Rhythm and the Demented past

Isn't it wierd how some songs are so weaved in with memories of certain people and places that however many years pass they continue to evoke a strange sense of nostalgic teary-eyedness? I was walking up the Runyan Canyon and thinking of all such songs...

Just like a woman has that effect on me. It instantly transports me to Jan 3rd, 1997, a dark sweaty room in a narrow lane of Old Delhi, the smoke, the chocolate pastries and the half-dead boom box on a third-hand side table. The days when relationships were "just for kicks" and mostly to impress friends, days when all we did was lounge on the dusty auditorium floor, feeling adequately creative with our "theatre of the absurd"- Brenton, Pinter & Ionesco rolled into amateur joints..

Kurt Cobain groans Plateau (eeps how do u people do the fancy hyperlink business? Let me give it a shot here) and I am back in the cold patio outside the hotel in Nainital, sometime in early 1990s. This was the time when P and I had just been introduced to Nirvana (ofcourse the only one we had dared to pick up was the "Unplugged" version that even a Backstreet Boys lover must have access to!) and we were celebrating our Rock-ed ness by listening to the same old cassette every morning till it drove even us crazy! Totally unrelated to the current topic but have you noticed how women who have these gender bender pretensions are more likely to be killing themselves with nicotine and chain caffeine consumption? I wonder why we are so silly - I mean, in any case there are so few of us who are semi-sane. Why do we have to ensure that we die faster than the non smoking non alcoholic doe-eyed ones? BAD STRATEGY!

A totally different genre of music here so don't be surprised. I was singing it to the boy yesterday and he panicked - it is a bit too haunting I have to confess. Can't seem to find a link but I could sing it for you :)
Raat ne kya kya khwaab dikhaye
Rang bhare sau jaal bichhaye
Aakhe khuli to sapne toote
Reh gaye gum ke kaale saaye
(roughly translated as "the night brings with it dreams and webs of desires. You wake up and all that's left are the shadows of sorrow" JEEEEZZZ how depressing is that!)
The surest sign that Baba is depressed is when he starts humming this song. It's like a smoke alarm - time to get your daughterly charms in action or this song spells potential disaster! Reminds me of the million vacation nights in some lonely hill station dak bungalow where all we could do to entertain each other was play antakshari (don't worry that game involved lot more cheerful songs as well or we would have all killed ourselves by now!) Add to this another of Baba's favorite "mood indicator" songs "Chandan ka palna, resham ki doli" and the combo can be a suicide bomb squad...

Then there were the various stages in my life when I got hooked on to some kind of music - but only for a week, then phoosh the band was totally forgotten. Velvet Underground's "Jesus" I don't know what attracted me to them for that one week in Mcleodganj where ALL we would hear is
Jesus Jesus Help me find my proper place
Help me in my weakness
Cos I am falling out of grace...

Adding to the eclectic mix - Sting's Field of Gold and some senti pede's Lady in Red reminds me of SPV days when I was adamently chasing a guy who gave me no bhaav! The lyrics of Sting's harmless song were enough to set me off on some imaginary love-land where Mr Brown Eyes (or whatevr cheesy name I had given to the guy) was running around with me in corn (?) fields. Heh heh heh!!

Las vegas has another assortment of songs attached to it. None of these songs would have originally qualified as "my kind of music" but so much changed in february 2005, that music lost and found was hardly worth lamenting about! The beats of Everything but the Girl's Mirrorball and George Michael's Round Here (yaya I would have also said EEYU a year back but then this song kinda grows on you esp when it's played for 10 hours in the car by the guy you are trying to hit on) bring back flashes of Paris Paris and Ballagio's fountains, the midnight coffee conversation in the cafe in Venice Venice...and since I am a flighty writer I have to take this diversion and ask "WHY THE HELL ARE ALL THE HOTEL NAMES IN LAS VEGAS TWIN WORDS? ARE PEOPLE SO DRUNK THAT THEY CAN'T GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME SO INTEAD OF CALLING A HOTEL VENICE THEY CALL IT VENICE VENICE??" AIN?? Oh oops, I just checked online - it seems the hotel names are actually NOT double words (except for NY NY).. I wonder why I thought they were.. Must have been the Paris Paris Margarita :)