Randomity

Tum Mile

2011-10-23T16:03:00.002-04:00

Hello People!

After a long break of 6 months, here I am with a new song... Have been itching to blog about it since a month and finally even though I am not too happy with this music piece, I decided to put it up on a show for you all to comment good/bad. The original song in itself is lovely, but somehow due to bad sound quality and also I was not sure what kind of background music style to use for this instrumental, I am disappointed and not satisfied. If you observe, I did try to put in some DJ kind of beats and make it sound little interesting...

Please enjoy the song and please please do not forget to comment. Would be happy to see good comments and happier to see criticisms!!

The final countdown

2011-04-24T21:20:00.007-04:00

Hello again!

This is the first song that I composed using yamaha psr s700's multi track recording feature, where in you record
each background track separately and merge them all together at the end.
It was a very exciting experience to compose the 2.5 minute music piece in a way a professional music director would compose.
But was about 6 hours of effort as i am still a newbie!! Hope to keep coming with more songs next month
Stay tuned!!

Kuch Na Kaho Instrumental

2010-10-18T11:07:00.007-04:00

Finally, after almost 2 months since my last song, I got some free time to come up with a simple instrumental version of the song Kuch Na Kaho from the movie 1942 Love Story. Hope you enjoy it. Please don't forget to write your comments on my blog post :)!

Wheat & Dairy Free Indian Style Pasta

2010-09-01T13:25:00.015-04:00

Hello All,

This is my first post in the Recipes section. After having realized my sensitivity to most dairy and wheat products, I began browsing for wheat and dairy free indian dishes. To be honest, an indian meal without Rotis, and breakfast and desserts without milk made me feel miserable.

But thanks to the internet, people have suggested good alternatives and now I am motivated to try cooking even those dishes that I never have considered before in my day to day cooking. I made this dish the other day and my husband just loved it.

I am sure that after looking at this pic you might feel like giving it a try!

Ingredients

Bionaturae gluten free Pasta -400gms (From Whole Foods)
Onions - 2
Green Chillies - 3
Garlic Paste -2 tsp
Pasta Tomato Basil Sauce - 5 tsp
Tomatoes - 4
Coriander leaves
Lemon Juice - 2tsp
Olive Oil - 100gms
Jeera
Shredded Rice Cheese - 50gms ( From Whole Foods)
Chilli Powder & Salt to taste
Butter (If you can tolerate small amounts of Dairy)

Instructions

Heat some olive oil in a pan, Add the jeera, green chillies, onions fry them well
Then add the tomatoes to it, then after the tomatoes fry then add the chilli powder, salt and the tomato sauce.
Then Finally close the flame and add the lemon, coriander leaves and the shredded cheese
Take a large vessel full of water, add the pasta to it. Let it cook well for about 20 minutes. Then fish the pasta out of the water and add it to the sauce.

Patriotic Fusion Theme

2010-08-23T09:09:00.009-04:00

Hello !!

Although it is past 15th of Aug, I believe its never too late to pay respects to one's country! Here I have tried to create a instrumental fusion of our national anthem, national song and another song from Roja. I hope you enjoy it. I still need to work on the sound quality of my songs, so may be next time I will post a song with better sound quality.

Please feel free to post your comments and most importantly critiques, which will help me get better at what I am doing.

Belated Independence day wishes to all of you!

Lukka Chuppi Instrumental Remix

2010-07-16T10:03:00.005-04:00

Hello All!!

After attending the A.R.Rahman concert last month I was inspired to create an instrumental version of Lukka Chupi from the movie Rang De basanti. You could call it a instrumental Remix or whatever as long as it sounds melodious to you and entertains you. Its a little longer than the other songs I have created previously , so please do listen to it till the end :) and don't forget to write in your comments on my blog.

Hope you all enjoy the music!

Pehla Nasha Instrumental

2010-06-05T16:24:00.004-04:00

Friends, this is my all time favorite song and on one of my close friend's special request I decided to learn how to play it and finally recorded after weeks and weeks of practising. There are still many glitches and a lot of scope for improvement but for now this is the best I could do!. Enjoy and feel free to post your comments - good or bad :). Thanks for listening!!

Ek Haseena Thi Remix - Karz

2010-04-17T13:21:00.006-04:00

Roja Jaaneman Instrumental

2010-03-08T11:06:00.004-05:00

Zara Zara Instrumental

2010-02-21T16:40:00.009-05:00

How we celebrated American Independence in Boston

2009-07-07T10:09:00.024-04:00

It seems to be a general consensus that Boston has the best of all fireworks in US. Well, atleast Bostonians think that way, just like a New Yorker would think that the Empire State is the tallest building in the world, not realizing that he/she is talking of the 1931 s. Not aware of this fact, my husband and I had planned a casual get away to Boston for the July 4th long weekend.

And here is our trip report!

1) Travel: Booked a Chrysler sebring convertible (convertibles - my latest passion) with thrifty in Boston at a nominal price - 80 bucks a day [all inclusive], only to find the car being unavailable. Tried our best to pain the rental guy and he finally gave up on our stubbornness and got us one.

2)Tourist Places: We had few places in mind that we wanted to see-Charles River, NewBury Street, Quincy Market, Boston Downtown, blah blah.. and ofcourse Hardvard and MIT as I am one among their all time prospective students. Common who doesn't want to study there?! If given a chance, I wouldn't mind giving up my IT career for a Music and Theatre Arts degree in any of those univs! Naah.. not so desperate:-)

3)Journey: July 3rd, Beautiful sunny day, spent half day in journey and paining the rental guy in Boston. Poor guy he was so nice and polite. We felt we were finally in the US!! The culture is so different in NJ/NY. People just take you for granted. Anyway, not to digress further, we took the convertible and went to Holiday Inn, where we stayed. Slept all evening and night and finally got up next morning and realized we had wasted one whole day already.

4) Charles River: July 4th, had a typical american breakfast at the hotel and headed off in our flaunting convertible to Boston's Newbury street - a trendy shopping district lined up with historic brownstones with hundreds of shops and restaurants. A popular destination for tourists and locals. Lovely building architecture, felt like we were in Europe or some other country and not in US. And yeah, we were not at all surprised to find indian restaurants in that area. Closeby there was a river surrounded by beautiful grass where people had set up their camping tents and were playing cards, gosipping, barbequing.

After an hour or so, I started complaining to my husband that we weren't seeing any tourist spots and were visiting all unimportant places. So I finally started googling on my iphone to figure out where we were and found that we were sitting on Charles River, a famous tourist spot, no wonder there were 100's of people :). The harvard Bridge - connection between Boston and Cambridge was right there and finally we understood that the fireworks will be held here.

5) Beach: Hubby wanting to visit one of the Boston Harbor islands, which was pretty far from where we were, so we searched for the nearest beach and our dear GPS decided to take us to some random beach in Boston. Its called Winthrop beach and I would tag it as a local town beach sort of thing, Although, nothing great about it... beaches are always fun.

6) Driving in Boston - Countless number of times we drove through either a bridge or a tunnel. We were never on a straight single road for more than a few seconds and roads were like a roller coaster ride and I am pretty sure that except in the downtown area, almost every road in Boston is a bridge high up in the air or a tunnel under the rivers and lakes!!

7)Quincy Market - once again a shopping and dining place. It was all crowded with tourists, surrounded by nice shops, restaurants serving the best junk food possible :) and we did not miss the opportunity to enjoy both!

8)Boston Pop's & Fireworks - For anyone planning to visit the Charles River for the fireworks in future, a word of caution, please do not go by car and instead use the local trains in Boston. We took our car and couldn't find any parking spot on the road even within a radius of 3-4 miles of the river. After half an hour of hunting for a parking spot, we decided to donate 10 bucks to one of the public parking garages there. We reached an hour before the fireworks were to begin, hence did nothing but stared at the American flag floating in the dark sky, and started feeling nostalgic, wondering if we ever took so much trouble just to celebrate India's independence day!!

The americans started singing their national anthem and other songs, I was surprised to hear my hubby singing along with them, only to realise that he was singing his school song that is basically the song God Bless America, just the one word 'America' was replaced by his school's name!! You know...It requires real talent to pick an already composed song among the millions avaiable in the world and then fit it to your own purpose and everybody knows how talented Indians are in such things :-)

Fireworks began and the ooh's and the aah's started. No doubt it was beautiful but after having celebrating Diwali for more than 20 years in India, where you hold the crackers in your own hands and throw them on the ground just a second before they light up.... it was kind of boring to just stand and stare at the sky, although beautiful. We were there for about 20 minutes and the fun was over for us.Went back to the hotel and slept.

9)Harvard and MIT:Harvard has a very beautiful campus with buildings along the Charles river. Visited the main HBS building and some random ones around. MIT, saw the main building, took a few snaps and while we were there, we saw a family and a chinese guy standing and staring at the MIT campus map. The american guy was asking the chinese guy, innocent questions such as why MIT is not an Ivy league. And the chinese guy almost shouting at him telling that he is not the founder of MIT to know answers to such questions. Heard their conversation for some time, had a hearty laugh and started the journey back home.

All in all, its a nice place, but nothing can beat NY and India !!!:-)

'Desi' Bridal Shows = Speed Dating!

2009-06-16T16:28:00.021-04:00

Last Sunday I had my first experience ever at an Indian Bridal Expo in New Jersey. A friend of mine who is a member of the New York City's Bhangra Club was doing a punjabi song performance and needed a keyboard player. Although I knew that the music part I had to play was insignificant when compared to the other parts being played by people in the song, I being unable to resist this unique opportunity of performing at a show, volunteered for it. The place was 1 hour away from our home. My husband and one of our close friends accompanied me and we definitely enjoyed our time there.

The venue was a hotel(3 star I believe), and we were welcomed by a number of people waiting at the entrance, who guided us through the path to the main area where the show was supposed to take place. All sorts of decorations on the doors and white veils that are generally used in Christian weddings were used to decorate the railing on the stair case leading to the main area. It felt like we were attending a North Indian-American wedding. As we entered, there was a stage with a beautifully decorated background usually found in reception/engagement parties. The stage was for the various music and dance events organized for that evening. There was a dining area kind of thing where there were lots of fruits/snacks to grab. A seating area with 2 or 3 big tables and chairs put up for the people to eat,chit-chat, gossip. However, this was not being used by people the way it was intended to be. I will come to this fun part very soon...:). Then there were a couple of booths set up by various jewellers, boutiqes etc displaying their designer collections and trying to sell them to the prospective brides, which I thought was supposed to be the main purpose of the Bridal Expo.

But here comes the fun part... While I was off to one of the hotel rooms for a practice session, which obviously gives me an excuse for not being able to keenly observe what exactly was going on in the Expo, I left my husband and his friend to get bored as, according to me, they basically had nothing to do there. The place was meant for parents and their soon-to-be married children and a good place for Businessmen for networking or advertising their stuff. When I came back from my practise expecting to see them bored, I was rather surprised to find them having fun and enjoying. I asked them what they were doing, and they said they were trying to act "Single" and have fun! Needless to say that I was a little annoyed and had to remind him that he was married to me ;) .However I decided to be a part of their fun and they showed me a how a guy, who, just appeared like a regular visitor, was actively pursuing his purpose of being there - observing girls and trying to talk to them- one after the other ;).

This was just the starting point... I then started observing people(girls, guys and parents) carefully and saw that there were many single guys and girls doing nothing but staring at each other and then efficiently utilizing the opportunity trying to talk and know each other. Parents who came with their children were eying other parents and their children. Basically none of them knew the other and the Seating area was being used by these groups to just sit and stare at with the hope of finding a match for their children. Could see a lot of stress on their faces! And then as the time was getting closer and events about to begin, single guys and girls became aggressive in their search . The aggressiveness became more apparent when I saw them with numbers and name tags, going around to introduce themselves. So the Bridal Show, in my opinion, turned out to be an informal Speed Dating arena.

At one point when a parent saw my husband and his friend standing, unaware of the fact that they were married, tried talking to them and apparently even asked them to sit down with them and wait so that they could introduce their daughter to them. Both of them fled from there as soon as they could!!

So, the summary here is... for all singles out there...A bridal expo would definitely be a great opportunity to explore the concept of speed dating, and who knows you may find the love of your life right there with your parents beside you!!And for all wives of married/engaged men... Don't ever make the mistake of taking your husbands to a bridal expo!!! ;)