RaGa

 

RaGa is miffed, or at least his coterie are; how dare Barack Obama call him names. After all it is ok for Indians to refer to him as Pappu, but a rank foreigner, he has no business to refer to him in such a derogatory manner. Indian classical music is pretty rich with its scales, notes, moods, parentage ……the aaroh, avaroh, taal, shudhh-komal-teevra…. a deeply spiritual experience actually. I have run out of musical vocabulary here(!) In simple words RaGa may be referred to as a musical theme, which should have an ascending and descending pattern and vary with moods, seasons or even with the time of the day. One can’t blame poor Obama at not having comprehended the nuances of our RaGa, after all he is yet to discover himself.  So far our Raga has been uniformly steady in his ‘descent only’ pattern nor has he made any ‘variation’ irrespective of the time of the day or season. But then “One man’s music may be noise for the other”, unfortunately for Mamma dear the fusion which a Rossini, Bellini or Verdi could have delivered with our own Ravi Shankar, Pandit Jasraj or Amjad Ali Khan has not fructified. In fact, not just noise but may be cacophony, which obviously is unbearable cruelty for the human auditory system.

We Indians are a sensitive lot, we can take umbrage over just about anything, so calling RaGa names is sacrilege to some but that itself may be music to the others, singing a different ‘Raga’ just confirming their own hypothesis. While Obama may not have sung any paeans to their star per se but that doesn’t matter, or for that matter Manmohan Singh has been praised is conveniently overlooked.

May be this abbreviated name business is to blame after all it has actually aided the enemy camp, with NaMo being associated with paying obeisance to the Almighty being the cryptic version of ‘Namaskaram O Lord’, the odds were obviously heavily against RaGa.

This obsession with abbreviating the names to ‘Brangelina’ “Saifina’ or ‘Virushka’ for celebrity couples took on a different angle when resorted to for the singletons…. so the advent of RaGa or NaMo…..they are self-sufficient, ‘apna haath jagannath’ types, nothing to tie them down literally. So we need to look for an alternative, oh no, not for Rahul Baba, heaven forbid, just for a different narrative….. How about GaRa……no that won’t do either as Gara in the vernacular means ‘mud’. But then mud is earthy and rural and can be moulded into pottery…. So any takers?? Or get him to tie the nupital knot which will automatically get rid of this RaGa business at least.....