Happy 74-th Birthday dearest Acca! I cannot listen to a song without thinking of you!
“I do not know who was here before. Now it is all new people. All the people from past are gone”
A dialogue in the song from Hey Ram
The dialogue at minute 1:50 made my heart stand still. Kamalahasan is haunted by sweet memories of the past.
It is still unbelievable for me – the world without my father is still an unreal world for me. 29-th! The date is the dreaded date. It is my birth date, it is my parent’s wedding date (we were planning their 50-th anniversary this year) and all are a month apart.
Last week was a bitter sweet anniversary. It was my father’s star birthday that day. I started this blog on that day.
Today is his 74-th birthday as per the Gregorian calendar. 74! This is a birthday I would have loved to talk to him on being a 74 born. We would have joked about it. He would have said something to pull my leg. This has been bothering me for a few days and yesterday a friend verbalised it.
74 born and not a moment without music – either him singing or playing music.
There are small snippets of some early life I remember in flashes. Me waiting on the balcony of a house somewhere in North India either seeing him off or waiting for him to return home on his motorbike. In Thrissur seeing him off at the gate, while having breakfast of Dosa, a crow swoops down and steals my Dosa. Going on bike rides.
Then came the KLV 8388 and Kottayam days. This is where my real active memories of music start though I know we had the tape recorder before. He had the spool recorder and all accompanying gadgets. He had a vinyl player and several vinyls. He had a small microphone using which he would record songs into the spools. This was pre cassette times. He had a Hawaiian guitar and a harmonium. For a short time a music teacher used to come home to teach him music. I still remember the jamkalam or a Dhurrie like throw being laid out for the teacher in the middle of the room and him learning – it was only for a short time though later we did the same when my sister and I started learning music. I would love to ask him whether it was work that stopped those classes or whether it was a transfer to Trivandrum or my grandmother falling ill that caused those classes to stop.
We used to go hunting for Vinyl records. I do not remember how he procured his spools. He had trusted vendors for his electronic gadgets who we used to visit together in his hunt for the perfect player or amplifier or speakers. They talked about the perfect sounds, made sure the stylus was perfect so that his music sounded just as he wanted it and the vinyls did not get scratched. After every transfer, it was a ritual to set up his music systems and to make sure they were all placed in the right places so they would sound good.
It was not just spool player or turntables.
By the time we moved to Tellicherry Binatone had arrived in our life. It was kept in my parent’s bedroom upstairs. We listened to Bhupinder on cassette. I had that cassette till the last move in Germany. I hope it is still here somewhere. Most cassettes were Yesudas ones (as were the spools) or were old Hindi songs. He played his Hawaiian guitar in that bedroom. I remember one evening while he played, it was a stormy night. We sat on the bed and heard the seas 5 kms away while he played and sang.
It was not just with in house equipment. He made sure that even the music systems in the car were top notch ones and we had the best road trips listening to our favourite songs
The Binatone was with us for another decade and more. Between the transfer from Trivandrum to Tiruvalla to Chennai, somewhere the spool player was lost. Perhaps the spool player was kept away in the loft of our house in Trivandrum together with the spools and the other things we did not have space to carry with us. Everything kept in the loft disappeared over the lifetime of several tenants. Binatone stayed with us until my parents moved to own apartment in Chennai before leaving for US. I am sure he would have loved to carry everything to US with him – but a cross continental move of the whole family resulted in selecting only two suitcases of things for all of us. The music stayed. He managed a way to take at least the cassettes.
After they moved to US, he built up all the musical infrastructure again and he picked up his passion in music even stronger than I remember from my childhood. His passion as I remember from childhood of finding the perfect equipment resurfaced. I am happy that he got last two years when he could pursue his passion even more than ever in the past. It left us with loads of memories and his voice recorded.
Yesterday, the song I shared at the beginning above popped up on one of my social media. Someone was commemorating his birthday and shared the song. It was one sung and played by Shwetha Mohan. I found it easier to listen to this one. There was no dialogue that makes the feelings stand in your face that the past is gone.
There was always music in our life.
Life of P(ay)i 