Music cures

(Disclaimer: This is not a music review)

I’m listening to A R Rahman’s new song from Kadal- ‘Adiye’ as I write this, and wondering how he does it. What is it about music that makes such a personal bond between song and listener? We all make a hue and cry about travelling but sometimes with music you can travel the world sitting in a room. You can shut yourself from everything with that simple invention, headphones. Or an instrument, or if you happen to be lucky enough to have a decent voice, then you need nothing. Touching the right note can be enough.

The song has now changed to ‘Anbin Vaasale’. Which pierces its way into your mind and demands your attention. What is it about this album ? Each song seems to stand out as a product of genius. This is not an album that you can play in the background, you have to stop and listen. (I’m taking around five minutes between sentences here while writing, and I stopped listening to it at work because it made my hands stop typing at the keyboard. )

 Maybe its me, but I don’t remember being this affected by a music album in a long time. Listening to each song for the first time had the anticipation of unwrapping a long overdue gift. From the time ‘Nenjukulle’ aired on MTV unplugged, it was the first song that would grace my Windows Media Player every day , until ‘Elay Keechan’ pleasantly arrived to compete. Each time he sang the line at 4:39 I wanted to hear that bit again- surprising what the slightest, almost unnoticeable modulation can do.

Listening to the rest of the songs yesterday, I couldn't stop at a comment or a ‘like’, there was something about this album that was capable of changing your mood tangentially in a mere four or so minutes. (I’m not presuming to ‘review’ this music- one can’t review something that one cannot hope to achieve in a thousand years)  Moongil Thottam and Chitthirai Nila in their separate mellifluous ways prove that people can do magic with notes and voices.  

Maybe when Roja first released it felt something like this? I was unfortunately too young to witness the magic back then, but I think this album is always going to remain special in its own way.

Attempt eight .

This is the eight time I’ve sat down with the firm decision of writing a new post. My hope of ‘at least one post a month’ has proved to be over ambitious, in spite of numerous attempts of sitting with pen and paper only to discard whatever I write within half an hour.


First I tried writing about music. It was one of those phases when I’d discovered a new song that stuck me as absolutely brilliant and was mulling over how it would feel to be a person who could create scores -pun intended-of brilliant songs that reach out to thousands of people you will never ever know personally but who would live with close personal ties with your music. I suppose I kept wondering and listening to the song, and in the process quite forgot that I was to be writing about it.

Then I tried a short story. Going into long winded descriptions of the place and the gate and the door bell, it seemed to be more a reflection of me and my surroundings than a story, and after repeatedly trying to establish a ‘storyline’ and characters with impact, I failed to manufacture any semblance of interest, and abandoned the story.

Then I thought maybe I would be inspired if I write about a book, one to me that was no mere’ story’ but a marvel of how a book should be. I started off writing about Jem and Dill’s innocence, of Atticus’s defence, of falling in love with Scout’s narrative each time I read the book, of Miss Maudie and Mrs Dubose and Calpurnia and how each of these non principal characters still left their impact in their own way, and of course, of enigma called Boo Radley and the soap dolls he made, that touched you in a way that was quite inexplicable. And well, I started reading the book again, and there ended that attempt.

Then came a half hearted attempt at a travelogue- half hearted is quite an exaggeration, I actually didn’t even reach the stage of sitting with a pen and writing a word. Then an article on out of place signs and quotes, that came out of seeing a person in a Playboy t-shirt at Tiruvannamalai temple. Again, unfortunately, I could only think of enough material for a status update or a tweet, not quite an 'article'.

Yet another short story attempt followed- this lasted around four lines. Then I tried succumbing to technology, sitting on the computer, opening MS word and trying to ‘type away’, expecting the bursts of randmomness I used to be capable of, but got distraced by Notifications, GIFs and YouTube videos of the sing I initially started off writing about, and finally shut down without even getting to the point of doing a Ctrl + S .

So finally, I’ve succesfully( and conveniently) managed to ramble on for a page on my unsuccesful writing attempts- please wish me luck for my next post to be slightly less futile than this one !

Guess who changed her profile picture ?

Mom : I just spoke to Mrs.S . Her daughter R’s marriage has been fixed she tells me.

Me: Yes, I know. The boy is called A.

Mom: But how did you know that ?

Me: Facebook. He works at ABC. They all went for a trip last weekend to Mysore…

Welcome to the world of the non social-networker versus a regular. Of how my mother fails to understand how I possibly get to know things about people to whom I have barely spoken three words. She mentions a distant relative and I know which university his daughter recently graduated from. I often remind her about her friends’ birthdays after seeing a ‘Happy birthday mom’ status update from the offspring who is my ‘friend’. Sometimes she excitedly shows me pictures someone would have quaintly mailed her and she is incredulous hearing about how I saw them long back on Facebook. I wonder how she would react if she knows that sometimes I can even tell her who went for which movie in which theatre and with whom sitting in my room seeing their ‘check in’, or even what somebody cooked for last nights dinner, all thanks to Instagram that make all dishes seem mouth wateringly palatable. ( I have to admit, I have been at the ‘posting’ end of this one ! )

Sometimes, the flood of primarily useless information is unbelievable, and as luck would have it, its somehow far easier to remember and repeat utterly uninformative ‘information’ about who is on what terms with whom rather than which deal was signed by which Chief Minister. And one person’s updating of her status message on the extent of her boredom or her new haircut becomes much ‘liked’ and ‘commented’ , while another person’s update on a significantly more important than life event like winning a national level prize or a new job goes unnoticed.

And of course, there are categories of these people. The addicts who ‘check in’ even at the gym and broadcast minute by minute updates of their playlist and how much weight they are lifting, and have sleepless nights when they don’t get enough ‘likes’. The invisible-but-omnipresent who seldom comment or share but are perfectly aware of which shampoo who is using and who coloured his hair recently. Then there are the anti-socials who are forcibly part of these sites though they hate them, and occasionally sign in to get revolted by the amount others are sharing. Then of course, there are the middle-aged-and-young-at-heart who want to catch up with the times and actively post updates and upload baby pictures of their children now almost adults, much to the consternation of the latter. And there are the elderly who make sure it is their duty to know what the ‘youth’ are upto , and the kids who actually believe it is normal to have one thousand friends even before graduating high school.

And the rest of us normal people who occasionally put up arbitrary status updates and change profile pictures, some of us who do all of this and still mock the website.  

At least I’m glad I have a mom who is still shocked that I could know that a vague acquaintance had a baby in London three minutes after the birth rather than one who is the background browser and gets to know what unsuitable cuisine I had for yesterday’s lunch by seeing my check in. Phew. 

Mosaic Tiles and Mismatched curtains

It is one of those pleasant Bangalore evenings- cool with a hint of oncoming rain, and silence. I sit on the concrete ,once wooden bench in the compound of my grandfather’s house. The luxury of having a place to sit that is neither in, nor out. I am shaded by the roof above me but can also see the sky. Having the seclusion of a blank wall in front of me but also a view of the road to my left. The road, one of those idyllic cul-de-sacs, which used to have at least enough trees to give us food for countless tree-to-tree games. Now most of the trees are gone, but at least the coconut trees inside the compound of a few houses still stand. I remember collecting the tiny dried up ping-ping ball sized coconuts that fall down and playing with them.

In front of me is the tulsi plant with the miniature shrine. Painted a bright yellow by my grandfather a few years back, it is a reminder of how central it used to be in their lives of yesterday. A small one-and-a-half foot wide strip of ‘garden’ runs along the length of the compound, no fancy manicured lawns or exotic plants here. Just a homely mixed growth of green. In front of the spot where I am sitting used to be a banana tree – a bright vivid shade of green, exciting to a child’s eye .The hibiscus plant still stays, from which we used to try extracting and tasting the nectar.The old fashioned gate remains untouched as well, with its carved flowers and musical instruments, from where I have swung watching the going-ons of the road and the way the maid would wash the stone outside the gate with cowdung and draw a ‘kolam’ and make borders on the stone.

To my right is the garage. Having never owned a car but still owning a nice ten feet by twelve feet garage with a rolling shutter,  the garage doubles as a multipurpose store room for odds and ends, discarded furniture, a clothesline where the laundry was transferred when it rained, the odd scooter that a relative or a random uncle would leave temporarily. The garage had been a wonderful playroom for me, sitting on a chair that been converted into a swing, making tents out of bed sheets, spreading the same bed sheet on the floor for games of ludo, and getting fascinated by the operation of the rolling shutter and its heavy rattle. A tall wooden stool that also doubled as a ladder while taking things from the loft still stands there. It is now a pale yellow but it used to be painted a bright blue. Just like most of the other wooden things in this house- cane chairs, the window shutters, even the back door.

Each of the rooms used to be painted a different colour, and the colours used to also be changed each time the house was repainted, and the little peeled off bits of paint would reveal what the colour used to be, leaving you wondering how that room would have looked in the other colour. The ‘hall’ was a shade of blue somewhere between sky blue and cobalt blue. The main bedroom was green with cornice bands of lavender and pale yellow. I remember how this room permanently had a spare cot that was placed on its side at one end to save space. I would clamber on to the gap and pretend it was a witness stand and enact courthouse scenes.   The other room that had a view of the road , that was and is still called the ‘front room’ or ‘outside room’ when translated into English was painted a light purple , I fail to remember the colour of the dining room but I remember the foldable brown formica topped table with the oddly shaped chairs.  

The small kitchen with the cement counters, the bathroom, not to be confused with ‘toilet’ that was a separate entity, had a rough granite floor, ‘anti skid’ in today’s terms, and used to have a large ‘boiler’ that heated water.

The backyard , with the washing stone and built in grinding stone, and a small water tank that I have on occasion used as a swimming pool/bath tub, and the small outdoor ‘Indian toilet’ with once red-oxide flooring, the projected sil where I have sat many a time playing with the hooks that hold the wooden shutters in place and the rangoli powder that was always kept in this spot, the old quaint wooden sign bearing my grandfather’s name and the name of the bank where he worked, the uneven portions of the ground where water would collect during rains and where we would make paper boats, the common walls with the neighbouring houses which we would jump across while playing hide and seek...

The house may have had mismatched furniture haphazardly arranged leaving no space for movement and oddly coloured walls and doors and a cluttered showcase where objects went on display regardless of  aesthetic, but the memories overrule the absurdities -sometimes absurdities are what make  memories so much more vivid... 

On the boy who lived.

I started off to write about re-reading books and the joy of discovering a long-before read book, or simply an over-and-over-again read book that you happened to have not touched in around a year. There may be some books that have touched me, that always help in lifting a dull mood, many that may have been gripping enough to finish in one sitting, but the most re-read book is probably Harry Potter, the Boy who lived, the Chosen one.

Reading this book is like a chain reaction- I happen to open one of the seven when I have some time and no other new book around, and end up reading all of them in the next couple of weeks. There’s something about the way the characters get etched in your memory, the way you remember insignificant details about the book like the colour of Pansy Parkinson’s robes at the Yule Ball or the password to the gargoyle outside Dumbledore’s office. The way you can sometimes replay conversations and scenes in your head using almost the exact words, like Ron having the emotional range of a teaspoon or Hermionie ferociously dotting her ‘i’s and making holes in her parchment.

The amount of discussions the series sparked , whether at school, or years later with people who’s kids went to school, the intense debates, not on usual controversies or criticisms that books have but on ‘doubts’ in the plot, on how Malfoy got the Elder Wand and on how the time-turner worked and on why Dumbledore did what he did. The complexity of the plots, on how Scabbers looking thin was related to a prison breakout, on how Harry catching the Snitch in his mouth in his first match related to destroying a Horcrux, on how even seemingly insignificant chapters like the one on spring cleaning the Black house proved to hold important clues.

The competitions on who would read the book first as they released, and the sadistic thrill of telling someone who hasn’t yet finished it the ‘twist’ in the ending. (I had the misfortune of ‘being told’ rather than ‘telling’ all the major twists, that Sirius Black was not a killer, that Snape killed Dumbledore, and that Snape was innocent after all. Which didn’t actually make the books any less enjoyable!)

A book that actually contributed to a two-hour game of word building with ‘Harry Potter words’  during a long bus ride stuck in traffic , that also lead to a 500-odd comment game on Facebook , where we broke our heads getting stuck at Y after Yule Ball, Yew and Yaxley.

Growing up with Harry was quite memorable- reading about the twelve year old boy depressed on his birthday when we were twelve, seeing the first movie version of the book and endlessly complaining about the omissions and alterations, seeing whether the characters stood up to your imagined versions, waiting to see who the next Defence against the Dark Arts teachers were, watching Neville grow from awkwardly searching for his toad to being a true Gryffindor, cheering with the Weasley twins and crying as Dobby was buried, watching how every loose end tied up in the last book, and finally seeing the victory of good over evil.

The boy who lived indeed managed to live in many minds breaking barriers of age, genre and other ‘muggle’ classifications! 

The prevailing theme of the year- Nostalgia.

It seeps in through insignificant things. The smell of summer showers, passing though a mango cart, a certain song from ten years back, the sight of an Enid Blyton paperback. Maybe its because of all the ‘what’s next’ questions – What’s next was never a huge deal all these years. At least that’s how it feels now.

The ‘Next’ usually followed with minimum fuss- After 6^th standard came summer vacations and then 7^th standard. After school came play time and then homework time. After dinner came family television time.  After exams came excitement and water fights.

Whether we got bored of these patterns, I don’t really remember. But looking back, it seems an idyllic existence. Having actual hours in a school day allotted for games and music and reading, having annual school picnics and parties, having nothing too pressing to worry about except maybe the marks of the Hindi unit test or a minor squabble with one of the friends in the ‘group’. We may have not had the even more seemingly ‘idyllic’ childhood of a generation ahead with climbing mango trees and playing with tops and spending vacations at a ‘native place’ with a horde of cousins, but we had our own set of now outdated activities. Buying audiocassettes of new movies or albums, borrowing walkmans (walkmen?) for trips, reading horoscopes for the day at the back of the weight token at railway stations, playing brick games on a handheld ‘video game’ and sometimes being treated to the ones where you could shoot ducks on the TV from a ‘gun’. When we hadn’t a clue about pizzas and pastas and soufflés and the only main concession to our regular food was the occasional Maggi Noodles, and the only foreign cuisine we vaguely knew was Chinese . When we did have fancy board games and the occasional computer game but if just given a piece of chalk, could still pass a pleasant hour playing hopscotch. When we did watch a lot of cartoons but still ( at least most of us) loved Famous Fives and Secret Sevens and spent many a day exploring Cornish moors and secret underground passages with them. ( This of course, was before Harry Potter happened, which was soon to overtake most school conversations.)

I remember reading an Isaac Asimov short story about a time in the future when there is a man who ‘claims’ he can do things like multiplication without a calculator, and astonishes people by getting the right answer, and leading to the realisation that the brain can actually be a substitute to the computer.

In the hope that we don’t live to see that day, though nostalgic posts of twenty years hence might talk about the times we actually had to type on a keyboard, and how we used Facebook and Skype to communicate, and how we transferred data using things like memory cards and pen drives, the floppy disks of tomorrow, and how we played Angry Birds on touchphones, how we were fascinated by Siri, and how we still did quaint things like going to bookstores and buying printed books. 

A memory.

My earliest memories of my grandfather involve the large front verandah of our second floor house, the very first house I have lived in. I remember him sitting on the cane reclining chair we still have, while I rode around the verandah on a little red tricycle pretending it was an autorickshaw and asking him where he wanted to go. He would often take me for walks upto the railway track .We would sit on a bench watching the trains pass by, and I would jump about excitedly if anybody waved back from the train. Sometimes these walks would include a stop at a small departmental store where he would buy me ‘Gems’ chocolates. We called the shop ‘Kannaadi kade’, kannaadi meaning glass, as it was one of the rare shops that had huge tinted glass doors.

I would often play a form of ‘hide and seek’ with him, which involved him sitting on his mattress and me hiding in various parts of the small room and him finding me by pointing me out without moving. He taught me to play chess when I was merely five or six years old, I distinctly remember the chess board we used to have, a wooden box with light brown and ivory squares instead of the usual; black and white, and black and ivory magnetic coins. I remember sitting across him on the single bed by the window and trying to remember how the bishop moves and how the horse.

Once we shifted our house, his spot changed from the verandah to a small bench we had built at the front of the house. Dressed always in a spotless white dhoti and a neat shirt of light blue or grey, he would sit watching the activities of the road. He would still involve in games, with not just me but the other children of the road as well. I remember endless games of ‘King Queen Police Robber’ where we wrote on tiny chits and maintained strict score cards. We would also play board games- he would call out numbers when we played ‘Housie’, we played Scrabble and Uno and Snakes and Ladders.

Sometimes the whole family would play carrom- I remember his unique carrom strike, he would rest his hand on the board and flick the striker with his index finger, accurately pocketing the coins.

We would play brain games, twenty questions, quiz and memory games, he sometimes looked through my essays, spoke to me about the books he used to read when he was younger- Dickens, Wodehouse...

And then there was music. He was a self taught musician. Never had he attended classical music lessons, but he could identify a raga within ten seconds, and would constantly hum his own notes, quizzing me on identifying the raga as I grew older. I remember once during a power cut, he was in the house humming a tune and a neighbour came to enquire how our television was working despite the power cut, only to catch the live show.

Order and systems- even his retired life was governed by these. His time of waking up, duration of walking, reading the paper, his meals, his afternoon nap, everything he did was as though according to a never-wavering time table. Even in his later years, he would never fail to go to the bank on exactly the first of every month for his pension. And if ever he was going out of town, he would have his tiny suitcase packed and kept by the door at least a week in advance.

He was involved in my school life in ways I only appreciate now- he always undertook the responsibility of covering my new school books every year. It was an elaborate ritual, he would sit down with the brown paper, labels, scissors and tape and neatly wrap all the books and stick the label correctly aligned on the top right corner. He also undertook ironing of my school uniform, and having the white canvas shoes polished pure white ready on Mondays and Thursdays while the ‘black shoes’ shone with Kiwi Polish on the other days.

As I got more involved in school activities and studies and friends, the games and conversations reduced. But my grandfather managed to keep himself entertained in his own way- he would play Solitaire and Patience with a deck of playing cards sitting on his bed, he would sing as usual and often listen in when I practice correcting my pitching, he would religiously watch the same news on all the news channels, he would pass most days quite uneventfully but without complaint. He was not one for constantly visiting relatives or chatting with the neighbours. Of course, at home he would constantly bicker with my grandmother on trivial issues like writing the ration list, and when his daughters and grandchildren came to visit; he would get into a talkative mood, narrating nostalgic stories. But otherwise, he generally appeared as a silent and dignified person, earning the respect of all around.

And so he remains in our memories, a person respected by all. I continue to picture him sitting on the verandah peacefully everytime I hear one of his favourite songs-‘Endaro Mahanubavulu Andariki Vandanumulu’ , translating to ‘There are many great men, to all of them my salutations’. A fitting tribute