Turned into Waste

Perseverance, calmness, luck….
All these terminologies are very common when we are working towards a goal. Yes, success and failures are two sides of the same coin and flipping the coin may yield any result. But the thought of the probability of losing should not in any way stop us from working towards our goal.
Yes, failures suck - big time. But they are also learning and stepping stones for something we may work towards, in the future.
One thing sucks though. Imagine you worked towards something for a very long time and finally, after a rigorous walk, you reach the goal only to find out after a while that the goal is a void. I mean, yes, you have achieved what you wanted to but it isn't what you had expected. It has a void and somewhere looks hollow and all of a sudden, all that time you invested on reaching your destination seems to be a waste.
I had faced a similar situation before and, well, resulted in the birth of the song "turned into waste".
Well, we all face bad times in our life and at every bad turn we come across, we just wish to revert it because we are humans and we mostly want to avoid any unconventionality coming our way. Something similar happened.
I worked towards something and I achieved what I wanted to. But that wasn’t the end. It was pretty dark (in terms of scenario) when I realized that what I had worked towards was a hollow and all that I had been looking forward to had just been turned into waste. I had wasted my yesterday, tomorrow wouldn’t be the same and this was a shame to be cried over. Well, the darker side took over me and I started penning down all that I had in mind and well, after 30 minutes, I had 4 verses, a chorus and a bridge lying before me on a piece of paper.
A lyric snippet is as follows:
" today will not be our's,
All of us are at fault,
This step has turned into waste,
Turned into waste"

Well, this wasn’t a song I wanted to remember because it was a personal dark song and reading it drove me back to the moment. But the very next day, I was sitting on the roof and going through the lyrics and humming a tune while reading the words. The melody sounded good and so, I just recorded the verse tune, chorus tune, bridge tune snippets before they would go out of my mind and rushed back to my room and recorded the entire song in one take on my phone. Then I sat back and listened to it over my earphone. Trust me when I tell you, it was one of the best melodies I had come up with so far. The tune, the vibe, the lyrics - everything was just amazing and I simply loved the song - my dark personal favorite.
When I started working on my next project - Cursed Valentine II, this song was a sure fit into the project. The problem began when I had to record it. While going to the studio, I used to listen to this song on the way. Well, that’s how I do it. Every song that I need to record has a voice note on my cell and on my way to the studio, I listen to that voice note over and over again to get into that vibe in which the song was written. The process for recording turned into waste wasn’t any different. I was listening to the song until I reached the studio. I thought that I had captured the vibe and was ready to nail it.
I went into the booth, recorded the entire vocal and came out and sat back to listen to it. I listened and to be very honest, I was shocked and disappointed!!! I thought I had captured the vibe but it wasn’t the vibe that the song was written in. I listened to the voice note and the voice note's vibe still outran the recording. I tried once more but failed. I took a break for a couple of days and went back to record but ended up with the same result. However hard I tried, I was unable to capture that vibe.
Now it got frustrating. Never did I have any problem recording a track to this extent. The whole project was dependant on it. This was the only song left to be recorded and I just couldn’t get the result I wanted.
Finally I gave up. No, I didn’t take it out of the project. This song wasn’t a song to be ignored or to let go of. So, as a last resort, I filtered the voice note that I had in my cell and had to make that work and sound as close as possible to a studio recording. It was difficult but I didn’t want the efforts put into it go into waste and so, this song had to reach its destination.
And so, after making a few adjustments, though this song wasn't sounding as good as the others but it wasn't sounding bad and it was considered done.
Finally, "turned into waste" was completed.

Ciao…

slaves of religion

What is religion?
According to the World Wide Web, it is a cultural system of behaviours and practices, world views etc etc etc….but that’s not how we treat religion as. If I was to define religion, I would define it as the shackle of a prison which binds us to that particular prison and separates us from our prison inmates who are tied to other shackles either in the same prison or of a different prison.
Clarifying my definition, a prison is a religion and different shackles within a prison are the different castes, tribes and so, different prison means different religions.
Yes, it’s a bit extreme to define a religion – the thing which gives us identity as a prison. But that wouldn’t have been the case had it just been an identity.
We humans are mostly born equal – with a pair of legs, hands, eyes, a nose….but once we are born, the first identity card that is issued to our name isn’t our birth certificate. It is our religion. So far, so good. The problem arises when there are objections raised when we want to attend a festival or a celebration of a person belonging to another religion. Why should there be an objection??
I will be honest.
I have people in my circle belonging to almost all the religions and some of the people happen to be my very good friends. Does them belonging to a different religion stop me from attending any function I am invited to by them???
Absolutely not. I enjoy all the diversities and have a great fun learning different cultures. Well, my case could be a bit different because I belong to a state which doesn’t have the religion I follow as the base religion. Naturally, I grew up in an environment learning to mix with people belonging to different diversities. Lucky for me, I had my peer support and I was never questioned whenever I wanted to attend a celebration which wasn’t belonging to my “religion”. Yes, I am lucky that way but it pains me to see that there are some people who fear attending a celebration which is different from theirs. The common excuses are : “ kuch aur khila diya toh??” – translation – “what if they serve something inappropriate??” …….
Yes, people are naïve. But this isn’t being naïve. This is being stupid and ridiculous.
Now I will point something out which I personally dislike the most and would term the people who act this way as sadists to the penultimate level -
This world is filled with miscreants. There are tragedies which are caused by humans and cost a lot of human lives.
I am not lying about this. A tragedy struck one day and a few days later, a guy walked up to a friend of mine and said, “ye kya kiya tumhare logo ne??? kitni jaane gayi hai!!” – translation –“what have your people done???So many lives have been lost!!”.
I was dumbstruck – YOUR PEOPLE!!!!
Seriously!!!!
It sounded like my friend was the leader who commanded the assassination.
But that day, I heard the best reply which shut the guy up instantly…
My friend calmly replied, “mere logo ki jaan bhi gayi hai, iske bare mein apne kuch pucha nhi?”-translation-“my people have died too, why didn’t you ask about that?”.
Life is unpredictable. Judging a person based on a religion which some miscreant may belong to is the utmost shameful and disgraceful thing anyone could do.
Someone else's actions cannot possibly define me in any sensible way...
I thought of penning down why in today’s world, we are slaves of religion. We are separated from the true meaning of friendship and love and affection because of this barrier.
Religion isn’t a bad thing. It gives us an identity and a direction to follow but when it separates us from people, it doesn’t server the purpose of being.

Ciao…..

Cursed Valentine II

Well, the first part that is Cursed Valentine was written way back in 2009 and it was the first time that I had written lyrics that were pretty different from what I conventionally wrote back then.
Things changed after that. I strayed from the conventional way and preferred expressing everything in the way they deserved to be expressed. That way I felt I gave justice to the vibe under which the songs were written... until my next project.
The next project that I worked on was called "Renaissance". Well, as the name suggested, I got back to the conventional way and wrote stuff that were insane and aggro-rock based. Following that I worked on "Applied Conditions". This project was a small one and consisted of ballads. It was a very soothing project.
Well, after that  I took a drastic turn. In terms of humanity :towards the worse, in terms of writing: turned out in my favour. I wrote a very dark project. Actually, I surprised myself on completing it. It had a different level of darkness and it was unlike any other project I had worked on - "Engraved Damnation". To give you a hint, one of the ideas that I worked on was named "Hell's a reflection away". It was a project which I wouldn’t prefer looking or listening to at the hour of the dead i.e 3am - 4am.
"When the divide" was the next project I worked on. Well, this was a very happy go lucky project. It had been a while since I had written typical rock songs and so, I stuck to writing simple rock songs.
After walking through all these projects, it was exhausting when I had to think which direction to go towards with respect to the next project. And so, I just left it to "fate" and let things happen their own sweet way.
Sometime later, I started writing. Whatever came to my mind. At first I thought I was taking the conventional way. But I didn’t stray from the process I had started following and just continued writing. After a while, I sat back and just read through what I had written. Well, I surprised myself again. I had not written anything like that before (or so I thought). This entire work had a very dark and personal theme - unlike anything I had written. Yes, it was dark but it didn’t have the darkness of  "Engraved Damnation". This darkness was more of personal and each idea could be related to the common folk. I was just wondering that how did this come to be. I mean, I had not expected this. Not that I was disappointed, I was left blank. Because just as I had thought that all roads had been exhausted, a new road came to be.
Then came the twist.
I was just walking through all that I had worked on till date and I saw that the underlying theme of the ongoing project took inspirations from a project I had worked on 6 years earlier. Cursed Valentine was a personal record but 6 years ago, the personal feelings were different. What made me angry back then was different from what made me angry now.
So, the template was of a similar plate but the material was totally different. Cursed Valentine was aggressive and personal. This material was personal, aggressive and most importantly - it was very dark. Because it had a long distant relative, I thought it would be right to call it "Cursed Valentine II"  because had I written Cursed Valentine now, it would have sounded this way.
Anyways, back to the process. I had around 15-20 ideas ready to record and then select the top 12. This didn’t happen. I started recording but by the time I had recorded 5 ideas, I wrote 2-3 more which were equally good and belonged to the same family. This process kept on happening until I had recorded 10 songs. By the time I had finished recording vocals for 10 tracks, the count of lyrics rose from 20 to 32. I gave up!!!!
I finalized that until I am exhausted of ideas with respect to this project, I wont proceed. And so, the working process continued.
A few weeks, actually months later, the threshold had been reached. I stopped at 48. It didn’t end there. Now came the difficult part - selecting the best. I had 48 tracks which shared the same parent - "Cursed Valentine II" but only 12 could be adopted. That was almost like I had to dump 75% of the stuff.
Well, it was tuff…. Very tuff…..
But after weeks of filtering, I could get from 48 to 18 ideas and it was impossible to get lesser than that. These 18 were the best tracks I had written till now and each of them could be a story of any person across the globe. Since I liked going off the edge with respect to every project I worked  on, I decided to keep the 18 and divide them into two parts based on the theme they shared. That wasn’t very difficult.
Now, the recording began. To be honest, out of the 10 tracks I had recorded earlier, only 3 made it to the top 18.
Out here, I would like to be specific with respect to one track - "Turned into waste". This is important as it would explain how difficult it was to get this record over with.
This was a track I had written while back. It had a very gloomy vibe and was a very dark track. I recorded it the very next day on my phone and trust me when I tell this, the melody of the track is to date on of my favourite. The problem happened when I went to record this in the studio. I must have recorded this atleast 15 times but not even once could I get the vibe that I had captured while recording it on my phone. I mean, I would record and listen to it and I would find it good but when I would compare it with the recording on the phone, the latter would sound much better and I would walk back to the booth to re record it. After trying to record it for 15 times, I gave up and finally I got the phone recording mixed and filtered and that made it to the original mix.
After completing the recording, I listened to the mix and I was shocked. Generally I have one or two tracks which are of the metal core base. This project had six metal core tracks and each of them were blistering, dark and well, insanely personal. But after listening to the project from the beginning to the end, it was the greatest feeling. It was a project that at a point of time had lost track and I had no idea when it would get completed.  Well, finally it did get completed and I can confidently say that this was the most difficult, out of the way and definitely the best project I worked on.
Well, just as a teaser as to how dark the project was  - one of the track is named "Antichrist".
But I had fun. Because I broke all  the boundaries which I had set up for myself and totally ripped the process I had been following all this while  and paved a new direction for the projects I may likely work on in the coming future.

Ciao

Let the Beast laugh

Loving something or having an affection towards something isn't a crime. After all we do call ourselves a democratic nation. But the sad part is when people judge you and try to define you by what you like.
I mean, just because I like playing with toys doesn’t mean I am a retard dude!!!
Well.. This blog isnt just about toys. Its about how the world of music categorized people.
I am a fan of the heavy stuff. I like listening to metal core, heavy metal, death metal, black metal, hard rock. Well, there are tons of "sub-genres "within these but all of them revolve around these genres and so, they pretty much make up the list. Now, I don’t listen to a song just because its heavy. I have my playlist and it has from the heaviest of shit to the most soothing song one may have come across. I like music. And so, any good song (which i find good) makes way to my playlist. Now, growing up listening to rock music has created its own section in my brain and whenever I need to google for some new music, I prefer googling the heavier stuff more than the softer ones.
When it comes to black metal - the genre that all know as the genre for the antichrist, its totally a false misconception.
Black metal artists are humans - like us. The simple reason that they are known as black metal artists are because they are not followers of any deity. They create music just like any other artist with heavy riffs and powerful lyrics which mostly do not revolve around religion. Its just the path they chose to follow which defines their genre for them.
Yes, I wont deny that there are artists who have lyrics strongly focussing on religious stuffs but at the end of the day, they are stating their point.
Yes, you may wonder why am I defining this genre. I will get to it.
What is the work of music? To express emotions right???
Now, arent these people humans??? They do the same. Just like a pop artist sings a jingle to express his emotion, they do the same in their own way.
Now I come to the point as to why am I talking about this specific genre.
Listening to black metal isnt a crime. Even black metal bands do come up with good music. And the most important part for a few ignorant people : "LISTENING TO BLACK METAL DOES NOT MAKE ME A SATANIST".
Frankly, I am not bothered by comments but when I hear such ridiculous statements which can be quoted as "you listen to black metal right, you are a satanist"….
Brother, I may love the corpse paint, I may love the riffs, I may love the artwork, may even love the weird stuffs they do while performing live but that doesn’t make me one of them. It just makes me a person who appreciates their stuff just like the hundred and thousands of others around the world. I don’t mind being judged. But I do mind being judged in a illogical way. Illogical reasoning only proves how far your head is up your own arse.
Open your mind up and respect the choices each individual makes around you and instead of defining their characteristic based on their choice, let them be. No body needs your validation to know themselves.
The world has enough mirrors to reflect reality.
Summing up, yes I listen to black metal, yes I have a fetish towards drawing apocalyptic caricatures, I love wild and aggressive live performances. But I am not one of them. I am a normal human being who just knows what he likes listening to, drawing and watching and respect that or shut the fuck up and scat…..

Ciao…..

The Bitch - Goddess of success

What the fudge could that possibly mean!!!!

Have the people "discovered" a new deity ? Do we have one more "reason" to blame our failure??
Hell no!
Life - for some its unfair and for some, well, we term it as 'lucky'. That doesn’t make us any better. We are a breed of species incapable of accepting our mistakes and love to dump our failures on someone else. The more reasons, the better. At every stage of life, there will be someone who will make it through and reach the top and achieve success and crush the dreams of others. Not all games can have two winners.
So, it’s a human nature - we may cherish the victory someone has achieved by crushing our dreams but deep down we feel sad, rebellious and wait for the perfect moment to get back and prove to our counterpart that he may have won the battle but he still has the war to win.
Success comes with a lot of added features. It gives you a sack to carry around the reasons you may hear from others, reasons pertaining to how you reached your goal by 'luck' or by an 'unconventional ' method or a hilarious one being  by 'mistake'.
You worthless morons!! Success does not come simply by luck or by mistake. It comes only after you have strived towards it and despite what you say, the guy who has it, knows how he got it.
Yes, being defeated and learning from your mistakes is good. But this shouldn’t trigger a revenge in you. You shouldn’t work to be better "than him". You should work to be better and just give in your best and before you know it, everyone standing in your way will be irrelevant and you will reach the goal you deserve.
But that’s not the case. Defeat gives birth to the heel side of you and all you can think of is dragging the person down from the place which you 'feel' you deserve. You will use everything you can, every resource, every unconventional method and finally you will get what you want because you customized your path of success and finally, all that you say to the one you slayed is:

"Payback's a bitch"…..

You didn’t work hard to succeed. You did all that you could just to pull your nemesis down and sabotage his deserved place by building yours just so that you could give him a payback. That’s all that mattered. What he achieved was success. What you achieved was payback and that’s what you worshipped. You reached where he was but you didn’t succeed. You got your payback, you got your revenge. You showed him that payback is the actual vengeance, the actual act of 'hard work', the actual work done to get what you 'deserve'. That’s what you strived for. Basically you worked hard, strived for the bitch….
So, isn't the bitch - a goddess of success??

Symphonies of Joy

      A lifetime is long enough for almost everyone to experience all sorts of joy and sorrow. There will be ups and there will downs. The ups encourage us and the downs teach us. These are the basic philosophies which are not passed down to us by our parents or teachers but it is something we learn once we start “living”. The common thread that binds all these philosophies is –“SUPPORT”.
      Support can be in any form. Even a shoulder lent just to rest your head and enjoy that feeling that there is someone for you is a very gracious support. Now, each member of our lives can give their support in some way or another but all have their limitations, but there is one group of people who can support you throughout your entire life, down to any level. That support comes from ‘friends’.
       Friends are those group of people who can tolerate you even when others have asked you to keep quiet. They will fight with you to prove themselves right but eventually come to a mutual understanding that both of you are correct in your own specific way. We need them around us always.
       Now, friends are categorized by a few as – “good, best & close”.
Whatever the discrimination may be, what matters is that are they the people who will turn towards you when you need them. If yes, then they are your friend(s).
       Since these ‘friends’ of ours have such a huge responsibility, it is our responsibility as well to let them know that we too are there for them always and how much we care for them and what their friendship means to us. This responsibility can be fulfilled by many ways. The most interesting  way is to have fun with them and then conclude your fun by reminding them that this is how much crazy our friendship is. Remind your friends that you mean a lot to them by calling them up one fine day and tell them that you got married secretly, listen to their concerns, their wishes, their complaints, their mockery and finally confess that any event occurring in our lives would happen with their involvement and not otherwise and so this trick was just a hoax.
        We are fortunate enough to be living in a world where many events take place in our lives time and time which require us to be in touch with everyone we know and technology being a boon in this era has made that possible to such an extent that we can virtually never be apart from each other.
So, basically, I summarize by saying that friends will always be the people who will be unconditional, unavoidable and the most annoying set of people in your life who will always know what is good for you and what is bad and will always be the third wheel in every deed of your life….
Don’t lose them….

Ciao…. 

devil's favourite son

The world outside isn’t always your best friend. There are people who will try to get you out of their way, try to consume your success and claim it as their own, pretend to be your own until they turn out to be your real foe. Such unpredictable sights of this plane can change a man from being the most devoted man to the devil’s favourite son until all he wants to do is “seek and destroy”.
Yes, it gets frustrating when all you have is a belief that keeps you running your everyday chores and that slightest ray of hope that says that, “your time shall come too”. How long is that time frame supposed to be??? Is it worth if my time comes when I won’t be able to walk on two legs and need a crutch to be my third leg?
           They say, “try hard, until you succeed”. True. Every accomplishment needs perseverance, sweat, but how much? Who is the judge to decide that I have or have not worked hard enough? If I have slogged for 15 odd hours and slept for 5 hours every day and then some random person tells me, “it wasn’t enough!!”, based on my “not expected” output, then do I stab myself or destroy him?
          The worst of them being, “only the big guy can save you now”, or “this wasn’t your time”.
         People, get your head out of that crackpot. God is not an alibi for your success your failure. You are the one who should know your strengths and weaknesses. Today if I put an illiterate man and ask him to design a game is 1 week, even if he would put 24 hours everyday, he wouldn’t be able to make it. Does that mean he hasn’t “worked hard enough?”, no, the reason is that, this is not his cup of tea.
        In simple terms, put in your effort in the field where you want to, then, every effort you put in will yield you some ‘result and you would be happy about it in the end. Don’t wait to put your blame on the “big guy” coz he isn’t controlling anything. He has his own problems to deal with.
Don’t rely on the faith that you have been asked to put on someone else. Have faith in yourself and in the efforts you put. That will be more fruitful.
Lastly,
God exists and so does the Devil. You chose your way but in the process, do not handover your life to them. Just keep either of them somewhere within you to share your plight, not to blame them for your plight. Always remember – “YOU OWN YOUR RESULTS”

Ciao….