Kartikey Sehgal

This is the working/first poster of ‘Vide’, a forthcoming film in English. The film is about the life of a church musician.

Participants include Manoj G Nigli as director, Kartikey Sehgal as actor and Christopher Masand as music director.

We wish for its sucessful completion.

To sum up this note:

“The future is no more uncertain than the present.“ – said Walt Whitman…

but added that, “The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.”

Kartikey Sehgal

 Here is a gift. Selected works of ‘Father of the Symphony’, Joseph Haydn. These are my selections  from his 106 symphonies. This man made many, many symphonies.

 Music fans have complained that Haydn is boring and ‘repetitive’. He wrote for the court and for  entertainment. He wrote so that the princes and the common man could identify and move along and  not be challenged or shocked. ‘But’ he also composed masterpieces that remind you of the style of  Mozart and Beethoven, who had dedicated their compositions to Haydn. 

 Because he composed a lot and often in speed, you are bound to find repetition if you listen to  everything. My selection of 22 movements have melody, style and grace. I challenge you to find this  selection boring or artistically inedible. 

 Here is the first track from the selection – online. An underrated and ‘unheard’ composition from his  early life. Symphony No 4, Mvt. 2 (Audio only Link).

 Ideally, you will listen to this selection and get back to me. So we can discuss Haydn’s music and talk about the violin strings. This will do good for your music study.

 I have divided the 22 movements into folders of six onto a safe web-sharing depot – mediafire.
Each folder is approximately 20 MB in size to aid listeners with slow internet connections. All files are MP3s. 

It gives me immense pleasure to listen to this selection of fine Haydn music. 
I hope it generates and sustains your interest in western classical music and that you seek more of such music.

Link to Music:

Click to Go to Link

This will take you to a page on mediafire that has links to six folders. Click on each folder to download.

Kartikey Sehgal

My vocals for the song ‘Goriye Ho Meri Raniye Ho’ (alongwith Seema Sehgal) from the album “Tale of a Virgin River”. 
 
Singers: Seema Sehgal & Kartikey Sehgal 
Composed by Seema Sehgal 
Lyrics: Yash Sharma
Arranged by: Sandesh Shandilya
From the Dogri Album ‘Tale of a Virgin River’ 

Goriye ho meri raniye ho by kartikeys

Kartikey Sehgal

Sung during the September program in Mumbai… my compositions of Faiz’s ‘Chopin ka Nagma’ and Ahmad Faraz’s ‘Tere Kareeb Aake’… sung by the mellifluous Seema Sehgal.

Savage storm and without storm. Unshaven or impeccably dressed. Amidst the clinker of construction sites and folk songs of sparrows.

Enjoy listening to them as I have enjoyed making them.
[Click on the ‘Orange Play’ button]

Chopin ka Nagma
Writer: Faiz Ahmad Faiz
Composer: Kartikey Sehgal
Singer: Seema Sehgal

Chopin ka Nagma by kartikeys

Tere Kareeb Aake
Writer: Ahmad Faraz
Composer: Kartikey Sehgal
Singer: Seema Sehgal

Tere Kareeb Aake by kartikeys

Kartikey Sehgal

The facets of Ganapati Visarjan. From ‘Langars’ to street dances to immersion.

[Link to Video]

[Link to Video]

Kartikey Sehgal

Foreigners are silly. They are not very smart. I don’t deny this assertion by certain Indians used to traveling the world villages. Instead, I accept that foreigners are silly.

And therein lies their charm and power. It takes a certain silliness to live life merrily. And to know life.

This ‘foreign silliness’, which comes across to Indians as ‘lack of intelligence’, is simply a case of delayed mental boredom.

They don’t know as much maths and science at a certain age as we do -  I hear. This is true to an extent and I consider this a positive civilizational trait.

An average Indian student may know more mathematics than the average foreigner of the same age, but the average foreigner need not know more than the Indian. It doesn’t matter.

What we overlook is that at any given time, there are certain foreigners who know as much – if not more – than the finest Indian students. While the other average foreigners don’t care about math and science. Why should they? They will spend their time elsewhere.

Indians seemed obsessed with the term ‘average’. How does it matter that the average foreigner, whose field of interest is not mathematics, knows lesser than the average Indian who may invariably force himself to a job out of a social compulsion of status?

The average foreigner, with lesser mathematic skills, will employ himself in other fields of his liking, for which his society will praise him and his government will provide him with opportunities. If at all his job is not to the society’s liking, then the law will protect him.

This perceived silliness is a mixture of courage and wisdom – interdependent qualities.

Symbolically, imagine the European countryside with its young children frolicking among green forests and lakes and ponds. That’s the image that is often presented to me; ‘they are just not smart like Indian kids’.

If silliness were a failure, then Europe wouldn’t have green fields and ponds and rivers and electricity. They seem to have done well despite their history of conquest and plunder.

If they were a failure, then immigrants wouldn’t have settled there in vast numbers and used their measures of social welfare to their advantage.

This silliness is an attribute you would want to see in children and your self, if you were not blinded by fear and aversion to creation. Fear of failure and an imagined life of penury. Fear of social shame.

Silliness demands multiple perceptions of life. Whereas fear makes you stick to the books and journals and other socially approved artefacts.

Consider the silly foreigners – babbling about and talking inanities – as freer and braver (and not stupid). They have more opportunities than Indians in discovering and pursuing the streams of their choice. They can take failure better as they can perceive it in myriad ways. Hence, their art and cinema has myriad expressions whereas Indian architecture has diminished.

Kartikey Sehgal

On moods and desires of men. And their idea of romance.

What remains, of days gone by? Remnants of nights – broken in pieces. Of rains that lash on to the nonchalant mind.

There is no fire. No motivation. All of it is just desire. Desire. Called variously as fire, motivation, quest, courage. If desire be the root of all that is creative, then I have seen desire. It burns like fire, and motivates you towards a quest.

Why are places important. They assume their place, thus:
Places are recipients of moments when the heart is aflutter with desire. And desire is that that is symbolic of man – all that flows within him – countless years of evolution.

The heart connects man to his past.

And when desire becomes man – places assume importance. And that is the romance of places.

What remains, of days gone by…

Sitting among walls, modern ruins of emptiness. Only well decorated. Homes.
They have their place, these homes, when filled with a man.
And man has his place, this mortal, when filled with desire.

And he chases desire. Chases that moment, when he was man. A man in spite of the world around him. A man in realisation of his self.

He leaps into the vault of memories. The sounds and lights of the places that hosted the desire. That desire.

The details of colour and people irk him. How does man retrace desire. His moments of glory?
And so he chases – on foot.

A soldier in rain. The umbrella his shield.

And water, that drips from faces and buildings – from places – forms puddles around his feet.
Water that is the culmination of an infinite memories.

He stamps that water, our soldier, conscious of the need for desire, while others’ desires melt around him.

Alas, that place holds no such meaning now. It ignited once, when he felt the creator inside him. It is now a memory. A memory. And that is the romance of places.

The original desires of man – are all memories. And while others dwell in the past, the creator dwells in the memory of desire, that is, the memory of an allegory, of beauty.

And then the night begets a dream.
Man awakens and forgets the dream.
The lure of defeat tempts him.
Another desire. An other desire.

Kartikey Sehgal

[Anna Hazare anti-corruption movement: reference]

So these people are not the anti-corruption heroes? Ask around, see how many of the supporters know about them.

J. Gopikrishnan, second from left (with mic) [photo source]

Subramanian Swamy [photo source]

Without the brains (head), how does the body function?

Or is it just easier to support whosoever is ‘in the picture’.

We complain of the caste system, but is it not ‘the legs’ that gets the most mileage? [Along with the arms?]

Mumbai is a beautiful city.
Apparently.
Her citizens take care of its roads and pipelines.
Commuters travel like human beings in trains.

Nobody throws garbage on the roads.
They pass by their monuments while rallying against corruption.

Mumbai is dirty so what?
Garbage goes when corruption goes.

No, corruption goes when garbage goes.
If this is a Gandhian movement, then don’t the protestors know this?

[and the legs score over the brains again. if brains score over legs, is it casteism?]

People are frustrated with personal corruption.
Good time to come out and vent.
Lokpal or not – doesn’t matter.
Anti-corruption – the term matters more.

I saw a girl walk in dirt and muck. Pro-rally.
[End to corruption.]
Around her lay shanties with frail sickly women.
Sitting inches above sewage water.

What colour is your garment.
Of what hopes do the eyes sparkle.
If you are beauty, then of what value is beauty.

I passed her by.
Cursing the anguish wisdom brings.
[but segregates lust and life]

He who can see life, how can he love a woman?

Does wisdom not know, she [wisdom] brings anguish?
Or does the seeker not know, she brings anguish?
What then, is, wise?
[At this, Goddess Kali laughs]

Maya.

Kartikey Sehgal

Commenter Kay wrote detailed responses on the story ‘What the slut-walk is really about’. 

my dad was an attorney, and had more flexible hours than mom, yet it was mom, every evening who came home from work, cooked, cleaned, helped us with homework, and on the weekends did an entire cleaning of the house, my dad always got the full plate of food ready, before any other member, he on the other hand never handed a glass of water to her…..the fact that in most homes, girls are ‘groomed’ for the domestic life after marriage, whereas the boys aren’t even asked to pick up after themselves.

Kay is referring to what I have called the ‘lesser man’. [link]

Let’s be clear. It is not a man’s duty to do house-work. Man by nature is independent. His upbringing spoils him. Men are feminised into being lazy; scratching their thighs and rubbing their eyes simultaneously while smiling ‘cutely’ and in turn, getting their cheeks pulled apart by older women.

The problem is not that man is not helping woman in house-work. The problem is that he has been brought to this state of dependency. And women are an important part in this complicity of enfeebling him.

Kay further writes that men care about their own families and not their wife’s parents. True.

However, Kay, note that these men don’t really care about the ‘family’. If they understood and cared for ‘the family’, then they would understand and care for the system; instead they ‘care’ just for their family. Naturally, these men don’t really care. They bear. A ritual, a responsibility for life.

And how can they care? They have been overburdened and bored to death. All that time you thought you were helping them by locking them up in rooms in front of books, you were actually preparing them for being living zombies. Heartless creatures who validate themselves through ‘marks’ and promotions.

These men don’t care much for their parents. They won’t care much for yours (if at all). And while women are blaming their husbands for being heartless, they may be preparing their sons for leading the same life.

We are preparing for a society of weak men. The ones who don’t do much while their country is bombarded regularly. Who are content to live amidst social indicators of wealth. Who scorn at men who are smarter but poorer. The ones who look at a man and think, ‘does he have more money than me? Should I talk to him nicely in the case he does?’. These same men then spit on the roads and throw their empty soft-drink cans on the road and reach out for their car, all the time scratching their thighs and heads in unison.

There are variants of such men. The serious ones. Who don’t scratch anything publically and are given to rules and mores. Who are depressed. And sad. And responsible to their family. Sadness and strictness takes up so much of their time, that they care little about their wife or her parents.

Behind all such men is almost always the weak family, characterised by the weak father and the weak (but seemingly strong) mother.

Kay, you must note that women are equal (or higher) contributors to the sufferings of women. I need not tell you that women are not good friends with other women. In society, the good woman is left behind by other women. She doesn’t get much support from most men as they are, well, lesser men, destroyed and unable to identify real worth.

The slut-walk movements do not take this into account. Which is why they come across as moronic. They will not be able to help women. If you really want to investigate the condition of women (and men), then read this very long essay by Thomas Ball. What applies to America can apply here.

You need action* and not needless drama to come out of any problem. Slut-walk is pure drama. Running and playing under the sun with children is action. Toughening them up is action. The second-rate/lesser men can’t do it. Those who know the ‘truth’ can. It is imperative they act.

Make ‘real men’*. They will not curb the wit and talents of any woman.

*action:  this is the ‘voice your dissent’ query of your response
*real men will have ‘real’ daughters. The witty ones and not the ‘bitchy’ ones.

Kartikey Sehgal

[Happy Independence Day. Independent in thought. Yet a challenge - The Young India]

My grandfather’s friend wanted for him to come and live in Norway. This is a good time – he told him in the 1990s. Things will take a bad shape. The Asians are coming over (he named the communities). He was not happy with immigrants coming to Norway. He was an immigrant himself.

He further informed my grandfather: There will be a geographical section in Norway that will become unsafe. It will be cut-off from the main section – the people who built the country.

My grandfather couldn’t go to Norway for some reason.

_______________________

Two out of three Charged with rape in Norway’s capital are Immigrants with a non-western background According to a police study. [source]

A simple search on the internet will reveal to you politically-incorrect statistics – if there is such a thing. Many to most Europeans are fed up of immigrants.

It is no longer ‘incorrect’ to name communities and religions. Police in Norway and Sweden are doing it openly. Germany has said that the “country’s attempts to build a multicultural society have “utterly failed”

Most of France considers Islam a threat [source].

_____________________

In 2010, all crimes against women in Oslo were committed by non-Western men. [Watch here]

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A relative has recently returned from Amsterdam.

“They are sceptical about me, my name and my religion. They don’t know who is Muslim and who is not. The one at the airport was rude.

I don’t mind. You can’t blame them. They are protecting their interests.”

Instead, he could have easily made it an issue by claiming racism and discrimination.

________________________

Political correctness does nothing for the good immigrants. If we don’t point out and punish the criminals, then the minorities in any nation will suffer. Post the bomb-blasts there is an eerie silence in India about ‘who did it’. When the cup of tolerance overflows, all minorities, including the good ones, will come under fire. This is natural. This is how it has been happening.

Related articles

• Lessons for India from the Norway tragedy (theyoungindia.com)
• The Double Standards of ‘Freedom of Speech’ (theyoungindia.com)
• The Failure of Islam in Multicultural Europe (theyoungindia.com)