Melody on My Mind

My earphones perch comfortably in the cusp of my ears. I’m slouching on my newly bought bean bag, the purchase of which was made mostly to have a feeling of dwelling in something that comes close to being called ‘home’. After toiling in the office, which is well over 20 km from where I put up, for hours, I don’t want to come back to a place I see only as a temporary make-shift arrangement. I guess we all look for a sense of permanence wherever we go. A sense of familiarity, an air of routine is what keeps our anxieties in check. So here I am.

But this post is not about office, and it’s not about permanence. It’s about something much simpler – music. Why do I listen to music? I don’t know. I just do. It sends a dose of sanity shooting through my veins, especially after a long week of drudgeries and mundaneness. The permanence of routine that I talked of above does not take a lot to become something boring that drags us down slowly, which we want to snap out of. In such a situation, music is the best cure. It makes me feel happy. It makes me feel good about life if it’s a happy song, and if it’s a sad one, I tend to dwell on and wonder at the depth of emotions and opportunities that come our way, the experiences we have and the way they shape our psyche, the way we turn for the worse, become defensive, irritable, accusatory, and what not. It makes me celebrate the profoundness that a sad thought churns about. A happy thought is just that, a thought that makes you be happy. But a depressing one is what makes you think, what makes you glassy-eyed, what makes you wonder at someone else’s pain and everyone else’s suffering. You think about how life kicks you when you are down, but you’ve got to learn to break through the hard ice sheet that is forming fast above you when you have been unfortunate enough to tread on the thinnest part of the sheet of ice on the sea of kismet, and fall into the icy cold water of karma or just plain bad luck. There’s no telling which. Neither then, nor later, no matter how many reasons may you give yourself for one or the other.

A cold draft makes the hair on my legs stand. I stretch myself and the bean bag adjusts itself obediently under my contours. Another weekend, another couple of days to look forward to. My sister told me some time ago that once you start working, your life is defined more than anything else by your weekdays and your weekends. Your life gets divided into these two neatly cut pieces, that are different as night and day, and just as sincere in their regularity and their importance in the scheme of things. I don’t want my life to be defined so simplistically. The very thought brings on an overwhelming feeling of disgruntlement. This is where music comes in, the landmark at which my life always takes a new turn and never fails to enrich my existence.