Godmotherly Music!

I had thought Practice School would be an intellectually stimulating and elevating experience. In fact, I am feeling quite pig-headed about myself for having believed so. Practice School cannot elevate a cow! I can count on my fingers the effective number of hours I have worked in the past month and a half! And now, i2 is supposed to be having what they call the i2 Bash. And it seems to have quite captured the imagination of the Vedas Godmother. And she is quite excited about her pivotal role in the Bash. She claims that she is going to sing in it! She disappears for quite a major part of the day and attributes her disappearance to intense practice and choreography! And, in the time that she does not disappear, she makes us all disappear! She has only to pick up traces of sounds vaguely sounding like music within her earshot. First, her face contorts and her head convulses into a hysterical rhythm. When the momentum is gathered she begins to intone what she claims to be a deep appreciation of the piece - a classical pastiche. And my ears begin to twitch, usually an anticipation of an ensuing catastrophe. But it surely cannot be, I tell my ears. I make a reinforced attempt and wait intently to capture the beauty of the music that will follow. And out of the many contortions of her face emerge series of piercing sounds very alien to her voice - some kind of alternating shrill shrieks and baritone bellows. By the time the pattern fulminates into a throaty crescendo my ear-drums have resigned themselves to their fate. And then, a sense of accomplishment writ large on her face, she beams at me. The beaming look gradually segues into one of philosophical retrospection, and she ruminates, "Most of the members cannot sing at all. Ugh! Quite an unbearable din they create. Luckily, for them I am there." My ear-drums permit me to muster a weak smile. Well, I do admit I am not much of a music cognoscente. In fact, most of the songs appear irreparably similar to my tympanum. And, I thought that day it was my ignorance that was causing my indifference to it. And I tried to follow the pitch more closely and appreciate the musical expatiation. It is high time I stopped being sceptical towards music, I thought. I still do not know what came upon me then, for me to so brazenly challenge my sensibilities! The gratuitous perseverance stayed to haunt me for the whole of the night! Haunting sounds woke me up thrice and left me amidst my gasps for air! Even a full One litre Pepsi bottle of water did not alleviate the situation much. My life will never be the same again. These days I am a madman, haunted by all kinds of non-existent eerie noises and pulling out all the hair on my head one by one. At this stage, I must mention that I am generally of a tolerant and peaceable disposition. Until circumstance absolutely circumvents me and confronts me baring its ugliest face, causing me to lose all traces of sanity. And these days, my head has quite been splitting with all kinds of unintelligible sounds from all directions; all figments of my imagination I'm sure, though they seem louder to my bombarded ear-drum when the Godmother is around! These days I am frequently reminiscing of the days when my room abutted Ratanji's redi; when his 40 W contraption blared out Hindi songs of the 50s, deliberately speeded up for a 'kick'; when I tossed and turned in bed every morning and thought I was in a moffusul lorry! As people say, your past never fails to come back to haunt you!

- posted by Dileepan @ 8:48:00 pm

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