Today I am in the United States. The land of the free, the home of the brave. The land of glitz and glamor. The sun never set in the Roman empire, so the sages have opined. Similarly,the glaring lights never dimmed in this country where one could realize his or her dreams.
Yet a simple act of nature could stall this relentless march towards the ultimate industrialized society...
Am I rambling? Am I digressing from what I had wanted to convey? Maybe I am. But if I am digressing from the content, I am dwelling on those undefined and yet powerful images that are swept ashore from the ocean of my subconscious. Are they less relevant to the storyteller?
Today at 11:30 PM, the lights of my apartment suddenly went off. This is not a common phenomenon in urban USA. I stared at the darkness for a couple of seconds and then stood up and cautiously tip toed to the balcony. Yes, the lights of the city had extinguished. It had been raining steadily for the past few hours and maybe the inclement weather had something to do with this.
The raindrops pattered incessantly against the window sills and the gravel. The sky was dark and the each of the stars had found their own corner to hide. And yet the whole landscape shimmered in the surreal radiance of faint moonlight. As I gazed at it, a wondrous feeling swept over me. I realized that I had never seen a sight like this before. And how could I? Whenever I had set my eyes outside, they had been accosted with bright lights from the apartment complexes. The natural night of the moon had been consigned to a forgotten background. Now it had come into the forefront in all its pallid glory. In the distance I could see tree tops outlined against the horizon and suddenly was filled with doubt - was this indeed Silicon Valley ?
I leaned against the wall and in an intoxicated state of mind, reflected on the song that I had been listening in youtube before the powercut.
Yeah raat, yeah jawaani
Yeah botal sharab ki
Ho jaaye is taraf bhi
Inayaat huzoor ki
kahiye gilaas bhaar doon...
Ah, the joys of meeting a long lost friend...
At that time, I was fifteen or maybe sixteen. Life was far more simple and innocent. The whole exposure to electronic media was through good old doordarshan and its solitary channel, a far cry from the modern days of hundreds of specialized channels courtesy the cable network. Movies would be showed sporadically and was in high demand. There was a propensity to broadcast old classics and I was slowly beginning to develop an avid liking for them.
Some of the most memorable movies I had seen back then had not been planned viewings. On a lazy summer noon when I had free time, I would have turned the television on and chanced upon a movie and proceeded to see it. Since cable was still a thing of the future, there was no wasting of time from indecisive channel surfing.
One such movie was a supernatural thriller by the name of Ek Paheli. More than the suspense and great acting, I had been mesmerized by the haunting tunes of its songs. I sat in awe, eyes glued to the television as my mind had been swept aside by the powerful melody. The movie ended and yet the music had lingered on and replayed itself endlessly in my mind.
Some time earlier, it had been another movie - Do Phool, a loose adaption of the classic Heidi by the Swiss author Johanna Spyri. The protagonists were two innocent children - a boy and a girl. The music too exuded innocence and a fresh breath of the spring air that charmed and invigorated the soul. The incomparable melody made me inexplicably happy and sentimental at the same time.
Since then, I had searched in every cassette store for these two movies. In each music shop that I chanced upon. In Calcutta, in Delhi, in any other city that I had traveled. But one shop after another didn't have the songs. But I was confident. I would find them in the next shop surely, I thought. I just had to visit a larger music store, I convinced myself. After all, wouldn't a large store have much more cassettes?
But as I visited large and larger music stores, I slowly realized, much to my dismay, that they weren't large as they had more old hindi film songs. They were large as they had songs of other, newer genre - pop, rock, western. It took a while to sink in and finally one day, when I wasn't a child any more, I realized that no matter what shop I visited, I would see the same set of old hindi film song cassettes and CDs that I had been seeing again and again.
The realization brought in bitter disappointment and incredulity. I had been so confident of procuring the gems that I had never paused to ponder what would happen if I didn't get them. How could you, upon getting a glimpse of musical bliss and believing that it is within your reach, fail in trying to grasp it as you reached out your hand?
And yet, with passage of time, this bitterness too passed away. It coincided with the time when I was growing up from a child to a teenager to an adult. Other dreams that had been shaped by my innocence were getting replaced by new realities brought forth by experience. My futile search for the songs of Do Phool and Ek Paheli was another part of my transformation from adolescence to adulthood. The quest that I had held dear to my heart gradually ceased to be important. I still visited music stores and inquired about the two movies, but it was more out of past habit than any real desire. Finally one day, I stopped doing even that. And funnily enough, I didn't even feel sad. I had other things to worry about.
And life proceeded on...
In my adult incarnation, I have stopped buying cassettes. I don't even own a cassette player anymore. I buy CDs once in a while for my car stereo. I have instead become a major fan of online forums for music. The songs I listen are more varied; from not so old hindi film songs to ghazals, to classical music, to soft pop. I don't listen to music with sole attention anymore - usually it plays while I am seated on my work desk doing coding or I am at home and the music forms the background of some other primary activity such as cooking.
But life does throw up surprises. Of late I have increasingly noticed that youtube has a collection of rare songs that are hard to find anywhere else. And yet it hadn't occurred to me to check for the songs of Do Phool and Ek Paheli.
But I did so one day. And indeed they were there...
At first I was overwhelmed by the mere presence of all the songs. I listened to them in a haze, one after another like a famished man in a royal banquet trying to devour all the food at once. My acquaintance with them had been rusted by long years of separation. At first I failed to recall what exactly had attracted me to some of them. After all these years I couldn't grasp their pristine charm.
But I listened again - slowly, one after another and re-discovered the magic. Maybe in a slightly different way than before. My long quest had finally ended.
And then the lights of the apartment went out. I closed my eyes as the mesmerizing tunes played in the background.
Yet a simple act of nature could stall this relentless march towards the ultimate industrialized society...
Am I rambling? Am I digressing from what I had wanted to convey? Maybe I am. But if I am digressing from the content, I am dwelling on those undefined and yet powerful images that are swept ashore from the ocean of my subconscious. Are they less relevant to the storyteller?
Today at 11:30 PM, the lights of my apartment suddenly went off. This is not a common phenomenon in urban USA. I stared at the darkness for a couple of seconds and then stood up and cautiously tip toed to the balcony. Yes, the lights of the city had extinguished. It had been raining steadily for the past few hours and maybe the inclement weather had something to do with this.
The raindrops pattered incessantly against the window sills and the gravel. The sky was dark and the each of the stars had found their own corner to hide. And yet the whole landscape shimmered in the surreal radiance of faint moonlight. As I gazed at it, a wondrous feeling swept over me. I realized that I had never seen a sight like this before. And how could I? Whenever I had set my eyes outside, they had been accosted with bright lights from the apartment complexes. The natural night of the moon had been consigned to a forgotten background. Now it had come into the forefront in all its pallid glory. In the distance I could see tree tops outlined against the horizon and suddenly was filled with doubt - was this indeed Silicon Valley ?
I leaned against the wall and in an intoxicated state of mind, reflected on the song that I had been listening in youtube before the powercut.
Yeah raat, yeah jawaani
Yeah botal sharab ki
Ho jaaye is taraf bhi
Inayaat huzoor ki
kahiye gilaas bhaar doon...
Ah, the joys of meeting a long lost friend...
At that time, I was fifteen or maybe sixteen. Life was far more simple and innocent. The whole exposure to electronic media was through good old doordarshan and its solitary channel, a far cry from the modern days of hundreds of specialized channels courtesy the cable network. Movies would be showed sporadically and was in high demand. There was a propensity to broadcast old classics and I was slowly beginning to develop an avid liking for them.
Some of the most memorable movies I had seen back then had not been planned viewings. On a lazy summer noon when I had free time, I would have turned the television on and chanced upon a movie and proceeded to see it. Since cable was still a thing of the future, there was no wasting of time from indecisive channel surfing.
One such movie was a supernatural thriller by the name of Ek Paheli. More than the suspense and great acting, I had been mesmerized by the haunting tunes of its songs. I sat in awe, eyes glued to the television as my mind had been swept aside by the powerful melody. The movie ended and yet the music had lingered on and replayed itself endlessly in my mind.
Some time earlier, it had been another movie - Do Phool, a loose adaption of the classic Heidi by the Swiss author Johanna Spyri. The protagonists were two innocent children - a boy and a girl. The music too exuded innocence and a fresh breath of the spring air that charmed and invigorated the soul. The incomparable melody made me inexplicably happy and sentimental at the same time.
Since then, I had searched in every cassette store for these two movies. In each music shop that I chanced upon. In Calcutta, in Delhi, in any other city that I had traveled. But one shop after another didn't have the songs. But I was confident. I would find them in the next shop surely, I thought. I just had to visit a larger music store, I convinced myself. After all, wouldn't a large store have much more cassettes?
But as I visited large and larger music stores, I slowly realized, much to my dismay, that they weren't large as they had more old hindi film songs. They were large as they had songs of other, newer genre - pop, rock, western. It took a while to sink in and finally one day, when I wasn't a child any more, I realized that no matter what shop I visited, I would see the same set of old hindi film song cassettes and CDs that I had been seeing again and again.
The realization brought in bitter disappointment and incredulity. I had been so confident of procuring the gems that I had never paused to ponder what would happen if I didn't get them. How could you, upon getting a glimpse of musical bliss and believing that it is within your reach, fail in trying to grasp it as you reached out your hand?
And yet, with passage of time, this bitterness too passed away. It coincided with the time when I was growing up from a child to a teenager to an adult. Other dreams that had been shaped by my innocence were getting replaced by new realities brought forth by experience. My futile search for the songs of Do Phool and Ek Paheli was another part of my transformation from adolescence to adulthood. The quest that I had held dear to my heart gradually ceased to be important. I still visited music stores and inquired about the two movies, but it was more out of past habit than any real desire. Finally one day, I stopped doing even that. And funnily enough, I didn't even feel sad. I had other things to worry about.
And life proceeded on...
In my adult incarnation, I have stopped buying cassettes. I don't even own a cassette player anymore. I buy CDs once in a while for my car stereo. I have instead become a major fan of online forums for music. The songs I listen are more varied; from not so old hindi film songs to ghazals, to classical music, to soft pop. I don't listen to music with sole attention anymore - usually it plays while I am seated on my work desk doing coding or I am at home and the music forms the background of some other primary activity such as cooking.
But life does throw up surprises. Of late I have increasingly noticed that youtube has a collection of rare songs that are hard to find anywhere else. And yet it hadn't occurred to me to check for the songs of Do Phool and Ek Paheli.
But I did so one day. And indeed they were there...
At first I was overwhelmed by the mere presence of all the songs. I listened to them in a haze, one after another like a famished man in a royal banquet trying to devour all the food at once. My acquaintance with them had been rusted by long years of separation. At first I failed to recall what exactly had attracted me to some of them. After all these years I couldn't grasp their pristine charm.
But I listened again - slowly, one after another and re-discovered the magic. Maybe in a slightly different way than before. My long quest had finally ended.
And then the lights of the apartment went out. I closed my eyes as the mesmerizing tunes played in the background.
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