Two years

What if those you held most dear, but who are not in this physical world anymore, were able to return for a day? One day only?

Let's say this day can be predecided. What would I do on my day with you? I could keep telling you how much I miss you and need you, but you already know that because I tell you everyday. You could tell me you watch over me and I needn't worry, but I know that already. I could ask you for your wisdom and guidance on how I should live my life and if I'm living it right. But you've already told me and taught me all I ever need to know. I try hard to live that life, but I do fail sometimes and blame it on being human. It becomes easier and easier to forget and make excuses...so maybe our day together would help me put myself back together again.

If there's nothing much to say, I could just hold your hand and lean my head against yours, like I used to do most evenings. We could just sit there in silence and feel perfectly content, like we used to do more and more as you lost your sight and hearing, but not the sharpness of your mind. Actually, it was a bit of that amazing sharpness and intellectual curiosity, even at that age and inspite of rapidly diminishing faculties, that I was secretly hoping to absorb by leaning my head against yours.

But each minute that passes would bring the moment you leave again closer. I would start to worry, and every moment from then on would be increasingly tinged with sadness. Then panic, then a maniacal refusal to let you go. And I would waste those precious last minutes fighting, begging, pleading, arguing, bargaining. And then, you would smile and be gone. And I would be left with the pain. The same, unbearable, crushing pain. And then? Then what?

Would I be willing to bring back the pain for one more day with you? I would, but what would it achieve? What would change? We don't need to tell each other anything - we already know. The alternative is, of course, to realise in the morning that you will be leaving in the evening, and to simply enjoy every single moment for itself. But if I were that enlightened, I wouldn't be asking for another day with you in the first place. If I think I could do it on that day, maybe I can do it now too.

I love you. Always have, always will.

Until I see you again...


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"The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother's heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too."

- from this excellent article, based on an interesting experiment.


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David Gower: Captain Obvious meets Lieutenant Lucidity.

"This is a pitch where, on a regular but irregular basis, something will happen."

- The Oval, The Ashes 2009, 5th test, day 3

The Song

And I am absorbed into the song.

I am wandering through the notes. Parts of my brain are being tickled by the intricacies, the subtle changes of scale and chord. I smile, finding my feet tapping, my head nodding. The guitar strums along, I hum along. Then the words kick in. Lovely, simple words. A voice like honey, nothing more than an easy conversation.

Then the bass line registers with me. Suddenly, I can hear nothing else. It's only in the background, but it's all I can seem to focus on. I can almost see the bass player standing there, inconspicuous, but tripping on his own. And taking me with him. All too often, we fail to see the underlying rhythms carrying us through our daily lives, providing the base. The bass is the base.

I am reminded of something the guitarist of the band Zero said to me when we played a show once in Hyderabad, many years ago. Inspite of his well-known virtuosity with the electric guitar, all he wanted to do was write songs that he could strum on an acoutic, sitting on his porch when he is 40. Life's like that, isn't it? As we grow, we move from the simplicity of the childhood acoustic, add complications like the electric, the amplifiers (we think the solution to drowning out the noise is to just be louder), the distortion pedals and assorted electronics, and it's only much later we realise what's really important.

The Song crosses the bridge, and I tag along. Moving towards the 3rd act, so to speak. The solo kicks in, asking me to soar too. Now, I am thinking about a hundred other things, about what the singer and I were talking about. I float for a bit, absent-mindedly trying to catch the notes the solo is running through. It's not as perfectly constructed as some others I have heard, but engaging nevertheless. I surf the slides, moving up and down with the pulls, get splashed by the hammer notes, dodge the harmonics. I hold on to my board as the solo moves back up the scale, and the last dragged note brings me back to the calm.

It's time to go, and we're winding up the conversation. Like all good ones, it leaves me thinking about things, new and old, and not really wanting the conversation to end. But as it must, the music eventually stops, with a promise of starting up again sometime.

But I am still in the Song. Searching for the bass.


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"The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die."

- Kierkegaard


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