Music to my ears

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I wrote the above captioned post and posted it. Within a few minutes of it being uploaded and liked, it disappeared from twitter, Facebook and my blog. I tried to figure out through Google where did the post go and tried to retrieve it, but Nada. No success at all. I had not deleted it from anywhere on the laptop. Technology: A boon or bane? This used to be a topic of many a college debates. When I was in school, there was not much in terms of technology which could hamper our school studies. I am trying to rewrite the post. Am a bit angry about loosing it after posting it. On Twitter, so many people I found using my pic as their display picture. It is a weird world out there or rather a good world with some weird people out there.

When I joined the hostel in Mumbai, the only English songs I knew were the hymns we sang in school and some songs from Abba which were also taught in the school choir. We had Sr. Emma who taught us a song " I had a dream, a song to sing". The English song I thought I knew was ' My heart is beating, keeps on repeating' from the Hindi film "Julie". That was a bold film in my times. I was pretty much scandalised by it. Though I did not know a word like 'scandalise' which sounded so much like 'socialise'. The girls in the hostel who came from North East always had good music with them. That was the 'zamaana' of tape recorders and cassettes. The girls with their parents living in Middle East or South East Asia , also had the latest English songs. No one listened to Hindi music in the hostel. It was considered too downmarket to play Hindi songs on your tape recorder. The word 'Bollywood' was not coined then and I knew only Hindi filmy songs. Aamir was yet to make a debut and so were Akshay, Salman and the likes. Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar had not " Punjabiised" the Bollywood movies. We did not have rap by Birmingham based Sardar bands. I could not get the accent of English songs and all my friends who studied Hindi as their second language in school, could not utter a single sentence in Hindi. Was this our education or our mindset?

I did not know different genres of music. I came to know Madonna in the hostel and Michael Jackson. My knowledge was limited to them. The hostel girls would play music and dance in their rooms after the night roll call. The roll call was at eight pm. Music was allowed to be played after that. I would be in my friends rooms with a blank smile because neither could I dance like them nor could I hum the lyrics. The other day I met a friend and she said I used to dance on the Madhuri Dixit popular number called ' Ek , do teen..' , I was so embarrassed. I used to sing " Oh Desire" when the song was "Eye of the Tiger". Recently I was singing "There is a brown girl in the rain, Tra la la la". A friend across oceans gently corrected me. I thought saying 'Brown girl' was racist. Then I thought singing 'girl in the rain ' was sexist and Feminazis would kill me for objectifying women. My friend said, " It is train not rain". Isn't that being a socialist?

Nowadays I listen to only English music in the car. I still almost never get the words but I have no desire to impress anyone.There is no need to be hep or cool by singing English songs. Also, I like the fact that I don't need to understand it or get it right, to enjoy it. This is how I enjoy the music of life.

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