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Terrific Liar

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.

J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

5 Years

I was going through backup of my old blog and found this posted on June 19, 2006. I got out and went to that same spot and snapped one for today.

Oothaan Waale

Growing up in rural Punjab I got to hear a lot of Attaullah Khan, albeit involuntarily. Tractors, trucks, public transport, but mostly tractors virtually came with cassette players that all their mechanical lives played only Attaullah Khan. And the quality of player and speakers was such that only god's throat Attaullah could be heard screaming from kilometers away with just a dead tin tin in background for music. Folks just loved Attaullah to blood and sweat. Especially my cousins in south Punjab, about whom my only childhood memory is the constant struggle to befriend them, were just crazy about him. Since I developed love for Pakistani Pop early on (Shahzad Roy/Haroon in fringe jackets anyone?), it was natural for me to despise local folk singers who were only played on trucks, buses and tractors.

But, then came this. Coke Studio turned a lot of folk tin tin into musical gold and recording genius. Yesterday morning when I checked above video I was somewhere between amazed and shocked. Given that I have religiously followed Coke Studio and listened each song several times, I believe Coke Studio might just have created the ultimate piece here with Attaullah Khan. Frankly, even though lot of people loved it, I found Arif Lohar's Jugni to be POS (Piece of Sh!t).

The above, my friends, is the greatest Coke Studio could ever achieve.