From when I was a little girl, music has been a big part of my life. I learnt the basics of Carnatic music from a family friend and then we moved homes and the classes stopped. But that did not stop me listening to music. I’ve never actively listened to classical music, only Bollywood and the radio and at some point the music the siblings listened to. We used to own one of the earliest models of radios launched by Philips and my dad had it tuned to FM and we used to listen to the radio every morning while getting ready for school. In those days, as it is today, most often the playlist at particular time slots are fixed. So, for an entire week, around 9am, either the same song or a song from the same album or movie will be played and this is true even today. So my mind was set to those musical clocks.
In those days, almost every house, on the streets we used to get to school on, had a radio that was usually tuned to the same channel, (probably because there was only one channel that used to be available). Anyway, since I usually knew most of the songs that did play, I was always aware of the time as we walked to school or in some instances ran. I got my first watch when my uncle returned from chennai after dropping off a relative at the airport for an international flight. It was a fake Casio watch picked on the beach there. But, I received this much later. Most often we told time, by listening to the songs on the radio or peeping in to spot the clock in some of the homes we passed. For instance, the song that played at 855am was one from the kannada movie ‘Ranadheera’ or the song played at 830am when we just left from home was the one from the kannada movie, ‘Geeta’. There were those parts on the route that had no music, either because there were no houses or because they did not have the radio turned on. Anyway, those were the spaces that we used to dilly-dally at and then you know how it goes, rush the rest of the way to school.
From the local top grossing Kannada songs to the lilting melodies of Md. Rafi or Hemant Kumar or the yodeling Kishore Kumar in Hindi cinema and of course, ABBA or BoneyM and those amazing LPs my dad owned, we grew up on a healthy dose of music. It was always there, in the background. I remember studying to them. I remember listening to them on those super windy cloudy days when the rain clouds threatened to drown out all those wonderful chips that were drying out in the terrace that we were assigned to watch. I remember listening to them through my first #crush, I think one of the many neighbors. I remember listening to them while I bummed a bicycle from one of the many friends that dropped in to meet my sisters’ and enjoying the wind in my hair. I remember listening to it when I got on the big bicycle and riding off down the road and then turning onto the main road, panicking when I saw a bus coming my way on the opposite end of the main road and then jumping off the bicycle right across to the far end of the footpath because I had no clue how to get off a big bicycle. I remember listening to it while on the way to our gymnastics classes every evening. I remember listening to it on the BTS bus on the way to the gym and even while we returned. The ‘music’ part of the programme used to be over and there used to be some recorded play or talk show aired at that time. I remember listening to it even when my fiancé dropped me home after an evening out. That particular stretch of road on the inner ring road, where a particular song from the blockbuster Asoka played. This signalled that I was going to reach back in time for dinner.
Songs seem to be etched into every synapse in my brain. Today, just off the bat, I may not remember the names of a lot of the new songs I hear, but play any chartbuster from the 80’s and 90’s and chances are I will be able to relate a story or incident that occurred while that song played. I never had the opportunity to form a liking to “a” particular band growing up. As the third kid, I got to listen to hand-me-downs. Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beetles, Jethro Tull, WHAM! Boney M and ABBA (the last two were thanks to my dad) were part of my playlist while in high school, long before playlists were even called that. And this was when my classmates were listening to Backstreet Boys and Boys 2 Men and the innumerable boy bands that were trending in the mid 90’s on MTV. (Yea! I know I just gave my age away ;).) The song that I registered on my own was Maria, by Ricky Martin all those years ago, because that’s when my older sisters had relocated to different states for work. And that’s also when my dad used to mock me by singing the song with lyrics he made up, because we don’t know Spanish and just to get under my skin. On good days, I joined him with my version of the song with the Indian pronunciation of Spanish words. On bad days, I would just go out to play with the dog and pretend to ignore him.
For the longest time, we owned a portable mono-cassette recorder/player from Philips. We used to use the adapter to connect it to a power source, as the big batteries required by that player was not easily accessible to us. I remember having a double deck cassette player set up right above the radio and playing the radio and when a song I liked came on, then recording it off the radio and then making a note of it on the cassette cover so I would not miss it or re-record over it.
Music has been a big part of everything I’ve done. I tuned the Tv in the labor room during delivery and the song that played as my baby crowned was ‘Man-Eater’ by Nelly Furtado. I tried silence for the first part of this event, but, music helps distract you when you are in pain. It’s no wonder that I’ve always had it playing in the background. It does not need to be loud. Does not need to reverberate through the walls, it’s the white noise that gets switched on and I’ve often turned the volume down when I realise that my focus has moved from work to actually singing the song.
Music! It’s tough to not have any association with it. And these are mine, what about yours? Do you have anything memorable linked with music? Do respond if you do. Or respond even if you don’t. I will send you a list of songs that I have memories linked to and you can tell me if you have any memories attached to them as well. Do keep in mind that I do have a long list of songs, sometimes almost seems never-ending. Between the memories that were linked to them and sometimes the emotions as well, I never feel like deleting them from my playlist, but what I do is skip a track if it’s not apt for that moment.
Just a little more 