My Spiralling Musical Journey — Part One (India)
All journeys, it seems to me, circle back home. And it seems I have been going in circles all my life. Music, for example, began in early childhood in a red Philips boombox; Mom inserting the Suprabhatam cassette, the cassette’s two wheels spinning, and MS Subbulakshmi’s legendary voice echoing in our one-bedroom Mumbai home. Then there was the pre-teen me crooning Bollywood tunes; the collegiate me head-banging to Iron Maiden; the Cal grad student me reciting Dylan’s poetry; the adult lost in Ustad Khan’s rendition of Raag Marwa; then Yo-Yo Ma, Ali Farka Toure, Kayhan Kalhor, Rahim AlHaj . . . ; and finally, the returnee home listening to mom’s Karnatic CD collection in his childhood home.
But does the musical journey begin even earlier? In the womb? Some mothers in nineties, played classical music to their bump, hoping their babies came out a genius. I wonder — if that were true — what happened to all those babies whose mothers listened to Heavy Metal [or god-forbid Spice Girls] while pregnant? Perhaps it explains the state of the affairs of the world today.
Well, I certainly can’t claim to any precocious unborn memories of music. My earliest memories were those of the cassette tape, and getting spanked for pulling out the magnetic tape out of cassette. Giggling and cooing at my handiwork, the cassette’s guts spilt out, black tape strewn all around me. I remember the spanking that left my bum red and my cheeks tear-stained. I remember watching my poor mother sit with a pencil inserted into one of the teethed wheels, rotating it anti-clockwise, to re-spool the precious Chittibabu tape.
MS Subbulakshmi, Chittibabu, Balamurali Krishna, Bombay Jayshree, Maharajapuram Santhanam — Karnatic Music. Boxes of black cassette tapes with their concert recordings were brought from Madurai to Mumbai by my mother post-marriage. I grew up listening to them in our 300 sq-ft one-bedroom apartment in Mumbai in a red Phillips boombox that my mom played every morning.
My own musical consciousness germinated in the fourth standard, when I was enrolled in Karnatic violin classes. A series of Violin teachers came and went, finally settling with Yashoda — my favourite teacher, a former student of the legendary Balamurali Krishna. I loved her Sunday Violin classes, she loved teaching me, and I learnt rapidly. But a year later, much to our chagrin, she had to leave Mumbai. The oily-haired, moustached, humourless Mr Kannan took over. Even today I, sometimes, wake up with Kannan nightmares: I am 50-years old, face wrinkled, hair grey, but still practising “Janata Varsaigal” (Mr Kannan made us slog through that most basic exercise for an entire year!). He ruined the violin for me and twisting my musical journey — from making music to listening to music. Music of the nineties, eminently listenable. The last great era of Bollywood film music. In sixth standard now, old enough, I would take the bus to the Malad train station and buy cassettes at a store on station road. Saajan, Saudagar, Khalnayak, Darr, Mohra, Khiladi. Songs that rocked, Songs that rebelled, Songs that titillated — Oye Oye, Meri Pant bhi Sexy, Choli ke Peeche Kya Hain. Immersed in the than-thana-than of Bollywood music, going where the tide took me, slowly but surely I lost interest in the violin. We are all prone to regrets, losing Yashoda as my violin teacher is my biggest.
The Music Cassette, the plastic case with with spools of magnetic within, that you stuck inside the yawning mouth of a cassette-player — always terrified, always checking twice, that you pressed the play button and not the record button — was slowly giving way to the Compact Disc.
We bought our first stereo system when I was in eighth standard. We drove two hours to the only Philips store in Mumbai. We spent half-a-day of testing numerous systems with our cassettes (even at that age, I was an insufferable audiophile), finally purchasing a 400W Philips Powerhouse system with ₹5500 CD player option. But CDs were frightfully expensive. 525 a pop. A cassette cost ₹30. It was 1994, the great RD Burman had just passed. And I proposed that we immortalise him by purchasing the album 1942 A Love Story as our first CD, there was a round-table discussion in the family as if we were negotiating the Treaty of Versailles. The merits of the music, was it just the flavour of the month, would we take care of the CD — it was all discussed. Finally my parents decided against. And they were right. A few months later I would move on from Bollywood music.
Sometime at the end of 9th grade, the doors to the Occident flung open and swallowed me whole when I best-friended Russell, the only Christian kid in our neighbourhood. Russell, with his fancy Japanese Aiwa stereo system and drawers full of the devil’s music, opened the floodgates to Occidental delights.
Michael Learns to Rock, Richard Marx, Cranberries, Boyz 2 Men, Bon Jovi, U2, Salt N Pepa, Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Every night when the clock struck ten. We rocked. It would be our parents’ nightly stroll time. I watched from the window, while my brother, the innocent imp, turned the volume knob clock-wise in proportion to the parents distance from our doorstep. It was a 100-feet walk until they were out of sight; and once they were, we brought the roof down with the opening guitar riff of U2’s Hold me, Thrill me, Kiss me, Kill me from the Batman Forever OST. Then came the Cranberries screeching Salvation, Salvation, Salvation, eeeyaay. Next came Bon Jovi and Bryan Adams and the dial coming down to 7’o clock, and then a Bollywood number from the 1942 … the dial coming 5 o’clock, and finally Richard Marx crooning at 3 o’clock as we saw the silhouettes of our parents growing larger. Of course we didn’t get away with it. Too often, like whirling Sufi dervishes in a trance, we were lost in the music — swaying, dancing, pushing each other on the couch — and forgetting our watch.
I envy the teenage me. I envy that visceral connection to music. I think to this date, unconsciously, I try recreating those pure moments with Audiofoolery.
One evening, tenth grade, board exams looming. Needing to relieve the stress, I ventured into the forbidden zone — Ralph’s [elder brother of Russell, who hated me] music cassette drawer. There I found a Black cassette with a coiled snake sketched in grey on it. “Debuted no. 1 in UK charts” it said. I twisted Russell’s arm until he allowed me to borrow it without Ralph’s knowledge. It was Metallica’s Black Album.
From the opening — a thrice-repeated bar of an acoustic guitar opening of “Enter Sandman”, a wall of sound coming soon after, till the end of the spinning cassette, 62 minutes 40 seconds later, I was hooked. I wore out the magnetic strip of Ralph’s cassette. I wore out the cassette I bought to replace Ralph’s cassette. I became my first CD purchase.
It was a coming of age moment. Music no longer about love (devotional, romantic or lustful) but nightmares, inner conflict, self-righteousness. Life no longer in the comforting circle of home-school-home in the suburbs but in a Junior College in the city. And the violin practice, which had which after seven long years reached the Varnamalika and a hair’s breadth of playing the same Keerthana compositions I grew up listening to MS Subbulakshmi sing, I abandoned.
Mithibai Junior College, Juhu. Where the stars lived, and the nouveau rich. Where girls didn’t acknowledge boys from Malad. Where 6000-buck Reebok sneakers mattered not books, music, looks or taste. In this weird assortment of wannabes, in my third week of college, I met a metalhead, Nimesh Tambe.
With his soda-bottle eye-glasses, with Poodle-like curly hair, Nimesh didn’t exactly fit the metalhead stereotype. But all through Junior College, he only wore black Heavy Metal t-shirts, and those black t-shirts defined him. Sepultura, Iron Maiden, Slayer, Megadeth, Metallica, Pantera. Each day, a new band, a new t-shirt. He was my Virgil, taking me down the spiralling path of Heavy Metal Purgatory. With his hand on my shoulder, I purchased my second CD, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, by Iron Maiden.
Amongst my neighbourhood friends, acquaintances, cousins, I became the missionary spreading the gospel of Rock and Heavy Metal. Some I got hooked into Pink Floyd and Gun ’n Roses, others to Megadeth, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath, but some, like Russell, despite my best efforts I could never get him past Soft Rock.
I moved to Bangalore to study Engineering, leaving Russell and Nimesh behind, but taking my violin-case with me. Bangalore was the pub capital of India. Pubs there served pitchers of beer and played Pink Floyd. It was heaven. Pecos, Purple Haze, Black Cadillac, The Underground became my regular hangouts. Russell and Nimesh had put me ahead of the curve in terms of music. While the rest of the hostel got up to speed in Rock music in our first year. I mostly hung out with kids from North-East — Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram — whose elevated tastes in music matched mine.
The four years of Hostel-life was the best time of my life, but a snooze musically. Every wannabe room was playing the Division Bell (my least favourite Pink Floyd album) all day. The only saving grace being, Chinglen Khombha, a talented guitarist, who introduced me to Grateful Dead and Melodic Black Metal. And so four years of college passed me by in a haze of smoke, stale beer, and stale music. In those four years, I never opened the violin-case, even once.
Amidst all the revelry of a Boy’s Hostel life, musically I was stuck.
Part Two here
