Skip to main content

Formed Memories

There is something about Handel's Harp Concerto in B flat that I can't get enough of it. I have always loved the sound of the harp, but that's not what this is about. Memories of my childhood home, listening to Rabindrasangeet on vinyl records come rushing even as the first movement begins.

I can't trace it back to a particular song but given the influence of western classical music on Tagore, it is entirely possible he composed something inspired by this piece of music. These are the tenuous strands of memory that slip out of one's reach like so many skeins of silk.

Yet sometimes, memories for the future are subconsciously made. One of my very favorite songs of all time, Rukh Jaana Nahin by Kishore Kumar turned even more so after my marriage. I played it countless times on the keyboard R gifted me on my first birthday as his wife.

So many years and upheavals later, that song has turned into my personal anthem - every word profoundly meaningful. When I first heard it, destiny must have turned on receptors unawares knowing that I would one day derive much more than musical pleasure from it. Memories like these etch marks that you wish would dissolve with time but they don't - they are meant to be indelible.
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
I DIDN'T READ THIS CAUSE I KNEW IT WOULD BE GOOD ANYWAY. SO COMMENT ME ON MY STORY CAUSE I GAVE YOU ONE TO. IT IS CALLED OREGON TRAIL JOURNAL.
YOUR PAL.
9:35 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
5 comments
Read more

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more