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Malayalam Rock! Bengali Rock! Regional Rock! Bollywood Rock! Cricket Rock! Hindi Rock! phew… Its OK its all Good.
But what’s not ok and not good is that we got no place for real Indian English Rock in our beautiful shining India.

Aray Bhai Hum bi baaradhwaasi hai/hoom!

Obviously every single Indian reading this post knows that we need to know English to do well in India today. Put up your resume on Jobstreet.com in Hindi/Malayalam and let’s see how far you get. In fact India’s current shine could be to a certain extent thanks to our grasp of English. If Lallu Prasad or Deve Gowda represented us in international forums then maybe we would need a lot more polish before we could start harping about how India is shining.

In India, we (i.e people reading this blog… whatever small minute % of the population…which is many a million for sure) depend on English language for everything. Unfortunately record labels in India don’t accept anybody who is capable of artistic expression in English. It has to be in Hindi/regional whatever. Well actually that alone may not do. You might need to have Saif Ali Khan play guitar for you too. No offence to Saif, he seems to be having fun being the first Bollywood Rock Star. Down south i wonder if bands will need Mohanlal or Rajinikanth to start rocking to make markets favorable to rock music. Imagine Mohan Lal trying to be like a Steven Tylor….y naaat i say
Its funny, Film Stars in Bollywood are wannabe Rock Stars and rock musicians go to Bollywood and become wannabe Bollywood Film Stars. Its tough to feel the Euphoria (Euphoric whatever…) in “English”, especially if you are an Indian Record Label.

So what could be the pain point for the Indian Record labels? We understand that its all about the money, they need to pay salaries to so many people, maid, chaiwalla etc etc ..and you cant sell English in India they say, it wont make them big bucks. I think its not that you can’t sell English. The “art of selling” is about taking up the challenge of selling anything. The easiest thing for the disinterested Marketing/Sales employee to say is that there is no market for your stuff…but the real marketing managers… by REAL i mean people who enjoy marketing, not for the Pfat salaries they earn but for the “TRIP” of making a product sell…. these kind of marketing/sales/business people are very few. There is a BIG opportunity for a REAL Indian Band to get out there and play on the world stage, it’s a big gap and no business/marketing person in India finds it interesting enough to play in.

Look around and everybody wants to do Band stuff now…it’s the latest fad. The other day i saw this AD film showing our Cricket Hero’s forming a Band and doing cool U2 type band stuff. Bajji on Drums.. yeah baby.. ballay ballay. Yeah its all ok and all good FUN…i know… but when you are a real musician who respects what he does then its not only about fun is it? Its about being interested in what you do and learning and growing through it..there’s so much to learn in music, isn’t that the best part of being a musician. Its not all about FUN. “Shakalaka baby” or “BaabuJi Zaraa Dheerey chalo” is frivolous fun stuff… especially when you see Virgil Donati and Frank Gimbale performing it live in Bangalore. Its so much fun… its HAHAHA fun… like MTV Jackass kind of FUN. And FUN works good for me, maybe the Jerry Seinfeld or Russel Peters kind of FUN i.e. Not the MTV JACKASS FUN.

So what language do you Rock in? Regional/ Indian/ Desi/ Firangi/Angrezy/Domestic ….Dont you see it yet…. What we’ve got here is a Tower of Babel of type situation…. I think the real reason for GOD making so many languages is that GOD wants to make sure that all of us learn the right lessons before we reach out for HIM/HER. He wants us to learn that emotions and feelings are beyond languages. Language is just a simple test to check your patience and tolerance. How much can you hate someone cos he speaks another tongue? To what extent will you go to pull another person down and make sure he does not succeed over you just because his language is different from yours? Yeaaah…ok.. I better stop…..these are just my stupid fundas…

But in our own High-Tech city of Bangalore languages means a totally different thing. Screw the issues with Bengalooru Vs Bangalore etc… its the language wars between the Linux, Windows, Flash, HTML,C++, C-=, J2ME, Dot Net, Symbian, Android etc etc – i know that technically these all cant be defined as languages…but these are distinct systems and groups, and people make a living out of it because they are good at one or the other…and then there is competition, and competing groups curse each other and put up the bad points and limitations of each technology in trying to push their own clan forward.

“How dare you tell me that Flash is worse than HTML. That’s racial abuse, i make a living out of Flash and according to me every one in the entertainment industry should have a Flash web site and not a HTML web site.” – From Jose Feliciano to Avial everyone uses Flash… and you say HTML. What the hell i say Mozilla, and i say Linux…and i Symbian no no never Windows never ever..Windows…Microsoft… theri maaaaki ..aaaarg. Internet explorer oh NO …dont you see it yet …dont you see it yet…

This language shit is all over the F^#$ing place….. and its F@#$ing the shit up big time for everyone.

There is a big opportunity for a real Band from India to break out into the world market.. but with no Business support + hazaaaar anti Indian English sentiments, there is no way anything’s gonna change.

Today at my respectable desk in office i filled in a form for allotment of Social Security Number (SSN). The Provident Fund dept. want you to do this. It is called Social Security…WOW! thats such a cool sounding thing “Social Security”…is this real … Indian govt. cares about my social security. So is it gonna be like the US where if you lose your Job then the Govt. pays you a nominal amount every month till you find another Job…. Is India ever going to become like that, or are they just gonna give us another number. But what if Social Security becomes a reality in India…wow.. I should stop dreaming … this sounds like MTV Jackass material… but you never know maybe…Shakalaka baby, shakalaka baby. This is how it’s really meant to be.