Surashri Kesarbai Kerkar

How many of us remember Kesarbai Kerkar? I asked quite a few of my friends whether they knew about Surashri Kesarbai Kerkar and everywhere I drew a blank. Even the Surashri title did not ring a bell. Yet this Padmabhushan decorated icon of Indian Classical music is considered one of the finest singers of the 20th century . Born in the Village of Keri in Goa, she moved in to Bombay and under the guidance of her guru Ustad Alladiya Khan,the founder of Jaipur Atrauli gharana went on to become a renowned performer of Hindustani Classical music.
How did I come to know about her? I was reading about the Voyager Spacecraft. What has the Voyager Spacecraft got to do with a classical singer? Well... Kesarbai's rendition of "Jaat Kahaan ho" is included in the Voyager Golden Record which was sent into space in 1977 aboard both the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft.
The recording was recommended to Carl Sagan by Robert E Brown of the Center for World Music in Berkeley. Out of print and unavailable in record stores, it was finally tracked down in an appliance store run by an Indian Family in New York, in a carton under a card table.
Voyager1 is now more than 100 au from the sun far beyond Pluto. (One au = avg distance from earth to sun) or 15 billion km travelling at a speed of 56000 km/h and will soon be in interstellar space. It will take 20000 years for the spacecraft to reach a distance of two light years. The nearest star Alpha Centauri (actually a star system) is 4.39 light years away or 41.5 trillion km or 27760 AU.
With all the nuclear weapons, global warming and stuff I don't know whether humankind will be around at that time. But Kesarbai's voice will remain... floating in the immense void of space for ages to come.

• Her voice (need Windows Media Player)

• Pictures

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Whew.... what a spectacle. After watching the trailer, after reading the comic, after seeing the production journals, after listening to "Just like you imagined" from Nine Inch Nails again and again....., this .... was the ultimate climax.
Except for a ridiculously uninformed review at rediff. Read the comments for a huge dose of fun.

An Inconvenient Truth

If you haven't yet heard of this, its time to find out about it. This is a documentary by former US vice President Al Gore reveals some startling facts about global warming. Using factual evidence and clear concise data, Al Gore manages to convey the need for immediate and strong action to prevent Global warming. Unfortunately some parts of the documentary end up feeling like his pitch to voters for the US Presidency. ;) Maybe that was done to establish a credibility among people who did not know him well enough. But overall this documentary manages to do what it was made for. It conveys how much threatened we are by global warming and how the world is still stumbling trying to come to grips with the implications of it. It also makes me wonder how an idiot like George Bush became the president when Americans had this worthy leader as an option. Check www.climatecrisis.net for additional details.