Music and memories

Hello everyone,

Last weekend was the school reunion weekend. Though I had a good time I spent a lot of Sunday crying and trying to figure out what I was feeling. Monday somehow was upbeat. I sent a parody of this song as a voice note to M.

Before I get into the details of what M said, I want to write about this song. I used to listen it as a child with no clue of what the lyrics meant. On googling, I found this piece in the New Indian Express that said:

“According to the myth, Mynakam is a small mountain. Once Indra decided to punish the mountains and little Mynakam trembled with fear. She pleaded with Vayu to help her. Powerful Vayu moved her towards the ocean and Varuna hid her in the deep blue sea. So the little mountain lay under the water for years, hiding all her desires within her.

This was the allusion that occurred to Bichu Thirumala when director I V Sasi described the story of ‘Thrishna’. Bichu at that point was penning the lyrics for the movie. The heroine hides all her desires in her heart which is like a sea.”

This resonated with me so much but so does the parody, it is about an embakkam (burp) that rises from the kodal (intestine). It is the background story of my life.

Anyway, M replied with a you-sing-so-well and for some strange reason I thought of my second grade teacher who was the first one who said I sing well. She even sent me to the Indian music teacher so I could be part of the musical programme he was putting up in school. That was probably the only time I was apart of one.

I really enjoy music. I learned Carnatic Classical for a year when I was 25. My teacher an old loving Paati who was very encouraging. The fellow students were all children and I performed with them not feeling odd that I was an adult. Then one day someone grown up and someone I like made fun of my accent and I stopped going to learn music. I think I was trying to sing this song.

Then again in the pandemic, Sruthi agreed to teach me. We decided to sing songs that we like. She brought in Kabir’s Nahiharwa and Yugan yugan hum yogi which I loved. Since Sruthi speaks Tamil and I have always wanted to learn Tamil, we decided on Ilaiyaraaja, we sang Kanmani Ambodu Kadalan and Unnai Vida. Then came, ‘Meri jaan, mujhe jaan na kaho meri jaan,’ and ‘Kaho kya khayal hai?’ and everything else that brought us joy. Things started opening up, she got busy and our classes stopped but I decided to teach myself song lyrics like I did as a child. I still sing everything I fancy and it is easily the best part of my day.

Coming back to M’s message that sent me down memory lane and made me think of good things from school. I must say my brain rarely goes there, it is only telling me school-was-terrible-it-made- you-feel-excluded-hate-it which usually makes me feel angry, sad and disconnected. But this time it reminded me of my second grade teacher and I felt a strong need to talk to her. In senior school I was friends with her daughter and had met her but had never brought this up. Now I felt an urgent need to call her and thank her.

A friend got me her daughter’s number whom I called. I was happy to talk to her but I couldn’t wait to talk to her mum. So I quickly hung up with her and called teacher at 9:30 in the night which I was told was a good time to call. But I’d have to wait another day to finally speak to her.

When we spoke, she was thrilled. She told me how she had moved back to her parents’ house, something she never thought she would do. She said how she didn’t remember saying this to me but how I had carried that encouragement for years from 7 to 42 and had continue to sing and that she felt so good about that. So we talked about life paths and other things.

I told her how I remembered this salwar kameez, something with a host of muted shades of red with mega sleeves that she wore to school in the second grade. She said it was her favourite and she got it stitched at M…. tailor. I hadn’t heard that name in so long, that’s where we had to get our uniforms stitched. She said he had taken a long time but it was so lovely. It was her favourite. She felt happy when she wore it. Then one day she gave it for ironing and the person made a hole in the salwar right at the knee and she was so heart broken. After being heart broken for a while, she stitched a patch there and continued to wear the salwar kameez. I felt so happy to have this window into her life.

I also told her that how once in second grade, she had asked us what we would be like to be for Fancy Dress Competition. I was very sure I wanted to be a duck but my mother didn’t know how to turn my 7 year old body into a duck’s and I had cried a lot. When I mentioned this to my mum, she said she remembers another time I wanted to be a Police Officer for Fancy Dress and she didn’t have the money to turn me into one and how I had cried non-stop then too. I have no memory of police officer but duck I remember very well.

She told me when she came back to Kerala she had never done any religious practices in her life but had come for a pooja and was now tending to a sarpa kaavu (snake grove) in her house. I told her how I am petrified of snakes and anything sinuous and how in my 20s when I wasn’t getting married, my mum went to the astrologer and he said I had sarpa dosham (The dosham caused because the serpent god is angered and that can lead to late or no marriage.). I was sent off to different sarpa kaavus across Kerala and Tamil Nadu to appease the serpent god and remove the dosham. Of course nothing came off that other than a lot of travel and visiting a lot of temples with sarpa kaavus which I was scared of.

We talked about the journeys life took us on and how we have surrendered to some plans life had for us and they were just as good. She talked about teaching and how wonderful it feels to hear from students. I shared about my teaching experiences.

She talked about living in Kerala, a place she never thought she would live in and how peaceful it is. She also talked about how Bombay spoils you and how everything is so accessible and where she now lives, she has to walk from an equivalent of our school to a popular Udupi restaurant to get to an ATM. Her way of measuring felt so special and unique, only someone who knew these places would get it and that felt intimate.

We yapped for more than an hour and then I asked her the important question, “Do you think we can sing together?" She agreed and I get to see her on Zoom next month. This conversation filled me with so much joy and I am leaving you with a song that fills me with joy.

<3
Indu

P.s.: I am doing Cock-a-doodle, a new people powered project to know what holders of a penis talk about their organ, how they please or not their partners, and to discover this complex and complicated relationship that lies at the phallic heart of patriarchy. 

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