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Heaven alone knows the troubles of a musical non-fan like me...if there is anyone else at all other than the violently fanatical music-haters on our western borders.
I not only have no musical ear but also no musical voice, mind or heart. The first time a hit-song hits my ear, I tolerate it ok so so. But the problem with the recorded and faithfully reproduced music that fills our waves is that each word and sound of it soon becomes entirely predictable...I am blessed with a fantastic memory for things I don't like and so know not only which word comes next but also which high, low, medium, or drumbeat. And it is a punishing bore for me to hear the same do all over again and again and again...
In my school days at our village, Muthukur, there was no recorded music at all. There was no power, no radio, nor any manually wound-up HMV record player with its puppy.The only music we had was the chirping of crickets by night in the fire-fly-lit tamarind tree and the wholesome daytime cawing of crows roosting on the neem tree.
Things changed suddenly when I went to Vizagh in 1958 for my university education and started living in my MD uncle's house. They had a huge radio, a portable transistor-set, and a self-changing record player with a robotic arm that could hold, swing, dip, play and retrieve all of a dozen hefty 77 rpm records...I think it was called a radiogram.
All those gadgets and their music drove me nuts. And there was this Binaca Geet Mala every Wednesday starting at 8 in the night for all of an hour playing the same songs all over again mostly. I particularly detested a hit song that ran for months and went like:
I ran to the beach a furlong down the hill and stayed there till it was all happily over. The sound of roaring waves hitting the sands and ending up in a steamy sizzle was more tolerable since there were no lyrics in them.
And then I went to KGP and stayed in the faculty hostel there for all of 7 years. It was bliss since our hostel had neither a radio nor a record player. But the late nights I kept were at times too dreary, and when someone said that HMV came up with an electric record player with 3 speeds, called HMV Star, I was tempted to buy one spending all of Rs 200, a princely sum. That left me with money for just one 45 rpm record (EP). I chose a popular Telugu movie song of yore that went like:
...D. L. Roy's Bengali nationalist anthem Dhana Dhanya Pushpa Bhara is
immensely popular in both Bangladesh and India, and was reportedly
considered a possible choice to become the national anthem of Bangladesh
in 1971...
...wiki
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Heaven alone knows the troubles of a musical non-fan like me...if there is anyone else at all other than the violently fanatical music-haters on our western borders.
I not only have no musical ear but also no musical voice, mind or heart. The first time a hit-song hits my ear, I tolerate it ok so so. But the problem with the recorded and faithfully reproduced music that fills our waves is that each word and sound of it soon becomes entirely predictable...I am blessed with a fantastic memory for things I don't like and so know not only which word comes next but also which high, low, medium, or drumbeat. And it is a punishing bore for me to hear the same do all over again and again and again...
In my school days at our village, Muthukur, there was no recorded music at all. There was no power, no radio, nor any manually wound-up HMV record player with its puppy.The only music we had was the chirping of crickets by night in the fire-fly-lit tamarind tree and the wholesome daytime cawing of crows roosting on the neem tree.
Things changed suddenly when I went to Vizagh in 1958 for my university education and started living in my MD uncle's house. They had a huge radio, a portable transistor-set, and a self-changing record player with a robotic arm that could hold, swing, dip, play and retrieve all of a dozen hefty 77 rpm records...I think it was called a radiogram.
All those gadgets and their music drove me nuts. And there was this Binaca Geet Mala every Wednesday starting at 8 in the night for all of an hour playing the same songs all over again mostly. I particularly detested a hit song that ran for months and went like:
jara samne tho avo chaliye...
I ran to the beach a furlong down the hill and stayed there till it was all happily over. The sound of roaring waves hitting the sands and ending up in a steamy sizzle was more tolerable since there were no lyrics in them.
And then I went to KGP and stayed in the faculty hostel there for all of 7 years. It was bliss since our hostel had neither a radio nor a record player. But the late nights I kept were at times too dreary, and when someone said that HMV came up with an electric record player with 3 speeds, called HMV Star, I was tempted to buy one spending all of Rs 200, a princely sum. That left me with money for just one 45 rpm record (EP). I chose a popular Telugu movie song of yore that went like:
chita pata chinukulu padutoo unte...
I played that song for a whole day and got so bored with it that I ran it at the two other speeds: 77 and 33 1/3 rpm. And after a week of experimentation a la the ghost sequence in Gupi Gayen Bagha Bayen, I sold the kit for a song to a friend of mine and bought a couple of cartons of Vazir cigarettes...an entirely wholesome deal. As Kipling would have said:
A record is but play
But Vazir is a SMOKE!
Things went splendidly for me for all of 2 decades...till TV arrived in the somnolent KGP campus with a vengeance. Most every home had a B & W set and they advertized their toy loudly. There came a time when Doordarshan brought forth a khichri anthem that became truly an anathema to me...the devil followed me everywhere without respite as I ran on the campus roads trying to escape its torturously inevitable melody:
mile sur mera tumhara...
It was a close thing to me which was more punishing...hearing the song or watching its visual.
And now I am here in Hyderabad in a remote house on a hill. But it is filled with music from all possible gadgets...a huge wall-mounted TV, a couple of laptops, four or five cell phones, an i-pod; and an i-phone of my son that has a thousand songs stored in it. And he carries it to his sedan religiously while we two ride it to drop Ishani at her school at 9 AM. And as soon as the engine is revved up, the father-daughter duo fight which song they want to listen to for the coming 3 minutes, and at what volume. I learned to put up with it all...including the Lungi Dance.
I drive down to Ishani's school at 1 PM to fetch her home in my old gold Maruti which is free from all music save its engine's. And Ishani is forlorn. And her dad promises her that he would soon instal a player in my matchbox car. And I threaten him with dire consequences.
There is only one song that I recall hearing with pleasure...that is because I never heard it again.
One of my friends at Vizagh who enrolled in the Medical College was a great amateur singer. And when I went to KGP for my job, he went to Assam as an Army Medical Officer. We happened to meet again in Vizagh during a reunion of sorts and we walked down to the sea beach. And he sang a song that he learned from a Bengali girl-friend of his in Dispur. The night was lovely and I still recall the event with great pleasure...more so since he is no longer with us here on this prosaic earth.
Here is a snatch of its lyrics...courtesy Google:
Dhono dhanne pushpe bhora amader ei boshundhora
Tahar majhe achhe desh ek shokol desher shera
O shey shopno diye toiri she je sriti diye ghera
Emon deshti kothao khuje pabe nako tumi
Shokol desher raani shey je amar jonmobhumi
Shey je amar jonmobhumi, shey je amar jonmobhumi
Tahar majhe achhe desh ek shokol desher shera
O shey shopno diye toiri she je sriti diye ghera
Emon deshti kothao khuje pabe nako tumi
Shokol desher raani shey je amar jonmobhumi
Shey je amar jonmobhumi, shey je amar jonmobhumi
...wiki
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