“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!

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 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!

Firstly, I must start this with a round of thanks to Tasneem Vahanvaty, the co-ordinator of the awards for India and so much more at the British Council, India! She forced me to put in my application last year and was there to answer any queries I might have had along the way! And while I am at it, Claire De Brackeleer for all the help provided in the UK! It would never have been possible without either of you!

The application form itself is quite a questionnaire and they have smartly left the questions very non-specific to a particular project that you might have worked on. This means that you have a LOT of introspection to do and you get to pitch yourself for the award. It took me about a week to just fill up that form and get all my references in place, but I was glad I put that time in for it because ultimately when I had to make my presentation, it was all just a breeze!

London was a once in a lifetime adventure for me! It was the first time I had travelled out of the country by myself and there was just SO MUCH to do that I feared I would not want to come back at the end of it The British Council had taken the most excellent care of us and much to the surprise of EVERYONE I know, the finalists were put up in the Leceister Square area of London, the most central, most vibrant place in London!

Our schedule was packed with meetings with various different people from the music industry in London who gave me a whole new perspective to the entire music business. Like I realized after discussions with them, what we see in India today with regard to the Indie music business is what the scene was in London about 20 or so years back! And also, with technology and opportunity becoming more and more widespread, the gap can be closed very quickly!

All the finalists got to head to Liverpool and Manchester for a different perspective from the people who run their businesses from there. But the underlying thread that we saw in all conversations was how people from every single domain in the music business take thier work so seriously and how there is value attached to every little bit of work that goes in! Something that has to start and grow in India.

Many of the friends I made in London and in the trip across the UK, have been very helpful to me over the course of the year when I sucessfully shaped my career in the music businessand the few partnerships that have formed and are forming show a LOT of promise! Infact, if I was to sum up the whole experience of the Young Music Entrepreneur award in one word, it would be ‘PROMISE’. And I would like to thank everyone from the British Council for doing their bit in showing us that promise!

Go over and read my “Thank You” list for everyone who has helped me win this award. And if you are doing something interesting in music in India today, then please head to the British Council Website and get the forms and apply at once! Its well worth your time

http://www.britishcouncil.org/india-arts-yme-award.htm is the link you want to head to now!

After getting our tickets sorted out by the lovely folks at ‘IndianStage‘, we headed to Rangashankara to a packed house which was treated to some nice theatre. Now for those of you who don’t know the play already, this is an Oscar Wilde comic love story with lots of mistaken identities, loads of madness, some great dialogue and an overall brilliant script.

Team Evam who put this together (In the picture above, pardon the quality, I did not have my camera with me and had to use my phone!) did a good job of it overall but I left the hall thinking it could be so much more! While it wasn’t something in particular that I can put my finger on and point out that was lacking, it was the overall production itself that could have been a notch higher.

Now I am not complaining at all about my time there! I totally enjoyed the play and I remember Shilpa and I sitting in the absolute last row in Rangashankara could follow all that was happening and also, were laughing out on many occasions. The actors themselves had great comic timing and ran through the play at a nice pace that was not hard to follow.

My grouse however, was that, at many times during the play, I remember catching myself thinking, they are just saying those lines out like they are at rehearsal! or rather a line check! when you say something naughty or mischevious, there wasn’t at times, the expression that goes with it. Also, there could be improvements made to the dance sequences in the beginning which I thought din’t come together quite well today, but it might just have been today!

In all, I would definitely recommend this to anyone. If you get a chance to watch the production, please do! Its totally worth it and as a fan of dialogue filled theatre, I certainly did not lose interest through the play. The script itself is brilliant and will thoroughly entertain you and the production does a good job of getting the story across.

I fully loved the character of Lady Bracknell, played by Shannon who I thought stood out during the whole show and would like to specially congratulate her for her performance.

I want to embark on something like that. My photoblog was started with a very similar intention but then moved on to become a place where my best photographs were showcased. I want to do both now!

So starting yesterday, I will post one photo everyday, hopefully taken on the same day with a short story behind the photo and why I took it. Hopefully in a year’s time, this will be of great value to me!

I have embarked on these things before but never really gotten them done. This time, it feels different!

So head to http://gauravvaz.com/photoblog and bookmark it or add it to your RSS feed readers to catch up on whats happening in my life – photographically.

I have the Nokia E71 and one of the most beautiful things about that phone is the “contacts search” feature where you just start typing the name of the contact you want to call on your QWERTY keypad and the contacts appear on screen filtered as you type. You don’t have to go into contacts and then start your search! In my mind this is a very small yet brilliant addition to an already nice phone.

Now a month back or so, I had managed to accidentally turn off this feature and the regular intuitive way that I thought one would go about turning such a feature back on was leading to dead ends! Searching for this Online din’t help either because I couldn’t find references to this problem – Maybe I was searching for the wrong thing!

The fix is very simple, and in retrospect, it is very intuitive as well, but only in retrospect! Atul found this out for me and saved me a lot of pain!

Once you type a character on screen when you are on the home screen, you click the upper left ‘Options‘ button and in there is the option to switch “Contact Search” ON or OFF. This option is not available in any other menu that I could find on the phone and it took a LOT of figuring out to stumble upon this.

I hope this helps someone else facing such a problem!

The new year was brought in just the way I like it! I went for midnight mass with the family and then headed to spend time with Shilpa. We even made pizza ourselves! I like this over the partying and the madness! And the rest of the year was going to get crazy anyway .. and it did

It was by complete accident that I started taking photographs at weddings. I carry my camera around with me all the time and when I first took some photos at my friend’s wedding, it was because I wanted to keep myself occupied! Some of the couple’s friends had made a movie about their life together and wanted to show it at the reception and since I had both my camera and my mac with me, I took a couple of hundred photos (like I do always), transferred them to my mac and ran a slideshow on the projector that was set up for the movie! This became such a great hit because a typical wedding photographer would take a month after the wedding for you to see the photos even and here guests who came in a little later could see what had happened earlier in the reception!

I started getting offers to shoot weddings which I still don’t take up for money. I am just not good enough yet and am still doing this as a hobby and for only my close friends. But then, sometime later this year, I should possibly start charging for it

Much to my liking, a LOT of music happened this year, with the new project (tentatively named – Allegro Fudge) that is making some very interesting music, to playing with old friends at Opus and other places around the city to the lovely ‘Raghu Dixit Project‘, its been a time when I grew a lot as a musician and I hope that will continue right through.

February 26th, 2008 was when The Raghu Dixit Project’s debut album was launched and from there its been a crazy ride with the band this year. From being MTV’s artist of the month, to seeing our album for sale in stores, to playing all over the country and some parts of the world, being part of the Roots Music Festival tour of the North East of India, to travelling around 5 countries in South Asia, to being part of a superhit movie score, my journey in music with Raghu has been tremendous this year! And I only hope next year will top it and will see me get better with the bass guitar!

This is my favourite picture of the band on stage taken this year. This was taken by Sayan ‘The Red Bantoo’ Datta, who is one of the best concert photographers I have met in the country!

The trip to the North East of India that I went on with the band, was more than just the music for me. It was a great lesson in management and I learnt more on that one trip about how to organize concerts, negotiate with people, delegate work, get work done, and just manage things than I have learnt in the past 25 years of my life! From the accident to having to set up promotional deals with radio stations in the North East and making sure things were on track in a place I have never been to in my life, in a language I don’t understand was quite an experience!

It was on this trip that I spoke extensively with Vijay Nair about the various things that we can in the realm of Indie music in India. Many of those ideas are being brought to fruition as we speak . This was also the trip that fuelled my leaving IT and eventually landing up where I am today. We’ll come to that in a bit.

2008 was the year that I was finally able to do music and work in the music biz a little more seriously and a large part of that was because of winning the IYME award for India. That was one of the best experiences I’ve had all year. I got to go to London, Liverpool and Manchester and see how the music industry works there and make friends and contacts that will be invaluable to me as I continue on this path in the music biz.

2008 was in many ways, the year for travel! Most of this was not purely travel, but I did get to see a LOT of the world and I am thankful for it. I will seriously invest time and money in travel over next year and the years to come. Its just the best thing in the world I should tell you! I used to be this person who completely disliked travelling on IT work because you are going to be stuck in an office in another country like you are now and it will only be a change of location. But I strongly urge you to travel when you can and do it NOW! go to as many places and see the world .. there is a lot you will learn

2008 was the year I finally quit IT! to pursue a life and career in the music industry and as a great first step, a series of co-incidences and great timing made me the VP for MuckWork and getting to work with Derek Sivers can be a great start to a career in the Music Biz and I can’t tell you how thrilled I am for it. More updates on how everything progresses will be made as things happen. But I am finally doing what I LOVE from my heart and its a great place to be and I am determined to make this count

There are a lot of interesting projects I am part of in the Indie Music scene in India and I will tell you about them as they happen. Right now its all just concepts but they will come together soon.

The project that started it all was relaunched late this year and I am really proud of what we have got here. The brand new RadioVeRVe now has more music and a LOT more features. I strongly recommend that you check it out and tell me what you think about it. This is just the start for the new RadioVeRVe. There is more that will go there and it will happen soon!

Another great project that I was part of late this year was FOSS.in. It was haphazard to start with, ambitious when it came close and finally when it happened, it was grand! there is a lot we did right this year, a LOT we didn’t and we learnt with everything that din’t go as planned. The team ‘bash’ after the event was quite an event and I hope that it makes us strong as a team together because there is a LOT of good that will happen with the event next year

Finally, Shilpa and I have been together for almost 5 years now and I could not have been happier about it! this has been the year when we grew a LOT closer to each other. When it was smooth sailing almost all year long The year when we started respecting our own space and learning or rather getting used to each one doing our own thing and not having to be around each other all the time. In many ways, that has been the secret to how close we’ve become.

This was also a year when I reconnected with a lot of old friends, made new ones, started many new projects and got qutie a bit of work done and enjoyed every moment of it. In a tremendous number of ways, this has been the best year of my life yet and I see a lot of good happening in 2009 as well. There have been many things I have forgotten to mention and I am sure they will come back to me soon and I’ll probably make new posts about it!

For now, cheers to a great year and here’s another one hoping for an even better year ahead

Now, I have eaten Biryani at many places in Bangalore and if there is one place I would pick to go back to repeatedly, it has to be Khazana – a little hole in the wall restaurant in Johnson Market (down the road from Fanoos).

I was passing by that place at lunch time today and there was absolutely no way I would miss a chance to eat there! Now you must realize that this is not a fancy shamancy place that I am talking about, its a really small joint on the road side that I was introduced to first by my guitar tutor, Mr. Alan Rego (who is a regular there!)

Infact, Khazana has a very loyal regular clientelle. I remember landing up there from work with my colleague at 12.15 PM for lunch and the place was closed, so we wait outside knowing it will open any moment soon. 5 minutes later, we see there are 4 more people waiting there for it to open and when they open the place by 12.30 PM, there were 12 of us ready to go in there and sit.

In Khazana, you just sit on whatever chair you can find, and you just (hopefully) become friends with the person you are sitting with, if you don’t already know them! But that is optional of course

In many ways, Khazana is a perfect model of what an ideal restaurant should be. A dedicated clientelle, a specialist menu (I will come to that in a moment) and really cheap prices! A great tasting fully stuffing meal for 2 would cost you about 100 rupees per head which is much better than many fancy restaurants in town!

The menu at Khazana has 16 items, there is no concept of starter, main course, dessert or any such thing! and the costliest item on the menu is 67 rupees! I love the quote on the menu and the disclaimer, “Food is subject to availability!”. This is completely true and on most days, they run out of a majority of their menu items in a couple of hours after opening.

If you are in the mood for some great cheap non-vegetarian food, I totally recommend the ‘Beef Biryani’ and ‘Beef Kalimirchi’ combo at Khazana! My mouth waters as I write this

PS: The quote reads – “Almighty gave us exquisite things to eat, the least we can do is prepare them tasty and serve them to you“

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

Get inspired!

Got to these links via PhotoJojo