SONGS OF EXPERIENCE

Sleep used to be my faithful friend. Whenever I wanted, I could reach out and find that person is waiting for me with open arms. But my fickleness, I guess, has had a contagious effect on this friend of mine. She doesn't take me on as eagerly as she did till some time ago.
Last night was one of those when I was desperately looking for sleep and she was eluding me, well desperately.
The television was on and on one music channel they were playing those good old Kishore Kumar songs. Suddenly it was the song from Blackmail, a movie I never got to see nor have missed it, started playing. "Pal pal dil ke paas tum rehti ho."
I suddenly went back a couple of decades and wondered isn't this one that hooked me to Kishore Kumar and opened up the whole vista of popular music? It actually was.
Those were the days of cassette players and I got one Kishore Kumar cassette and this song was the first one on the list. Well, the exact and year and date have been lost in oblivion but I was in school then.

What followed were afternoons and nights of backbreaking work. Writing down the lyrics in English alphabets and learning them by heart. And of course, humming them in hours of loneliness when words started to take tangible shapes. And before I could realise, the voice of the man became my voice. People have told me I am tone deaf and I believe them. I was not born to sing like most people in the world. But how can I deny myself the love for the Kishore Kumar songs.
"Har shyam ankhon par tera anchal lehraaye/ Har raat yadoon ki baraat le aaye"--these simple but beautiful lines, when they took shape in my mind, they formed a world of their own.

And last night all those images born out of those words were revisited. As Rakhi was going through a bunch of letters, I flew far away in time. Those afternoons when I was alone at home listening to songs, writing them down and memorising them. Well these were just a part of initiation. The involvement grew with days, weeks, months and years.
Songs, if they are beautiful, always have an association with pain. And words give shape and body to that pain: Tum yunhi jalaate rehana, aa aa kar khwabo mein"...
The song that followed was : Tere bina zindagi se koi shikwa, to nehi, shikwa nehi...with Sanjeev Kumar and Suchitra Sen walking among the ruins. Ruins of life perhaps.
"Ji mein aata hain tere daamon mein sir chupaake hum/ roote raheein roote raheein"--well, how will sleep be my friend if words like these keep haunting me. It's not my fault that I can't sleep night after night. I have stopped listening to music but what will I do with those that I have already heard. It's not the melodies that keep haunting, keep coming back. It's the words in their shapes that I gave them come visiting me often when its all dark. "Jab mein raaton ko taare geenta hun/ Aur tere kadmoon ki aahat sunta hun/ laage mujhe haar taara, teera darpan..."
Is it possible to unpluck Kishore Kumar from the soul. Even though Macbeth pleaded to the doctor to unpluck the unkindness from his wife's bosom, it wasn't possible. Some things are done for good, irrevocable and inscrutable.
Like Rick will always have Paris!