The Sound of Music

My grandfather used to be paranoid, he worried like all grandparents are wont to do that I’d go deaf listening to pop music, and every time I saw him he would warn me about the dangers of listening to loud pop music (complete with anecdotal evidence taken from The Times.) “In America and London, 12 year olds go deaf listening to loud music through their ear phones” it was the ultimate condemnation of western popular culture. He needn’t have worried. Back then.
Way back then I didn’t listen to pop music, nothing, zilch, zero, mute, no hindi filmy music, no backstreet boys, no nothing. It was vulgar, shameful, used words like “sexy” and was not allowed in our house. And I would comfort my grandfather by proudly telling him that I don’t listen to pop music and that I would never listen to any pop music. Ever. Yet I remember cringing and feeling embarrassed in front of the cool kids in my sisters birthday party when we had to play passing the parcel to “the sound of music” instead of “Whigfeilds- Saturday Night”.

Then one day they showed this little, story-less, black and white movie on TV. It was an important movie and the entire family gathered to watch it, and I was hooked from that first indefinable twang of a chord of “A Hard Days Night”. I might have been sitting in my parents bedroom circa the new millennium but in spirit I was transported back half a decade, cheering, crying, running after and swooning over the Beatles. I have never looked back since then. Except to find those old, classic songs and bands (and movies) of course.

I worry now, that I will go deaf. (Turning down the volume on my ipod). Anyway, music makes my world go round, straight, up to the skies, it takes me everywhere, and I take music everywhere I go. I started listening to the early Beatles , ABBA, show tunes, Petula Clark, Simon and Garfunkel, the carpenters, Nancy Sinatra and other old pop songs on my mothers recommendation who warned me that while sexy songs were not banned, bad music was definitely barred from entering our house
I moved onto the later Beatles and bands like The Who, led zeppelin, Queen, Pink Floyd. And before I knew it I was listening to all kinds of music. I revisited the lost pop music of my youth and realized that most of it was now “uncool” trash. This means that I can with a very straight face and clean conscience tell people that I never got caught in the Aqua, Backstreet, Britney craze, my music tastes are far superior (what? I like Boney M in an ironic way and umm... Britney and Mika.....)

Today I jog, stride up and down corridors, jump around and live life to flashdance, songs from musicals, eye of the tiger, Rahman, Shankar Ehsaan Loy, Guru Dutt, Backstreet Boys, Bhajans, Brahms, Beethoven, the beatles and weird Al Yankovic. I listen to what I like. Whether its un-cool or cool, popular, indie, obscure, classic, old or new, even good or bad.

At a recent party, my ipod was being used as a jukebox. Everyone was dancing furiously to the latest fast paced noise in vogue, when suddenly the song changed and a melodious nun started singing in a crystal clear voice “she. Climbs. A. Tree. And. Scrapes. Her. Knee.” I stifled my laughter and ran over to a very baffled looking guy who was standing next to my ipod, jaw hanging and muttering “I thought it was Maria”. This time I was not embarrassed by The Sound of Music in front of the cool kids. You see, if I like a song, I will listen to it, and even my grandfather can’t do anything about it.

Hush.... it's a secret!

When the twins were born, my mother was shown only one baby. The two of them were pointed out to her in the ICU only the next day as they lay under sickly yellow lights trying to fight jaundice. Happily enough, they survived and blossomed into two healthy happy bouncing babies. And that’s where any similarities ended. To put it in my mothers words who was repeating my aunts words. “One was a pleasure to see and the other was a joy to watch.” While Sumana sat around stolidly, batting her pretty long eyelashes dressed in perfect little frocks, smiling, gurgling, cooing, Nandini would be running around, constantly getting into trouble, disappearing and reappearing with torn frocks, mysterious scratches and cobwebs in her hair.
To put it in my own words; Its pouring with rain outside, Sumana will manage to make it home from school with nary a drop of water on her and not a crease out of place on her uniform, while Nandini will make it back home two hours later, after having spent the last hour in the blazing after-rain sunshine soaking wet and drenched to the skin.
They grew up into two different people something which my parents very actively encouraged by refusing to twin them, they never wore matching twin outfits, they went to the same school but were in different sections, they had different interests which were encouraged independently. Of course nature helped, and even on the surface the two of them are as different as they get. Nandini grew up into a 5 foot and something, big, curvy, dusky beauty, while Sumana is a 5 foot nothing petite, doll like girl. Forget about looking like twins, they don’t even look like distant second cousins, twice removed.
I have a theory, which is slowly becoming an unshakeable belief, that one of the “twins” is a changeling. Some hapless woman having given birth to a girl ..... again....... bribed the nurses to exchange her girl for a boy (only one baby was shown remember!). and so our family were born, Mummy (I was copying my cousin) and Naina and Me and the babies as I remember telling my parents while swinging from their legs. My Parents on the other hand remember my telling them to send one of the babies back to the hospital (I was trying to copy my cousin who had only one sister, disaster was averted when they asked me which baby to send back and I couldn’t decide.)
I tried telling my aunt this theory, and she flared up “every mother recognizes her child”. I disagree, my mother recognized the changeling as her daughter and that’s exactly what she has grown up to be. Every Day I thank god for the switch, because I can’t think of a life where I didn’t know either one of my beautiful sisters and didn’t have them to fight with and lean on. The switch theory means that no matter how far apart the three of us were born, we were meant to be sisters and would have found each other. It means that we owe so much to our parents for bringing us up to be happy and friends and it’s not a question of genes. That love runs thicker than blood. If the changelings biological mother reads this somewhere, keep your son, he’s yours, we’re keeping our sister.

Daddy Issues

Firstly I could never call my father daddy. He has always been addressed by the traditional Telegu “Naina” and referred to as “My father” by my sisters and me. Even when I was a 18 month old, blindly aping my hero-worshipped older cousin and saying everything he said, I began calling my mother “Mummy” but my father remained “Naina”.
Nomenclature while indicative is the least of the issues. The main issue is not even that my Father doesn’t understand me(I’d trust him to pick my friends, my career, the books I ought to read, the life I can and ought to lead). But rather that I don’t understand him. I don’t understand how he understands me so well, what he does or did, and why, what he’s thinking, how he judges people, how he judges me (understanding and judging being different), how he got to be the super-liberal that he is coming as he does from his uber-conservative family. Everything I know about my father, his values, his life, his opinions is through my mother. My father, in short remains this mysterious, intimidating, quiet, hard working, brilliant, congress supporting, can’t remember having hugged (and I’m sad/sorry to say this last part) ATM.
It’s not like we haven’t tried. Imagine you’re a 19 year old, culturally confused, guilt stricken, ADHDd girl, trying to gain some gyaan from her father on how to deal with college (he went through the same thing after all, balancing family values with new-found freedom, the pressures of a professional course et al). You pluck up your courage and ask him what he did in college, how he spent his time, you stammer and you stutter and after minutes spent trying to frame the conversation in your head, imagining a nice heart to heart, you get this reply “TT- I played a lot of TT in my spare time”.

My mother still tries to get us to talk, and he very sweetly does call me every now and then enquiring about my state of affairs and finances, the weather and my health, but I still hem and haw and I’m no closer to sharing myself with him the way I am able to with my mother or even you who’re reading this blog and nowhere near getting him to talk about himself.
If I’m bad my sister is worse, she isn’t able to extract conversations from my mom and has to use me as the guide to understanding our mother. Knowing how it feels to not know a parent, I decided this situation required some expert interfering and subtly ordered my mom to start talking to her. The next day I get a call from my sister, who tells me that mommy rang her up and whined to her for an hour and she wants to, but doesn't know how to tactfully tell my mother to stop whining because,...... thats how life is. Just imagining the sight of my mother being told that “thats how life is” by my very lost and extremely lazy and unaccepting sister makes me want to burst out in laughter and made me realize that some people are just not meant to talk no matter how closely they’re related.
I tried to cheer up my sister by telling her that I’m not able to talk to our father which didn’t cheer her up one bit since neither is she. So I asked my sister for permission to tell my mother the whole story in a humorous manner, and it was grudgingly granted. My sister then messaged my mom on gtalk telling her that soon she and I would be laughing at my sisters expense, this she thought could be another opportunity to chat up our mother. Unfortunately my dad... ooops my Father saw the message and called back wanting to know what the joke was. My sister has given up. Naina if you read my blog, now you know. I love, admire and respect you and if we can’t talk, well, I'm not worrying, thats How life is!

Sing. Smile. Dance. Blog.

There was a young teacher who got married and left for the US of A. Then there was the young teachers old teacher who left to go live with her son in Anand. There was the teacher with the irritating grandson who went to visit her other grandsons and never came back – they were presumably easier to live with. There was the teacher who sounded like a toad with a cold on the phone and beautifully powerful when she sang, she shifted to Hyderabad, presumably to be with someone near, dear and not irritating. Not to be outdone, we left the next teacher, we didn’t go anywhere, we just stopped going there one day (I’m still hazy as to whether we told her we were dropping out).
AS a result of such intensive and extensive classic carnatic music training, today when I sing (Rasputin by Boney M being my favoured song) I bring tears to the eyes of my friends.
In his autobiography “Moab is My Washpot” Stephen Fry, the Gay-ly Profane P.G. Wodehouse, rants, in capital letters spelling out F-bombs about his inability to connect with his peers because of certain musical shortcomings. I empathise. When you can’t dance without tripping, sing along to the latest singalong song without people leaving the room, you’ve lost out on a very important and primal form of socialization, of connecting at a level beyond words, you my dear friend are out of sync with the rhythm of life. To make matters worse as Fry points out, its’ not like we’re tone deaf, If Fry and I were tone deaf we wouldn’t know what we were missing. But for someone who traces her cultural awakening to watching “A Hard Days’ Night” and falling head over heels (literally, when I tried to dance to them) in love with the Beatles, its just plain old cruel. With apologies to Brendan Behan, It’s like being the eunuch in a harem, you know how its done, you hear it being done every day, you just can’t do it yourself, it’s like being a critic (gasp)! Shudder.
This weekend I danced, I shut my eyes, stopped caring about my hair getting messy, what other people might think, other peoples feet and danced. WooHoo! Jodhpur Riff, I went to listen to Dharohar, a project/collaboration between Rajasthani Folk Artists and Jason Sigh a Beatboxer, it was absolutely fantastic, you just had to get up and dance to them, I started out with foot tapping, swaying, and bobbing my head trying to look dignified, until I finally gave in and started jumping around like crazy. Then there was Swarathma, an urban-folk-rock band from Bangalore who have issues with this classification according to their facebook page, but since I don’t know anything about their music except that it kept me dancing and I have been listening to it all Sunday and all through the writing of this post I will submit to the superior wisdom of the writer of the RIFF Pamphlet, use the classification and declare myself a fan of urban-folk-rock-bands. I went to listen to Antonio Rey one of the world’s top three Spanish guitarists, and watched Farruco a third generation flamenco dancer seduce the crowd. I didn’t dance, but I definitely drooled. And for the finale there was Sivamani, the most recognizable name in the line up, I danced again, but mainly I watched and admired the potted out hippies grooving to his beats, until that is, Dharohar came up to Jam with him, and kicked his ass. Ramu does dance. To Dharohar, with enthusiasm. With a smile.

Can you hear me Cheer?

My hands are sore and my throat is cracking, from too much clapping and wooting. I’ve had two consecutive weekends of fests, the colleges first ever sports fest “Yuvardha” was held last weekend and the Jodhpur RIFF is being held this weekend. I cheered at them, I cheered a lot.

My cheering has always embarrassed my sisters, when you’re sitting next to the girl with weird hair who’s the only one clapping and screaming encore in the otherwise silent auditorium, you’d be embarrassed too. My cheering takes classmates and friends by surprise, I am not exactly known for my spirit, being aware of what’s going on in college, or even what whathisnames name is. Add to this the fact that I don't know a single thing about football (it’s some sort of team sport which inspired quidditch!), and it’s umm weird that I'd come scream my lungs of at a football match in the blazing jodhpur heat instead of brooding about morality and goodness in the comfort of my darkened and suitably gloomy room. In fact a slightly ignored and disgruntled boyfriend accused my enthusiasm for Yuvardha as bordering on WAGish. But the truth of the matter is that I clap equally hard at sitar recitals, people taking an unpopular, un-cool stand in class and “National Seminars on Multiculturalism in India: Constitutional Provisions and Future Remedies”.
I like to clap, I like to cheer, if you have something you love doing, and the will to follow through on it, take opportunities and the courage to do it in front of an audience, I think you deserve to be cheered, and told to go for it (irrespective of how much you suck at it). The only thing I seem to be able to follow through on and do in front of a large audience is cheer!
The cheering seems to go hand in hand with my never wanting to tell someone not to do something. No matter how daft or dangerous the idea you put before me, I would tell you to go for it because if you don’t take chances, don’t do what you want to, you might as well not live, and you’ll never learn. Of course I’ll also try my best and hardest to be there if you crash and need a shoulder to cry on, or someone to come bail you out of jail at 4 in the morning.
This also seems to be a difference between elder sisters and elder brothers. Elder brothers want to protect their little sisters, elder sisters want their little sisters to go live and learn even if it means getting hurt. At least I want my little sisters too, I am never going to tell them that I have been through something, so that they don’t need to.... I’ll never ask them to learn from my mistakes, they need to make mistakes for themselves. I want them to do whatever it is that they want to do.
So, you know what? Go! Do something. Shut that laptop down, pick up a guitar, kick a ball around, whatever it is, I’m Cheering for you. Woot!