February 2017 - Week 4

I can't proceed to talk about music until I address something that has been gnawing at me all week. Especially a Malayalee woman who grew up watching movies by Bhavana, dancing to Karupinazhagu, and watching CID Moosa a hundred times, I woke up feeling shocked at the news of what had happened to her on Friday.

I've always tried to separate my political and social rants from my personal blog, tried being the key operative word here. I'm just a person who feels strongly about a lot of things and for reasons no one knows, I've always been that kid in the class who spoke up whenever something reeked of injustice. I cannot separate that person from my identity and hence from this personal blog. So although I've been addressing this issue on my other forums like Feminism India and Desi Outsiders, I want to bring it up over here too.

For those of you who may not know what I'm talking about, please listen to the latest episode of the podcast where Meenal and I discuss the issue of Bhavana's assault while also trying to address the inappropriate reactions that the issue has been getting online. We try to place a finger on the root of the problem by discussing our own upbringings and awareness of social etiquette as children who grew up in completely different settings - Meenal being raised in Europe and I, in India.

To quote directly from the episode,

I feel that in India, people have very little social inhibitions be it with regard to pulling out their dicks and urinating in public, or laughing at a victim of abuse from behind a computer screen.

From my heart, I urge you to listen to this episode and share your thoughts on the subject. I've been waiting for this episode to come out before addressing it on this blog. It's very interesting to me that hours after we released our episode, the main accused in the case got dramatically apprehended by the police. I'm waiting to see how justice is served.


Now, for music.

I know that there are a few Lana Del Rey fans here so you're in for a treat. She just released her latest single Love four days ago and that'll be the first song you'll listen to on this playlist.

I just found out last night while compiling this playlist from the songs Shane sent me this week that Imagine Dragons' Radioactive was his alarm every morning while we were dating and he adjusted his sleep times to fit my routine. I can't believe he still likes a song that he set as an alarm back when his sleep schedule was fucked up but it's still a song that holds a lot of meaning for us. We hope you enjoy it too.

I'm sure you'll recognise Massive Attack's Teardrop when it starts playing. It was remastered and used as the title track for one of the most famous shows on American television. I won't mention the name of the show because that's for you to experience.

And finally, who doesn't like Woodkid? I'm quite an extremist when it comes to expressing my passion for art I love so if you don't like Woodkid, you and I cannot be friends. Sorry. So I hope you enjoy Run Boy Run, both for the music and for the video. Or you're dead to me. Just kidding! Or am I?

Enjoy!