BlogMas 2018 Day Fifteen - Octaves

My day doesn't begin without music. It doesn't end without music. Not that hard to predict, but I'm an absolute sucker for lyrics and voices. My father has always had a massive role to play in my music taste. Somewhere in between his massive collections of Manna Dey, Hemant Kumar, S.D. Burman, Rafi and Jagjit Singh, Gulzar and a lot of Pakistani plays, I created my safe place. That's where all my rides with nostalgia take me. I remember running through Deer Park back home with my father every Sunday morning, with him sharing trivia about his favourite musicians and singers and actors. And oftentimes, while mapping our way through the forest back home, he'd stop amongst a bunch of trees playing with the light of cold December sun which he thought of nothing less than beautiful, with the birds chirping, he'd hum a tune or two. And that's still one of his favourite things to do - sitting in his living room with a strong cup of masala chai, his newspaper, early on a Sunday morning while the rest of the house snoozes, listening to the birds.

Even today, after grueling day of work, I always find a Dev Anand video awaiting in my messages from him to help me pull through. And I think, more than anything, it was surely watching him enjoy good music and almost ready to write a sonnet of his own about how beautiful the words were phrased back then, that made me develop a weakness for a good voice. Even though I feel it was my mom and her father's genes that made me enjoy playing with words a lot, it was always my father who made a tune stick out in my head. And amongst everyone, it was him and some of my closest friends who drew a very definitive box around my music taste at different times through a day, while I'd be doing different things. And surprisingly enough, it holds true to this day. I can't design without Erik Jonasson or James Blake crying out in the background. Or draw out a tonne of lines in a day without Gulzar narrating Ghalib with Jagjit Singh. And that's one of the most beautiful things music does for you. It lends you the power to be silent for the longest possible time, and muse. And there's no such thing as the perfect music. It just has to be wonderful. 

Today is my father. Not because he gave me this topic, but how, unknowingly, he moulded such a huge part of my days. 

Until then.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

A.