Tunes from an alternative Victorian era: Sunday Driver

Sunday Driver were formed in the summer of 2000, though lead singer Chandrika "Chandy" Nath had earlier composed some of the songs whilst monitoring ice floes near the South Pole, during a field trip in Antarctica, collecting data for the British Antarctic Survey.

Chandy has a Ph.D. (in physics, I think), and the band's name "Sunday Driver" derives from the moniker of a gene (SYD) commonly found in mice; and the music mixes Indian (Carnatic) and English folk music, along with early 20th century classical music (Ravel, Glass, etc.) and West End musicals, topped off with a (originally unintentional, I believe) steampunky twist.

Their first album, "In the City of Dreadful Night", is available here: www.sundaydriver.co.uk. From their own description: "...inspiration from Victorian London and Raj-era Calcutta, the tracks range from hypnotic to bittersweet."

In any case, here's...

A nice sampler:

A few interviews:

• Beyond Victoriana: #10 An Interview with Sunday Driver
  
• Libby Bulloff (2010-04-15). "The Brady Bunch of Calcutta 1910 (an interview with Sunday Driver)". Steampunk Magazine #7. p.54
• "Bombay to London and Back Again: An Interview With Sunday Driver". Steamerstrunk blog.

And a few promotion photos suitable for wallpaper:

Hack - Emacs calendar: Indian/Nepali/Hindu holidays for 2011

Ideally, it would be nice to calculate these automatically for all years (and to be able to convert from Gregorian to Vikram (Bikram) Samvat dates).... But for now, this can be inserted into your .emacs file to display Hindu holidays for 2011:

;; Hindu Holidays (North India/Nepal)
(setq holiday-other-holidays 
'(
(holiday-fixed 1 14  "Makar Sankranti")
(holiday-fixed 2 8   "Vasant Panchami / Saraswati Puja")
(holiday-fixed 3 3   "Maha Shivaratri")
(holiday-fixed 3 19  "Holi")
(holiday-fixed 4 4   "Bikrami Samvat / Hindu New Year [2068]")
(holiday-fixed 4 12  "Ram Navmi")
(holiday-fixed 4 18  "Hanuman Jayanti")
(holiday-fixed 5 6   "Akshaya Tritiya (Akha Teej)")
(holiday-fixed 6 15  "Savitri Puja")
(holiday-fixed 7 15  "Guru Purnima")
(holiday-fixed 8 4   "Naag Panchami")
(holiday-fixed 8 12  "Mahalakshmi Vrata")
(holiday-fixed 8 13  "Raksha-Bandhan + Janai Purnima")
(holiday-fixed 8 22  "Krishna Janmashtami")
(holiday-fixed 9 1   "Ganesh Chaturthi")
(holiday-fixed 9 9   "Indra Jatra begins")
(holiday-fixed 9 11  "Kumari Indra Jatra")
(holiday-fixed 9 17  "Indra Jatra ends")
(holiday-fixed 9 11  "Teej")
(holiday-fixed 9 13  "Pitr-Paksha begins")
(holiday-fixed 9 27  "Mahalaya (Pitr-Paksha ends)")
(holiday-fixed 9 28  "Navaratri begins")
(holiday-fixed 10 3  "Durga Puja begins (Maha Saptami)")
(holiday-fixed 10 5  "Navaratri ends")
(holiday-fixed 10 6  "Dasain/Dusshera (Vijaya Dashami)")
(holiday-fixed 10 11 "Lakshmi Puja (Sharad Purnima)")
(holiday-fixed 10 16 "Karwa Chauth")
(holiday-fixed 10 25 "Dhan Teras")
(holiday-fixed 10 26 "Diwali / Deepavali / Tihar")
(holiday-fixed 10 28 "Bhai Dooj")
)
)

You may want to add other holidays as appropriate, e.g. South Indian holidays; holidays specific to the Punjab, Orissa etc. The format is:
(holiday-fixed numeric-value-of-Gregorian-month numeric-day-of-month "Name-of-Holiday").

E.g. (holiday-fixed 3 5 "Losar") for the holiday Losar falling on 5th March.