Music for the Soul?

Have you ever heard the soft voice of Enrique reach a crescendo towards the end of each and every one of his song? Or captured the very essence of Richard Marx when he sang "Endless Summer Nights"? Or felt so true inside your heart when Rihanna sings of committing the ultimate act of infidelity? When Bryan Adams asks the men "Have you ever really loved a woman" ..... I wish I could broadcast that on National television and hope to have the men glued in as they would if it were a matter of national emergency or the Sensex crash. Or even closer home, when Kunal Ganjawala crooned the ultimate sexy number "bheege hooth tere"... a whole generation of Indian men, openly proclaimed their latent sexual desire for their wives/girlfriends/etc with the help of that one number alone.

I grew up on a healthy dose of Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhonsle. My dad was a hindi movie freak and in those era when television was still a novelty in middle class Indian homes, my father invested not only in an EC TV but a music casette player made inroads into our home right at the time of my arrival in this world. Hence, my ears were attuned to the sights and sounds of Kishore and Lata crooning together when Chitrahar was broadcast every Wednesday evening. With the advent of the television, we all hankered for coloured pictures and my dad, being the clairvoyant that he was, invested in coloured television way before my neighbours had it. That was the first time I became acquainted with the term EMI or equated Monthly Installment as I remember my mom and dad fighting over the issue of buying a "luxury good" in "debt". In today's materialistic world, the term EMI is synonymous with our very existence. So way before I was 10 years of age, I had the pleasures which were considered luxuries then, but necessities in today's world. Along with the TV, my dad paid an extra 500 rupees for a remote!! My mom was furious. What use was that to us? The TV only broadcast DD National and DD Metro. Why do we need a remote? Let’s ask the couch potato today what use a remote is to him? Clearly he hasn’t lived in the time of only DD National and DD Metro.

Anyways, I am digressing. Apologies for a wandering mind. With the advent of the colour television in my home, the national channels became adventurous. DD metro started a time slot in the evenings broadcasting English music!! Although I had heard of the likes of Michael Jackson and Madonna in school and even had the good fortune to listen to their music at a friend's house, this was my first brush with "music videos". And I was instantly, completely and totally in love. Michael Jackson filled my days and nights; I did ignore the fact that he was a Black and a famous musician, way way way out of my reach. But I do believe that he was my first crush. Not because of the way he looked (honestly, that was the phase he had just started experimenting with his looks and plastic surgeons and it was the beginning of his albino look), or the enormous amount of money he made from his music. I fell completely and madly in love with "The way you make me feel" and "Liberian Girl". I dragged my mom to the shops to buy me the album of "Bad". Madonna, Richard Marx, ABBA, Celine Dion, Pet Shop boys, Phil Collins, Prince, Tina Turner, Guns N' Roses, Gloria Estefan (I could go on and on and on) invaded my life while I made conscious efforts to keep up with the latest. DD National was a television channel which was bolder in those days. I wouldn’t be caught dead viewing it in my parlour today. But I owe my love for music awards to them, when way back in the early 90's they started broadcasting the Grammy awards, live, into our parlours. My school was at 7.30 every morning. Inspite of having to rouse myself at 6 am every day, I never missed an opportunity to watch the Grammys or even the Oscars for that matter, late into the night. Courtesy: DD National. In those blissful 80's and 90's, did I listen to the successors of Kishore Kumar? I don’t think I did, although I don’t accurately remember. Yeah, there were a few exceptional film music like Aashiqui and QSQT, but beyond that I don’t believe the whole genre actually caught my fancy. I also it had to do with the fact that my mom and class teachers increasingly encouraged us to imbibe the Western culture into our lives. Hence that general apathy towards Indian music.

But the one exception was Rabindrasangeet. I am a Bengali and my mom is an exceptional singer. It was a rare morning where she didn’t wake us with her soulful rendition of one of the numerous Rabindranath Tagore's songs which were etched in her memory. She didn’t know how to dance hence she had enrolled us (my elder sis and me) into Kathak dance classes, favouring the dance form or art over music. She tells me today that she rues that fact. My sister and I can’t sing for nuts...forget trying to emulate my mom's singing prowess. But those memories did manage to capture a permanent cavity in my heart for Rabindrasangeet.

I grew up and the world grew with me. Somewhere some Bollywood directed came up with a movie called Rangeela, a first in our Hindi film domain, as the movie's leading lady was clad in clothes which were till then considered the domain of the vamps (or female baddies in a film). Ram Gopal Varma introduced a South Indian music composer, Tamil guy to be more precise, who no one knew. Today A.R. Rahman is the only Indian music composer who can proudly claim to be sold 500 million records worldwide. Rangeela was considered a landmark in Indian cinema; for its breakthrough performances, superlative music score and general overall packaging. The movie piqued my interest in a genre which was all but forgotten in my love affair with the Western world of Grammy award winners. A.R. Rahman could be attributed for my renewed interest Hindi film music which today has reached tremendous height.

A greater part of my day is spent sitting at my cubicle working away some 8 hours in front of a laptop. Don’t get me wrong, I love my work. But a constant fixture in my cubicle, along with my laptop is my Sony headphones, which, apart from the time I need to speak with people, or have lunch or answer calls of nature, can invariably be found around my head, drawing the music from the hard drive or the internet straight to my ears. It helps me relax, concentrate and finish my work on scheduled time. I'm lucky my company has flexible rules for its employees for music. Otherwise, I'd be screwed. I dunno where I picked up this habit, but yes, my work wouldn’t get done otherwise.

So does that make it Music for my soul? Yes. I would have only been a half-human, walking the hallowed corridors of my life, without ever knowing the pleasures that some instruments and words juxtaposed could bring to my life. I would have been a dour and sour woman, without any happiness in life, ready to see the evil in everyone and everything. Malevolence would have been my middle name, and inherent in my very being. A soul is empty without those wonderful tunes.

He/She who listens, knows of what I speak.