Music - nectar for the soul

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” 
― Bob Marley

Music to me is Kishore Kumar's voice when he is impish in "Ek ladki bheegi bhaagi si", or heartbroken in "Badi sooni sooni hai"; it is devotion when Mohd. Rafi sings "Aye duniya ke rakhwale"; philosophical when Mukesh sings "Zindagi kaisi hai paheli"...the twang of Jimi Hendrix's guitar, the moonwalk of Michael Jackson's "Beat it", the precision of the Mamas and the Papas melodies, the soaring voice of Whitney Houston, the mesmerizing lilt in Yo-Yo-Ma's cello, the drama of Mozart, and clean meticulous compositions of Beethoven and Strauss.

What would this world be if there were no music in it? How else would we be able disengage from our cares and tensions? What would happen to our sanity if there were no music to keep us calm in a traffic jam? How would we be able to tune out the cacophony that surrounds us, courtesy a developing city?

I envy people who can sing...out loud in tune in public with confidence. There is something heaven-like in a sweet melodious voice...Lata Mangeshkar in the 50's and 60's, Shreya Ghoshal in the present times, Chitra, Yesudas and those many other greats.

I grew up with Carnatic classical music playing in our home...Dr. M. Balamurali Krishna, G. N. Balasubramanium, Lalgudi Jayaraman, the Sikkil sisters, K. V. Narayanaswamy...to name a few luminaries. In my teens, with the advent of MTV, the Western world made its appearance in our drawing rooms. I remember watching with awe...and varying degrees of crushes as ABBA, Bruce Springsteen, Wham, Prince, Bryan Adams etc gyrated, strutted, and belted out their best. And then there were the ladies...Madonna, Pat Benatar, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston...with their big hair and clunky bracelets, and outlandish clothes that they alone could turn into chic must-have clothes.

Soon pop, rock, country music vied for playing time with the classicists, and old Hindi film songs. "Generation gap", I muttered when my father deplored my taste in music, calling it "loud and nothing to do with melody". But we wanted to be cool and so we listened to the latest that the West had to offer.

Life has come full circle for a friend of mine who cannot 'get' the musicians these days...and so, much to the horror of her teenage daughter, she does not differentiate between Justin Timberlake (hot!) and Justin Bieber (not!), or cannot understand groups like Maroon5, Coldplay etc. Pitbull (to her) is a breed of dog and Lady Gaga a knighted Dame of the British Empire...need I say more?

I have realized that the older I get I am returning to the music of my teens. Yes I do like the songs of today, and can even enjoy a "Badtameez Dil" as much "Yeh shaam kuch ajeeb thi"...but if you ask me who my favourite singer is...it is beyond doubt Kishore Kumar for his sheer range of music, his voice, his eccentricity.

But at the end of the day it is music alone that is the winner, and we mortals simply blessed to be able to hear so many different sounds and appreciate the vastness of this divine ocean.

Of the need for pseudonyms

I am reading "The Cuckoo's Calling", a book authored by Robert Galbraith. A few days ago it was revealed that Robert Galbraith was actually a pseudonym of the celebrated J. K. Rowling, who is of course known the world over for her 'Harry Potter' series.

The question on most minds would be why Ms. Rowling wrote a book using a pseudonym. Wouldn't it be far more satisfying to write under her own name?

The answer lies in the way her first book (after the Harry Potter ones) 'Casual Vacancy' was received by critics and fans all around. She was slammed for writing adult content; some found her characters 'too dark' after Harry and company; some lauded her on her courage to do a complete 360⁰ in terms of her writing style.

As she herself is supposed to have said "I was yearning to go back to the beginning of a writing career in this new genre, to work without hype or expectation". “It was a fantastic experience and I only wish it could have gone on a little longer.”

Be that as it may...my quandary is this...will I enjoy this book more because I now know it is written by Rowling, a woman I admire deeply for her fantastic imagination? How would I have felt about about it had the pseudonym secret not been made public?

Sales of 'The Cuckoo's Calling' which were sluggish initially have definitely now skyrocketed with the author's true identity being made public. Ms. Rowling too has successfully won her lawsuit against the law firm that 'outed' her, donating the damages to charity.

Women like Mary Anne Evans (George Eliot), Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (the Bronte sisters) in the 19th century did use pseudonyms because they have wanted their work to be taken seriously. It took the success of their works for these authoresses to declare themselves as creators of such seminal works.

Ms. Rowling might have looked forward to basking in the success of her latest work, albeit in literary disguise...but for fickle tongues.

The book, in my humble opinion, promises to be a good whodunit and I will try to appreciate it for just that...and try not to be influenced by the knowledge of Ms. Rowling's awesome intelligence at work.

A slice of heaven in Connaught Place

This one for all those who grew up in Delhi in the 70's and 80's.

We did not have too many places to go to as kids, but Connaught Place or 'CP ' was definitely one of them. There were also not the plethora of foreign-branded shops that one sees nowadays. There were a few saree shops like Kalpana and Uttam's, iconic restaurants like 'United Coffee House', 'The Host'...and of course 'Wenger's'.

Wenger's was not a restaurant...but a bakery...sweet and simple. An the pastries, patties, sweet buns and cakes were simply mouthwatering. One could also buy bread..the kind that gets you salivating just by looking at it...soft, fresh, with that just-out-of-the-oven warmth. Oh, the different kinds of bread...for people who had only read of Italian bread or garlic bread or bruschetta...this was gourmet heaven. Whenever my father bought me one of their treats....let me just say it was an 'ohhh' moment!

With the passing of time and the limitless renovations that CP has gone through, not to mention the onslaught of the chain stores and foreign-style cafes, I had imagined that Wenger's must have bowed out gracefully.

So you can imagine my surprise when I saw it after 30-odd years...it still looked the same...the same board displaying the name proudly...and inside...sweet Heaven, it smelled the same too. And wonder of wonders, the prices are extremely reasonable. My mind was in a pastry and patty haze...what do I sample first? So I did what any self-respecting carbo addict would do. I bought patties, and cakes..all that I could respectably carry without seeming to be a glutton...that first time.

I returned again with my friend Betsy..who is as much a foodie as me. We were soon salivating at the thought of so many goodies to be had. And of all the welcome additions this one should rate at the top 5...they have a Wenger's Deli next door...serving salads, paninis, pastas, waffles (please excuse the drool), mousses etc....and all at very reasonable prices.

The staff is extremely helpful and accommodating...we asked for fat free cold coffees (to enable us to eat more of the baked goodies) and they whipped up some really good coffee.

So for all of you who have visited Wenger's as kids and loved it...please take a walk again down memory lane...savour the smells and the tastes of those childhood treats. It is our own little slice of heaven in overcrowded, noisy Connaught Place.

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Millennium City Woes

The trains from smaller towns travel to New Delhi, the capital of the nation, bringing with them on a daily basis an average of 10,000 new people in search of a better life. Airplanes from larger towns and cities do the same. These people make their homes in the Delhi-NCR area. Everything is new, and everyone is hopeful...new living conditions, new neighbours and friends, new colleagues, new markets, and for the children...new schools. So also is the case with the new residents of Gurgaon...the so-called Millennium City.

However, do we all feel the way we did after spending a year here? All of us have our own stories of how the roads are unusable because of the craters...some that can sink or certainly wreck a vehicle, not to mention claim lives...or how the traffic lights stop working in the blink of an eye because of which the long lovely evening you thought you'd spend with loved ones is instead spent honking, cursing, sweating in a traffic jam. Then there are the housewives who can regale you with their problems with the maids...because either they have one or they don't.

The funny thing about the state of the roads here is that Gurgaon doesn't get as much rain as say, Kerala or Chennai, even Mumbai. And yet we can easily claim the notoriety of being the only metropolitan city where these horrible conditions continue to exist. Will having a solid public transport system alleviate the situation? The absence of one does in fact raise questions.

When you have drivers blatantly jumping red lights (with small children as passengers), cows calmly sitting in the middle of roads ruminating (on life in the Millennium City?), people scrambling to cross over-populated roads...you wonder if this is progress or arrogance.

We were taught that 'money can't buy happiness' but apparently there is an addendum to this quote: 'Whoever said that money can't buy happiness doesn't know where to shop'. This seems to be the case with the cash-crazy citizens of this city. The mall culture has taken over and no child worth his or her salt would willingly go to a museum or a library...both of which are conspicuous by their absence.

A couple of friends who have recently moved here said to me that within one week of their coming to Gurgaon, they gave their husbands an ultimatum...'I'm giving you a year to get a job anywhere else'. According to them this is such a 'fake city' and they feel like they can never fit in. They are worried that their children will imbibe this culture and turn into caricatures.

So what are we claiming here? What are we offering to the millions who live here and the many thousands who hope to come here? Mumbai at least offers the dream of Bollywood...I don't think the Haryanvi film industry even exists...does it?

Parenting...its as easy as you choose it to be

Yesterday I saw a movie called "The Odd Life of Timothy Green". It is about a childless couple who have been told that they are unable to conceive. Devastated by this news, they write, on small sheets of paper, the qualities they would like their child (if they could have one) to have, put the papers in a box and bury the box in their garden. That night after a storm (that hits only their garden!) they discover that a boy has 'come to them' as their son. Strangely, he has leaves on his legs that cannot be removed. He demonstrates through the course of the film all those qualities that they had written on the pieces of paper. But unknown to them, each time he demonstrates a quality, a leaf on his leg dries up and falls off. When all the leaves fall off, he disappears, just as strangely as he appeared.

While the concept of the story is, well, odd... it got me thinking. When we become parents we all have visions of what qualities our child might possess. That the child is born with a personality of its own is a fact we all choose to forget most of the time.

What we also forget is that the child is an individual and therefore possesses likes and dislikes, opinions, and even an attitude. As parents we are so anxious to 'control' the child and make him or her walk on a path of our choosing that we forget to give him or her the space they need to grow and develop into a full rounded adult.

When my friends and I discuss our kids we all agree that our lives were so very different ('deprived' is how we put it)...there were no gadgets or even so many books to distract us, neither did we have so many opportunities to explore and find our real; talents...we are all products of our parents' ideas, whims and fancies. I am not really complaining...under the circumstances of those times they did the best they could.

I read about parents micro-managing their children's lives...read reports in newspapers and magazines about mothers and fathers who dictate their children's tastes, education and career choices, and I feel sorry for the child who has to squelch his or her ideas and dreams and fall in with their parents' wishes.

I think we all agree that we want what is best for our child. It is the manner in which we set out to achieve it that makes the difference between a successful child and child who is successful and happy. Spending time with your children, talking to them, and understanding their fears, their desires, and their opinions makes you more accessible to them when they have a genuine problem. If you go with one of their ideas, it doesn't make you any less a parent, but your child feels a certain confidence in approaching you and talking things out with you...and vice versa.

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