I am mighty excited today, because my 'writer's block' decided to go on a break and I have a first person account to banter about, that has the potential of not being as boring as my previous musing.
So let's talk music. Let's talk quirks, let's talk emotions, let's talk tastes. Let's talk a speculation of being dropped on the head as a baby.
As I flip pages past to the eighties, I trace back to my love for a certain genre of music. And I have a strong feeling that this particular trait of mine was inspired by a particular song in a blockbuster from the eighties. It was from a movie called Hero and the director Subhash Ghai, I discover later, was the blue eyed boy of celluloid story telling back then. My maternal uncle, who is a huge music buff, was my wikipiedia of sorts. I used to linger around his conversations with his college friends with perked up ears cause there was so much information which was dispensed in there, that was awe inspiring. In one such eavesdropping episodes, I heard him rave about a singer named Reshma from Pakistan and how he actually bought the ticket to the film Hero multiple times just to listen to her sing. So there was a mention about Laxmikanth Pyarelal's flute as well. Uncle Raghu's conversations, I realized early on, were annotated with finer details cause he was a dog lover and a hard core connoisseur of the Carnatic style of music as he plays the mridangam himself.
I had the good fortune of listening to the tape at my grandfather's house and add up a visual thanks to DD1's chitrahaar..Lo and behold, I was smitten. I was very little to understand much but It was probably my first brush with the feeling of being in love though the object of my affections was very abstract. The nasal twang, the forlorn expression on the Heroine's face and the melancholic strain acted as the perfect catalyst to my 'happy sad song' syndrome. I was launched into the wonderful world of lyric, music and vocals. As I grew up, I gasp every time I see a sad number being played in a sufi strain, folk dialect and all that... I realize, just like me, Bollywood has been in love with the song too, to get inspired over and over and over again.
It was all good. I loved crooning in a happy mood, all the sad songs that caught my attention. As I grew up, the data base of songs increased and I used to grind my mother's nerves to no end singing them in the background. I had this uncanny ability to pick on the most morose of lyrics that metaphorically spoke about death and my mom used to blow hot n cold asking me to shut up. I once asked her to elucidate why she disapproved every time I sang "O papa lali" number from Geetanjali.
"Janma mottaniki laali padakkarledu" (Meaning, you don't need to sing a lullaby for the entire lifetime in one go) was her argument and she had to explain it to me that the lyric metaphorically indicated the terminal nature of the heroine's disease in that movie. How did I care? It sounded even more enthralling.
Then there was a phase when Indian movies had tear jerking versions of the happy song. Almost every single time I heard a song I loved, I used to wonder if it had a sad version and dig around to listen to it first before I proclaimed my love to the happier one. "Kucch na Kaho" from 1942 a love story was the national anthem of sorts in my teen years. I remember singing the Lata Mangeshkar's version every single time my friends sat around to a point where one of my close buddies threatened to hit me if I chose to sing that drag version and spoil the mood of the day. "What spoil people?" I was swaying in ecstasy. But then, some arguments were won by avoiding them. Or better yet, ignoring :-)
This is getting longer than I intended it to be, but no talk about sadness is complete without the heart wrenching sound of ghazals by Jagjit Singh and lyrics by Gulzaar. The movie 'Maachis' was my altime favorite album and one of its numbers had a whole imagery of Kabr, mitti, asmaan' - the foreground was serenading death and the back ground was, you probably guessed it - my mother's helpless pleas to shut the goddamned tape recorder. Ear phone's weren't a thing yet in my radar, but once the tape recorder was switched off, I used to relay play it in my own vocals. One of us gave up eventually, and I think it was her more often than me.
By this time, I also was lamenting (according to all and sundry) in my fake american accent, trying to sound like Celine Dion when her "Go on" appeared on the horizon with James Cameron's Titanic. Pain has no limits and limitations. So why be partial to tollywood or bollywood when there's a whole entire planet out there. Right? Right!
I'll have to truncate this for now, wrapping up with my happy sad song. This kind of brings my Oxymoron syndrome to culmination. When I first listened to Heer song from Tamasha, I froze in my tracks, cause it was a sensory overload. Rahman's music, surrealist poetry and Imtiaz ali's visuals....my my my! And a sentiment that aligned with my inner Meena kumari while its wordage matched my outer Ellen DeGeneres. When the lines questioned "Baji badi ab band heer ki ab is band pe naache koun?" I always gesticulate 'me, me me' while shaking my two right legs. By God, I tell you, Imtiaz envisioned this song as a tribute to me. He might not know it, but that is what it is.
1985 becomes 1995 becomes 2018....the miffed mom is replaced by an embarrassed daughter - "Amma, stop grooving. You look funny, you cannot dance, Give up already"
Me - "It is my home darling, you can take your backside to your room if you cannot see me dance"
Sometimes she walks away, sometimes she does a face palm and hangs around while the toddler (Who, I am happy to report, dances like a dream, unlike mommy dearest) and I sway away to the badi saad number.
I end it on a seriously silly note - I have to quote my P B Shelley, from The Skylark :-)
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
P.S - Pressed for time, publishing it without proofing.
Pic courtesy - screenshots from youtube.
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