Nocturnal Programmer

Ever since the rock star ran away, the “durbar” has been shut down of its usual daily proceedings. Jack Black’s, School of Rock, seeded some thought for one such conclave.

Let me quote from the movie

Dewey Finn: Give up, just quit, because in this life, you can’t win. Yeah, you can try, but in the end you’re just gonna lose, big time, because the world is run by the Man. The Man, oh, you don’t know the Man. He’s everywhere. In the White House… down the hall… Ms. Mullins, she’s the Man. And the Man ruined the ozone, he’s burning down the Amazon, and he kidnapped Shamu and put her in a chlorine tank! And there used to be a way to stick it to the Man. It was called rock ‘n roll, but guess what, oh no, the Man ruined that, too, with a little thing called MTV! So don’t waste your time trying to make anything cool or pure or awesome ’cause the Man is just gonna call you a fat washed up loser and crush your soul. So do yourselves a favor and just GIVE UP!
Dewey Finn: [on sticking it to "The Man"] Yes! But, you can’t just say it, man. You’ve gotta feel it in you’re blood and guts! If you wanna rock, you gotta break the rules. You gotta get mad at the man! And right now, I’m the man. That’s right, I’m the man, and who’s got the guts to tell me off? Huh? Who’s gonna tell me off?
Freddy: Shut the hell up, Schneebly!
Dewey Finn: That’s it Freddy, that’s it! Who can top him?
Alicia: Get outta here, stupidass.
Dewey Finn: Yes, Alicia!
Summer Hathaway: You’re a joke, you’re the worst teacher I’ve ever had!
Dewey Finn: Summer, that is great! I like the delivery because I felt your anger!
Summer Hathaway: Thank you.
Lawrence: You’re a fat loser and you have body odor.
Dewey Finn: …All right, all right! Now, is everybody nice and pissed off?

Pretty confusing as it may seem, Dewey is trying to define to little kids, what Rock music is all about. It’s a mental unleash of frustration to the Man. Some like Buddha might go crazy and run away to a forest nearby for “answers”. But Rock music expresses pretty much the same. It’s a form of art that is more explicit and verbose that many people from all walks of life can appreciate and correlate to. Again, this form of art apart from getting you larger from being expressive, guides a larger part of the, say western youth, into taking things more sarcastically and ironically, thereby nurturing a more tolerant civilization.

This is where Bengali rock comes in. Many of the Indian and Bangladeshi bands have been trying to create verse in Bengali. This might seem funny for some, but try to zoom out. Apart from the few elite among us, who are privileged to empathize expressive art forms like western rock and the crap that I’m writing among other things, imagine how many of the general population of India lack such capacity. That’s a huge number with so many digits. If a nation is about its people, and not the land :P, then I’d like you to evaluate the effect of localization of rock music! I’m not talking about translation, we aren’t that desperate. India like any other populace has a great pool of poets who can sing better in their native tongue.

The king used to cry imagining Auto Rickshaw guys in rock persuasion. Now that is radical? Ah… It’s already happening. I think its really cool. Now one might say, ah crap… we’ve our own forms of art, like erm… Hindustani and Karnatic? Well, maybe, but then there are two forms of art. One appreciated by the trained and ardent and the other appreciable by the general public. The general public is defined as people, who don’t have a literature or art degree, nor can afford extensive amounts of time in scaling complex forms. So the latter, is simple and has greater penetration. Such is Rock music. Artists who aspire to inspire fellow contemporaries, revolutionaries who wish to awaken the nation, visionaries who wish to surrealistically present complex ideas piecewise etc, can do so with greater reach and faster effect with such forms of expressive art.

In the words of AC/DC: We roll tonight… to the guitar bite… and for those about to rock… I salute you.