Are you happy? How?

Hi all,

I guess this is the longest I’ve been away from my blog. Had a deadline, and then was on a book reading binge in December (read once again the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter series and a couple of miscellaneous titles ).

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I’ve been pondering about something for quite a while now. No clear answer yet. Thought I’d blog about it and get perspectives.. The title of the post is the question. Are you happy? How?

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I’ve been observing people around me and myself for a while. Some of us are unhappy with the current situation we’re in. Some are happy. The unhappy ones either struggle to change the situation, or just remain unhappy. The ones that manage to change the situation move to the happy guys group. (Why people are unhappy is interesting in many ways, as I found that it tells a lot about that person; its no help for this particular question though)

Looking at the happy ones, I was interested in why they are happy.  Generally, people who are happy seem to be those who are free to do what they want. But not all who are free to do what they want are happy. Why? Is there a causal relationship, or is it a classic example of correlation not implying causality?

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The last one and half years have been great for me. I’m where I  long wanted to be, I am mostly independent, and am having a great time! Surprisingly, though, most of the fun things I did are fading away (no, I do not suffer from some kind of dementia or memory loss ). Or rather, they do not seem significant. Have you felt this?

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This leads me to a related question: is lasting happiness a myth? If not, what in a happy experience makes it lasting? I do have many things that happened ages back, but still gives me pleasure to think about. I don’t know if they will continue to do so after some years, but at least they are more “significant” than the rest. Based on them, I have some guesses to the above question, but also have a feeling that they cannot be generalized to all.

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So crops up the question in its final form: in general, what makes people happy? What do you think the answer is? If it is not too personal, can you tell me what makes you happy? Happy not in the momentary or temporary sense, but in a more lasting sense.

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karthrags

Update 1:

Was reading about the hedonic treadmill. Seems to be closely related to hedonistic adaptation, which is when the pleasure derived out of some object dims over time. Simply a term for the phrase “getting used to”, I guess. In this context, the question would read as “is there happiness immune to hedonistic adaptation?”

 

IIM CAT 2009 Experience – The Fiasco

Hi all,

Having written the GRE, GATE, I was curious to see how CAT is. After hearing that CAT is going online this year, was even more intrigued. So my friend Lenson and I registered, for day 1, the morning of 28th – the first day first show In short, it was a flop! It was a painful experience overall and left me feeling that a simple, old-school paper-and-pencil test would have been much better than all this high-tech mash-up.

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Act 1 – The Entry

Scene 1 – Approaching The Centre

We were instructed to be at the centre by 830am, with the instructions booklet giving us dire warnings of late-comers not being allowed entry. As we were to find out later, this was just one instance of the general philosophy of rules being applicable only one way, and no accountability from the organizers for ANYTHING. We’d be barred entry if late, but what if the exam’s delayed? Nothing. Anyways, we were there by 815am, and we find a crowd standing outside the campus. Students weren’t allowed inside the campus! At 845am, the powers that be deigned it appropriate that students be permitted to approach withing 500m of the sanctum sanctorium, the exam centre. We were fortunately at the front of the queue, and got in quickly. At the gate, each person was asked to write his name, phone number, address, college and mail id, one by one. Really pitied the guys behind, which was essentially the entire batch.

Scene 2 – Approaching The Hall

Our identities were verified by 2 more people on the way (wonder why.. It was a straight road ) and we eventually reached the building. A lady (guess a staff from the college, as volunteer) demanded that we surrender all personal belongings, including wallet, phone, stationery, watches. There was no table or container of any sort to keep the stuff she was going to collect, and there was no receipt/token mechanism to track who’s belongings is which!! We flatly refused, causing another delay while she checked up with her seniors and finally let us through. Immediately after that was another check where another minion demanded to see the bank chellan, of all things! Finally, after quite a few hurdles, we had arrived at the right building, at 9am (we were the first, remember)

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Act 2 – Before the Exam

Scene 1 – The Waiting in Room

We were waiting in the corridor for a while, after which we were asked to wait in another lab. We had fun there, observing how others take and react to pressure Some went into a shell, some became agitated and started tapping tables, fidgeted while others became more exuberant. After a while, some people were called, based on their testing room number. Not surprisingly, we had the number that was called last so had to wait the most, for about 30 mins. Finally when called, we had to give our belongings and wait to enter the exam hall.

Scene 2 – The Waiting in Line

The exam was scheduled to begin at 10, which meant we should have been at our seats by 930. Sadly, 930 was when we were in queue to get into the hall. We were thinking then, “aah, at last we’re going to write the exam!”. I get reminded of one of Murphy’s Law when I think of our state of mind then – smile; tomorrow will be worse. How true. We weren’t to know then that the real disaster was yet to happen!

While in line, again, we had a lot of fun commenting on the admins, the college, the exam, the MBA program, the person ahead of us in line, the person behind us in line, each other, ourselves, vaastu, MPLS and network QoS, xkcd and other miscellaneous stuff! By far, we were the MOST talkative pair in the whole batch, without a single silent moment soon, others also opened up and we had a whale of a time waiting outside!

Finally, we were allowed to get in, and yet again, we thought “at last!!”, but it was not to be; not quite yet. We were asked to come one by one, and one person went in, while we merrily carried on with our tomfoolery. s time passed, we became increasingly curious so as to what happened to the girl who went in initially. After about 10  mins, the second person was called in. We thought, “at last! The system must’ve had a glitch initially, causing the delay. Now things’ll get a move on”, and we were obviously wrong. It took about 3 mins each for every person, for fingerprints of two index fingers each, and a webcam photo! Talk about inefficiency!! We were itching to speed up the process. Since there was separate hardware for fingerprinting and taking photo, it could’ve been pipelined easily. There were 3 webcams and 3 fingerprint scanners, but only one set was used. Apathy? Incompetence? I wonder..

It was 1015 by the time I was seated, and I was the third person to get in.

Scene 3 – The Waiting for The Exam to Begin

It was announced while we were waiting outside that the exam will begin at 11am due to “technical difficulties”, and we were resigned to the fact that it was going to be a long and dreary wait. I really pity the people who had prepared for a year, doing mock tests, assiduously tracking their performance, dreaming, praying, wishing fervently that they do well in the exam.. My heart really went out to them. So much can be, and was undone by the callous insensitivity of nameless faces for whom every candidate is just a serial number. If only they had thought of each person as a person, maybe they’d've done their job with some more seriousness and not made such a mess of it.

I thought dealing with people was part of management. I thought logistics was a part of management. I thought organization was a part of management. I thought 1400 Rs was money enough to get enough hardware. I thought Prometric, being a reputed international organization, will do a good job. I thought since this was conducted by IIMs with the aid of Prometric and NIIT, they will put into practice all they preach. I thought a lot of things. Sadly, the IIMs and Prometric beg to differ. They might be right and I might be wrong; 42 might not be the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. (speaking of 42, it was the address of my centre )

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Act 3 – The Exam

Scene 1 – The Waiting for The Exam to Load

After much fuss about my height, orientation of chair and finger pressure on the scanner, I finally get fingerprinted and the mugshot is finally taken (seriously! They kept asking me to move about to get the proper picture instead of simply adjusting the webcam! All instructions I got were “move”; no direction of which side to move. When I tried to adjust by myself by looking at the screen, I was admonished )

After this, I was asked to wait for a while while my system was logged in. I noticed then that the girl who went in first (20 mins back) was still waiting! “Uh oh..”. My system logged in soon enough and I was at my desk, watching people struggle with logging in. I was one of the lucky few for whom the system logged in the first time. People had to restart their system multiple times before it logged in, with each restart taking about 10 mins. Lenson had to wait for 40 mins!! Of course, I had to wait through all that because we couldn’t start before everyone was ready (so we were told).

At around 11am, with a few more left to enter the hall and finish biometrics, I suddenly see Lenson freaking out. One of the admins had started his test without informing Lenson, and the timer had started ticking!! He had no scratch paper, no pencil and hadn’t done the tutorial! He lost about 5 mins in the ensuing chaos. I later came to know that his case was not as tragic as the guy next to him, for whom the admin had clicked “I do not agree” to the Non Disclosure Agreement. The test quit, and re-appeared 40 mins later, and the timer had been running all the while!

Scene 2 – The Writing of The Exam

I then decided to start mine as well, and started. I was prompted for yet another verification code (we have 2 codes on the hall ticket, one for logging in, one for accessing the data center and finally yet another!). In keeping with the theme of incompetency and mismanagement, the guy did not type in the value quick enough and it timed out. I had to wait for another 10 mins. Finally I got cracking.

But many others hadn’t. People were chatting, fidgeting and making noise. I soon tuned out and lost myself in the questions. After an hour or so, the noise level increased considerably. I resurface to find out that some people have still not started the exam!! No exaggeration: I heard giggles, chatter, some rhythm being played with pencils on the table, and the most tragic of all things, the admins’ phones ringing repeatedly in loud mode!! An average 10-minute slip test worth 5 marks in school, with no invigilation, had better atmosphere. Wonder how others concentrated..

Scene 3 – The Protest and The Exodus

Soon, arguments broke out at various points in the hall. One guy had to be home ay 5pm, one girl had a train to catch in the evening and so on, while others were writing the exam. Soon the situation degraded into a full-blown protest. A bunch of people were trying to stage a walk-out, and some admins were blocking the doors. They were arguing loudly on whether students could leave or not. That’s when I lost my cool and screamed at the admins to solve the problems of the students, but outside the hall. Thankfully, they complied and the poor bunch exited. Only then did we get a proper exam atmosphere, but only 45 mins was left for me.

After the exam, we wanted to complain to someone from IIM. There was no one representing the organizing body!! We found a guy who was not from IIM or Prometric (a “third party observer”) and put across our problems and left.

To rub salt on the wound, throughout the test, there was a banner on top with a logo  that read “Satisfaction simplified”

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Act 4 – The Aftermath

This was all over in the news channels with rumours, statements, interviews, opinions etc. I heard that some IIM statement quoted 200 people to be affected. There was a list of centres affected, and mine was not in the list! Hope its added soon. I suspect that the IIMs are not revealing the exact severity of the situation (my centre was VelTech). The systems booted soon enough, and the problem was at the server side. So assuming 10 students to have been affected on an average, with 30 test cities, assuming an average of 4 centres per city, roughly 1000 students were affected. 200 is nowhere close.

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This is the first time CAT is going online, and yesterday was the first day. I agree that there’ll be teething troubles. But this is way too much. To their credit, the paper was interesting. There was no dumb option; I had to work for eliminating every option. There weren’t any free hits as well. On the whole, good paper marred by very poor organization.

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karthrags

Nov 29 Update:

1. Forgot to mention two more mess-ups. The directions to the test centre put up on the website was grossly off the mark! Travelling time to the actual test centre was 1 1/2 hours, while travelling time to the place as directed in the website was about 20 mins.

Yet another mess-up was regarding rough sheets. I was given a sheet nunmbered differently than my computer. When I asked, the guy curtly asked me not to throw a fuss. Five minutes later another admin is shouting at this guy for distributing wrong numbers.  Poor Lenson had already filled a sheet, and refused to hand over his sheet. The number on his sheet had to be changed later.

2. http://www.catiim.in/ has a message all saying tests have been cancelled some centres.
in

 

What IITians Have Been Doing

Hi all,

I’m in campus, and suddenly wanted to listen to Garaj Baras by Rahat Fatah Ali Khan and Junoon and went to youtube. This is what I get!

:D

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Oh, well I certainly agree with youtube!

(In case you’re not able to read, it says “Sorry for the interruption. We have been receiving a large volume of requests from your network. To continue with your YouTube experience, please enter the verification code below”)

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Here’s the song that I wanted to listen to:

Garaj Baras, part of a Coke Studio episode

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Many episodes of Coke Studio have good music. Worth exploring!

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karthrags

 

Whoa! Slow Down!

Hi all,

A post after ages! Quite busy these days, for a change! I took the evening off today and went for a carnatic jam session here. It was amazing! Fifteen people taking turns singing, or singing together; sounded superb! (and no, I didn’t sing ). Met some second and third years there, and nothing was odd. Now it hits me – its 4 years since I was a second year guy!!. My brother is in his second year now!! Ya I know, 4 years would have passed in 4 years only, but to me it seems as if I was in second year just a few months back, and bang.

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This set me off thinking of stuff that happened in the last 3 years. A LOT!

The highlight of second year (and a bit of third as well) was friends – sponsorship for college symposium, gang TT at Sujatha’s place, Diablo II for 4 hours a day (Level 87 Necromancer, Level 60 Assassin ) and discussing it for a few hours, hanging out for 5 hours at a time at some Barista, roaming the city, hanging out as a gang at a friend’s place, phone chats going for a few hours per day, 100+ messages per day, mischief as a gang in class, punishment as a gang in class, impositions!, golu rounds as a gang!, night-out the day before as a (semi)gang, nicknames for each other, “test driving” each other’s bike,  cricket as a gang, cleaning the college as a gang, gang politics… Gang, gang, gang, friends, friends, friends! Arvind, Cheemu, Krishna, Lavanya, Priya, Sujatha – thanks!

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Third year and beginning of fourth was the beginning of obsessions. First was GRE. For six months, nothing else. Excruciatingly detailed planning, near-perfect execution. Clinically methodical preparation. Obsession. I used to regularly dream of the new words I picked up that day. I could do so much preparation only because I was already passionate about English. I never really got over English after GRE. Still browse online daily for some etymology and flip through the flash cards I prepared.. Of those six months, I don’t remember much else. Flash cards in pocket, browse them in class, while having lunch, while walking, while having coffee, during model exams! and everywhere else.. The result was very very satisfactory. 1560 / 1600

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Immediately after GRE, it was GATE, in fourth year. For 8 months, ONLY CS! And that too, ONLY the subjects I liked in CS. It was heaven .. No syllabus (virtually), no restrictions, just read what you like.. Regular night-outs with Anish, Pawan and PK, which were some of the best times I’ve had. Kitchen adventures, competition to see who kills and collects more mosquitoes, music, creatively comparing PK’s size to various objects (70gsm A4 sheet, for example ), applying concepts learnt in irrelevant and relevant real-life scenarios.. A time of intense learning, pressure and fun. Exhilerated at all the  fascinating new things learnt all by ourselves, terrified of the exam looming ahead. Attending mock tests, plotting and tracking performance, devising tools to improve efficiency. Great times.. Then came GATE, and the Big Depression. Severely underperformed in the real exam, and ended up with a score that ruled out direct admissions, but thankfully was on the outer fringe of interview cutoffs (AIR 242). Was in a haze of disillusionment for a couple of months.  I studied so hard and deserved a lot more than this. So why such a bad performance? Intense pain and surprisingly, a sense of loss. Then came the travel phase; a time of attending interviews at different IITs and IISc, and clearing almost all! Aahhh.. the thrill, after depression that too, gave me such a high that it still hasn’t fizzled out! Got to understand and love and relate to the phrase joie de vivre.

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First year of MS was probably the RICHEST year of my life. That deserves a full post, or maybe two.. I might write a few detailed ones when I’m in the nostalgic farewell mood.. Music would be one word that summarizes quite a bit of the last year, though not all. Started listening to carnatic, became obsessed with it, started listening to hindustani, started learning the violin carnatic style, became obsessed with it,  started getting into the theory of music, became obsessed with it, tried out a thousand new things never done before in my life. Also worked a bit for my MS now and then

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And here I am. After the most eventful four years of my life, and thinking that the four years didn’t happen over four years in reality. Days dragged, but years flew.. Probably the very fact that it was so eventful is the reason it seems so recent.

BTech seems to have been a kind of checkpoint for me. The kind of point/event which tempts you to do a before/after comparison. A defining phase. My schooling was in no way uneventful, what with me changing three schools in 12 years. But that period pales in comparison to this phase of great development and change. Even though it was 4 years ago, I still remember the assignments I wrote, the exams that copied, all my wanglings and finaglings and fights. Incredibly detailed memories..

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Is this the case with everybody? Seems so. But why?

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I’m on the threshold of another major phase. My MS completion is in sight, but everything beyond is extremely nebulous. Exciting! Of the 18 or so years that I remember being, I liked being the 19 year old, second year college karthrags the best. I would have been mentally 12 years old then, and I’ve not grown up much since then

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Are you wondering about the point of this post? Nothing! Its just a bunch of semi-connected thoughts running in my head.. What about you?  BTech a defining phase for you as well??

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karthrags

 

August Rush

Hi,

Watched a movie yesterday – August Rush. Quite a few people recommended it, and was curious. I was BLOWN AWAY!! It was brilliant!

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Its a movie about music, about a boy who finds that he’s a musical prodigy on the way to finding his lost parents. I found the movie to be like our Indian movies – almost 2 or 3 songs for each character There is one thing that really struck me – the expressions. All the actors were good, but the expressions that the boy gave were simply out of the world. He shows what I feel when after a good violin session. I sometimes feel that I’ll glow in the dark with happiness (not tried it out; don’t ask if I have ). I’ll just lie back on the floor, back aching, shoulder aching, leg numb, but with my ears and fingers still vibrating, remembering the music. I’ll be basking in the afterglow of the music. Bliss. Listening to music is a joy, but creating music is something else completely.. You don’t need a masterpiece to move you; sarali varisai is also music That 11 year old kid shows that joy of music. Just amazing. Kept getting goosebumps throughout the movie, thanks to the music!

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My desire to learn the cello has intensified after seeing the movie! (female lead is a cellist) Maybe I’ll get one and fiddle around with it Wow, WHAT a sound a cello has! Violin is a beauty, and cello adds a touch of magic to that sound

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The story is not so great, but each song is fantastic, but the climax is the best! Check this out.

August Rush Rhapsody

LOVE this piece. Some special parts for me – the pluck of the cello chord at the beginning, the violin piece at about 2:20, the boy’s expressions throughout, the really cute little girl, her singing from about 2:30, the way the boy says shhh while smiling joyously, at about 4:10 (that was a killer!!), aaannd, the final thing that the boy says. Can’t agree more.

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the music is all around us; all we have to do is listen

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I just cannot improve on this. Must-watch movie, for the music and for the expressions.

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karthrags

 

What’s the Point?

I ask again: what’s the point? Naturally, you might think “of what?”. Of anything. My conjecture is that the “what” does not matter. It all reduces to the same thing.

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A sample. This is just a sample; each step could be replaced by any of the alternatives available.

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>Why should I finish my MS? So that I can get a good job.

—-> Why good job? So that I’m happy doing it, and earn money.

——–> Why should I be happy?

——–> Why should I earn money? So that I can spend on who/what I want.

————> Why should I spend on who/what I want? So that I can be happy.

—————-> Why should I be happy?

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See the pattern? Any line of thinking leads here, to this question, or a similar one. This question did not occur to me in school, or during BTech. After 9th standard, I did not think “what should I do next?”. It was naturally 10th standard. Now, the case is different. I am doing a PG out of choice. What afterwards? Whatever I wish to do, given some constraints. I’ve been trying to arrive at what I must do next, from various perspectives. Nothing seem to work. Rather, everything boils down to what I want to be; what I want my career to me. I know it must be “good”. So what’s the definition of “good”? Is it not relative? Nothing seems “good” if it is pointless. And sadly, no inquiry into the point of something seems to have an answer.

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“What’s the point?” is not a question asked in despair. Its a question asked curiously. At every stage, I’d like to do what is ideal, the one that takes me closer to where I want to go. If deciding this is not possible, I try to do the thing that I think is best, given the situation. This question seems to be the key to predicting the ideal thing to do.. Given that most decisions seem to be such that they cannot be made ideally, this question becomes more important.

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So what’s your point? Have you thought about it? Do you face a similar question? Have you answered it? It’ll be great to hear from you..

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karthrags

P.S. – I find it fascinating and disturbing that if you keep asking “why” enough times, we run out of reasons and hit hard against axioms. Reasoning goes down only to a point; its all axioms beyond that. Everything we do is based on a set of statements that have absolutely no way of being validated, because even the validation mechanisms are built on top of these assumptions. Is there ANYTHING that’s not arbitrary, or based on arbitrary statements? That is, can anything be reasoned out fully without falling back to an axiom? Whoa!!!!

 

Useful Firefox Hack

Hi all,

Warning: This is a post on Firefox, for people not used to finding their way around in a computer. It might be a bit tedious for many; please scroll to the bottom for a short description.

I read online extensively, and have often wished for the ability to “remember” the tabs currently open so that I can close them and open whenever I want, without laboriously bookmarking each. In other words, to store the current “context” of Firefox, the ability to switch between different sets of tabs at will. I’m sure many of you’d have wished that as well.

Typical Scenario:

I have five tabs open in one window about Intel’s microarchitecture, seven tabs in another window containing reviews on mp3 players. Even though I decide to read about Intel tomorrow and about mp3 players today , I need the Intel tabs to be open to continue tomorrow. This slows my system greatly. Can I save the Intel tabs and close those tabs and read about mp3 players today, and then save and close these tabs and open Intel tomorrow?

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I found a way to do this. When you want to “freeze” the current state of Firefox to be restored later, go to home/.mozilla/firefox (I use Linux (Debian) and have no idea about Windows) (.mozilla would be hidden if you use a file browser. Ctrl+h should makes it visible for me) In this folder, enter the folder named <some 8 chars or numbers>.default. Here you’ll find a file called sessionstore.js. This file gets deleted when you close Firefox. Simply copy this file into a folder, and the context is saved. Now Firefox can be closed, with the tabs “remembered”. Next time you run Firefox, the default window will open. Ifyou want to restore the saved context, copy the saved sessionstore.js back to its original location. Simple as that

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This is how I use it – I copy this sessionstore.js and name it based on the content of the tabs. So in a folder called contexts, I’ll have Intel, Sony, iPod, AMD and so on. I just choose the one I need and rename it to view those tabs.

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In summary, to save the context of Firefox currently running, one simply needs to save ~/.mozilla/firefox/<some random chars and numbers>.default/sessionstore.js.

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I guess one could simply have different profiles of Firefox for different purposes, and choose save&exit in each and open the required profile. But then, this is fun

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Hope this is useful. Did you face similar problems? How did you manage to solve it? Any improvements to this? If so, please respond

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15/7 Update – Bookmarks -> Bookmark all tabs should do it. Thanks, anon commenter, for pointing that out!

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karthrags

P.S. – New smileys in WordPress. Nice! is not so good, but and are nice!

 

GATE Experiences

Hi all,

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I prepared for GATE with three of my BTech juniors – Anish, Pawan and Prasanna Karthik. They finished UG this year. They wrote GATE 2009 and got fantastic scores of 99.63, 99.60 and 99.71 percentiles respectively! The number of people who took the exam was around 41000, and these guys got ranks of 158, 162 and 117!! Needless to say, they performed spectacularly in the written tests and interviews and got admits into almost all the places they tried! Delighted to see them succeed SO spectacularly!!

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PK has started blogging here about his GATE experiences. Since I was fully preparing with them for GATE 2008, many posts are as much about me as they are about him.  I had blogged about IIT Interviews and choosing between MS and MTech. He’s written a lot of stuff that I wanted to, but was too lazy to write after these two Moreover, his detailed descriptions of the strategies we adopted for preparing, our experiences etc will help GATE aspirants. Two good reasons to check him out..

The strategies he puts up are tested on two GATEs, and all four of us have succeeded through them. So I can safely claim that they are good and that they work for most. Please go ahead and adopt them or modify them as you wish, and let us know what worked for you Do check out his blog.

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The previous few posts have been about some other blog or video or the like. That’s because I was nearly drowning in work ! Second sem got over, and I got an S in both the courses I took. I’m a ten-pointer this sem!! With this, my course requirement is fulfilled, and my final CGPA is 9.21 Now I’ve started my research. Am working on improving reliability of architectures.

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I also realized that my prof is a regular follower of the blog – he makes snide comments on every post, which means that he reads them all! Hi sir

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karthrags

 

ANOTHER Fake IPL Player Blog!!

Hi all,

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I had blogged about the KKR Fake IPL Player. It seems that a Chennai Super Kings player has started a blog!! No idea if its a real fake blog or if its a fake fake, but I LOVED the start! One post, but references to the original Fake IPL Player blog, Vijayakanth and his stats, tamil politics, Koundamani, Chennai and more. Seems promising. I think we can expect at least a few good posts from here, more enjoyable to tamil people as this guy has a LOT of vernacular references. Do check him out!

http://sennaisuperkinks.wordpress.com

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karthrags

 

Rangapura Vihara – Ranjani & Gayathri

Hi all,

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I LOVE the raga Brindavana Saranga, and this song especially. Moreover, I’m a big fan of Ranjani and Gayathri. Addicted to this song for the last few days Such an AWESOME version of it!!

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Some interesting points to note:

- the resonance of the singers’ voice. It amazes me EVERY time I hear the song!

- the percussions. At no point do they dominate. Rather, they keep rhythm and emphasise appropriate parts of the song, and let the focus remain on the singing, making the song much more beautiful. GREAT playing! The mridangist is Arun Prakash; don’t know about the ghatam player

- The improvisations. They are trained in both carnatic as well as hindustani, and their improvisations are a bit different and absolutely fantastic!

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Rangapura Vihara – Brindavana Saranga – Ranjani & Gayathri

Another FANTASTIC Brindavanasaranga is a Viruttam and then Kaliyuga Varadhan, by Sowmya. I like her singing also a lot, and the violinist, Embar S. Kannan, is just out of the world

Viruttam + Kaliyuga Varadhan – Brindavana Saranga – Sowmya

Aaaahh.. Divine

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karthrags