|
|
|
PHOENIX GLOBAL
Phoenix Broadband
It plays everything from The Beatles
to the latest Bollywood hits to numbers from old Tamil films.
That's versatility for you.
|
|
|
The break of dawn
is at least an hour away in the rest of Bangalore, but it could
well be mid-morning at 24/7 Customer's brightly lit offices at the
Singapore Technology Park on the outskirts of the city. As the name
indicates, the company is one of India's many ITES (it-Enabled Services)
warriors and its customers are largely located in the continental
United States. A routine shift-change operation is underway and
bright-eyed men and women, deposited at the park by snarling UTE-wannabes
walk in to the faint strains of Santana's Black Magic Woman-outside,
in the cafeteria, the company band Ncads is jamming.
Ncads-from non-customer affecting defects,
explains Akshay Shankar, a 25-year-old who is a team leader at the
company and the band's bass guitarist-is so much a band that it
is actually changing its name after 18 months of existence. Ncads,
the band felt, was tough on non-ITES tongues; so, after a company
wide poll, it is rechristening itself 24/7 Bandwidth. ITES jobs
are stressful, involve the altering of biological clocks, and are
dominated by repetitive tasks. "Music enables us get our minds
back to life," says Shankar.
That sentiment finds an echo in the words of
Mohammed Hafiz, 27, the rhythm guitarist of No Klue, one of Wipro
Technologies' bands, who continues to play despite being afflicted
with the carpal tunnel syndrome, a common affliction among both
coders and guitarists. "The world looks a better place when
I am playing the guitar," he shrugs matter-of-factly.
Bands such as 24/7 Bandwidth and No Klue are
common among Bangalore's tech companies. They play the kind of music
popular in India's elite engineering colleges, a mixture of rock
and roll, heavy metal, and pop (a few touch on grunge, but not extensively)-not
entirely surprising since engineers are the predominant segment
of the workforce in these companies. So, No Klue specialises in
covers of Metallica, Nirvana, Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath numbers,
as does another Wipro band Trad Scabrous; Infosys' Elements does
Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Guns N Roses, Doors, Pink Floyd, Metallica,
Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Scorpions; and 24/7 Bandwidth, Santana,
Eagles, Pink Floyd, and Deep Purple.
|
|
|
INFOSYS
Elements/Symphony
Infosys allows its band to use the company's
pa system, including Bose speakers that cost around Rs 25
lakh, during concerts
|
Bands with older members-as engineers mature,
so does their taste in music, not always for the better, though-do
play other kinds of music. H-P's Wind Tunnel Road, named after the
road on which its offices are located plays its own brand of fusion-its
financial-assistant-by-day vocalist Harish Nair skillfully moves
between Deep Purple's Hush and Bhagyada Lakshmi Baramma, a Kannada
devotional number-as does sap's sapthak. Some of Elements' members
are part of another band, Symphony, that plays only Hindi film music.
MsourcE's Mrock has a thing for reggae. And Phoenix Global Solutions's
Phoenix Broadband plays everything from The Beatles to the latest
Bollywood hits to numbers from old Tamil films. Out here in Bangalore,
the music never stops.
I'm Just A Singer In A Rock And Roll Band
It isn't easy to be part of both a go-go tech
company and a fairly active-one-jam-session-a-week-band. It helps
if you are passionate about music, like Phoenix Broadband's founder
Pramod Stephen Chakravarthy is. The prematurely balding 34-year-old
looks like a relic from San Francisco's 1960s Bay Area, dangling
earrings, pince NEZ, and a potbelly. Chakravarthy, a multimedia
designer, sings duets with singer-actress Vasundhara Das, writes
music for Kannada blockbusters-his father was a music director,
as is his brother-and is Phoenix Global Solutions' resident musical
muse. "Work is my life, but music is my mistress," says
Chakravarthy. The three members of Infosys' Elements that are winging
it to Germany in June for a concert by Metallica would agree with
that. "No amount of expense will be spared to be with our heroes,"
gushes one.
|
|
|
WIPRO
No Klue & Trad Scabrous
No Klue specialises in covers of Metallica,
Nirvana, Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath numbers, as does another
Wipro band Trad Scabrous
|
Still, finding the time to jam remains a problem.
Music and work isn't really an either-or choice for members of corporate
bands. As Chakravarthy puts it, "We never neglect work as it
pays for our passion." The peripatetic nature of the code-jock's
job means there is no constancy in the line-up of the bands. Elements'
drummer Himanshu Gupta is in the US, a 10-month-long assignment;
"Just when we get everything together, someone is posted abroad,"
says the band's keyboard player Syed Aman. Most corporate bands
seem reconciled to this. "Our lead guitarist Arvind Ravindranath
is off to sap Germany next month," says sapthak's Riju Mukhopadhyay.
"We just have to find an effective replacement." Then
there's the issue of equipment-most companies underwrite this-and
finding place to practice, but as two-month-old Mrock's Harry Correa
says, "these are initial hiccups."
|
|
|
Avinash Christopher,
an MBA, with rock-star tresses quit his job with BPL Telecom
in 2002, and floated Wishbone Music, a company that aims to
promote local musical talent
|
The companies are happy to indulge their bands.
Infosys allows its band to use the company's pa system, Bose speakers
that cost around Rs 25 lakh and all, during concerts, and has underwritten
equipment to the tune of a couple of lakhs. Wipro hires professional
sound equipment for in-house concerts of Trad Scabrous. It helps
that all tech companies dig the concept of making work fun; some
even have designated chief fun officers.
Music is just that, fun, for some bands. sap's
sapthak is confident it will never turn pro. "We know our limitations,"
says Mukhopadhyay. It is more than that for a few. Phoenix Broadband's
Chakravarthy has just cut an album titled Unheard Echoes and is
talking to a few record labels. Avinash Christopher can sympathise
with such aspirations; he went over to the music world last year.
The 30-year-old MBA with rock-star tresses quit his job with BPL
Telecom in 2002, and floated Wishbone Music, a company that aims
to promote local musical talent. "The call of music was getting
stronger," says Christopher. "I could no longer hold back."
As the song goes, "I can't stop for anything; I am just playing
in the band."
-with reports from Venkatesha
Babu
|
TREADMILL
|
 The
Small Ones Matter
B
iceps, pectorals, quadriceps, deltoids, glutes, abs...you
name it and every serious gym-goer knows how to pump these
up and flash them too! But what about the small muscles? And,
no, Treadmill isn't being smutty. We're talking here about
the supporting muscles, which contribute in no mean manner
to your physique. When was the last time you exercised your
Serratus Anterior? Those are the two strips of muscles on
either side of your torso that stretch from the inside ridges
of your shoulder blades to your ribs. Or your Levator Scapulae,
which run diagonally from the top of your neck to your shoulder
blades? And what about the External Obliques? The muscles
that stretch from your ribs to the sides of your waist. I
could go on... Gluteus Medius (wedge-like muscles on the side
of each hip), Triceps Longhead (the biggest and longest part
of your triceps covering the inside and back of your upper
arm) and so on.
If you're wondering why I'm suddenly ranting about small
muscles, it's because most people don't worry about these
nuances. These are the subtleties that matter. The muscles
that, when developed well, really give your physique a boost.
They make everything add up to a super shape. Next time you're
at your gym, ask the most well-developed hunk about these
muscles and he'll show you exercises that are simple, yet
effective in building these small supplementary muscles. For
instance, if you want to develop your Serratus Anterior, it's
just a simple crunch with a tweak: Hold a light barbell with
an overhand grip; lie on the floor with your feet flat on
the ground and knees flexed. Keep your arms perpendicular
to your flat body; now, use your abs to flex your torso like
you would in a regular AB crunch, only add to the movement
a push to the barbell with your arms (without bending them)
upwards towards the ceiling. Note: Don't count reps, do a
set in a minute and then three such sets. And then go out
and buy tanktops with extra big arm-holes.
Tip of the fortnight: Everybody does freehand push-ups.
But don't let it become just a chore that you do by rote before
hitting the bench press. Try doing slow push-ups and vary
the width between your hands-from shoulder wide to extra wide.
And keep your torso straight and back unbent. If you're adventurous,
try propping one foot on the ankle of the other one.
-MUSCLES MANI
|
|
