My Equation with God
Friday, April 17th, 2009
This was something I had written for a local daily here in Bangalore when they asked me for my views on Religion and why I follow the religion I follow. I had this in my drafts for a long time and decided to just post it today!
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I am not religious in the true sense of the word and it is my opinion that most people have their own definition of what ‘God’ means to them and how religious they are and there is no universal definition that fits all.
I am a catholic, I do believe in a God who is modern and understanding and evolving with the times. I believe in my definition of my God! I am also a believer in the good side of my religion, and that religion is inherently good. Its just been crowded in a lot of controversy and there are many things I wish were different. But at heart, my religion preaches tolerance, love and peace, all of which I believe are good and should be preached!
I cannot point to one specific incident in my life and say, “Here .. this is why I believe in God”, its just the way I have been brought up by my parents. In retrospect, there have been many things in my life which have just gone right and I seem to have a lot of things working for me in all aspects of my life! while most people would attribute that to pure luck and hard work, I’d like to believe that there is a little more than that at play!
-Gaurav
Engaged :) (Unofficially!!)
Saturday, March 28th, 2009
After 5 years of dating and wooing and falling in love over and over, Shilpa and I decided it was finally time to, in a manner of speaking, have our cake and eat it too 
Just like when we started dating, it was she who finally popped the question that mattered and I would be a fool to say No!. Its not very often in life that such good deals come your way and its then that you need to jump and pounce on them and never think twice even :p .. Okay .. so I am getting a little carried away 
The official engagement, in the traditional style of the my family going over to her house and having a small engagement ceremony etc will happen in due course of time, but for all practical purposes, and as far as we are concerned, “We’re Engaged!”
For all you curious types and for those that doubted any part of this, here is the evidence!
Yes it is a diamond! .. and Yes! its the first one I’ve bought .. EVER!
Art for Art’s Sake!
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
Ivan Germon (Pronounced EeVon Jermoine) is a graffiti writer (painter?) from France who I happened to meet at Bobby’s place when I was in Mumbai. He is travelling around India trying to write graffiti (or stick pre-written graffiti as the case may be) on walls here in different cities and has infact, done quite a bit of work on the walls of Mumbai.
When he told me he was coming to Bangalore next with his friend Loik, it was a chance of a life time for me atleast! I have always loved graffiti writers and the crazy typography, the colours and designs that they seem to so easily put up using really HUGE walls as canvasses!
After interacting with him and looking at pictures of his previous work, I was really curious to see the process of it being done from scratch. After a quick call to Carlton of Opus, who just loved the thought of it!, we were set to put some colour on the white walls of Opus and to keep Ivan happy, we decided to paint the outside wall that faced the road!
Now Ivan is not your regular graffiti writer, and he is extremely versatile in his style and approach to graffiti. He tries to imbibe the culture of the place that he is writing in and also in many cases mess with people’s stereotype notion of graffiti! He does this by doing things that are completely unexpected of a graffiti writer! My favourite being a guy with an angry face saying “Cut your Hair and Get a job!”
The only guidelines that he had to follow when he was deciding what to paint on the walls here were that whatever he does should not have any reference to Sex, Religion or Politics because all 3 are topics that could easily raise the ire of various factions here and we did not really want the attention or for what was being done to get vandalized later!
So Ivan came up with the idea of an elephant on roller skates, blowing a musical note out of its trunk and a very typical Indian Lorry style writing that says “Blow Horn Please”. His sketch on paper got all of us excited about what the final print on the wall will be like! So off we set to get spray cans to get started.
That was the first hurdle we faced also! Indian spray cans are not meant for graffiti, we get spray cans here whose nozzles are meant to spray on large surfaces and meant to cover a wide area instead of focussed lines with which you can make designs. And the nozzles that they brought from France would not fit the Indian cans, so after much searching and no luck, we decided to give it a shot with the cans we could find itself. Ivan had thankfully carried some cans from France which he would use for the borders and so he was sure he could get something decent in place.
We started around noon knowing that the office going traffic would have subsided on the roads and Ivan started by drawing the general outline of what he wanted to do which was then refined into a final blueprint.
The next step was to cover the larger areas of the design with simple block colours and have a basic illustration ready for detailing and shading or as he calls it - “Adding Volume”.
This is when we started getting a sizeable crowd interested in what was happening there and who was painting and why? When we tried explaining to them that it was an artist from France who was here to just paint for the sake of his art. He din’t want money, was not endorsed, was not promoting any brand, but just painting! Art for Art’s Sake! People were just dumbfounded!
They could not believe that someone would come from a foreign country and paint on the walls here and expect nothing in return but the fact that people would see his painting and smile! But the people who did get it were either in awe or just very happy! We got a lot of Auto drivers who told us that it was a nice thing that this was art that everyone could see and there was no fee for it, we were paid visits by the cops who were also happy that there was nothing offensive being painted and it was smooth sailing all the way!
We stopped for the day after we got most of the painting in place and decided to come back the next day for the lettering and the rest of the details.
The 2nd day posed a new set of problems, the usual way lettering is done (when you want a clean hard line for the letters) for graffiti is freehand and if you don’t find the right cans, you take the stencil route. We decided to try creating a stencil with tape and then spraying inside that stencil and then removing the tape. But when we removed the first line of tape, it removed paint from the walls and some of the graffiti as well! This was something that was not expected and threw us off completely! So it was a LOT of fixing small areas and Ivan, being the perfectionist that he is, could not live with anything but the absolute perfect best!
So after a lot of hacks, we figured out the right pressure and the correct amount of tape and finally managed to get the lettering in place with the last bit of lettering done with a brush infact because it was just impossible to spray and get letters that fine!
After about 8 hours of graffiti writing, where about 4 of them were just because of the quality of the raw materials, we finally managed a brilliant piece of graffiti which I think is a first in Bangalore! Here it is to see for yourself and also the proud artist along with his work 
A huge round of thanks to the folks at Opus who loved the idea and were brilliant hosts and helped in so many little things during the making of this work. From here on, to find Opus, go down Palace road till you see an elephant on the wall on the left side. See it, backtrack about 50 feet, and there it is!
Also, cheers to Ivan and Loik, true artists who do things from the heart and practice their art purely for art’s sake in today’s highly commercial world! I made two friends over the past weekend and will hold you to your promise of hosting me when I come to France!
My Experiments with Photojournalism
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
Ever since I started getting somewhere with my photography, I’ve wanted to do photojournalism. Its just something that I have been wanting to do for quite sometime now.
So after waiting for the right time to come along and waiting to see if I can get some “assignments” hooked up to do something, I have decided its time to start doing something on my own.
A couple of months back, Shilpa and I had decided to wake up early on weekends and go do a story on the street dogs in Bangalore, and that is one of the first few stories I would want to start with.
What I wanted from you guys is suggestions for stories that I can go shoot and write about in Bangalore. I am not looking for complicated month long projects, I would like suggestions for small projects that would possibly take me a couple of hours a week and help me hone my skills.
Also, if anything I do is of interest to you and you want to join in, or if you want to use anything that I do, please do write to me at mail at gauravvaz dot com and I’ll be more than glad to work with you!
Mumbai Meri Jaan
Monday, March 9th, 2009
Over the past year or so, I have made so many trips to Mumbai and from absolutely hating the place and not being able to stay here for more than a weekend at most, I have come to know and love this place … a LOT!
Infact, I would never have thought that this would be possible, but I think I would happily move here and have a ball of a time doing it! I have made good friends and great connections with the place and its people. This doesn’t mean or indicate in any way that I am contemplating moving out of good ol’ Bengaluru anytime soon, I have way too much invested in there to make that shift, lots of friends and also the great hometown advantage that I am not ready to lose just yet :p
Yesterday, Shilpa and I, along with two of Shilpa’s ex-roomies and frequent interspersed visits by my good friend Samira, spent the day roaming the streets of Bombay indulging in Shilpa’s favourite passtime (shopping of course!) and I began to think about how much this city had to offer and how Bangalore, which started with promise has now disintegrated to a very badly run and organized place which, if you look beyond the gloss, has very little to offer!
Its really time to take Bangalore back to what it once was and promised to become and make the most of what Bangalore can offer! and it offers a LOT.
More to come soon.
Allegro Fudge
Sunday, March 1st, 2009
A while back, I had asked all of you to suggest a name for the band I was playing with. A lot of interesting suggestions came up, but what stuck was “Allegro Fudge” which was suggested by none other than Derek Sivers himself! Infact, it was suggested as a spur of the moment thing and without even knowing what it was for! But it was unique and just stuck with the band! Thanks a ton Derek for that suggestion, who knows, someday ..!
So after about a year of meeting and putting song ideas together and getting things in place, we finally are ready to unleash ourselves on the whole wide world! or atleast our circle of friends.
We have always wanted to play our first show for our friends whom we personally invite and ask for their feedback after the show and while we planned to do it initially in Jason’s house, we thought of Opus and the Sunday brunch was just too perfect a chance to pass up
So tomorrow, we premiere a lot of the original material we have written (we’ve written enough for a full length album BTW) and a couple of covers we thought would be fun to do! and we’d love to have some feedback from the everyone who comes to the show about the band and the music and what you liked and more importantly, what you din’t like!
If you are in Bangalore, please do consider this a personal invitation to come to Opus at 2 PM and watch Allegro Fudge’s debut show and after that, please do take some time to send us mail, or just post a comment or even catch one of us and tell us what you think of it all!
Website - http://allegrofudge.com
Email - music@allegrofudge.com
Must Eat In Bangalore - Part 1 - Drunken Beef in Shiok / Moss
Saturday, January 17th, 2009
I thought I would start a new series on my blog of particular dishes I recommend from various restaurants in Bangalore. I have been a foodie all my life and have been exploring all of Bangalore for new and interesting eating options and it totally helps that I eat just about anything edible
So the first in my series is the most widely acclaimed dish that totally lives up to its fame - Drunken Beef at Shiok / Moss.
I was introduced to this dish in the very early days of Shiok and all of us heard about Madhu Menon who started this restaurant after getting out of the IT industry etc.
In his own words, Drunken Beef is “The top-selling beef dish at my restaurant, Shiok. Beef is stir-fried with a fiery mix of chillies, garlic, and basil.” and I completely vouch for it!
Any time I go to Shiok or to the newly launched Moss Lounge, this starter is a must and I completely recommend that you try it!
Changeling
Saturday, January 17th, 2009
Its been quite a while since a movie really gripped me from the very start and then took me along with it and had more than half the theatre crying by the end of it!
“Changeling” did precisely that and so much more! Its about a mother’s search for her missing son and how things twist and turn in the most interesting ways! Whats more, its based on a true story!
What I liked about the movie is that even though its got so much emotion running, its still not a sob fest! and by the time the interval comes up in the movie, you are fully revved up to go up and help that lady with what is happening in her life!
Its a brilliant story and an even better movie. The casting for the movie is perfect to say the least! You really sympathise with Angelina Jolie as she goes through her part of the story, you really and I mean really detest the negative character in the movie and after the lawyer in the movie did his bit in the court room, there was applause in the theatre!
I fully recommend that you go watch this movie but remember, it might overcome you at times Definitely not for kids though!
Sigh - The Short Film
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009
About a year back, my good friend Mark, called me and asked if another friend Ram Ganesh, author and playwright and creator of some brilliant original plays like ‘Snakes and Ladders’ (which I admittedly watched 3 times because I so loved it!) can take one of Phenom’s songs, ‘Resurgence‘ for a short film that he was making.
I din’t hesitate a moment and we readily agreed to give out the music for the film. I completely forgot about that film and it was only yesterday at the TFA awards, where Ram had been shortlisted for an award in the creative writing category, that I met him and he told me that the short film was complete and was uploaded onto Youtube and asked if I had seen it!
A quick search brought the film up and I must say I love the way its turned out, though Ram vehemently states that its not how they intended it to turn out, I like the feel of the film and considering that this was shot with almost no budget with a simple handy cam and all actors in the film doing this as a hobby, its a really nice effort!
Check it out yourself and let me now what you think! Also, If you haven’t yet done it, please go and download the Phenom album from our site, its dated now, but the songs are still very nice
Direct Link to the film - http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=KVZx8A-OERY
The TFA Awards and Allegro Fudge
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009
The TFA Awards were announced earlier tonight at the Alliance Francaise, Bangalore and my band, ‘Allegro Fudge‘ though din’t win the prize, won a special commendation from the judges. For a band that has just been together as long as we have, this is a real validation of the work we have put in and a nice pat on the back!
The TFA music awards this year received about 44 entries this year and 6 bands which included Another Vertigo Rush (the eventual winners), Kastadyne, us and 3 other bands were shortlisted by the judges for commendation.
Another Vertigo Rush went on to win the award which was a choice of either 50k in cash or a record deal with Counter Culture Records and equipment worth 15k from Onstage Music. I seriously hope they choose the record deal! The cash will come with time, for now its very important that they stick to the music and put it out right.
Coming to the awards themselves, this was one of the most wonderfully organized awards I have seen in a while! the setting was beautiful, the program short and crisp and it was all about the arts and the awards. There weren’t too many unnecessary speeches and infact when I had to go up and read out a message on behalf of Counter Culture Records, I was only the 2nd person on stage talking who was not an award winner!
A fitting tribute to a brilliant young man, Angirus ‘Toto’ Vellani, who is now a legend in the Indian Indie Rock circles. The awards are one of the few around that are actually about the arts and not about some brand or some publicity stunt. These people genuinely care and a lot of good is to come from TFA. That much is for sure!
Thanks Anmol and Sarita Vellani for putting this together every year! I have been attending the awards for the past 4 years now, right from the days in Crossword and this was by far the best! yet!
