Saturday, November 20, 2010

There can only be one king, the others either retire or aren't good enough, yet




 It’s a cold Saturday night in November, a little past one. Some weekends, I don’t really like to sleep. Not quite early. So in a pretty romantic spirit, I wandered around my living room and slowly into rugged thoughts and eventually, when I was badly in need of some source of sound, I ended up rummaging thru’ the collection of music I fondly made this year. Not many. Just about three to four, thru’ the entire (well, almost the entire) year. The most beautiful of it was the cover of ‘Vinnaithaandi varuvaaya’ – such a pretty poster, it brings a smile of love to even the most unromantic. I played the newest in the list – the unplugged version of ‘Aaromale’ in the mesmerizingly classic voice of Shreya, released in the collector’s edition of the album, last weekend.

                    I had listened to it, maybe three times since it came out. But tonight, alone in the living room, with just a faded incandescent bulb in stunning silence, I could literally feel the song simply fill – and I really mean it when I say ‘fill’ - every ounce of air in the room. It runs about four minutes and a half, with a subtle violin and a few underplayed strokes of guitar in the backdrop. The first time, it felt different. The second, it felt completely different. It’s amazing how Rahman’s music transforms into totally new sounds of art during nocturnal hours. I played it a third time. And a fourth and maybe about ten more times.

                  When it finishes and leaves you at the hem of the silence again, it kind of rings - maybe resonates from the inside and the only thing you feel up to is going back to it and experience the strange, unearthly feeling all over again. It's, in a way, bizzare. Such a simple piece of tune, taking your entire, musically challenged mind all the way to a cosmic, perhaps, godly place.


                Many a time, especially during such hushed nights, when I listen to Rahman’s tunes, I feel a strange - I don’t know if it’s right to say, but – sort of a connection. In what way, I have no clue. But I just feel it. It’s like reading your favorite author and you kind of know the words that would follow in the next line.

Perhaps, one could never explain what magic Rahman's music unfailingly carries. As a raw soul that practically grew up listening to Rahman, I think this is what it means, in a personal sense, to me   -

Without music, we would have but been a mere ensemble of flesh and other anatomical parts.
Without Rahman, we would have but been mere victims of rusting commercialism of music, Indian and western.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

The most beautiful time - quite literally !

In my list of 100 awesome things to do in life, I think this should show up somewhere in my top ten – the feeling you get out of the entire experience of destination-less driving during the time of the gorgeous fall. I mean - nothing but mindboggling colors all around. It’s like a dream, only absolutely real!
How do I describe this? Hmmm…Imagine how you might feel when you blend in softened sweet butter with cream and caramel to strawberries? Hmm..not a very fair equivalent, there.
But the leaves! My God! What the hell happens to them around this time? They wither so beautifully and blow around the town in - here's the magical part - yellow and burnt orange and deep red and purple and faded pink and ...
anyways, sometimes, when the feeling measures off to a strange, unexplainable place, I don't get any words in my throat. This, I guess, almost makes one such hell of a feeling. So I would rather stop and simply say -
They die so gracefully, I mean the leaves, that it melts your heart and makes you want to bottle them up !

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

It's that time of the year, again.

The calendar is probably one thing you should never look at if the age-old adage ‘Time and tide wait for none’ fills your stomach with a viral guilt. Didn’t we just step into this year, like, a few days ago ?? Hmm..a few three hundred days ago, I guess. On an unenthusiastic personal point, this time of the year can get extensively antisocial with my psyche – speaking out of several exemplified instances of alarming personal examples.

My brain just retards and goes on maybe a long drive to live with the sea turtles where it doesn’t return from until probably Christmas, when there’s better scope for emotionally engaging activities like eating more slices of cake than any other time of the year. I run away from my cell phone. My reading interests practically die. I live on hot chocolates until they make me sick and watch more movies than ever, from under the blanket. I wear mournfully old, pathetic shoes that have dingy, dangling stuff (who even makes them anymore?!). My writing however bounces back in a renewed psychological spirit which utterly frightens me. (You see? Another exemplified instance of alarming personal example).


I think I should be more interested in deeper introspections under such times but what basically happens, I guess, is that I simply hibernate.

So, it’s that time of the year. Again. And no matter how much I listen to Greenday or Hoobastank, it’s still gonna be a lousy winter. At the end of the year though, I am gonna bounce back with a terrific contradiction of what a beauty it is to end the year with a snowy christmas.