'फुर्सत के रात दिन- The Heart and the Home.

Dear Monica,
When I look back on the last weekend and those two days I spent with my brother, I find it hard to believe I was so free, so relaxed, and yet so out-of-place... I could not understand the restlessness inside me until, as I walked off the bus nearby and turned around the corner, I saw my home... The feeling of peace it gave me, made me realise what I had been missing, all along. I BELONG HERE... my heart said, and my head, filled with relief, concurred. So, what is home!!?? It is a harbour to the ship called body, it is a parachute to the jumper called desire, it is a rein to the horse called drive and ambition... home, truly, is where the heart is!!

When I knocked on the door and Raj opened it, his smile said it all! Then, the kids soon came looking towards us from the behind him, smiling and exclaiming "mummy!!!", ..."You're home..."

This is one of my favourite songs of all times....It reminds me of my childhood days, when, in a home without a TV, I watched my parents sitting outside in the Lawn on summer nights, the light filtering out through the curtains...(Dil dhoondhta hai), There are so many memories associated with it.... Dad singing along, and even humming it the next day, as he stood by Mummy watching her cook. He would lean on the Kitchen Platform, chatting about their day, and stirring the vegetable occasionally, as she busied herself with making the rotli. 


Daddy always has loved good music, and given my Mum's understanding of various languages, (or her 'sources', like her colleague Arvinder Auntie in Chandigarh's Dev Samaj College who told her the meaning of tricky Urdu words they weren't sure of in Ghazals and Nazms), their enjoyment of world music was special and intimate. In our home, music was the constant echo, just like it is in yours, Monica... Your description of how music is a part of the very air you breathe, reverberated in my soul and I could feel an identical sense of kinship with the memories you shared!

My favourite memory of being in Ahmedabad after SID was when I was busy with the Thesis and would spend hours in the room, reading, writing, sketching nad typing things up on my PC. Later, after Dad would get home, we both would sit down with Ba, have our dinner, and then all of us would chill-out, listening to the radio crooning  musaafir hoon yaaron, or gulzar's serial- Mirza Ghalib's Audio CDs, one of our favourites...When the home stirred the silence with Jagjit Singh's melodious, pathos-laden voice as he sang, Aah ko Chahiye... By Mirza Ghalib...we felt really touched by the depth of feeling in the shayari...
Music is an integral part of life; when we go for a walk, we hear the birds sing, and as we listen, we can make out which tree the bird is in, where the responses is coming from, and how high-up in the tree it is...sort of like waking up to Nature all over again...It soothes me, calms me down and nothing else can do that, unless of course, we count a perfect evening spent with my husband, just sitting together, alone, talking or watching something and each of us thinks the exact same thought at the exact same time...This realisation of being so finely 'tuned-in' to each other is fantastic...and makes us smile! Music is the echo in my heart; when I'm restless, missing Dad or Keya didi, Digi or Mummy, I listen to a song from the past, and it transports me into that era....
Time goes by, but memories remain, and music is a power that can bring back the 'feel' of that moment back with all the sensory experiences you went through at the time....Its like a phoenix rising from the ashes each time you invoke it with the music of that bit of time...!