Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka Jaya He
Bharat Bhagya Vidhata
Punjab Sindh Gujarat Maratha
Dravida Utkala Banga
Vindhya Himachal Yamuna Ganga
Ucchala Jaladhi Taranga
Tubh Shubha Name Jage
Tubh Shubha Ashisha Mange
Gahe Tubh Jaya Gata
Jan Gan Mangaldayak Jay He
Bharat Bhagya Vidhata
Jaye He ! Jaye He ! Jaye He !
Jaye, Jaye, Jaye, Jaye He

Its over 6 minutes, but completely worth it. The national anthem of India done right by A. R. Rahman & Bharat Bala Productions and a whole crew of superstars, including:

Vocalists

• D K Pattamal
• Pandit Bhimsen Joshi
• Lata Mangeshkar
• Pandit Jasraj
• Dr Balamuralikrishna
• Jagjit Singh
• Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty
• Shobha Gurtu
• Begum Parveena Sultana
• Bhupen Hazarika
• Ustad Rashid Khan
• Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan
• Smt. Shruti Sadolikar
• Dr S P Balasubramaniam
• Sudha Raghunathan
• Asha Bhosle
• Hariharan
• Kavita Krishnamurthy
• P Unnikrishnan
• Nityashree
• Saddiq Khan Langa
• Ghulam Murtaza Khan
• Ghulam Qadir Khan
• Kaushiki Chakrabarty

Instrumentalists

• Flute: Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia
• Sarod: Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Amaan Ali Bangash, Ayaan Ali Bangash
• Santoor: Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, Rahul Sharma
• Ghattam: Vikku Vinayakram, Uma Shankar
• Mohan Veena: Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt
• Saxophone: Kadri Gopalnath
• Chitraveena: Ravikiran
• Veena: E Gayathri
• Sarangi: Ustad Sultan Khan
• Sitar: Pandit Kartick Kumar, Niladri Kumar
• Violin: Kumaresh, Ganesh

Orchestra

• Conductor: K. Srinivas Murthy
• Cello: Ramsekar, R K Vijayandran, Bidyur Khayal
• Tympany: Kumar, Karthikeyan
• Violin: M Kalyanasundaram, Jerry Fernandes, Cyril Fernandes, R Joseph, K Murali, B J Chandru, B Balu, Murali, Dinakar, Rex Isaac, Debu Ashish, PJ Sebastian, P S Ramachandran
• Mridangam: D A Srinivas
• Harp: R Visweswaran

Tonight Bill Gates showed up at the Daily Show with John Stewart. This is definitely one of my top 3 shows. Who doesn’t love the whole Gates saga, right? Sure Gates doesn’t have the fanatic fandom of the head honcho of Apple, Inc. but he is no slouch in either the marketing department or a staggering product lineup. Whether it was Windows 3.1, 95, 98, (lets forget ME), XP and now Vista; Windows Mobile that has evidently licked Palm; Xbox that by it’s second version has (in my humble opinion) shown up the previous front-runner (Sony Blu-ray toting what?!); I wish I had more love for Zimbra, but its all about Exchange as far as I am concerned; and not even going to mention the Might Office. The list doesn’t end.

I remember seeing Gates launch the original Xbox at Times Square NYC, followed by the crazy mid-desert launch of 360. His coming out on the Daily Show with Stewart is another example that isn’t an old dog that can’t learn. Gates being whoever he is (and he isn’t the devil) does what he has to for his products. Sure, I now have a Mac (cause I love Aperture and Adobe Lightroom sucks) and my past 3 recommendations to friends buying new laptops/desktops has been OS X (Macbook and Mac Minis rock!). But I swear by their products, at least the ones I use, and somehow I imagine stat-to-stat Jobs wishes he was in Gates’ league.

Its pretty weird what happens sometimes when you are in a rush. Something that you do again and again and is second nature to you can be completely ignored. I was recently purchasing a new lens for my precious Pentax K100D - Pentax 50mm f/1.7 Manual and I couldn’t find the right deal. So I ended up bidding on and purchasing a Pentax 50mm f/2.0 M instead. Only in the rush to close the deal I didn’t realize that the person only accept money orders and my natural scam alert didn’t go off as well. I obviously am not going to be completing this transaction, rather get a negative than lose $65, right? But I did end up buying another 50mm f/1.7 M for now. Waiting with baited breath.

khayyal-sam.mp3

I love this song so much that I wrote the lyrics down. Also got you guys a small taste of this instant classic. Vishal Vaid, Karsh Kale and the Punditz have done it again!

Kab khayaal aapka nahi hota
Dard-e-dil se juda nahi hota

Haal-e-dil kis tarah likhoon unko
Haath dil se juda nahi hota

Dil ne kuch unse keh diya hoga
Bevajah woh khafa nahi hota

Woh khafa hotein hain to hone do
Woh kisi ka khuda nahi hota

Kab khayaal aapka nahi hota

Khayaal - Midivial Punditz

Check out Midival Punditz- Midival Times at Amazon.

Flickr has come a long way since it’s launch and even its Yahoo buyout. One of the coolest things I like about the site is it’s community and the creativity it cultivates. Only recently have I started playing around with its Groups section and there are some real crazy ones to jump into. Everything from Recipes to Black & White to Transit to City Specific to ‘Projects‘. One such project that I am looking to get my brand spanking new camera ‘dirty’ with is the Jumping Project. The other one that I have my eyes on is the Multiplicity group (no connection with the 1996 Michael Keaton starrer), some of the photos in this group are so out-there yet well-executed that you forget that these are professionally done.