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.

Arranged Marriage

I am a late blogger in life. People around me and also my friends and peers have been a part of this revolution for some years now. So here I am, having created my blogger profile as an attempt to keep up with my new year's resolution. I have always loved writing. Infact, in those old days of snail mail, I remember avidly reading The Telegraph and sitting down to write some cutting remarks about India's socio-economic conditions or about Jayalalitha or Laloo Prasad Yadav and post the same on that very day to the editor of the newspaper. Today I proudly have those cutouts of my letters which were published, hoping to preserve them for posterity. But then, who knows. Will I at all have an posterior generation?

I am more than a quarter century old. I have lived a full and happy life, and have seen some setbacks also. Like so many other 21st century women (I would still call myself a girl) I have had relationships in the past, which never worked out. Like Carrie Bradshaw, I have grabbed every opportunity in life, waiting for that perfect guy to walk around the next street corner. Like Charlottel Gray, I wanted that perfect White (Red, as I am an Indian) wedding. But all these came to naught, as I became more and more disillusioned with every passing day and with the end of each relationship. So it was no surprise one day when my mom broached the topic of marriage, like every worried Indian mom. According to her, I was not getting any younger, I had a stable job in one of the most famous comapnies in the world, I earned quite a bucketful of money, I wasnt bad looking, I had the right attributes to be a wife, daughter-in-law, mother, etc. Therefore I should start thinking about marriage!!

Now let me tell you a small secret I have learnt in my quarter century life on this earth. Most parents of the 21st century, hate this job!! They hate the fact that they are the ones to have the responsibilty of marrying off their sons and daughters. Mine parents are no different. Although they were never overtly explicit about it, it was always an inherrent factor in such adult conversations. I recently attended a wedding of a very good friend of mine. I have known her for more than 10 years. Hence it was but natural that I was a part of the entire wedding ceremony and had the opportunity to intermingle with the rest of her clan. She was marrying the man she loved, a worthy doctor. She were childhood friends, whose love story was reignited by Orkut, after he had left the city at a very tender age. So now one aunt of my friends' has an eligible bachelor son, who works in the Indian Silicon city, draws a good salary, pretty good looking, and in all, has a good family background, the quintessal "must-haves" for an Indian male to make a good match in the Arranged Marriage market. But surprisingly, his mom, during the gala lunch which were spread out in the morning, piped out, that she wished that her son already had someone in his kitty, as she didnt want the hassles of being a parent in the arranged matrimonial market!!

I am assuming that my mom shares her sentiments. So it makes me reach a conclusion that youngs girls and guys like me are actually a disappointment to our parents. We have actually failed at the most important task in life: finding a life partner. It doesnt make a difference that we are properly educated, earning a decent package, working in world famous organisations, and have a good social life. We have failed.

Lets look at the bright side of this. Atleast we are Indians!! Anybody, having seen Renee Zelleweger in the first First Jones Diary (or even if you read the book) will remeber that she wished that she were born in India, coz atleast we have a system where when we fail, our parents step in to rectify the mistake. How she wished that system was prevalent in England too. We, Indians are a product of the British Raj. Our IT boom, economic independence and prosperity and the english language can all be attributed to those 300 years we were a part of the British empire. We have received a lot from them. (Our freedom fighters maybe turning in their graves if they ever read this) and atleast I am thankful to them. Maybe it is time, we gave them something which is so uniquely Indian and so much a part of our daily Indian lives. This is created a huge market in India and has made millionaires out of people like Anupam Mittal (creator of shaadi.com).

Lets put the focus back on me. So after pouring out my heart and soul here, where does that take me from here? Back to normal life, working all hours of the day (my company is clever, they've managed to ensure that I am at their beck and call 24 hours a days by saddling me with a laptop and a paid broadband connection), chilling out with friends in the weekend, and once a while having to sit down and listen to lectures from my mom and dad as to how I should take a more proactive initiative in hunting for that suitable son-in-law and/or having to listen to the profile of eligible bachelors. Do I actually want to do that? Even I don't have an answer to that question.

That Thing Called Love

Is there something called love on this earth or am I a born cynic? Why is it that even after 2 failed relationships, I am sometimes so depressed that I refuse to believe that there is love on this earth. But something within me, even in my most pessimistic moments, refuses to let go of that fact, that I may actually find true ever lasting love some day.

Ever since I was little, I was greatly influenced by my elder sister. We were both bookworms from an early age, to such an extent that I started reading Mills&Boons much before my immediate peer group were into it. Thus I grew up on a healthy dose of romantic novels and from Mills&Boons progressed onto Georgette Heyers, Victoria Holts, Danielle Steeles, Jude Devereaux and the ilk. With time, I progressed from the literary romantic domain to the celluloid one and spent a healthy amount of time crying or rejoicing at the distance or union of two lovers in Notting Hill, Sleapless in Seattle, You've Got Mail and my favourite, Pretty Woman. Having never actually been around men (I studied in a Christian Missionary school), all I ever did was dream of the perfect man. So when I was actually introduced to the men in my postgraduate years, it was with initial trepidition, that I hailed them as "not-so-perfect" men of my dreams.

I said "yes" to the very first guy who proposed me, thinking that he was to be my ultimate man, and believeing in the "death-do-us-part" myth. Sadly, even in the very beginning, I realised that it was a compromise on my part. I was going around with a man, who was not my epitome of a perfect guy. I guess I was playing the lines of "you should love that person who loves you". But then, was I not entitled to love someone for myself and have that same person love me back? So a few months later, I backed out, rather cruelly I guess. Today, when I look back, I wish I could have remained friends with him, coz although we were incompatible, he was a fine man. I lost a true friend. A few years later, another relationship followed, although a very very brief one. Again I lost a good friend. Within a spate of 4 years I have loved and lost 2 good friends which I will never forgive myself for. I sincerely blame myself for having confused friendship with love and therefore it is today that I realise that I have lived more than a quarter century without actually truely loving someone. Then am I incapable of love? Is it something alien to me? Or have I loved my parents and my family so much that I have no love leftover for a partner?

But there is that die-hard "something" in me which refuses to believe that I may never find tru love. We have a whole industry dedicated to love. Archie's Gallery and Hallmark cards would have gone bankrupt if Love did not exist on this earth. But till today, it has eluded me. My closed friends say that I am incapable of love, that I am selfish and I am materialistic. Maybe I am so. But then, I epitomise every 20-something individual in our planet today. But the only difference me me and the others is that I have managed to alienate myself from those people who had promised me unconditional love whereas others in my generation have stuck to the ones who have loved them rather than being selfish enough to find that one person to love selflessly.