Bliss!!

I listened to a lot of music as a kid. Probably more than any other kid I knew and a wider variety than most adults as well. I’d look forward to having the house to myself and would be super happy if my parents had to go somewhere without me. With Mom out of the door, there was no limit to how loud the music could get. And we had no neighbors for at least a quarter of a mile. Heaven!! Dancing to the loud music on my terrace when it was raining, the music so loud that nothing could get thru’ no door bells and no phone rings…and getting into trouble with my parents over how ‘careless’ I was! On Dad’s old LP player and tape deck I’d listen to Ravi Shankar’s Music Festival of India (I’ve been looking for a CD), Tchaikovsky…trying to dance like a swan in Swan Lake…imagining myself to be Odette. Reading my dad’s handwritten liner notes in red ink on old yellowing pieces of paper – romantic notions running in my head along with Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty…the OST for the Love Story would have me singing the theme song along, it was practice since we’d learnt that song at school. And then there was the Rolling Stones, Dire Straits, Clapton, Chapman, even Clayderman….Lalgudi Jayaraman, Ananda Shankar, Chris Isaak, The Beegees, Nirvana, Denver & Smokie, Vivaldi, Lionel Richie, The Who, Chitti Babu, Pink Floyd, MC Hammer, Whitney Houston…on and on and on.

When the bigger louder speakers were off limits, I used a tape recorder in my room…it had a dial that could alter the tempo of the track and I used it for my dance practices. At nights, I’d plug in my headphones and listen till late at night…sometimes dancing in the dark. I was in love…with my music and my world and….you get the drift!

In Mysore I had no source. I went around scrounging in the few music stores looking for something and then spending all my pocket money on tapes. There was this chap called Ravi who had a library and he’d generously make mix tapes for me. Eventually I left sleep Mysore…and in college I discovered ghazals and hindi movie music, techno, the Gypsy Kings, electronica…stuff that kids were listening to in cities much bigger than sleepy Mysore. I started making my own mix tapes….

It was music that connected my now husband and me for the first time…the OST for Top Gun.

And then it just stopped….the music, the dance, everything. The long years in between were so bare…I did not know what happened anymore in the world of music. And now it seems silly that I did not turn to the one thing that always gave me comfort and focus.

But all’s well that ends well. I have found my bliss again. The past 4, 5 years have been so wonderful….because I found my music again. And the past 2 years have been simply awesome…coz now I can share my music with anyone who cares for it!! Who’d have thunk I’d be on radio….certainly not me!!
This is my idea of heaven on earth!!