Erase those memories

Some things are meant to last.  Friendships you develop in residential colleges that you can get back to anytime, ability to cycle even if you havent touched one for years, memories of your first kiss etc

And then there are some things that you just cant shake off. Your memory of the utter humiliation you felt when you made an ass of yourself in front of a whole group, the feeling of terror you remember feeling before an important result or a moment of  professional failure. These are things you try so hard to forget but they are impossible to dislodge from the recesses of your brain.

And then there are memories that actually are insignificant but refuse to leave. Bits of events that happened long back that you remember vividly for no reason, residual hazy images from your past you cant completely remember , shards of memory - the complete picture of which your brain discarded long back.

I am going to tell you about one such thing. You know, when we were young ( not like yong and foolish, i mean really really young) when the cable tv hadnt taken over our homes and life, there was one thing my sister and I did religiously- the weekend afternoon movie on DD. We got this luxury once a week,  we were going to make the best of it. We were well prepared every movie afternoon- pillows and covers, lights off, favourite seats occupied and chips- honestly, the movie was kind of the least important part of this whole bit. I have watched so many useless, non-light-of-the-day seeing movies this way and I dont remember much about most of them.

Except one.   It was called " Ninaivugalai neeki viduga"

The title means Ërase those memories. And it is the creepiest movie I have ever seen. I like horror movies a lot and am not scared of them at all and I had seen a couple of horror movies atleast , before this one. The plot is incredibly soap opera-ish - An ordinary housewife meets with an accident and gets a brain transplant. The brain she gets belongs to an actress, so the actress continues to live in teh body of the housewife.And she is unable to accept the fact that she is now an ordinary woman- there are multiple scenes of her imagining fans coming to her only to suddenly see her face in the mirror and getting freaked out most ordinary scenes that I wouldnt remember the next day if I saw them today. But for some reason this has stayed on.

And not just stayed on like some vague memory in some obscure corner of the brain, every time I recollect this movie, I feel a chill down my spine. The worst part is that when I recall it, it is soo real, it is almost as if I am recollecting something that has happened to me, and not some bit of a movie. And the creepiest bit is that the movie has the same effect on the two other people who I know have watched it.  I am unable to figure out what it is about this movie that torments me so much and why it has left such a strong impression on all three of us. There is no trace of it in the internet so I cannot help but wonder if there are other people who have seen it and remember it the way the three of us do.

But I am sure whatever happens, this movie will come back to freak me out in the most unexpected of times. In a life that is so unpredictable, this is probably one of the few things that will remain unchanged. And I will never know why.

Musicophilia

Amongst all the topics I could have chosen to resurrect the blog, music is the most unlikely, but perhaps most fitting, in some ways.  You see, I had spent all of my life trying to be cool. And cool was achieved by two ways- by genuinely being better than others at something or just being different from others, without seeming to try hard. Since the former required some semblance of talent combined with efforts, both of which I famously lacked, I gravitated to the easy path.  Amongst my many useless attempts at being different was  one I genuinely believed in- that music was not important to my life. I had once proclaimed "If all music were to disappear from my life, there wouldnt be too much change" much to the  amusement of my friends.

I couldnt have been more wrong.

 I had never shown much inclination to music and was mostly indifferent to the popular songs my peer group listened to. Of course, I had my favourite songs but most were the ear-worm type catchy tunes that would get stuck in your head for days( think Rabba rabba from whatever raveena tandon movie that was) and I had no ear for the supposedly complicated music that my friends understood and appreciated. Even the non-earworm songs I liked had a lot to do with the voice, the lyrics etc more than the music itself.   I assumed that I was cursed with a flawed ear and accepted it with a generosity I never bestow on myself and went about making the best of it by loudly trumpeting my indifference to music to whoever cared to listen.

My only use for music then, was to serve as a memory tapper- a song that I associate with something would immediately transport me to that particular event/location assaulting my other senses so powerfully- When I hear "Black hole sun"I am always taken back to S'room during that hailstorm day- I can taste the sand in my mouth and can feel the gritty wind blowing on our faces , i can almost sense the depressingly dark room and our dirty selves. It is almost as  if the song has taken control of my brain and instead of taking sensory inputs from the eyes and nose, is sending the  song-inputs to my sensory organs. Many songs take me to various events- indian ocean to the backstage audi bringing back the dull throbbing excitement ( there is just no other way to describe the feeling ) of the stage set-up or some tam songs taking me to the dark sleepy afternoons of TV watching with my sister.

But as with most things I was proved wrong, but this time I am not complaining one bit.

A year back, I listened to some flute songs on youtube to pass time and found myself enjoying them quite a bit. But not in a life-altering or a soul-searching way and so like a person you become friends with on a cruise  trip, I got back to my life and forgot all about it, only retaining vague pleasant memories.

Then I bought a fancy phone and like a lot of things that I would never have done without the fancy phone, I once  listened to something I heard in a friend's car, first thing in the morning. It was brilliant, and I realised how awesome it is to start the day with music.  I remembered my little flute experiment and started listening to Celtic flute stuff which then lead me to other instrumental cool stuff ( god bless "related videos") which further lead me to heavier stuff based on celtic instruments and before I knew it, I was listening to some weirdly named bands in genres I didnt even know existed. And evoked reactions in me, I didnt know could be evoked by hitting a piece of metal with a stick. Like all true addicts I continued searching for more stash in the giant called the internet and while I still dont know what exact genres most of my songs belong to ( hell, I dont know how many kinds of metal are there) I do have a list of favourite bands stored away on a spring pad, to be listened to, at a later point. My mornings are spent staring at the traffic from my balcony lost in some battle music and the winter fog only adds the LOTR-ness to the whole scene.

I cant believe I am doing this so late in my life. All those afternoons spent on campus staring blankly at the ceiling could have been enriched so much, all those funny mornings of dredging through FB looking for gossip could have been embellished with sound-effects, all those nice mornings of tea and breeze could have been oh-so-perfect with background music. If I could, I would give the younger-me a slap that she so richly deserves.  I suppose I am being ungrateful here- Shakespeare said "How much sharper than a serpernt's tooth it is, to have a thankless child"  The past-me would consider the present-me thankless. After all, she was just trying to be different.