Music Fusion

Listening to A R RAHMAN my all time favorite composer at 2 am in morning and blogging away! Talk about luxery. This sort of luxery is only afforded to me due to a small chance happening of Umaima being away to Mumbai while I happen to be in Dubai. Surprisingly given the fact that she's been going to India atleast 3 - 4 times a year its testimony to my vagabond existance that this is first time this has happend.. Normally its surely the other way around where, I'm travelling and she's in Dubai.

Today while driving like a maniac, listening to music, I was just thinking back about music I like. I started also considering the fact that music induces euphoria in me. Specially when I am driving. Inevibtably my foot is pumping on the accelerator, and with my clapping and gesturing in tune with the music, I guess in my instance its more dangerous to listen to music in Car while driving as compared to talking on the phone while doing the same!

Back to the music though and my title of fusion, in the car I was listening to sweedish group ARASH.. (Disk gifted by Oleg, check them out at http://www.arash.com/.. fusion of russian, bollywood , raggae and some persian.. his sounds really know no boundry) .. track bora bora (russian number) got back memory of long 700 KM night drive from Dniprederzhinsk to Ternopil from central to western Ukraine, which I'd undertaken in old depliated manual Nissan Sunny at night, while Oleg and Yuri (my friends who I'd met first time on that first trip to Ukraine) dozzed. Aaah, nostalgia!

Just before that with a chinese friend Limming happend to come accross a pleasent surprise. He'd just come down from beijing today, and being of the timid cautious nature that normally chinese engineers tend to be, he turned down my offer for taking him out to an Indian dinner. So instead I offered to take him for a Hot Pot. However traffic outside my showroom and near my car park wavered my resolve and I told him instead we'd go to another Chinese restaurant which was walking distance from my house. It so turned out that this restaurant happened to have been converted into Sichuan Hotpot joint. Last that I'd been to this place was 4 years back, when I and Umaima had entered it on an impulse. When we went in, and didn't realise that being a authentic chinese place the waitress wouldn't really speak english (what goes by the name of chinese in India and most other places around the world really is an alien taste to most of my chinese friends)!... Well we found out soon enough. With some gesturing we asked for menu. However and I write this with a smile , we took one look at the menu, saw the dish pricing at 30 to 40 AED per dish and walked right out :).. Anyway , with Limming, I saw that the place had been renauvated into a Ho Go ( hotpot restaurant - my fillipina friends use some other term, have to confirm what they say). I was happy that my promise of hotpot to Limming would be fulfilled however he seemed to have another idea. Sichuan hotpot tends to be one of the spiciest kind of food you'd ever have. He said it was too hot for the weather (we'd just had a 20 mins walk in 35 deg evening time temp outside). I told the waitress to give laad and bu laad combo pot ( half hot and half plain soup, I was not about to pass up opportunity to get spicedup). Although the food was not so special ( this was my second experiance with Dubai hotpot and both the times i've been disappointed) however i was treated to 'Yo Mayo Iga Yaanshuba' ( or something to that effect). One of my personal favorite songs in Chinese along with 'Kuba Kuba' ( a man may not cry - which Li sings so well). Again accompanied by a lot of nostalgia, memories of my numerous evenings in KTVs in China, and/or travelling around in someone friends car etc ( interesting point being that in most cases Car is the place where I most listen to music).

So, Chinese, Iranian, Russian, Hindi and English in an evening. Normal enough for my average day, and reflection of fusion of cultures and tastes in my life.