3 Random Songs, 3 Random Memories
The conical and the comical.
My playlist is both the least interesting and the most interesting thing about me. It is least interesting because, in true millennial fashion, I cling to my childhood by listening to 2016 music on repeat. But the more I stare at my playlist, the more I realize how many stories are related to these relatively old and, sometimes, cringey songs.
Here are 3 random songs from my playlist and 3 random memories attached to them.
Nimbooda
Nimbooda is a song from the 1999 Hindi language movie Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. Over the years, I have fallen in love this movie, and have come to appreciate the writing of this six-minute song about a lemon. Yes, folks. Six minutes, and all they sing about are lemons with as much sincerity as if it were a song about love or heartbreak. That’s some genius writing.
In the era of this film, songs used to stay relevant for years after the movie was released. The songs would run on Top-10 lists on TV. I would wait eagerly for this one because I was obsessed with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s hairstyle in it. It was a common style back then to tie up the hair in a high bun and pin the dupatta over it to give the head a cone-like shape.
I remember once, when I was five, I was dressing up for a friend’s birthday, and I asked my mother to give me this hairstyle. Only, I did not give her any visual reference or point to our television. I simply raised my arms over my head and formed a cone by touching all five fingers to a point and creating a “roof” gesture. When my mother didn’t understand what I meant, I fell to the floor, weeping. I didn’t stop until I got distracted by the annoying tag on the new dress I was wearing.
I think about my mother watching her five-year-old daughter make triangles over her head and then promptly proceed to weep, and I have a newfound respect for her patience.
Footloose
I am pretty certain that Footloose, the 1984 song by Kenny Loggins, is the first ever song in the English language that I listened to. I was in fifth grade then. In my school, dance was a compulsory class that all students had to take. At the time dance was considered “very cringe” and being forced to dance was considered a punishment.
Or, perhaps, it was just me who considered it a punishment. Everyone insisted I dance well, and they often forced me to get on stage and dance even when I didn’t want to.
Our teacher had chosen Footloose as the song for the sports-day dance. (Yes, that was a thing.) She had warned us, “This dance that I am teaching you kids is going to have a lot of twist and shakes. I don’t want you complaining about aches and muscle pulls. We don’t have time for that.”
I brushed it off, thinking I was going to be an exception to this aches-and-pains rule. I dance well after all, right? Within one class, I didn’t want to go back because I had a muscle pull on my right side that refused to let go for a full week and a half.
When I think back to this time, I remember the dance being really well choreographed for a group of fifth graders. I remember it having loads of claps and turns, and well, twists, enough to confuse even an older dancer. I think we did well for silly nine-year-olds with imaginary cringe labels attached to the most non-cringe things.
Sham
Sham is a song from the 2010 Hindi language film Aisha, which is a modern interpretation of Jane Austen’s Emma.
The first time I watched this movie was in 2012, when we still watched movies on DVDs. I was really excited to watch Aisha because I was in love with the costume design in the film. (Looks like I was a film nerd way before I realized it.) I was especially waiting for this song because the lead character wears a tiara that I loved.
The song was about to begin: I sat at the edge of my seat in anticipation. And just as the first few strums of the guitar echoed through the room, the DVD stopped. We tried to rewind it but it would get stuck again at the same point. We tried to forward it but the DVD jumped thirty minutes, skipping everything in between.
I used to, and still, hate leaving movies midway. No matter how ridiculous the movies are, they have to be completed once we start them. I was in near tears. My parents suggested we purchase a new copy of the CD from a different store the next day. I had to wait a painstaking fifteen hours before the next DVD was in my hands.
We fast-forwarded to the beginning of this song so that we can continue watching the movie. To my utter horror, this copy too got stuck at the same point.
Suffice it to say, I carried this half-watched movie as an itch in my brain until last year when I finally watched it on Amazon Prime. I guess we don’t realize how good we have it until we remember that we had to make time to go to a store and rent DVD after DVD just to watch something mildly entertaining.
So, what did we learn today, folks? I learnt that I have a propensity for weeping and putting songs that played at the time into my playlist. I also learnt that warming up before dancing is crucial and that perhaps music wouldn’t exist if there was no such thing as memory.
