Songs & Memories

A friend of mine just forwarded a video of the song “Radha Kaise Na Jale” from the movie ’Lagaan’ and as I was listening to it, I was transported back in time when I had first heard this song. I remember they used to run the trailer of the movie between programs on the Zee Channel and I loved it. It was one of the first movies that I had been really excited about and I remember this because my grandfather had commented on my excitement. Ah, songs and the memories they bring with it. As of today, memories are all I have left of my family members. For each one of them, there are memories associated with certain songs. And I thought, why not write about the various songs that hold significance in my life in the form of memories they evoke, be it about my family members or certain moments in my life.

My father was the OG music aficionado in the family. He had a Philips 2-in-1 music system and he would buy cassette tapes of his favorite albums. Kumar Sanu, Kishore Kumar, Asha Bhosle & Udit Narayan were some of the singers whose music would play at my house. “Ek Ladki ko Dekha” from the movie ‘1942 - A Love Story’ still takes me back to 1995-96 where it played on a loop in our house. My father loved the songs of that movie so much that he bought a second cassette tape when the reel on the first one got stuck. Mornings would usually be adorned with bhajans or Sambalpuri folk songs that I hated at the time. But every now and then, I go on YouTube and listen to “Dalkhai Re” and think about my father. 

While my father was the Hindi movie nut usually, his cassette stack that I discovered several years after his demise introduced me to The Beatles. Yeah, I had a Beatles phase during my teenage years and a close group of friends and I had actually performed (very embarrassingly, I must mention) our very own dance performance to the song “Love Me Do” back in 2006. It was all ‘disco’ and I still know the lyrics to that song by heart. I have never done drugs but I would day-dream extensively as a teenager and ‘Elanor Rigby’ was my companion during my trippy daydreaming sessions. And the song “Yesterday” was my go-to song after heartbreaks in school.

My teenage years were spent with my grandparents and my uncle. My uncle, while a deeply flawed human being, had a very niche choice in music. Having lived a life of austerity himself, he did not have the luxury of his own music system, but he would croon songs by John Denver & ABBA in his croaky voice and that’s how I was introduced to ‘Annie’s Song’ & ‘Mamma Mia’. On the other end of the spectrum, he liked Kishore Kumar and would discuss at length the genius of the legendary singer’s voice. An English major himself, my uncle’s knowledge of classical music was next to zero, but God, that man could talk. I remember having had hours of discussion on songs, singers, and their voice quality.

Classy songs have their memory associations but so do trashy ones. The remixed song “Kaanta Lagaa” was a guilty pleasure while I was growing up. Seeing Shefali Zareewala raise her top to reveal a pierced belly-button to the peppy tunes of the remixed retro song was titillating and led to several night-time fantasies if you know what I mean. Then came the Himesh Reshammiya era. His repetitive songs became all the craze and I loved singing them during the last years of school. Even now, I sometimes go back and watch the videos for “Naam Hai Tera Tera” and “I Love You, Sayonee” just for the memories I associate with the songs. 

Come 2007, I had ventured out from the nest for the first time. I spent a year at Bhubaneswar, trying to find myself. That’s when I remember I had joined a really posh gymnasium there, one frequented by several ladies dressed in tights and some guy they said was an Odia movie star. Muy memories of that gym are peppered with the song “Woh Ajnabee” from the movie ‘The Train” featuring Emran Hashmi and one of those generic faced vampy looking actresses. They used to play the fast-paced song all the time as it had just come out. I hear the song now and I immediately remember the sporty fragrance of that gym. (Remind me to do a bit on smells and memories next!) I would often tune in to FM radio those days and they would also play “Yeh Dooriyan” from the movie “Fool N Final” and I associate it with that time I got kicked out from a PG for having started a fight for which I was detained by the cops too. I had to stay at this mosquito-ridden house on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar for a few nights before I found another PG and that song takes me back to that nightmare.

Fast forward to college days in Goa and Himesh Reshammiya’s ‘Tandoori Nights’ was all the rage. Actually, cross that. It really wasn’t. I used to sing it at the top of my voice in the IHM Goa Boys Hostel every morning to annoy my seniors though. Funt times! A group of us would jam to the Sufi hit ‘Sayonee’ by the Pakistani band ‘Junoon’ all acapella where I would do the high parts of it. My voice had not broken at that point and I could hit real highs.  Reminiscing all this for this article today comes as a welcome break in my dreary anxiety-ridden life. 

You know it’s not just songs that evoke memories. Show intro tunes also do a very good job of it. Take for example, ‘The Whole Universe’ from ‘The Big Bang Theory’. I started bingeing on the show in 2011 when I was bed-ridden due to a slipped disc. I would watch the show at night and when I got hungry, as I often do at night, I would go to the kitchen and get a packet of Parle-G glucose biscuits that I would dip in a glass of water and eat. Yeah, I am weird that way and that’s not the point. Even today, while watching the series again on Disney+ Hotstar, the tune teleports me back to the time. I can almost feel the back brace and the physiotherapy that I associate with that summer. The years after 2011 were kinda rocky and I don’t have very strong memory associations with any songs. Maybe I don’t want to remember the last decade where my life saw a lot of ups and downs.

Be that as it may, I need to re-start associating memories with the songs I listen to. Because I have learned that memories are the doors to happiness and years from now, when I listen to the songs I enjoy these days, maybe I will remember this time as happy times, even if they don’t seem like that now. I suck at philosophy, right? By the way, have you heard Shreya Ghoshal’s ‘Rozana’ from the movie ‘Naam Shabana’? It’s amazing. I didn’t even notice it when I watched the movie but I re-discovered it recently and I can’t get enough of it. Signing off now to listen to it for the seven hundredth time. Toodles.