Just Like That: A mellow ode to the gramophone and vinyl
The gramophone did not need electricity or a battery. It was powered by a hand wound spring, which you wound before playing the record made of a brittle substance—shellac resin. My family's gramophone still plays, but, of course, is almost never used. On a visit to Islamabad with the late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, I bought another one. This had the showy brass amplifier. For some time, it adorned my study, and was quite a conversation piece, but is now lying on my farm, forgotten and forlorn.
Also Read:The vinyl countdown: 75 years in, see how the LP changed the world
The gramophone era was replaced by the vinyl era. Music was available on LPs or its smaller version, EPs. I still vividly recall the excitement when a Philips system came to our home, with the turntable and two speakers. My first LP record was of the classical music maestro Kishori Amonkar's ethereal rendering of raag Bhoop. Every night, before I slept, I used to put on this LP. In the mornings, while doing my yoga, I used to hear an LP of Lata Mangeshkar singing select verses of the Bhagwad Gita.
The present generation cannot imagine the romance associated with the vinyl period. LPs came in beautifully designed sleeves, and were lovingly stored in many homes on especially designed shelves. My study had such a section where LPs could be stacked genre wise. I recall that when the song Kabhi kabhi mere dil me khayal aata hai, from the film Kabhi Kabhi, had just come out, I wanted my wife to be to hear it. I had to send one of my staff to buy an EP of the song to play it for her.
The vinyl era was followed by that of cassettes. The compact cassette was revolutionary for its portability, its ability to record, re-record, and share mixtapes turned music into a deeply personal expression. The cassette was the first true enabler of the playlist culture, long before algorithms took over. But tapes wore out, they tangled, and their sound quality degraded—a small price for the freedom they offered.
Also Read: Vintage gramophones: This music connoisseur from Punjab is keeping a dying art alive
The compact discs promised perfection—digital clarity, skip-free listening, and longevity. The CD era marked the zenith of physical music sales, with albums achieving platinum status based on sheer volume. But the illusion of permanence was shattered when digitalization made CDs seem cumbersome. Why stack shelves with discs when music could float in the ether?
The transition from analog to digital was not just technological—it was philosophical. Music was no longer a physical possession but a string of ones and zeros. The MP3 format changed everything. Compression technology shrank files without obliterating quality, and suddenly, entire libraries could fit into a device no larger than a deck of cards. Napster, though controversial, exposed the hunger for instant access. The iPod, with its sleek design and '1,000 songs in your pocket' promise, became the emblem of this new era. If the digital revolution made music portable, the streaming revolution made it omnipresent.
Also Read: Record Store Day 2025: Musicheads are keeping Delhi's love affair with vinyl spinning
Why own when you can access? With cloud storage and offline modes, music was no longer tied to a device. Your library lived everywhere—phone, laptop, car, smart speaker. I myself installed an expensive wi-fi sound system in most rooms of my house.
And then, something strange happened. With music everywhere, omnipresent on the touch of a button, I found that I was listening to my choice of music much less than when it was a manual task, putting a disc on the turntable, inserting a cassette, loading a disc. But now I have found a solution that simplifies the complex wealth of technology at our finger tips. I carry a small and simple blue tooth speaker with me, anywhere and everywhere. I have a mobile that can connect to it, almost anywhere. And I listen to my kind of music whenever and wherever I want.
Also read:First time in 30 years: an indie group from Delhi is making its own vinyl records
I think that as we plummet headlong into the web of advancing technology that infinitely increases our options, the best option is to keep things simple, and eliminate the confusion of choice. In my book, Yudhishtara and Draupadi, there is a couplet:
A pebble thrown into a ripple-less void
Choice is the beginning of sin.
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Hindustan Times
18 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Just Like That: Understanding Krishna
As Janamashtami, the festival to celebrate the birth of Lord Krishna, approaches on August 16, I sometimes wonder how foreigners react to the massive Indian veneration of a God whose persona is so radically different to their concept of divinity. Here is a God who steals butter as a child, precociously flirts with the gopis when still in his teens, is the ultimate lover—Sringaramurtimam—in his raas with the gopis and his immortal love lore with Radha, plays a key role in the great battle of Mahabharata between the Pandavas and Kauravas—in which he is willing to unethically break rules so that ultimately Dharma wins, and—in an entirely different role—is the sage counsellor to Arjuna in the Bhagwad Gita. A child dressed as Lord Krishna tries to break an earthen pot (dahi handi) on the occasion of Janmashtami festival. (PTI File Photo) Is Krishna one God, or is he several personas rolled into one? To the Hindu mind, the attraction of Krishna lies precisely in this exuberance of his multifaceted personality. The love and reverence he invoked was never meant to be monochromatic. For Hindus, divinity is not necessarily a hostage to conventional yardsticks of behaviour. It is meaningful for the image it invokes, for the emotions it releases, for the ends it achieves, and for the joy and bliss it symbolizes and guarantees. Krishna, to be truly understood, must be seen—in contrast to maryada purushottam Ram, the very epitome of rectitude—as leela purushottam, the human incarnation of the playful, whimsy divine who is unconventional, nonconformist, lovingly mischievous, the very embodiment of a god who revels in the sheer joy of his divinity. Why did Hinduism conceive divinity as this kaleidoscope of differing attributes? The answer provides the key to the cerebral complexity of Hinduism and its fearless resolve to uninhibitedly plumb the unusual in order to provide a glimpse of the plenitude of divinity. While not all its infinite aspects can be captured, because it is both omnipresent and omnipotent, a glimpse can be provided of this very infinity by portraying it in myriad ways, each only a fragment of the whole, and yet a window to that endless canvas. Maryada Purushottam Ram is one aspect of the grandeur of the universe; Leela Purushottam Krishna is another aspect of the playful energy of the cosmos. Both represent facets of the seamless benediction of Ishwara, and the omniscience of Brahman. Whatever the philosophy underpinning Krishna, there is little doubt that as a religious deity he is arguably the most ubiquitous presence in India. In Vrindavan, people still believe that every night Krishna and Radha meet to enact their raas-leela. At the sandy stretch along the river Yamuna—the Raman Reti—people still build sand-houses in the hope that the Yugal Sarkar—Krishna and Radha—may walk over the edifice, and thus bless them. At the famous temple of Nathdwara near Udaipur, Krishna is worshipped as Shrinathji. The entire worship is premised on the assumption that the image of Krishna in the sanctum sanctorum is living. Across the land from Udaipur, at Puri, on the eastern coast, Krishna is worshipped as Jagannath. And possibly his most resplendent representation is seen at Guruvayoor in the south. If Shiva, in the awe-inspiring grandeur of his tandava was Nataraja, Krishna, in the delicate seductions of his movement, was Natwara. He is the main theme of the Manipuri dance of the north-east, of Kathak in the north, and of Odissi in Odisha. His dominant presence is also seen in the Yakshagana dance form of Karnataka, in the Kuchipudi dance style of Andhra, and in Bharatanatyam in Tamil Nadu. In Gujarat, the folksy Lakuta and Dandiya raas are inspired by him, as is the Tamasha folk theatre in Maharashtra, and the Chaitanya inspired yatra dramas in Bengal. His presence in music is equally pervasive. In West Bengal, they have a saying: Kanu bin gita nahin, which means 'without Krishna there is no song'. In fact, he is the focus of the largest number of compositions in Indian classical music, and his presence is even more dominant in the light music genre of the thumri, raas, hori, and dadra. Of course, in literature, he has inspired an entire compendium of poets, from Jayadeva to Surdas, Chandidas to Vidyapati, Bihari to Keshavdas, Mirabai to Antaal. And in art, the palm leaves creations in Bengal and Odisha, the Madhubani paintings of Bihar, the Thanjavur works of Tamil Nadu, and the Paithen paintings of Maharashtra are all testimony to his immense popularity. In his form of a personalised God, perhaps Krishna transcends the horizons of Hinduism. In the court of seventeenth century princely states of Mewar, the master painter who illustrated the Bhagwata Purana was a Muslim, Sahibdin. In Odisha, to this day, devotees sing the Muslim poet Salbeg's lyrics to welcome Lord Jagannath. Krishan looms large too in the devotional outpourings of Malik Mohammad Jaise. Syed Ibrahim Ras Khan (17th century), wrote his Rachnavali in praise of Krishna. Its opening lines were: Worthy to be human, are only those Ras Khan Who dwell among the cowherds of Gokul Gaon, And blessed alone are those animals, Taken to graze with the cows of Nanda's barn.
The Hindu
28-07-2025
- The Hindu
Preserving frequencies of the past
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Indian Express
27-07-2025
- Indian Express
Nagesh Kukunoor at Idea Exchange: ‘The climate has lent itself to many lawsuits, making it more terrifying for filmmakers'
Filmmaker Nagesh Kukunoor on his recent series The Hunt- The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case, keeping it apolitical and why we haven't cracked the true underdog sports story. The sesion was moderated by Alaka Sahani, Associate Editor, The Indian Express. Alaka Sahani: You have managed to keep your new web series — The Hunt- The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case — quite apolitical, given that it follows the investigation after former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was killed in a gruesome manner. How did you decide on its tone and treatment? I've always been clear about avoiding politics and religion. It's one of those areas where you're absolutely going to upset someone. It really doesn't matter how objective you try to be. What excited me about The Hunt was the investigation. I was around when the assassination happened and understood snatches of it. However, reading Anirudhya Mitra's book (Ninety Days: The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi's Assassins) and realising what had really happened in those 90 days were two completely different things. When I read it, my mind was blown. The hunt itself was so interesting for me that I kind of saw the path forward, to not touch upon any political angles. It starts with a political assassination and people assume that the rest of it is a political show, but it's mainly the assassination. After the show came out, I just kept my fingers crossed for the first two weeks. We're not out of the woods yet but hoping that everything will go smoothly. Alaka Sahani: You had your primary source material in the form of a book. But what kind of research and filtering process went into it? I co-wrote it with two other writers, and when you have a book that you base everything on — and this is also for legal purposes — you do whatever the requisite research is. You read the articles, some of the SIT members themselves have written books. There are multiple and differing viewpoints. So it became apparent after gathering all the material that we wanted to pick one and run with it. And that was the book. However, what's interesting, and this was also the reason that attracted me to the project, was that I have never adapted a book before. The most amazing sequences that play out on screen will sometimes be a single line in the book. To pick the events that actually tell the story, to make it cohesive, because when you undertake the largest manhunt in history, it's not as simple as what's shown in the show. People are telling me, 'oh, it's such a thriller'. That's because we made it like that. In reality, no investigation ever plays out like that. Sandeep Singh: Were you looking for a theme for a series or did you decide on it after you read the book? Anirudhya Mitra brought the material to Sameer Nair, who heads Applause Entertainment (production company). Sameer asked him to write a book so that we can adapt it. Once the book was written, that's when he pitched it to me. It was a series from the get-go. For the past seven years, I've just been almost entirely in the series space. Gone are the days when you would look at something and say, 'Oh God! This is so dense, how do I condense it in two hours?' And now that this stress is out of the window, the only question is monetary viability. Way before streaming came to India, I'd been trying to pitch myself as a series director in the US. I've been an HBO fan and long format was something I was just waiting for. Feature films are awesome, but up to this point, it has been gratifying to do stuff in the long format. Mohamed Thaver: Towards the end of the series, there are certain things which are not directly said, perhaps hinting at something. Does the book also leave things open-ended or have you made some changes? We have made a couple of changes because there are so many theories floating around. So, one had to kind of maybe suggest and kind of leave it open-ended. So, that's what we did. In the case of a true crime, the moment you take it from the page to a dramatic format, the kind of liberties you have to take… So every small thing, including the words that come out of the character's mouth, makes me think: are we doing right by them? It arguably was the most stressful thing. And I don't mean for being sued or creating a controversy. It's me as a writer and a filmmaker; I want to do right by whoever I'm portraying. In my world, there is seldom any black and white, it is all grey. Even when I deal with the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), it's dealt with so much humanity. There's never any finger pointing because as one of the characters says: 'One man's terrorist is another man's hero. Mihir Vasavda: Be it the LTTE side, the political side or the security establishment — how do you make a series without hurting any one of them? I don't know what that answer is but when we were writing it, more than anything else, we were absolutely paying attention to the fact that there would not be any misrepresentation. Taking liberties can be interpreted as misrepresentation. But it's trying to just do the best that you can. Since it's been out, that's been my only stress. It was arguably the most exciting project I've done. But just constantly hoping that you haven't upset anyone… You can say the most meaningful of things in ways that don't offend people, as opposed to doing it in a way that's in your face and getting your point across. And it's genuinely the way I view the world. It doesn't take effort for me to write lines a certain way. Mihir Vasavda: Is it tougher to make these kind of shows or movies now compared to 15 years ago? It is a hypersensitive world and people can come at you from any angle. When I made Hyderabad Blues (1998), the censor board gave me 91 cuts. It was one of the most torturous processes to get the film to the theatre. So, I'm not new to this kind of milieu. There the gatekeepers were defined. So I knew that when I was going up before the censor board, such and such thing would happen. The Anand Patwardhans of the world were also on a parallel track with me. He was doing his own stuff and I would constantly look and say: 'Man, I could never do that'. I still write within this space and this is how I do it. In today's times, everything is so amped up. So yes, you really don't know what's going to happen and how. The biggest threat to our existence is social media. In 2019, I just disconnected everything and went off the radar. Alaka Sahani: What was in your mind while shooting the Rajiv Gandhi assassination scene? How did you want to portray him? I wanted to show him the way we've seen him in rallies, but arguably that was the most disturbing part of the shoot because you knew that you're portraying a horrific, grizzly scene. So, I tried to handle it with the maximum sensitivity because the whole thing is told from the child's point of view and we don't see anything. And we see very little of the aftermath other than the shoe. I think that was the one scene when you're actually doing the nitty gritties. But at the back of my mind, that was weighing a little bit saying that this is how he went. Alok Deshpande: Could you elaborate on casting for The Hunt. Also, how has OTT changed the casting game? What we understand as casting has changed because of the OTT space. Prior to that, if I had to justify a cast like this to a platform and talk about what the marketability would be and who brings poster value — it would have been virtually impossible. But now, when I clearly sort of lay out my plan, no one baulks. Here, the guiding force was clearly the fact that we had to get people who at least looked like the characters they were portraying. Casting Bay handled this show. They dug around and absolutely found them. Zeeshan Shaikh: Based on the research you did, what is your analysis of the actual assassination? For an organisation that was so secretive, LTTE really went out of its way — they clicked those pictures which showed their involvement in the assassination. They didn't take credit. But the justification was that everything that they did, they documented as proof to show that they could pull off the most audacious things. For example, when they ran a trial run with VP Singh, they had a bunch of different people recording but they followed the same format. Dhanu had a garland and went all the way to VP Singh and garlanded him, which is what's shown there. They wanted to take it back to Prabhakaran and prove to him that they could get all the way to the top. It was brilliant in its conception. They did the same thing here (Gandhi's assassination). Physics played a small part in it otherwise they would have gotten away with the perfect crime. The photographer wanted a slightly better angle and he raises the camera and that's a little bit above the blast radius and the camera survives. Zeeshan Shaikh: At a time, when there are so many filmmakers and artists complaining about their freedom of expression being repressed, did you feel the pinch of what has been happening around you while making The Hunt? If I were to go to my previous shows and tell you the kind of minute changes that one has to make because someone else might be pissed off. Not related to any political space, but a community might take umbrage. So it's everywhere. It's political, it's religious, it's caste-based, everything is no no. You can make a sweet love story set in some small town and I guarantee someone can sue you even there. It's the times we live in. That's the reality of what we do. Alaka Sahani: What kind of vetting did The Hunt undergo? It went through the same that every show does. Every small line, every explanation. The vetting process had been going on for a very long time. It's not something that just happened. Because the climate has lent itself to a lot of lawsuits, it's far more terrifying for filmmakers. Sandeep Singh: We are living in tough times where we have to be careful of what we are seeing and depicting. What do you think has changed? Social media. That is the root of all evil. I don't need to know everyone's opinion, but everyone has an opinion. Let's say you are in an airport and someone recognises you. There are beautiful pluses to that and there are minuses to that. Why would you walk up to a filmmaker and say that the film you made was really bad. What do you hope to achieve with that and what do you think the filmmaker is going to say? You pour your heart and soul into it. The last thing you need is someone walking up to you and saying… it's like, if I walked up to you with your child and say, 'that's one ugly child'. Tell me which parent is going to be like 'you are right, this is a ugly child'. If you have something nice to say to someone who's made a film, say something nice. The last review I read was in 2006. So, I really don't care much for reviews either. With social media, the hate floats to the top and that's what sticks. I have no desire to constantly engage with that. None. Mihir Vasavda: Why haven't we cracked the true sports underdog stories in India? The problem is that in order to reach a larger audience, two things happen. First, you have to get a star. You've destroyed the story there. If you don't worry about the way the person looked and you brought a star, I understand what the filmmakers are doing. Then to justify that star, you need to make it bigger and bigger. Let's say you whittled it down and made it like a three-five crore film. You tell me who is going to see it. Where are you going to show it? Then you have to circle back around to the fact that you have to get at least a B-list star. Our movie universe setup is not equipped to deal with this. That's not going to change. Mohamed Thaver: What prompted you to write and direct to Iqbal? Someone wanted a bunch of us to write short stories to commemorate former President Abdul Kalam's second term in office. I wanted to tell an underdog story. So I had an idea about a deaf and non-speaking kid who excels in malkhamb. I started writing the short story and it was only supposed to be like 10 pages. Seven went in describing what malkhamb was. So then, when I flipped it to cricket, all you had to say was Iqbal wanted to play cricket and you're done. I wrote a short story. A lot of people thought it was a movie about cricket and it wasn't. It never was. The heart and soul was about someone with a disability and overcoming it. This is a classic underdog tale. Alaka Sahani: Is it possible to make more top grossers like Pushpa? If it weren't for the big films, half the industry would not function. The success keeps people employed. There is a certain level of excitement to walk into a theater and watch something on that scale. But that can't be the only thing on offer. With OTT, the world has just become a smaller place. I had written a sci-fi film in 2000 and people kind of laughed. Now I can pitch the same. They might still say, 'we're not going to give you Rs 500 crore to make it' but that is a different conversation. Zeeshan Shaikh: Your film Dor is an official remake of a Malayalam film. What is the creative freedom in recreating art that has already been created by someone? There's not just one way to tell a story, right? I was on a jury and I saw Perumazhakkalam (2004), a Malayalam film. Both this movie and Dor are based on the same original idea about a woman losing her husband. I loved the idea. But TA Razzaq, the story writer and producer, got there first. So I had to go and get the rights from him and then make it. But if you look at Perumazhakkalam and Dor, there is absolutely nothing in common. Not the lensing, not the way the story is told. Sometimes the core idea appeals to you and you say, 'I bet I could tell the story differently'. I did it once again with a movie in 2011 called Mod with Ayesha Takia and Rannvijay Singh. It was based on a Taiwanese film called The Moment in Time that I watched at a festival. Suanshu Khurana: With so many big budget films with big stars not working in recent times in Hindi cinema, how do you see the uncertainty in the film industry? Does it need a fresh perspective? Is that what's happening? There's always a need to put things in a larger context and try and make sense of it. You have some hits, you have some losses. If we look back at the cinema that happened 50 years ago, it was driven by whatever stories were told at that point. So I don't know if just Hindi films aren't working or if now there's a larger scope for other languages to dub and then occupy what is known as the Hindi cinema space. Even when we couldn't raise money for a single film, I had this pig-headed approach that if you try hard enough, someone will give you that money and then eventually the movies would get made. Maybe this is just the lower part of the cycle and again there'll be two or three hits and again it'll come back up again. Zeeshan Shaikh: Did you get a call from DR Karthikeyan (who headed the SIT) after The Hunt was released? He has an alternative version of how things unfold. Sivarasan (the mastermind of the operation) is an important character with an interesting backstory. Is he someone you'd want to flesh out in another version? The answer is no to both. But characters who have a lot to lose are always interesting to write. Given everything, it was great fun writing Sivarasan. Then getting someone like Shafeeq Mustafa for the role. Shafeeq does the first audition and what I remember most is, he takes a drag and holds the cigarette and his hand shakes. I just loved it. That was one of the ways I saw Sivarasan. I wanted that nervous energy. The way Shafeeq walks, that's Sivarasan. I didn't have to structure that walk. Again, these are all the joyous parts of fleshing things out. So no, I would not be interested in doing anything larger.
