Mile Sur Mera Tumhara!

It is festive season again, and the music is on.  I had decided that this season, I was going to catch a lot of concerts, and enrich my musical brain.  The first of the concerts I went for, was a jugalbandi with the blend of the north and the south.  I had a friend tell me sometime back, it is not necessary to know music to enjoy it; how true it was, I realized when I saw how beautifully the notes touched  a chord in my heart.  I do not really understand  Hindustani classical; for that matter, my knowledge of Carnatic music is also abysmal, though my exposure has tuned my ears to appreciate good music and filter it from bad performances! 

So, to come back to this concert.  The ambience was awesome, and I felt transported to a world where the stars shone dimly, the lighted pillars created by the event management team reflected the mood and spirit of the evening.  Music, especially soulful music, chokes me, whether I am singing or listening. This evening was no exception.  I choked and had tears rolling down my face, as the notes brought memories, nostalgia and emotions to the surface.   Someone had told me, when you sing and you can’t sing a high note because you are choked and emotional, you are having a musical seizure.  Well, I was having a series of them that evening all right.  Music blends all right, I had enough proof of that that evening.  Or, did I?

 

 

The person sitting next to me was a young girl, maybe in her late twenties, and she was also enjoying with her eyes closed.  But I noticed, that she would appreciate only when the Hindustani artist was singing, and would not even join in at the end of a particular Carnatic number when the whole hall was resounding with applause.  I found that extremely strange and a narrow appreciation of music. Maybe she did not really understand Carnatic music; but I am sure, a lot of the people, even me, did not really understand Hindustani music either;   but did that stop us from appreciating music? This was one sore spot on an otherwise perfect evening!

I believe that music does not know boundaries; why do we create them in our hearts then?  And the end of the concert was beautiful  with two lines from a nation-wide popular song which  conveyed that if your note and my note blend, then we create a fresh, new note! 

Alive Again!

Have you ever visited the past and felt you had travelled into the future leaving a bit of you behind, and then rediscovered yourself? It is an awesome experience, like finding a bit of a lost puzzle of a jigsaw. There is a sudden click, an "aha" moment, and suddenly you feel you had been searching for something you had misplaced in a wrong bag!

I visited Pune after 15 years... I had extremely fond memories of the place. I had been at my best I think then, living life to the fullest, taking healing classes, taking care of my family, learning new skills like Bonsai, making new friends, exploring new avenues. Somewhere along the line, when I moved out of the place, I think I left a bit of myself there, which I never realized. It was like I had packed everything, but left the baggage behind. And strangely, never missed the lost bag either. Maybe because I was so busy existing, I forgot to live. And I did not realize what I had lost, till I went back and found it. And what a find it was! I felt complete and whole again. Reconnected with parts of myself, reestablished old connections, and felt totally enveloped by the warmth of the
love I thought had been lost.

I did feel sad to see huge transformations too, like the old building I had been living in was razed to the ground, the shop I used to frequent for my groceries was no longer there...but that was reinforcing the fact that some things do change, and that it was not utopia, what I rediscovered. A paradoxical reinforcement I guess. I came back to see myself undergoing a slow transformation, picking up pieces of fragmented parts of me, and looking at myself in the mirror and seeing the birth of a new me! How I love this new discovery!