Connected, yet so disconnected. Woven in the same web...yet, each an individual strand. Anubhavam, Moksham, Delirium. Three words that have held my interest for way too long now.
This is not the first time this blog claims a mention of my carnatic music classes. Its weird how things change so much with time. Songs that you listened to in passing years back, suddenly seem to hold so much significance...it all depends on what you relate to at different phases of life, doesn't it? I've been learning carnatic music for so many years now..it's been so on and off, i can't even figure out how many years. Maybe 10. But 5, for sure. And now, at this point in life, when I'm no longer on my 3-days-a-week-1.5hours-each classes schedule, is when the beauty of this art has dawned upon my being, entirely. My grandfather would be proud to know that I am now capable of losing myself to this floaty, yet so profound force...and find ultimate solace in it. Satisfaction inexplicable...forgetting the rest of the world...forgetting oneself...being lost in the myriad of feelings something abstract imparts...something that one probably doesn't understand...something that can make its way into the depths of one's psyche with a single variation in tune...something that ultimately pulls you into it so intensely that you feel strangely drunk with it...your head so full of it, that it throbs. And stays. Drunken...with tranquility...with music...with faith...with the mystic force - a divine combination of liberation and surrender...Moksham. Bombay Jaishree's Anubhavam.
Anubhavam. The story comes back a full circle. I have very faint memories of 'Anubhavam' being listened to by my mother over and over again at home in Kenya... the Ngong house... the days when I attended music classes for the sole reason that I was forced to do so...the days I was the stubborn teenager, who even for a minute, wouldn't consider her mother's requests to learn one song and sing it for her. It took me a good 7 years to find that particular memory in my sea of thoughts, and finally comply with my mother's request from years ago... It was the first time I walked up to my music teacher with a song, its lyrics, and said that I want to learn that song, at any cost. And then waited...patiently...for the process to take shape. I don't think I 'felt' any other song more when i was learning it...and when i was convinced that the song was polished enough in my head for my mother to hear it, I recorded it...for the fear of choking if I sang it to her in person... Mother's day, 2007. Bhavayami Gopalabalan. A part of Bombay Jaishree's Anubhavam. Amma's favourite song. It became my prayer. It still is. My prayer. My strength. My tears. My solace.
I never really stopped singing it since the time I learnt it. But rediscovering it in this album...made me dream of amma and me sitting at the dining table at the Ngong house, chopping vegetables, this time, both of us lost in Bhavayami,instead of her alone... I've promised myself I'll make a trip to Kenya just for this...Just to look at her face when she's drowned in the depths of Yamuna-Kalyani...and know exactly what she's going through. Listening to my Brother sing it recently was a differnt experience altogeher...Its like some unfathomable force of nature bound our family to the song... Bhavayami... like the song was destined to change my life in more ways than one.
I've been going through a deliriously intense period with this music. Something at a higher level than addiction... Delirium. Two very different things claim the 'Delirium' tag at this point of time... Carnatic music and...Science. This insane compulsion to keep working even if you feel like it could kill you. This perpetual feeing that you're at the brink of a discovery, even if you aren't...the curiosity...the crazy hours...the brain-storms...the passion... Biology. Science. Bliss. Working with science at its roots.
Jantabhayaga vinu, Ventaramani vedu konti Bhadragiri Ramadaasa poshaka...
Happy Green Ball. PQR.
Yours "Niratha kara kalitha Navaneetham..." ly
Signing off....