Arts or science - It’s just a business.

While going back on the frame of time to discover the definitions of arts, we may reach pre-historic milestones - when men learnt to draw the graphical symbols. When the need got more and more, men thought deeper to find solutions, from there arose science. Some may argue science exists from the beginning of the universe…this is left to readers to think upon.

Similarly business may go back to the era when commodities were exchanged for daily needs. Business gets involved in everything. Whether it is arts or science doesn’t matter. Business target people who are need of those particular commodities that it aims for. It can be anything. Starting from food, cloth, house to education…from comfort to sports…from gambling to all illegal activities. Business is there everywhere. When the retail market today is mushroomed with all new venture capitalists, it didn’t start something new, just gave a new look to those villagers like Ram dukanwala whose generations were involved with the retail. New café coffee days and Barista’s are the new face of Ram Gumti or Gopal’s chai dukan. The modern business tycoons are a new breed of baisyas(tradesman) of yesteryears.

Spirituality was never a business hundreds of years back and thanks to business gurus who helped spiritual gurus earn fortunes for their organization. Earlier teachers never demanded anything for their lively hood from their fellow students; it’s rather the system of GURU DAKHINA that epitomized GURU-SHISYA parampara. Now education is a big business. One may wonder to find, it needs thousands to educate a 3-4 year old kids. There are many consumers for this business; again they are the business men of some other business. If we look at a ground level this is just another form of business what people did in those early days which involves virtual money.

Today we find a mobile handset with almost every body. It was a commodity for the supper riches a few years back. It was counted as a luxurious good. But today it’s not so. It becomes a part of our blood system. It appears as if we can’t live without it. Here comes science, creating great business opportunities for millions of the people across the globe. Just go back a century and look out those handfuls of scientists who have worked their life to bring communication engineering into a common’s men’s kitty. Similarly all the great business houses today are an end result of a few brilliant innovations by the scientists.

If Marcony could have lived today, he could have become the richest person on the universe for discovering the radio signal and patenting it. In knowledge driven economy, ideas are wealth. It’s not just a new concept. From the early days of human civilization, people knew knowledge is power and today we give it a new dimension. An idea of a PhD student at Stanford heralded a new generation of computer users. In the recent dictionaries you may find the meaning of “googling”. A concept and a mathematical formula of yesterday, that created a billions dollar company and world’s number one (By Forbes for 2007) GOOGLE Inc. It is helping thousands creating their bread and butter out of it. How does the world’s best free search engine do business. They do it by name of FREE stuff - The modern day advertising.

Business itself is an art that most of us know and only few are masters of it. But what ever we do somewhere or the other we come across some business. I think that’s why usually people say – it’s none of your business!

On the lines of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa…

Today we find many reality TV shows. Some are inherited from western media like Indian Idols, Big Boss. Few innovative people discovered a lot of talents for the entertainment industry like Sunil Pal, Raju Srivastav from shows like the Great Indian Laughter Challenge. But “Sa re ga ma pa challenge” of ZEE TV is one which started long back with a musical heritage. It helps the industry in finding new singing sensations by the legends. It’s a fusion of talent…nerve racking competition…entertainment of pure music with human emotions and drama. Indian Idol may have a different philosophy but it doesn’t match to quality of music of Saregamapa.

Now the concept of Gharana having GURUs (musical mentors) to guide is a good concept. But that left me with a lot of asynchronous thought. Who should be a GURU? Can anyone become guru at any stage of life? Here I mean a GURU with caliber that can result a high output for his disciples or shishyas.

Now coming to the program – the show started with the first batch of competitors to come out and appear the litmus test in front of the all time legends Asha Bhosle and Ghulam Ali. In Saregamapa Excellency is measured on razor’d edge… In any field Excellency counts but may not be up to that extent. The comments from the GURUs and the Judges are in fact critical guidance for the singers but the way of telling a point is different. That’s where a lot of things come into the picture…whether one should be aggressive or passive. If none of the singers were up to the expectation range at the initial stage, it’s essential to discover a creative way to encourage them so that they may not have to bear the rants.

When an aged GURU guides, his experience talks a lot than his knowledge. That makes the guidelines more inspiring. But the energy of a young GURU expects immediate result. When expectations fail, sometimes it translates to rants.

Where as, the real warriors of life, the winners and the legends on the other hand, kept encouraging the budding talents. They understand the feelings of those who stand in front of millions on TV screen at a tender age. They understand the initial pressure that builds in the competition.

So a combination of both experienced and young may result great success in giving new life to the hidden talents. Comments from an experienced Bapi Lahiri and from a young oozing high energetic Himesh Reshammiya are different. Though sometimes both of them have same view but the presentation differs.

When Asha Voshle speaks out, those participants get crowned even in their lost battles. When the dreams of an outgoing participant shatters on the stage of SAREGAMAPA, when tears of all participants announce their friendship, when the half spoken words of SHAAN or Aditya Narayan makes full sense…when advertisements make the audience wait for the results…than I forget my existence for a while…debating for the results...for the business they make…and I too fall on the line of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa for a good reason.