I always used to think that blogging was what worthless loafers or internet junkies or bored IT professionals used to resort to…..I added the last category, coz it was my fiance who introduced me to the same,and he is in one of those seriously high flying IT jobs with an awe inspiring designation that mystifies you completely as to the actual nature of the job.(Now i know wat he does 🙂 anyway i read his entries, and found that it could actually be an interesting thing to try out.So, here i am, making my first attempt at writing a blog! i wonder what prompts people to write blogs…I mean do all bloggers feel that they have something of great import to convey to the world?( I should stop right now if so !) I don’t really write regularly even though i like to…nor do i maintain a diary…i simply put down words as and when i feel like on whatever i can get my hands on at that moment- the last page of an economics notebook , a scrap of paper, whatever.Somehow a blog could never contain one of those spontaneous off-the-cuff thoughts that cloud your brain and refuse to go until you pen it down,can it? A blog is more of a write-to-let-it-out thing, an examination of inconsequential things that happen in your daily life.Or is it?Is there a feeling of release that you derive from it?After all i am simply a first-time blogger.
It seems blog is actually derived from weB Log.It also apparently is going to be added to the Oxford & websters dictionaries by the year 2005, probably alongwith CTM (Chicken Tikka Masala… really !)
This is enough for a first entry i think…(i can hear whoops of joy!) ..so until next time…(ha!)
The Slamming Door….
The slamming of the door had never been so welcome before…
The concrete pavement outside was hot, burning in the afternoon sun… a stray dog registering the banging door with a twitch of its tail…
The auto veered towards her in a drunken lurch, the driver taken by surprise by her appearance, its not usual for a woman in a cocktail dress to be wandering the streets of Pune.
Her nails were still edgy from their trail across the walls, long red talons, chipped and cracked at the edges, plaster still clinging underneath, like an unwanted memory… painful, gritty and hard to ignore…
The hot wind blew circles of dirt on the road, swirling in their own crazy dance of abandonment… her black dress streaked with creases of dirt… the auto driver staring repeatedly at the rear view mirror, craning a lecherous eye for a better angle…
It had been a special day, 2 years back, the day when they, classmates at college, got engaged… no. Not the exchange of rings… it was the day he promised her his heart, his life and so much more… and in a swirl of flower petals and scented candles, she promised him all she had and ever would… with no witnesses and staid ‘I dos’ they had agreed to live their life as one…
Months later, the families got involved… and the rules and procedueres of the game were firmly established… it was us and them, as her parents said. ‘We’ need to make sure that ‘They’ do not take us for granted, you can never be too sure about such things… and she solemnly nodded her head, firmly ignoring the little voice that piped up inside her head… taken for granted? Him, and me? Yet she nodded her head, more vigorously the second time, attempting to be on the good side of her parents… to help them see the match in a better light. Didn’t he say, it is important that our parents agree to the match.. after all, we are all they have…
So a date was fixed and the caterers booked, invitation cards distributed and curious questions warded off…’Love Marriage hai kya?’… arrre, it is ok now… whatever had to happen has to happen.. times have changed’…
A precarious minefield of rituals… a crossword of traditions…’Us’ and ‘Them’…
The wedding went by in a series of ceremonies and camera flashes… till the two of them went away to the mountains… leaving the increasingly complex mechanisms of relatives and rituals behind…
It could only get better from this point on… they thought, happily ensconsed in the comfort of the other’s presence… comfortable in the safety of plans far enough in the future to seem possible…
She was working then… happy and successful at her work..a combination so rare it made her an anomaly in their circle of friends…
She went numb the day he asked her to quit her job. It was for the better he said… we need at least one of us to manage the house… the parents, the kids to be… me
She thought, and believed and in her immense trust in her relationship, she quit her job. Her colleagues were surprised…and then understanding. We will remain in touch, for sure.
After the first couple of months, when the trickle of phone calls from her ex-colleagues altogether stopped, she was scared to sleep alone at night.
He kept going away on work… to different places… Its hard for me too..he said… i too miss being at home.
She was sure he was right… ignoring her urge to say that she wanted to get out of the very place he missed when he was away…
So she stood guard over the symbols of their relationship…. a hall and two bedrooms… and a bathroom with tiles grown dull with age and chipped at places …like her own self image…
She paid the bills and ate solitary meals… and looked after relatives when they came around… ‘He is at London right now’, yes it is a 3 month assignment, yes he is doing very well in his company, got promoted this year.
He, defined her.
Yesterday night, her friends invited her for a girl’s night out… Just like old times… You, me and Manisha.. lets paint the town red babes….
So they all dressed in their best, she wore her cocktail dress, the only one that still fitted her, with a slit up her thigh scandalous enough for him to raise his eyebrows…well he was not expected back till today morning… and she really wanted to let her hair down this one time…
They went to the same old college hangout their cirle of friends frequented when they were at college.. the bartender recognized them… and offered a drink on the house…and they still played ABBA on the dance floor….
Before she knew it, she was drunk and grooving away to ‘Dancing Queen’… and when the waiter took the last order she realized she was too drunk to drive back home
In the morning her friend’s husband dropped her home on his way to office, she smiled when he saw his car parked in the driveway….
She got into the house calling out his name, and stopped short when she saw the menace in his eyes…
He silently took in her dress and the sound of a car revving off their driveway…
‘you bitch, So this is what you do when I am away?, guess I should I have known it all along…you spend nights with other men while I slog it away to feed you !’
She stared at him, suddenly too tired to really care if words really mattered at all… if all the nights spent alone on an empty bed really had any meaning…or if the promises she had made for a lifetime could help her tolerate the man in front even for the next second…
She slapped him and left, her nails dragging along the walls of the lobby… the door banging in her wake…
The slamming of the door had never been so welcome before…
Just a story…
Have you noticed how different a string of electric lights on a misty cold evening can be? If you are with a crowd its …its probably a party, if its just the two of you, the lights form a pool of sleepy stars, slow, languorous and undulating
And if ,like me, you found yourself sitting alone on a balcony in an empty house, with the railing edged with electric wire and yellow lights, it can also bring memories that sting your eyes.
The table in front of me is filmed with dust, the glass makes a scraping sound as put it back on the table , the moisture down its sides trickles to form a circle round the base.
There is now a wet pattern of circles on the table, some intersecting, and some alone, and some so close to each other that its hard to tell them apart, their boundaries smudged with intimacy.
A few hours ago they carried the last of the Ganpati’s away. I watched them all pass by, one by one. Standing in my balcony, I saw them all being led away, tamely to their watery end, surrounded by dancing teenage boys high on religious fervor, or maybe something else as well.
She used to love watching the processions go by. Every year, through the night, she would sit at this very balcony and wait for her favorites to pass. “ Why should I visit all the Ganesh Panadals? The Ganpati come to my doorstep !”.
I would normally sit inside, annoyed with the noise that invaded my street annually, trying to convince her to close the door to the balcony and come inside. After all, all this revelry really did not fit in with my scheme of things. So much of money wasted, burnt and squandered. Every Pandal set to outdo each other, the devotees bent on redeeming their sins with a shower of bank notes. No, such a gaudy festival was definitely not mine.
While she would sit in this very balcony, eagerly awaiting the next procession to go by, the interludes interspersed with steaming pakoras shared enthusiastically with the neighbors who would gather in our second story flat to watch the processions, crowding me out as I sat in the hall, unhappy with the ruckus, and angry with her for putting me through this year after year.
She would call me, again and again, “ Come Now, it’s the Shankarshet Ganapati !” “ At least see the Tulshibag Ganapti, its made of real Sandalwood”
I would pretend not to listen, and glare at her silently, ensuring that everyone around was aware of my disapproval and her scant disregard for my wishes.
Each year, as I lay next to her at night, hours after the last of the procession had long gone, and the last of the pakora eating guests wished away to their houses… she would sullenly complain, “ You could have come at least once, I called you so many times. Mr Sharma even took his kids to the roadside, you should have seen how Krishna was laughing with him”
And I would listen to her, searching for my cold victory in her sadness. My pride somewhat mollified for having taken away at least some of her enthusiasm… I had proved that I was stronger willed than her.
And last winter, she died. Suddenly and without warning. They placed her in the hall on slabs of ice. Trails of water streamed across the hall as the ice melted, and found their way into the balcony where they collected in a puddle. Her forehead was red, smeared with Sindoor, and she seemed more beautiful than I ever remembered her to be.
I sat next to her, for an entire night, trying to fathom her face for a million answers. In the morning, they covered her face with a lotus bloom and we carried her off down the road to the riverside.
They handed me a staff to break her skull as she burnt at the pyre. That was when I cried.
Its been six months, and I have become used to having an empty house to return to from office. Every evening as I unlock the door, the silence greets me with an unsettling familiarity.
I still find long strands of hair when the maid moves the furniture for cleaning, or swabs of cotton with her perfume in the almirah….bits of cloth in a bag sorted away to make a quilt for the next winter, or an unfinished embroidery.
This year, I sat in the balcony, alone. Not too many people visit me these days.
They have decorated the society with strings of yellow lights, which blink with sudden brightness in an unforgiving pulse.
I watched the Ganpati’s go by, all seventeen of them. I gazed at the lights and breathed in the incensed air. Tried hard to detect some familiar sensation, or a smithereen of memory being carried away down the road.
The crowds have dispersed now. The street seems unusually wide in its emptiness. I rose to go back into the house.
They should switch off these lights now…
Khattam Shud
“Because everything ends,” Rashid explains, ” because dreams end, stories end, life ends, at the finish of everything we use his name, its finished, it’s over, Khattam Shud: The End.”
Salman Rushdie (Haroun and the Sea of Stories)
Its necessary for things to be taken to a logical conclusion… rather than leaving them in an uncertain limbo…waiting to exhale…
I have come to the end of my random ramblings for the moment…though I will not stop strolling for sure.
Hope to meet you again… have made few friends here. Keep in touch mates 🙂
Ashish
Comments from the past:
Ashish
25 Jan 2008, 9:40am
Yeah… have a mail id too 🙂
ashishkec@yahoo.com
Bye Bye Bangalore
A City steeped in the rains, green roads crawling around Caf頃offee Day outlets, colonial churches competing for space with the trendiest malls, a crowd buoyed by optimism ? and money, a town of astounding ambition and an infrastructure trying hard to match pace with the aspirations of its inhabitants? Bangalore was all this and much much more.
I recently spent nearly a month at Bangalore, it was the best season to visit the city they said.. not that I had a choice, my company has a habit of sending you to places at a days notice which you might have otherwise never ventured to on your own.
Work was hectic, but the weekends were mine? They say that the best way to know a city is to see it through the eyes of a person who belongs there? and I was lucky enough to have two friends with me who were just that? a beautiful couple who belonged to Bangalore as much as they belonged to each other.
It was a strange feeling, to be escorted around the city as if you were still a kid, to be a silent partner to discussions on which would be the best place to eat out at night, to be allowed not to make a single decision over the entire weekend and yet be comforted that you were in good hands?
Whether it was basting your own barbecue on a rain kissed Saturday evening at a roof top restaurant at Indira Nagar, or spending a lazy Sunday morning gorging on omelets at a century old caf頯n MG road? or a fantastic dinner at the 13th floor of a building, the twinkling lights of Bangalore spread out on to the horizon, or just ambling idly through the alleys of Bangalore with no specific purpose in mind, it really turned out to be one of my most enjoyable weekends ever.
We spent the night talking about the times that had gone by, about the friends we made and lost, about the times we shared and our plans for the future. Strangely, I felt extremely at home in a flat with two persons with whom I had never really spent much time with before.
Come to think of it, we always knew that we enjoy spending time together, yet it took a forced trip from my company which helped me go see my friends in person. Just about how many friends have I lost over the years, because I never found the time to meet them. Is it really true that we did not have the time to attend that particular friends wedding, or just do away with a phone call when someone lost a loved one. Or rather, was it really necessary to use up my vacation to attend the engagement of a cousin I had not cared to remain in touch, and would not care to remain in touch in future. Just made me wonder, how many times have I given priority to half hearted family connections over friends I have shared my life with.
Guess this is what friends are for, they let you in their lives with no questions asked, and make you feel at home in any corner of the world. You know they will share your joy and will leave you alone when you want to be quiet and not take offence. And finally, when its time to say Good Bye, they make you feel that you really mean something to them, something that is not forced like a hand-me-down relationship, but something that is needed and hard to find at times, a friend.
Comments from the past:
coretta
20 Jul 2007, 3:05pm
🙂 🙂 🙂 and a big hug!
Vipul
10 Aug 2007, 10:02pm
I think its time for you to write a book…you have the potential dude!!!
chandan
16 Oct 2007, 10:31pm
Damn neat man…you spoketh thy heart’s words.
Ravi
9 Nov 2007, 9:43pm
Hi ashish…..jus read a few of ur blogs….u write stuff that really reaches the heart! i liked it a lot…looks like u’ve been blogging for ages…never knew that! do keep posting!
That Summer, That Year
It all used to start off the day we went to school for collecting my final report card. Then along with a yellow sheet full of ticks and marks, the teacher would attach a list of books for the next class. Did I care about the list then? What do you think J? For me the list would be forgotten during the all too short eight weeks of summer holidays. The scorching hot afternoons scented damp by desert coolers, the balmy evenings spent watering the plants in our backyard, watching clods of soil soak up water and decompose in effervescent bliss? taking my dogs out for walks all over the school campus where we stayed? and endless games of monopoly and Ludo? the holidays could not have seemed shorter and more inadequate !
Then one fine day? around the first week of July every year, standing tall in the front of the scooter, I would lead my parents to the local bookshop. I guess we bought stuff from the same bookshop every year, for me as well as my brother.
And as I would peep over the counter, the uncle at the shop would haul over a readymade set of books,? Class 4 Na, Colvin College???. And suddenly, I could not wait to get back home.
Its not that I was in love with all my books, I mean who wants to look at yet another book on arithmetic, or science, or grammar !! It was the literature books which I could not wait to read from cover to cover. I still feel that some of the finest stories I have read were found in my text books, Hindi and English. The Radiant Readers, Gulmohars and Hindi Sahitya Shrinkhalas? But I guess, the opinion could be just mine?
And finally, one afternoon, my mother would dump a large pile of books and notebooks on the carpet, and the entire family would be busy for the next couple of hours, covering the books with brown paper and sticky labels. Guess it was a scene repeated in every home with kids at school? the entire family sitting in a circle, the hum of a cooler and snips of scissors punctuating requests for passing the tube of glue, or a label, or a fresh roll of brown paper. There was always a dispute between my and my brother, about which labels were meant for whom.
Eventually, on a (usually) wet July morning, I would find myself standing in front of the school gate, suitably attired in the school blue, smelling of shoe polish and boroline, hair neat parted and a shining new water bottle in hand, weighed down by my school bag but excited on seeing so many of my friends at once.
The first day of school after vacations?.the welcome address in the morning assembly, the choir singing ?Vande Mataram?, the sequential reciting of names in the class, a new class teacher, a new time table, a new class room and the same mad rush for the gates when the final bell rang?
When the focal point of the day would be a plastic toy one got free with Binaca toothpaste, and a relaxed evening would involve playing hopscotch with the local gang till the time our mothers threatened violence?.
When a trip to the market meant excitement and a toffee was something you saved money to buy? I guess all of us are some distance away from it all.
Sigh?
Let me get back to my work now ?..
Comments from the past:
Sanjay
29 Mar 2007, 3:37pm
Hey really gud one and it?s very true. This happens in every summer vacation in every house:)
Samved
29 Mar 2007, 4:34pm
Yo..Nostelgia!!!
It can’t be any different for me also:)
coretta
29 Mar 2007, 5:30pm
Its the story of my life too :)…Seems like u wrote about me..lol. But what amazes me is how you could bring it all out from the back of your mind and like an artist with his brush,bring back all those memories, as if it happened yesterday—Refreshingly fresh!!! lol (please don’t kill me for my garmmar,Literature Champ) 😉
vani
29 Mar 2007, 7:26pm
Ah! Got too nostalgic ….At once made me remind my summer vacations…Wondered how could it be the exactly same everywhere(aftr reading the fellow-comments). Reading all the literature books, non-details(donno wat u call it) and enjoying the class when u know all the suspense at the end 🙂 Lol
s?
30 Mar 2007, 10:31am
same feelings here 🙂
Pallavi
31 Mar 2007, 3:40pm
Am nostalgic!! i loved those days & we are really far away from those days now…
Its really written well!!
My Mother
I still remember the way she used to call out my name. Her voice ringing with exasperation at my repeated refusal to have breakfast in the morning. I just had to have something sweet in the morning, or for all other meals at that? but the ritual drinking of milk in the morning was something on which me and my mother never agreed upon.
Thus used to start my day, and hers, with a pitched battle being fought over the dining table. With threats emanating from the kitchen till I downed that disgusting tumbler of milk. I was not a kid then, I was Sixteen, old enough to carry my own ego around on a pedestal.
And there were times when I made her cry, well almost. I knew I had crossed a boundary beyond which a son hurts a mother?s sensibilities, when her threats fell silent, and things became unbearably silent at meal times. All I can do is to smile wryly when I think of those days now. What an ass I had been.
Sixteen, the age when you are a man enough to take a girl out, but not a man enough to hold her hand in front of her father. I was just getting to know my mother, as a person. How I used to envy my elder brother who used to have long conversations with her, sitting next to her, while I was still treated the like kid in the family, which I was.
At sixteen, I think my mother started treating me like an adult for the first time in my life. She spoke with me of things which only a mother can say and get away without making you realize that she actually knows what you have been up to while she wasn’t around.
She used to teach me Hindi and Sanskrit, in preparation for my class 10th board exams. She had been a University topper in Sanskrit, and she left it all to go and marry the man she loved, against the wishes of most of her family. I won a medal for the highest score in Sanskrit at my school? I lost that medal, don?t know where it lies amongst the debris I have strewn across my various dwellings in India, but I do remember the special meal she cooked to celebrate the medal.
She was a beautiful woman, and the first thing you notice in all her pictures is her smile. At times, I think back and try and capture what would have been the lasting image of my mother for me, but I have always failed. There is now way I could confine her to a single lasting impression.
She died when I was sixteen, suddenly and without explanations, and 12 years hence, I am still unable to comprehend what life could have been like had she still been around.
Her death rocked our family to the core, and things took more than a decade to stabilize. But I still find myself thinking of her when I do something good, or when someone says something nice to me.
She died convinced that her youngest son will become a doctor, while I went on to do something entirely different. It?s a strange feeling to be cheated out of a chance to love someone back , to be able to hold someone in your arms and tell them exactly how much they mean to you? and to know that when dad took her to the hospital that night, her tired face was to be my last glimpse of her. I felt very very alone then, standing alone in the lawn of our house, with our family dog running circles around me. Next day, she died in the morning, a day before Valentine?s Day, and I was deprived of even a last chance to say goodbye to her.
Guess, its never too late to write down something I should have sometime ago.
Comments from the past:
s
9 Mar 2007, 4:18pm
Very sorry about your loss. How awful it must have been, and still must be. Some situations make one feel so helpless, there is nothing except acceptance that can follow.
coretta
13 Mar 2007, 9:14pm
A sigh, a smile and a hug from my side..:) Needless to say, u have done her proud.Look at what u have established for yourself dear. God Bless U
pari
14 Mar 2007, 8:05pm
This is the first time I visited your blog…..Very touching. I liked the way you wrote and the way you expressed your thoughts….. Iam really moved!
ariza
15 Mar 2007, 8:09am
Hey. Keep writing.
Amar
19 Jul 2007, 1:24pm
Very touching.. Men dont cry.. but u made one shed a tear right now!
Hugs!
Arul
26 Jan 2008, 2:13am
Sorry about your loss. Very touching blog entry.
God bless you and your family
The Sound of Silence
I am supposed to be working on a deadline. Honestly, yes. This is what I am expected to be doing right now. I have used the deadline as an excuse to postpone all my meetings for the day, and now that I have the entire afternoon to myself, I find myself typing away to glory on MS Outlook, writing what I hope will become the next post on my much neglected blog !
She has been silent of late. Silent, that is, she has not been talking much. Not talking at all is more like it. Last week, she attended office with a sore throat and managed to aggravate the itch in the throat to a full blown case of Laryngitis?. And now she is quiet, silent on the doctor?s orders.
So for most of the weekend, I was carrying out a one way conversation with myself, with her limiting her responses to a forced mime or hitting out at me occasionally. Dinner was peaceful, so were lunch and the breakfast earlier.
She went to office today, and I am not supposed to call her, as that will make her talk, which is not what the doctor ordered. Here is one for the dipping cellphone bills?
Should I be happy? I mean how lucky a man can get before he dashes off a bridge crying hallelujah !
You close your eyes and you are free, if you chose not to listen with your eyes then there is little around that can shatter the solitude around you? except maybe for a well aimed object ( pillow, clocks, teddy bears, knives?) or a kick if you are close enough.
You can have the next drink after seeking her permission, and claim later that you though that her shaking of the head in all directions meant yes. Ask her to keep quiet in front of everyone and get away unscathed in one piece. Throw clothes wherever you want around the house and know that they will be picked up off the floor minus the nagging that accompanies it?
They say Laryngitis lasts a week?
A week?
Just a week?.
Sigh?.
Comments from the past:
s
27 Feb 2007, 10:57am
Hey, How is it going? We had a look at an appt in your society. Got a few questions, if u don’t mind. Could I email you at ashishkec@yahoo.com?
coretta
27 Feb 2007, 10:29pm
I for once want to throw a bucket of cold water on u!!!!
u do not have laryngitis, so wats wrong with ur phone?why can’t i reach u?
Ashish
3 Mar 2007, 8:32am
Coretta, glad I am not close by…
S, feel free to mail me. I had been away, hence the delayed response
The Rest of My Life…
Do you know how it feels?. When things kind of rearrange themselves and fall into place with a satisfying click?. Leaving with you a sense of relieved disbelief? wondering if the world itself is not in playing a nasty joke on you?.
Well for me today.. was one of those days? There was a transition to a particular group in my company which I had been working towards for the past one year? and today things moved at a speed which defied my own expectations… making me a very very happy man in the end?
I guess these moments do happen, in everyone?s? lives? for me the first such moment took some time to come?.
I was scared of speaking in public. Scared, I mean really really scared. The kind of scared which means getting goosebumps, and knocking knees all at the same time. When I was still younger.. I guess 8th standard? I had a pretty sad debut on the podium? forgetting the lines of Nehru?s ?Tryst with Destiny? in front of 25 other schools at Lucknow. ?.The sad part is that I still remember that speech by heart !
I was convinced that facing a crowd was something I would never be able to do? be it speaking? or singing
It was in standard 12? the senior ?most class in my school, that I was told that I am supposed to give a speech on Republic Day. Just one of those speeches that we saw every year in school? the kid who spoke after the National Flag was unfurled? and the mandatory patriotic songs sung? and the Principal praised the chief guest to the skies.. and the chief guest would explain the real meaning of patriotism and our duties with finger wagging sagacity? and finally we would line up for our bag of sweets, waving paper flags all along?
Yes that year.. that kid was supposed to be me? and for me it was as good as committing hara-kiri. I guess spent almost a week writing my speech, to tell the truth, still remember some of the stuff I wrote in there? and then I practiced it and recorded it on the old BPL cassette recorder we had at home?.I was scared, and determined not to make a fool of myself all over again? like the way I did the last time I uttered anything on a microphone?
The D-Day arrived? and I spoke my heart out. Oblivious of the not so proper things you say when you are 17 years old.. filled with the passion of a teenage mind? and my dad was there in the crowd listening to me. I did not falter, and I did not forget my lines.. I paused at the right moments and I smiled at the right places. In short, I loved it. At the end, every one clapped? glad it was over?. And later my father told me that I was good. THAT made my day.
At my engineering college.. during ragging, I discovered that those who could sing, escaped the more humiliating things that you could be made to do?. So I sang. And for the next 4 years, saw my name appearing on the list of all college song competitions on its own. During my MBA, I guess I was on a roll the day I won 5 events for my team at a B School fest?
I am bragging, yes, and for this one aspect of my life, I am not pretty apologetic about it either, because just between us, I am pretty proud of it as well.
Today, training and talking and communicating are my biggest strengths. And to think that till class 11th I was convinced that Medicine would have been a great career choice for an introvert like me.
You never really know, what might change tomorrow. Something that gives you sleepless nights today might be your source of strength tomorrow.
A year back.. I was floundering in a career which did not seem to be heading in any direction which I would have enjoyed. It has taken me a year to mould it back towards activities and roles that I find more fulfilling personally.
You know, its days like these? which make you look forward to the rest of your life?.
The first post for this season.. Wish You All a Happy New Year
Comments from the past:
s
27 Jan 2007, 3:14pm
sigh…
Ashish
27 Jan 2007, 7:54pm
???
s
27 Jan 2007, 9:57pm
ah, just waiting for some of that luck to come by
Ashish
28 Jan 2007, 1:54am
Oh… well am sure its on its way …
coretta
2 Feb 2007, 12:24am
Blessed :)–U are
On a drowsy afternoon…
I am a sucker for music really. Nothing changes my mood as music does. A few moments back I was harboring violent thoughts of smashing the screen of my laptop ( that would be good). Now.. as I have ?Summer of 69? playing in my earphones.. maybe I will defer the demolition for another day.
I am 27 years old?hardly an age to feel old. But sometimes I feel as if a generation has passed me by. They do not play my music anywhere anymore.
That brings me to me a more basic question, what is really my kind of music?
The first songs of my childhood were scratchy long playing records of ?The Sound of Music? and ?My Fair Lady?, shining black discs with a huge crimson dot in the center, and a thoughtful Dog peering into a gramophone?. Or Bright Green circles with Colombia written in Silver blocks?. It took me a fair amount of growing up before I was allowed to put the needle head onto a spinning record?.
How many summer afternoons were spent listening to songs of places and people I had never seen and hardly expected to see ever, twiddling with knobs on our two decade old Bush Radiogram. Sometimes, on a rare occasion, when someone would procure a functioning Video Cassette of an old classic in a hole in the Wall library in old Lucknow? we would gather in front of flickering VCR screens, trying hard to make out if we could see the face of Maria , trying to locate that one picture that adorned the cover of our records in the shelves?
Its almost an anticlimax now? to see neat stacks of ?The Sound of Music? CDs in Crossword, where people just have a look and pass them by. Hardly as exciting as the Sound of Music of my childhood. At times feel sad for the kids now? with everything just there for the picking?.
Is it not, that at times a memory that is a bit rough around the edges, exclusive and a bit hard to define.. becomes so much more to you than it would otherwise have.
Anyway, I digress?. My Music.
There was Cliff Richard?. Our boy from Lucknow. Trust any Lucknowite to name at least this one English singer as one his favorites? and this has more to do that Cliff Richard spent a couple of years at a local Convent school before his father packed his bags and left India in 1947.
But honestly, ? The Spanish Harlem? and ?The Evergreen Tree? are songs that I still hear at times? played anonymously on the piano, as background fillers at five stars?
I never really had the conviction for rock music? like so many of my friends in school and college? I guess I always was a bit ?Out? of it.
Asha Bhonsle was the most beautiful voice I heard growing up, and it still is?.
And then there was this band called The Corrs in the 90s? their debut album was a beauty? as much as their second one was bummer. Almost like our own home grown Silk Route?.
Recently heard a guy called Josh Turner? sings Country music and makes you go back to all the good things people sang about in the songs of old?.
She plays John Denver on the stereo when she is in the mood for cleaning up the house. So every time I hear strains of ?Leaving on a Jet Plane? wafting through the house, I know its time to get out of the way and curl up with a book somewhere? My father sings Talat Mehmood when he misses my mother, I listen to ?Summer of 69? when I have a lousy day at office. Ha !
Diwali vacations are a day away, yet my inbox is flooded with ?Happy Diwali? messages? kind of takes your mind somewhere else altogether.
Wish You All a Very Happy Diwali !
Comments from the past:
s
21 Oct 2006, 8:11am
and Happy Diwali to you too
s
25 Jan 2007, 1:32pm
one very long drowsy afternoon? no more posts?
Ashish
25 Jan 2007, 4:13pm
Call it a coincidence? Just posted one today !
Sussegad.... 