You name it

Music is human creation and yet it transcends all the boundaries of time, tide, cast, creed and religion etc.

I do not even remember since when I started listening to music or even started understanding it and how I developed a liking for it. It has almost become a ritual like breathing to me. We do not remember or rather have to remember that we have to breath, it just happens, isn't it? Just like that I am always singing songs and take every chance to listen to them. They fill me with joy and I begin dancing to the tunes and imagine all the dance steps I would have done, in case I was the choreographer. It transforms all the day's stress into a bearable journey of words, tunes, rhythms, voices etc. What a joy is it to just surf through the different FM channels that nowadays only play Kannada songs, you suddenly find your favorite song playing on one of those channels and you just forget the world around you.

It happened to me just yesterday. I was so bugged up of sitting in the bus while returning home, that I decided to try my luck with the FM channels. And there on FM rainbow channel, there was one of my favorite song, "dooba dooba rahta hun, aankhon main teri" by the famous group Silk route and I just closed my eyes and started humming and forgot the whole day's terrible life in the office. That song is picturised below the water with the troupe playing in water and it was one of the oldest Hindi pop songs when the pop revolution was just beginning in the late 90's. I mostly love string instruments and the guitar played in it is just out of the world. I fancy all the stringed instruments and want to learn at least one stringed instrument in my life. The sitar is very integral part of the Hindustani classical music and I used to play it when I was learning classical vocal. Concentrating on singing and also playing all the 4 strings correctly with only 2 fingers took some time to master, but then it was very easy. I wished I had concentrated more on singing that time, it would have been a far better satisfying and fulfilling bait than this rat race which I am running, do not even know where it is taking me. But, there are many disillusioned people like me in the vicinity, so I need not feel very bad about it.

There are music lovers like me, music clubs, music meets etc. where people meet regularly and discuss their favorites and other things. I am in search of such a club in Bangalore where I can talk and learn about this wonderful creation called music. Yes, so I was talking of few songs which just uplift you from the present and take you to back to the memories of yesteryears. On such song is from the movie Aandhi, "tere bina zindagi se shikva to nahi, tere bina zindagi bhi lekin zindagi to nahi". What must have the great Gulzar have thought while penning this song? How did R D Burman weave it such a haunting tune? How did the immortal Kishore Kumar make it so popular that even after almost 30 years, people of my age still listen to it? There is hardly any music lover who would not know the trio of R D Burman, GUlzar and Kishore Kumar. Other song which I remember is from the movie Umrao Jaan, sung by the ever young Asha Bhonsle. What an attitude and grace while singing it and I can imagine no one else than the gorgeous Rekha in that song as Umrao Jaan. Aishwarya is no where near to her.

I do not why I like the song "ek hasina thi" from the old movie Karz, in fact all songs from that movie were super duper hits and the movie was also a huge success at the box office. Rishi Kapoor is one such actor who does his lip sync well and Kishore Kumar's voice suits him perfectly. When he is on screen, it feels as if he is singing in reality. How can one forget the memorable "dard-e-dil, dard-e jigar" from that movie sung by Mohd Rafi? That was the only song sung by him in that movie and it was a show stealer. Another Rishi Kapoor song, "tu tu hai wahi, dil ne jise apna kahan", from the movie yeh vaada raha of which a horrible remix was done and the picturisation was done on 3 girls who were looking like call-girls seeking customers on phone. It was just pathetic. The very nature, sentiment of the original song is destroyed in such a re-mixing and I am not a very keen advocate of re-mixes, in fact I wish the original songs should be kept in the original beats and tunes.

There are certain memories of people attached to some songs. If you seen some movie with your best friend and you like some song of that movie, every time that song plays, that friend of your's comes to your mind and all the fun you had with that friend surfaces. You smile to yourself and remember that friend for that period of time. I saw the movie “Hum Tum “with a very good friend of mine and now we are no longer together. The songs in that movie remind me of him every time I listen to them and I wish him all the very best in his life. I watched the movies "Chak de" and "Jaane tu ya jaane na" with two of my most craziest and loved friends, Sudhir and Koustubh. Chak de was like a big match for everybody in the theater and we were no less. We were cheering, shouting India and Kabir Khan and his girls as if the match is real. The title song has a special place in my heart for it was the best time I have ever had while watching a movie. The second movie was a good time-pass and the songs were picturised of gang of college friends and I loved every bit of it. Another instance is of another friend who had come down from the US and we had seen this movie, “Jab we met” and that song “tumse hi” is very close to my heart.

There was a time when I was in Germany for some months and the songs I listened there for the first time evoke different emotions in me. The song "I am a Dreamer" by Ozzy Osbourne became my favorite during that time. It is picturized taking winter as the theme and snowfall is shown with all children playing and running around. It was winter in Germany too and that made a very good association with my mood over there. That reminds me from children, how can I ever forget the "lakdi ki kaathi, kaathi pe ghoda" from the movie Masoom? Those 3 kiddos are just awesome and they have sung them with such fun and excitement that I am sure they must have had a ball of time while actually doing it. It was really very cute. I like the "tujhse naraaz nahi zindagi" from that movie. Again Gulzar and R D Burman and the nightingale of Indian music, Lata Mangeshkar gave an out-of-the world rendition. Another song which made its place in my heart is Shaan’s “Tanha dil, tanha safar”. I used to feel a bit low in the initial days of my stay in Germany and it used to remind me of my buddies who were so far from me. Internet was not so very common eight years ago in every household and so we had to write letters to each other or give missed calls to the people in India at a fixed time to let them know that I miss them so much.

I wonder, what would have been life without sound, music? How would I have survived? How would I have appreciated these wonderful pieces of magic? I had heard that music requires no language. All this while I was listening to Marathi songs, because it is my mother-tongue, Hindi because it is our national language, German, because I have learnt that language and it is almost my second mother tongue now, English, because that was my medium of instruction in school and college. Only after I came to Bangalore, the above said sentence that music knows no language held good in my case. The wonderful songs from the movie "mungaru malaye" are always in my mind and I know the song "Anisuthide yaako indu" by-heart! And one more song which I have become fan of lately is the "ni nindale ni nindale" song of which I do not understand a word, but yet enjoy it to the fullest.

We form images and associations, maps etc with the words we hear and that happens when we listen to music of other languages also, I guess. We tend to just get wrapped in the pure thought and sentiment of that tune. I will not say we get engrossed in the meaning, because not every time, we understand it. I know someone whose mother-tongue is Oriya, but he liked Tamil songs too. So, it is not essentially the meaning of it which attracts us to it. It may be the mood, the time, the tune, the voice which attracts it to us.

Music has fostered so many relations world wide. People from different corners of world have come together for a cause and the medium to show their genuine concern is many times, Music! I do not know what people think of Michael Jackson, but I just love his song "Heal the world" and I think it is one of the best songs of all times, which advocate the cause of stopping child abuse, child labor so that this world is a better place for the children of tomorrow as they are going to be the ones who are going to shape the world. There are many such songs which are on my list of all time favorites. "Love will never die" is one such song by the group MLTR, which means that no matter what, love will always stand and will never lie, no matter where the people will be.

The song from the movie "Border", "bhagat singh" have a different flavor and fervor and they infuse feelings of patriotism in us, which has to be reminded to us many a times nowadays. Who thinks of the motherland anyways? Who is concerned what our fore-fathers underwent in the freedom struggles? Everybody is just concerned about self. One just song which I am sure must be creating nostalgia in the minds of people who are away from their motherland, families, friends is the song from the movie "Swades", "ye jo des hai tera, swades hai tera". Even if I am in Bangalore, very much in India, but away from my parents, I become very sad and think of running back to my mom's embrace.

Thus, music forms a very important component of my daily diet. I can't survive without it and that is a breather to me amidst this sometimes chaotic life. It helps me to come back to normal and attain the necessary balance to be able to survive in this competitive life.How can I ever thank the one who invented or discovered music?