Indian mythology believes in Cupid being the God of love and how he with his arrows strike and trigger a particular kind of love. To go at depth, there are five types of flowers that hits at different places, be it the eyes, lips, heart and so on to arise and awake the feeling of desire.
Hope and desire are two things that are most unpredictable and you never know when it can set in motion. If it’s not with the moon, then it’s during sunrise or even at dusk. But barely can anyone say escaping from these. Sometimes they might even be a repercussion of memories collected through the years.
For me, music has played a role greater than that. I may not be a music expert but notes in tune dig out all that’s in me and bring it forth like a mirror standing before me and I feel lost and devoid of myself. I have always been a matured music listener. During my growing up years, cassettes were still alive and music stores had them arranged in various orders with pride. Every month my father would take me to ‘Melody’, a famous store in Kolkata or even the HMV showroom in Esplanade where I would spend a lot of time browsing through cassette covers even though I already had my list ready.
Pandit Jasraj, Bhimsen Joshi, Girija Devi had occupied considerable space in my shelf along with Bhupen Hazarika, Begum Akhtar. But who stole my heart was Kishori Amonkar. My brother would immerse into Iron Maiden and Pink Floyd, but my room would vibrate in all sorts of alaaps, bhajans and thumris. Be it a Saturday night or while doing my home-work, my stereo played music that was way matured for any child of my age then. This naturally had pushed me away from many children of my age with whom I could no longer relate and found them weird for not getting lulled by Indian classical music. While they would be engrossed in their new additions of Mills and Boons gossips or what Cosmopolitan had to highlight in their glossy monthly issues, I would enjoy basking in ‘He mero mana mohana’. Accompanied to all this would be ‘Ma’ spending her evenings in the roof singing compositions of Atul Prasad, Rabindranath and Rajanikanto. To me these writers and singers became heroes.
Then came the period when I started imbibing what was more into vogue amongst my peers. Loud and bold, determined and ambitious not just inward but whoever sees me barely remembers the older me, who had once suffered seclusion and outcast by friends who found me on a completely different track.
Between then and now, several years have passed by. I have learnt to keep away engulfing fantasies and ones that do nothing but while away time. But all of a sudden, an encounter with an artiste brought it all back. The impact was simple. I spent an entire Saturday evening listening to Kishori Amonkar, not just playing it in the laptop but putting my head phones so that it’s just the galvanising effect of her tunes in my thoughts.
If you are wondering how? That’s what, you can never tell when it can set your subdued thoughts in motion and yet you are not irritated but calm and complete. Perhaps because he looked like ‘Pt Shivkumar Sharma’, a legend whom I call resembles a Greek God and whose santoor can create vibrations so fresh and luring; Perhaps because it was an unexpected evening of flute and tabla; Or perhaps I needed someone to drive me to memory lane.
Whatever it is, music has unfathomable reach. I might have taken to dancing but it is music that touches my soul; it is music that triggers love and it is music that makes me nostalgic.
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