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This is a dream I had on 15th September, round about at 8am in the morning. Considering that I remember almost every single detail, this has to be one of the weirdest I have ever seen or even heard someone else recollect in my life.
So I am in this huge auditorium with a big stage which was empty for the time being. It was about half-filled with people my age and also lots of kids in school ( my old school, DBPC ) uniforms. Some of them are facing the stage, some are facing the opposite way ( that is the way the benches were arranged mind you ). Anyway I spot this kid near the back who was sitting alone and I go up to talk to him. Turns out, funnily enough, that kid was me, as a six year old. I somehow had managed to meet a 14 years younger version of myself. Anyway I remember talking to him ( me ) for a while.. we talked about school, about how our shoes were similar, stuff like that. Next, I'm getting the feeling ( finally ) that something ain't right, so I see a friend of mine ( college classmate who recently got a new cellphone with a 3mp camera ) in front and ask him to take a picture of me and me together ( to prove that I had met myself later ). So we go out of the auditorium and land up in the central wing of our school's top floor. It was raining pretty hard outside but anyway both of us stood, my hand on my (younger) shoulder and my friend took the picture. I actually did not expect the picture to come out well ( firstly, the younger me was fidgeting a lot and secondly, there was something going on in my mind, sort of like when you take a picture of anything remotely paranormal, it comes out blurred, like one of the Final Destination movies ). So my friend takes the photo and surprisingly manages to get a print-out of it from his phone ( !!??! ). It turns out to be a bus ticket for the Rs. 4.070 BUT it is, as I expected, sort of blurred in the middle. After all this I go in the auditorium again along with myself. I don't remember talking to him ( me ) after that. I did run into some classmates of mine ( school classmates in class 1A, they were 6-year olds too ) sitting with their back to the stage, about 5-6 of them together.
Next thing I remember, one of our Principals comes on stage, everyone stands up and the morning prayer begins when I realize my shirt was gone. I am standing and praying, without any shirt, feeling a bit embarrassed about it when I spot another schoolmate ( grown up though ) in the same situation. A bit calmer, I started searching for a shirt and fortunately came across an extra one in my school bag. Phew!! Next we line up to go to classes and end up doing so and going to the old 1st floor classrooms in the junior school side. One unnecessary detail I remember is that there were a couple of rolled up "The Telegraph" newspapers lying in the corridor. Anyway we enter class when I realize I didn't have a tie. Only place to search, I open our class cupboard and instead of books and hopefully a spare tie lying around I find it filled with my dad's shirts.. I search frantically and when I finally do come across a few ties in a corner, I feel incredibly drowsy, fall asleep and then wake up ( in real life ). End of dream.
Although some people, like my brother, thought that I had made most of the stuff up later, I didn't..
More weirdness later..
I listen to the genius, Pandit Nikhil Banerjee on his birthday ( he would have turned 77 if he would have been with us today ) as I write this.
As mentioned before, Yaman Kalyan is too awesome to pen down in words. The sense of peace I get listening to this alaap by him is tough to recreate. I am yet to hear anyone who can create the 'mood' which is required while listening to any classical piece as good as Pt Nikhil Banerjee did. Here ends this simple tribute..
Two days back, my father reminded me of a 'funny' gag he and my family used to play on me when I was very little. Whenever I was out, my father would say "Ebar tor biye debo, meye khuji" ( "time to get you married, let's search for the girl" for those less conversant in Bengali ) and I would absolutely freak out and start screaming in terror !! I think I was about 3-4 years old then. The funny thing ( to them at that time, NOT to me ) was that they got me worked up and terrified every time they said that, I wasn't able to call their bluff, not even a single time. As of today I am officially old enough to get married and it's strange how this incident, one I had completely forgotten, came back into my memory two days before today!
Speaking of terrifying little kids, another memory came rushing back. Back when my grandparents ( Dida and Dadna ) were alive, we used to live in the ground floor of my house. There was this show on TV "The Invisible Man" which I was scared to death of, so when my brother watched it I used to run upstairs and "take shelter" in the company of my grandma. What my dear older brother decided to do one day was turn both TVs .. upstairs and downstairs to "The Invisible Man". What resulted was me running upstairs and downstairs continuously for half an hour, screaming and crying. Everyone found it unbelievably funny but I sure didn't back then. I am willing to forgive my brother in spite of the traumatic experience if I get a full written apology though :P.
Like most others, I often wish I could relive my childhood again. We were truly innocent back then, I wonder how much has changed for kids nowadays..
The first of many rants about music you can expect here..
I am currently listening to Comptine d'Un Autre Été by Yann Tiersen for the 7th consecutive time. It's part of the score from the movie 'Le fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain' ( Amelie to you and me ) and jointly the best piano track I have ever heard in almost 21 years. ( The other one is a track in my computer called Piano Concerto 26 by Mozart ) .
Real music is undescribeable really. By real music I mean real music, not the sort you get to hear in recently released Bollywood movies or VH1's "Hip Hop Hustle". To me good music has to have the ability to make you forget anything else is going on around you. That's it..
I learn sitar, but Piano has to be my most favourite instrument after the Sitar. Any good pianist can take you away to somewhere else altogether. People like Yanni, Richard Clayderman, Robert Miles are all really really good but what sets apart the track I'm listening to from those by Yanni and Clayderman is the fact that no other instruments were used in the song. I listened to that track 14 times in a row once, 9 times now.. Most people would fall asleep listening to the same song over and over again, but that's the basic difference between my type of music and theirs.
There have been many phases in the last couple of years, phases lasting two or three weeks when I used to hear a single song at least once every day and at most 5-6 times consecutively at a go. Does this happen to everyone? For example, for the past two-three weeks I have been listening, without fail, to a 5 and a half minute piece by Ustad Imrat Khan ( in which he plays alaap in Surbahar in Raga Yaman Kalyan ). After watching American Beauty there was a phase when I listened to the track "Arose" about 50 times in 2 weeks. There She Goes by Sixpence None The Richer, True Love Waits ( piano version ) by Christopher O'Riley, the Amelie track, the Mozart track, a piece of music that played in the process of installing the Rogue Spear game, Trade Winds by Craig Chaquico ( guitar piece ) .. I could go on and on.. have all been part of such 'phases'.
I have been successful in changing many of my friends' taste in music by nagging them continuously to listen to my favourite stuff and it seems to have worked, cos Smart Primate apparently listened to the Amelie track 30 times today :P. Lots of other examples are there but this is getting boring, I stop here. More when I think of interesting stuff to write.
Statistics : Music I have listened to while writing this post :
Comptine d'Un Autre Été by Yann Tiersen x10
Arose by Thomas Newman x11
Piano Concerto 26, Mozart x3
Trade Winds by Craig Chaquico x3
Piano Concerto 21 in C Major by Richard Clayderman x1
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