Jeff
2005-05-01 06:44:54 UTC
If you study his archive on SAWF, you will see that Parrikar is not
only a plagiarist, thief, liar, and guttermouth, he is also a
Westerner! His entire effort is based on the application of Western
methods to Indian Classical Music, with a complete disdain for the most
essential Indian elements of ICM, sadhana and riaz.
His archive is like a certain old joke - A guy loses his keys on a
dark street at night. He is looking under a street lamp for the keys
when his friend comes to help him look. His friend asks him, "Did you
lose your keys here?" The guy says, "No, I lost them over there." The
friend says, "Then why are you looking over here?" The guy says,
"There's more light over here." Similarly, his archive consists of
compositions and commentary which Parrikar has lifted from his various
sources, misprints and all, posted to the web. The special qualities
of ICM such as the tiny deliberate gamaks and the feeling inherent in
each note of the rag, cannot reduced to the page or the posting. That
is why every rag must be learned from those who know it, and cannot be
learned off a page. There are rags which have exactly the same scale,
such as Samanta Sarang and Sur Malhar, or Bhup Kalyan and Jait Kalyan,
which are distinguished precisely by the colors and feelings expressed
in each note. Ravi Shankar, for instance, believes that the system of
vadi-samvadi is wrong, because even a weak note in a rag expresses the
rasa of a rag, in its very weakness - therefore all the notes show the
rag equally. This cannot be learned from the page or posting.
Parrikar is basically doing to ICM what has been done to Western music,
reducing it to the page. Parrikar is trying to Westernize Indian
music, there is no other good term for it!
Parrikar, who lives in Mountain View, California. is typical of the
Westernized NRI's who owe everything they have to an English-medium
education and an American university degree (in Rajan's case, the U of
Colorado) and who achieve great success not in Indian society, but in
Western society. I do not begrudge Rajan's success in American society
as it is due to study and hard work - indeed, he's an example of The
American Dream. Guy immigrates to America, gets a PhD, works for Loral
Space Systems, which gives American missile secrets to the Red Chinese
and goes bankrupt. A real Silicon Valley success story, with the usual
ending. It always amuses me that the most Westernized Indians pretend
to be examples of Hindutva culture. They are the ones who immigrate to
my country, and then call me a foreigner. They are so out of touch with
reality that they do not appreciate the irony of that appellation.
While Parrikar is the proverbial "rocket-scientist", he couldn't
survive in India for a month on his knowledge of ICM. He is a bad
amateur harmonium player who doesn't know anything whatsoever about the
development of a rag. This I do know, as I've heard him play my
harmonium in my own living room in Palo Alto. He has no sadhana or
riaz whatsoever. You will notice that the development of a rag is
completely absent from his archive, precisely because he doesn't know
anything about it and has not done the kind of practice required to
achieve this knowledge. He is deficient in study and hard work in the
field of ICM - he should have spent the time he used collecting his
archive for practice instead. Then he might be able to play something.
He cannot develop even one piece correctly. In addition, he plays the
most Western of all instruments used in India, the harmonium. Maybe
this is why he is so ignorant of all the subtleties which cannot be
reduced to the page, and cannot be played on the harmonium. If he had
ever taken the time to learn a really Indian instrument like sitar,
sarod, or Krishna's own bansuri, he would have a very different idea of
what ICM consists of, because he would understand how difficult it is
to produce the subtle nuances which are absent from the harmonium. In
fact, he has an antipathy toward sadhana, the most Indian of virtues,
and replaces it with specious intellectualism, the most Western of
behaviors. He can only pretend to be a pandit because he lives in the
US, and because most of the people who inhabit his favorite ICM web
groups are similarly Westernized English-medium Western-educated NRI's
as well as Westerners who know even less than he does. People who
really know ICM have no use for him, which Rajan senses - thus he
engages in his attacks on those master musicians like Ali Akbar Khan.
Parrikar is a sample of the new reverse-colonialism. India's
greatest export to the West is now it's PhD con men, like Rajneesh,
Deepak Chopra, Paul Jain, Sanjay Kumar, and Rajan Parrikar. Like
Rajneesh, Parrikar got emboldened by a post-graduate degree, took up
residence in the West, found some suckers who knew less than himself,
and presto-chango, he's a pandit. Works every time. It all reminds me
of something that GS Sachdev said to me long ago, before the NRI
invasion of the 90's, which has now gone bust. After I complained to
him about some stupid thing an NRI had done, Sachdev said to me, "Don't
form your ideas of Indian culture based on the Indians who come to
America. They are the worst Indians, they come here for selfishness
and greed, they just come for money. The real Indians are still in
India, and they're uncomfortable in Western materialistic society."
Indeed, Parrikar is such a Westerner now that he even puts down his
own countrymen, like his rantings about Bengalis, who he likes to call
"bongs." For those who are not familiar with this term, it does not
refer to the thing which Hindu "holy men" use to smoke hashish and
opium called in India a "chillum" and by Cheech and Chong a "bong," but
instead it is a racial epithet hurled at Bengalis.
A certain friend of mine, a brahmin who grew up in Delhi, a very
thoughtful man who is a credit to his race, the human race, said an
interesting thing to me about Rajan. After reflecting on Parrikar's
hateful postings on Americans, Bengalis, women, and the rest, he said
to me, "Rajan can say this stuff only because he lives in America. In
India, they know how to deal with a guy like this. Some dark night,
someone would get him in an alley and beat him up good. Because he
lives in the US, people let him get away with it."
only a plagiarist, thief, liar, and guttermouth, he is also a
Westerner! His entire effort is based on the application of Western
methods to Indian Classical Music, with a complete disdain for the most
essential Indian elements of ICM, sadhana and riaz.
His archive is like a certain old joke - A guy loses his keys on a
dark street at night. He is looking under a street lamp for the keys
when his friend comes to help him look. His friend asks him, "Did you
lose your keys here?" The guy says, "No, I lost them over there." The
friend says, "Then why are you looking over here?" The guy says,
"There's more light over here." Similarly, his archive consists of
compositions and commentary which Parrikar has lifted from his various
sources, misprints and all, posted to the web. The special qualities
of ICM such as the tiny deliberate gamaks and the feeling inherent in
each note of the rag, cannot reduced to the page or the posting. That
is why every rag must be learned from those who know it, and cannot be
learned off a page. There are rags which have exactly the same scale,
such as Samanta Sarang and Sur Malhar, or Bhup Kalyan and Jait Kalyan,
which are distinguished precisely by the colors and feelings expressed
in each note. Ravi Shankar, for instance, believes that the system of
vadi-samvadi is wrong, because even a weak note in a rag expresses the
rasa of a rag, in its very weakness - therefore all the notes show the
rag equally. This cannot be learned from the page or posting.
Parrikar is basically doing to ICM what has been done to Western music,
reducing it to the page. Parrikar is trying to Westernize Indian
music, there is no other good term for it!
Parrikar, who lives in Mountain View, California. is typical of the
Westernized NRI's who owe everything they have to an English-medium
education and an American university degree (in Rajan's case, the U of
Colorado) and who achieve great success not in Indian society, but in
Western society. I do not begrudge Rajan's success in American society
as it is due to study and hard work - indeed, he's an example of The
American Dream. Guy immigrates to America, gets a PhD, works for Loral
Space Systems, which gives American missile secrets to the Red Chinese
and goes bankrupt. A real Silicon Valley success story, with the usual
ending. It always amuses me that the most Westernized Indians pretend
to be examples of Hindutva culture. They are the ones who immigrate to
my country, and then call me a foreigner. They are so out of touch with
reality that they do not appreciate the irony of that appellation.
While Parrikar is the proverbial "rocket-scientist", he couldn't
survive in India for a month on his knowledge of ICM. He is a bad
amateur harmonium player who doesn't know anything whatsoever about the
development of a rag. This I do know, as I've heard him play my
harmonium in my own living room in Palo Alto. He has no sadhana or
riaz whatsoever. You will notice that the development of a rag is
completely absent from his archive, precisely because he doesn't know
anything about it and has not done the kind of practice required to
achieve this knowledge. He is deficient in study and hard work in the
field of ICM - he should have spent the time he used collecting his
archive for practice instead. Then he might be able to play something.
He cannot develop even one piece correctly. In addition, he plays the
most Western of all instruments used in India, the harmonium. Maybe
this is why he is so ignorant of all the subtleties which cannot be
reduced to the page, and cannot be played on the harmonium. If he had
ever taken the time to learn a really Indian instrument like sitar,
sarod, or Krishna's own bansuri, he would have a very different idea of
what ICM consists of, because he would understand how difficult it is
to produce the subtle nuances which are absent from the harmonium. In
fact, he has an antipathy toward sadhana, the most Indian of virtues,
and replaces it with specious intellectualism, the most Western of
behaviors. He can only pretend to be a pandit because he lives in the
US, and because most of the people who inhabit his favorite ICM web
groups are similarly Westernized English-medium Western-educated NRI's
as well as Westerners who know even less than he does. People who
really know ICM have no use for him, which Rajan senses - thus he
engages in his attacks on those master musicians like Ali Akbar Khan.
Parrikar is a sample of the new reverse-colonialism. India's
greatest export to the West is now it's PhD con men, like Rajneesh,
Deepak Chopra, Paul Jain, Sanjay Kumar, and Rajan Parrikar. Like
Rajneesh, Parrikar got emboldened by a post-graduate degree, took up
residence in the West, found some suckers who knew less than himself,
and presto-chango, he's a pandit. Works every time. It all reminds me
of something that GS Sachdev said to me long ago, before the NRI
invasion of the 90's, which has now gone bust. After I complained to
him about some stupid thing an NRI had done, Sachdev said to me, "Don't
form your ideas of Indian culture based on the Indians who come to
America. They are the worst Indians, they come here for selfishness
and greed, they just come for money. The real Indians are still in
India, and they're uncomfortable in Western materialistic society."
Indeed, Parrikar is such a Westerner now that he even puts down his
own countrymen, like his rantings about Bengalis, who he likes to call
"bongs." For those who are not familiar with this term, it does not
refer to the thing which Hindu "holy men" use to smoke hashish and
opium called in India a "chillum" and by Cheech and Chong a "bong," but
instead it is a racial epithet hurled at Bengalis.
A certain friend of mine, a brahmin who grew up in Delhi, a very
thoughtful man who is a credit to his race, the human race, said an
interesting thing to me about Rajan. After reflecting on Parrikar's
hateful postings on Americans, Bengalis, women, and the rest, he said
to me, "Rajan can say this stuff only because he lives in America. In
India, they know how to deal with a guy like this. Some dark night,
someone would get him in an alley and beat him up good. Because he
lives in the US, people let him get away with it."