Music - muse or passion

I am not too disciplined about anything in life. That quality about me stings me. Makes me realize (ah, the Virgo, know it all and by virtue know nothing) the fundamental reason I didn't find my true calling, or talent. That is true for things I love too, books mostly, writing definitely, and lately for music too.
Someday I dream I'll acquire another degree in classics and literature and be forced to do the thing I dream of doing, reading everything I've always wanted to, Roman Classics, Greek Mythology, Latin, Ancient and Contemporary History and complete assignments in creative writing, journalism, documenting, essays. Oh boy, what a degree that will be compared to engineering from aeons ago. This will be a time when mortgages will be paid off, and college tuition for the kid will be paid off and there will be enough set aside for life contingencies and exotic vacations. In short, in my dreams

Of these, music is the only one in which my interest is passive, as in, I don't have any true musical talent except that I am not tone deaf, have never been I think. I understand and appreciate good music. Correction. I understand and appreciate good vocals and good lyrical talent. I haven't been voracious in my consumption of music, its been erratic at best. I remember first being exposed to music from Indian Cinema's golden ages (the 60's and 70's) through baba and being exalted by the voices of Rafi, Lata and Kishore. And then Naushad, Geeta Dutt, Manna Dey. I remember being overwhelmed by the breadth of their talent and the mesmerising, poetic quality of words. And like any other teenager, I did enjoy the crappy stuff from my times too, along with some genuinely good music. Sonu Nigam was my first singer crush. Then came KK. I also had this pseudo intellectual phase where all I sought was good lyrics. Gulzar was like a de facto for a good song for a while.

My exposure to western music was born out of peer pressure. I had blackmailed my folks into getting me a walkman at 13. For a middle class working family, now that I think back it was huge. I went to a all girls private school were social class existed, and not subtly, it was in your face. There were clans. You had the rich cool kids, the athletes, the weirdos and the nerds. I was THE nerd. I didn't know it back then. I was in awe of the cool kids, desperate to fit in. What they listened to I had to listen. And what they listened to were your boy/girl bands. Backstreet boys, Boyzone, Spice Girls, Abba, Shannon. I religiously shelled over Rs 100 per cassette just so I didn't appear dumb. And though I'm not proud of it, I did enjoy it too. But truly, I didn't get it. Did I think any of them had good voices, nope. I didn't know. Lyrics? Most of them were lost on me. I don't understand a lot of musical genres that well, or a lot of instruments for that matter. I don't know origin stories and I certainly don't know what makes a good rock song, after a certain decibel, it may as well be all white noise. I know there must be a method too it all, I just plead ignorance.

For a while, till nearly into my late 20's, I didn't listen to music except as a passe, and very little too. Then came the phase that I now call internalizing pain phase. And I took to music, not as a patron, but as literally something to cry with, something to channel my pain. And interestingly, I first listened to Amy Winehouse. I literally stumbled on her. My first song was Rehab, and I was blown away. I dont know what about it stuck, but I just kept going back to her. The quality of her voice, the darkness of her mood, it was all very embalming. I listened to a lot of Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton, Passenger, Jeff Buckley, Freddie Mercurie, Shangri la, Bono, Marvin Gaye. Nothing unites like grief. I second that. Oh ya, and angry stuff too. Eminem, Linkin Park.

After a while I went back and listened of a lot of other stuff I genuinely liked too. Michael Jackson, Santana, Jay Z for a bit (Kanye too, hey couple of his songs are kinds cool). I dont know genres. I don't know technicality. I just know songs that make me happy. Or speak to my sadness.

And then along came Adele. And for a while I felt like she was it. She started where Winehouse had left for me. But she could do so much more with that voice. She could rouse in you a feeling of uplifting that is hard to place. Beyonce does that for me sometimes. But she also makes stuff I cant relate to.

As for Indian music, there have been plenty, plenty of songs that have stuck with me. Only, there is no towering individual behind it anymore. There is no one entity that is so overwhelming, that I appropriate with it. It is more a collective effort that is truly genius. Some singers I want to mention, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Sukhwinder Singh, Arijit Singh, KK, Shreya Ghoshal, Sunidhi. Each of them have given me a handful of songs that stay on my player forever.

My point through all this ramble being. I'm not a believer, a creationist, I don't pray or speak to any entity. But the emotional equivalent of true devotion, the joy that comes from an expression of existence so beautiful, you have to think there is a God, music does that for me. Music overwhelms, overjoys, heals. Music is that one friend through all times, good and bad. I just don't keep up nearly as much as I should. 

My status quo

I am blogging because I wanted to resume writing. Just to get out of the rut. But..

I am blogging with subdued enthusiasm. I am going through a very low phase in my life right now. Admittedly not the lowest phase. That was when my father died. That kind of grief leaves you dry, void of anything to say. This one is a more aware low. I have battled health issues, terrible, life altering ones for close to 3 years now. How life altering? Not the cancer kind, that make you look back on life and find some point to all of it, though at times it felt like that. Not the kind that make you take stock of your existence once and where you stand with your family, once and for all.
The kind that make you pause in life. Make you review what really matters to you and whether everything you are screwing yourself over is even worth it. If every day of your life's energy is spent trying not to feel worse from your illness, you have new found appreciation for the good days, few and far in between though they may be.
It wasn't like this always. Everyday, for months in the beginning, after I started on this downward spiral, I walked in a numb stupor, crying at the slightest provocation at the unfairness of it. Why me? Why now? I haven't abused my body. Why are the smokers, the drug abusers, the junkies spared while I'm made to go through hell. I am young(ish). I was angry. dejected. Even now, there are days when I can barely muster the will to leave bed.

Then there are emotional lows you hit. A rough phase in a relationship. Or the end or one. Sometimes you don't know where you stand with one. Others simply drift apart.

Moving continents as I did in lure of a better life has its cost. (It reduces your loved ones to a voice at the end of the phone or messages on whatsapp). And I will not say I don't know what this better life I was after to  is. There are tangible things that I am thankful for. The overall degree of fairness in mundane aspects of life. The water, the electricity, the safety, better early education for my little one, better workplace, the value of your earnings. Its easy to forget all this when grief overcomes you. Its easy to sway from agnosticism to atheism fairly quickly so that you have something to pin all your life's failings to.

But what my illness and my first stint with hideous grief before this have taught me is that the dearest cost I pay for all this is my health. I have. Already. Irrevocably. My only effort now is to try to stop myself from making it worse. An effort I do fail at on many days. Some days however, I'm actually good to myself. I've stopped taking my body, my mind and the weird tango they are engaged in together for granted. I've been selfish, and I am alluding to a virtue when I say this. Over the last year I have tried, in baby steps to be good to me.

I've traveled, a new continent, a gorgeous land, all by myself (with a dear dear friend, so I still say by myself, because hers wasn't a jarring presence in this idyllic tryst but a beautiful one that made the travel a thousandfold better)

I've started exercising for positivity more than anything else. I suffer from severe anxiety attacks, and the beauty of exercise is the visible balance of hormones that  calms me in a way I never new possible

I have a new found appreciation for the healing power of food. I have suffered food allergies and had to go on severely restrictive diets. In the months when my body was most ravaged, good food gave me the strength to battle it. I try not to abuse it now. I still cheat some days. But mostly, I think of its effect on my body before putting it in my mouth. My best discoveries: Kefir, Kombucha and Coconut milk

I stopped living by the perception game to a large degree. In an effort not to alienate people and have some form of a social life or just to avoid being vilified, I realize I sometimes lied to myself about who I truly am. Youth is the peak period for this fallacy. But what I have come to realize is that while the lie might earn me more acquaintances or the approval of those in my life I don't truly care about, I would be making the one I care about most unhappy - me. So I've tried to shed these trappings as much as I can. Its made me more authentic. More weird too admittedly, more uninteresting. But this me makes me happy. I can focus on things I like to do. Stuff I want to say. Without fear of reprimand. Without fear of losing. So it also draws to me those handful who are truly like me or vice versa. As I'm growing old, I have new found appreciation for my family, full of eccentricities. My siblings and my mother are just me put in other life's scenarios. So if I tell them the situation I am in, I can be assured that they'd guess how I reacted fairly accurately. The couple of friends who know the rut I am in. The oddballs. That's it. That's my entire contact space.

Mostly, I acknowledge my habit of being taken down completely by what I think are life's failings toward me. I am aware of the bitterness that engulfs me. I tell myself consciously that I am doing that thing again. And my body will react. And then I stop fighting it. I try to dissociate from the funeral procession that my mind turns into and ask of myself to let it be, to remember the transience of everything in life and that, if I just let it be, if I do nothing, if I just mostly tide through the day, tomorrow will be OK. And OK is good enough.

Harrassment meted out to my family at the hands of GoIbibo - Jet Airways

I wish to bring to your immediate attention the shocking incident that took place with my mother today and the Bangalore International Airport. She was due to fly today from Bangalore to Sydney on Jet Airways flight(s): 9W414, 9W10, 9W4006 respectively. This booking was made on the 23rd October through the goibibo website. Attached are the details of the ticket. On reaching there yesterday well within time for the ticket, when the counter opened we were told that the passenger details were not present with Jet Airways and that they could not board my mother without a clearance from GoIbibo. This was at 4:30 in the morning for a flight that was due to fly at 5:40. We started frantically calling GoIbibos "24X7" customer care and no one picked a call for more than 35 mins. This is the first red flag on their part. What the hell was that really? Afterwards someone answered and instead of giving a resolution, the person who answered just started passing the buck around and finally said there is nothing he could do till his supervisor arrived at 9:00 a.m. This in itself is shocking as you are saying that no customer is allowed to have emergencies in his booking before their designated hour of 9 o clock. For an hour we went about calling GoIbibo authorities and Jet airways staff but other than passing the buck around, no one came up with any resolution and my mother had to miss a flight on which it was very critical that she be there, as I am due to have a baby any time now. We dont care which of of them messed this up but somebody did, and we are suffering for no reason whatsoever, monetarily, emotionally, time wise. We have spoken to GoIbibo authorities, Jet Airways authorities - here I would like to tell you we have spoken to Athanasius D Souza and Priya Biswas. And Priya Biswas played our time and spoke like we were fools, the level of bulshit she gave us. It is indeed shocking how you take the life and death situations of customers and make light of it. We were told by Jet that Qantas has "exchanged" this entire ticket for something else, we dont know what the hell does that mean? On whose behest did Qantas change it? And for what purpose? And exchange means there is an alternative, we didnt recieve any! We werent informed of any alternative! As far as Qantas goes, I didnt book my flight with them, I booked it with Jet Airways through GoIbiBo and these two answer for it. Qantas is refusing to even entertain my calls and rightfully so, I paid Jet/GoIbibo, not Qantas. They dont even have a record of the ticket number that Jet gave me. My money has been swindled in broad daylight by two companies that are registered legally in India. This is utter and complete abuse on the part of both parties involved. The whole day has passedby and all I have seen is false assurances that havent come through as yet. Meanwhile my mother who is diabetic and unwell has suffered through the ordeal and I have spent endless hours in calls and emails through out the day when I am supposed to get rest as I am pregnant. The mental harassment they have put us through and the apathy they showed reeks in this entire episode with not a single apology being issued by either parties. After relentless pursuit over the course of the entire day where Jet Airways didnt own up even once, we got a ticket for today. The latest update is that the apathy continues on the part of Jet Airways. Even after their supposed tie up with Qantas, the passenger is left stranded at the airport with no help, painful luggage changes and no assist after being promised assistance. And in an age where the airline goes out of the way to make the passenger comfortable, Jet is doing the exact opposite, they have actually asked the passenger to pick up the luggage and transfer it to the next flight on their own. We are left on tenterhooks till my mother is lands here in Sydney because of the shocking way in which Jet treats its customers. I wish to bring this to the notice of anyone who flies, dont fly Jet internationally wherever they partner with another airline, they essentially wash their hands off you after taking your money and ruining everything for you.

I wish...
Like any journey, life also came with Emergency Exits complete with parachutes or lifejackets, more so becasue its everything
That peoples thoughts were audible and words muted, so that the whole exersice of speech wasnt such a wasted effort
That happiness was an investment one could make, by postponing too much of it at present so that it could be encashed when we hit rock bottom
That this whole notion of someone up there wasnt such a big question mark, we ought to know either way, life is fucked up with too many unknowns as it is
That it wasnt down that the birds fell when they died because something so beautiful turns into carcass, wish it just got sucked into the orbit and didnt remind us how two faced we were
That three leaved cloves, eyelashes and shooting stars were just wishes that by some magic came true, there is so much to wish and so little granted anyway
That pain was controllable, that it went to a point and stopped like everything else in life does
That I am granted a day where I am granted things before making a wish..

I read an interesting article today, which said that most heart attacks world over are caused to people due to suffering idiots! It’s true, as per the article – if you have a particularly distressing conversation or confrontation with an idiot who screws up, chances are, you would be increasing your heart risk. The study, conducted by the medical college at University of Colorado (citation needed, the article was in print, so very sorry, don’t know the source) says that 83% of their study sample of 1500 people suffered from strokes within 48 hours of having a lousy experience with a person with less mental capacity from work/social circles etc. I don’t quite know what to make out of this news. I am often told that I have very little tolerance for people who aren’t my kind or those who share a point of view different from mine. I say bullshit. In what broader perspectives should I endure idiots..picture this:
A call to the Vodafone call centre after by phone was barred for the umpteenth time:
Me, sounding thoroughly harassed “Hello, my outgoing has been barred again, I need it corrected immediately. I have to make an urgent call”
The call centre executive “We are very sorry for the inconvenience ma’am, for security reasons, can you give us your number and name”
Me, irritated “Since you have made me dial my number some 10 times before reaching you through that stupid IVR, cant you figure that out?”
She, again in the irritatingly soft tone “Still ma’am, for security reasons you have to give your number again”
Pissed now “Fine 9*********, *****”
She “And now, can you tell us your mothers maiden name ma’am, for security reasons?”
Counting to 3, I reply “*****”
“And your rental postpaid plan ma’am?”
Me “Look, are you going to come to the point?”
She: “Last question ma’am”
Me: “So-so rental scheme”
She “Thank you for the details ma’am. Ma’am, we are very sorry for the inconvenience faced by you ma’am. For the solution to the problem, we suggest you visit the nearest Care Centre and they will be able to assist you”
Me, thoroughly confused now “Wait, so you are telling me you won’t be doing a thing about this problem”
She “Ma’am, to find the solution, you will have to visit the nearest care centre”
Me, totally losing it now “So, why did you ask me all those stupid questions?”
She: “Ma’am, that is for security reasons”
Me: “What kind of security, you didn’t tell me anything?”
She, confused I think, pausing “Ma’am, we have to confirm the identity for security..”
I hung up…

Homer discovered!

I know Greek mythology is colossaly famous but no one really knows why. I mean, we have heard the words Iliad, Odyssey, Ulyssus, Homer being thrown around but I didnt really know who or what the hell these were till sometime back.
I watched the movie Troy recently (this is quite shocking but frankly it is the truth, I am that outdated) and I was very intrigued by the characters of Hector, Achilles and Breseis. Obsessed as I am with details, I began reading extensively through the trivia and pretty soon was compelled to start on a full translation of Homer's Iliad (Illius in Greek) and have started now on Odyssey. To say that thay are compelling reads is quite an understatement. They are poignantly breathtaking. And to think that it is volumes of poetic prose. God is really in the details, and if so that is the word for these amazing volumes, every character, every nuance, every emotion has been given its due space in the pages. I've been told that people do their doctoral thesis on parts of Hum 1 and Hum 2. Phew!
My personal favorite characters: Ulyssus and Hector. Yeah yeah, its not Achilles - There is some pattern to the people I like, for instance in Mahabharata my favorite characters are not the usual heroes but Karna. Its something like that. There is something heroic about standing by your convictions and fighting to death for them even if they are not the convictions the world lives by. As also, there is this unconditional respect I have for the mad genius kind of characters. So, till I discover another splendid read, its Homer all the way...

This blog is for all those friends of mine who touched my life, unknown to them and have a lot to do with what I am today... P.S: Even though I seldom say it (maybe never, in some cases) I love you guys..

I'd like to tell you about this girl who is a complete mess. She thinks she hates the world and how badly it sucks, but when she misses it she realizes it - she loves it. She thinks to be emotional is to be vulnerable and so hates herself for it. She seldom calls people, is a pathological anti social. To her bliss is her bed, coffee and a novel. Tell her she has to slog her butt off and she wont blink an eyelid, she will revel it. But tell her she has to meet a dozen people over the weekend and it is her worst nightmare come true. She doesnt remember birthdays, anniversary's, even now many nieces and nephews she has! But ask her to rattle off history or trivia she loves, and she can go on for hours. She frets over her weight, her height, her unfeminity, and quickly forgets she has to do something about it. Memories are her fetish. But she wont tell you how often she remembers you. She wont tell you she misses those days, when things were uncomplicated, when life was just beginning and we werent running, running like there is no tomorrow. She likes the run, but she loved that stillness too. Too fiery, too tart, too closed to let her guard down, misandrist sometimes, feminist sometimes..indivisualist always..confused mostly..wants a son like Calvin, commitment phobic, wants to adopt a child. Agnost..atheist..theist..self involved, procrastrinator....shopaholic..bundle of extremes..ultimate dream to publish a novel..
But above all, what these 25 years have made her realize is that she loves it when she makes a difference,she loves her friends, she cries when they cry, she cries when they are happy, is fiercely protective of them, will do anything for them, and they mean they world to her.. Yours truly.. Love you guys