Gandhi apparently once said: "He who owns more than he needs is a thief." Now you can either be cynical about it and say that probably Gandhi's own wife and children would not be able to stand him with his stoic lifestyle, or you can start reflecting on how much of the things you spend money on in your life is just unnecessary luxury or pure vanity. In fact, if we now pause and think about the impending problem of global warming today, we ought to paraphrase Gandhi and say: "He who consumes more than he needs is a criminal against mother nature." Does every family need to have a car? Do you really need air-conditioning the whole time wherever you are? Do Indian restaurants need to show they are modern by serving food on disposable plastic plates with plastic forks and spoons? (OK I'm not sure eating on banana leaves is a good idea for the forests, but contributing to plastic wastes that have to be burnt, that is definitely not cool for the atmosphere.)

I was almost wondering why the recent Live Earth concerts were held everywhere in the world including China (at least on a symbolic scale) and Japan but not in a big country like India. Well maybe the Bollywood artistes would not be deemed good role models considering the way they travel to far-flung places unnecessarily, filming in Switzerland when it has nothing to do with the storyline, even boasting about filming at seven wonders of the world, when it amounts to just a few seconds here and there! OK that's not really my point here, of course western rock stars can also be accused of the same thing with their world tour concerts, certainly more than Bollywood stars holding film awards around the world. (Well there were also cases of dumb Bollywood actors poaching endangered animals, but that's a separate story.) What I mean to criticise is the modern mentality that just because you have a little money, you want to travel all the way to lands far away like Europe for a 10-day holiday, rushing here and there to take pictures even when you don't have time to find out the history of the country you are in, when you might as well relax in a nearby country in a more meaningful trip. Tourism in 'exotic' lands is something that the media needs not promote any more. It is so endemic of the modern lifestyle, that you don't have time to do anything useful after your stressful working days and you just compensate by spending your money on a quick fix through your weekly retail therapy or your annual vanity trip that make your tour agents rich while burning fuel into the atmosphere. A lot of us get into a habit of simply spending money for the sake of spending money or for the sake of keeping up an external image, instead of spending time to improve our inner well-being.

There is an interesting song by Thyagaraja, Nidhi Chala Sukhama. It sings: "Oh my mind, tell me truly, which conduces greatly to happiness - wealth or the sight of the Lord? Which gives more happiness - flattery of mere men bound up in their own conceit or the singing of the Lord...?" Apparently the musical saint sang it when the ruler of Thanjavur invited him to his court, but he declined. It is a Hindu wisdom to be against praise of men for profit; even a guru is supposed to be impart knowledge to disciples for its own sake and not for guru dakshina. Maybe such attitudes are outdated now, we all would rather talk about the 'music business' or 'arts industry' because everything is commercialised. Nowadays musicians and dancers will find it hard to reject all performances at commercial events or performances to humour politicians, especially when you can't find any support for the arts in the community. Economy rules this day and age, that's all.

How many of us would have guessed that Purandaradasa, our Sangita Pitamaha, the one who composed thousands of songs, the one who fixed the scale of Mayamalavala Gowla for preliminary music training, who prescribed elementary lessons like sarali varisai, jantai varisai, was actually a worldly and greedy businessman in the early part of his life? He was born as a son of a banker or gem stone dealer and so it was quite natural that he expanded on his family's business and amassed wealth by hook or by crook. However he then discovered music and went on a search for the Divine through music, turning from a sinner to a saint; he gave up all his wealth and went about begging with his wife and children just enough to feed themselves. That's such an amazing story, for these days it is much easier to imagine artistes who start out being idealistic and then turn into mercenary businessmen as they grow older. Maybe wives and children are too demanding these days, and everything costs money, television, PC, handphones, sports shoes, etc. Anyway thank God Purandaradasa went the opposite direction, otherwise we would not have all those lovely songs still sung after 500 years - songs like Narayana Ninna Namada (in which Purandaradasa prays that his tongue gets the essence in chanting the Lord's name) or Jagadodharana (about Krishna stealing butter and Yasoda asking him to open his mouth, which reveals the whole universe). My current favourite is Venkatachala Nilayam, set to Sindhu Bhairavi. I don't actually know the significance of the song with regards to the Lord of the Seven Hills and so on, but it is certainly the kind of song that evokes the deepest emotions, such that make us human.