Keynotes

There are keys that unlock memories, some of them happen to be on a keyboard, the musical type. And that’s exactly what happened when I chanced upon a keyboard at a relative’s place. I started with the easy stuff that I could still remember – nursery rhymes 😀

That was followed by some attempts at carnatic music. Some successful, and some not. Lots of rust. And lots of immediate connections, where the fingers knew automatically where to go. And I was asked how i knew, and then, how long I had learnt. No time is quite enough, but in 9 years, you could learn quite some.

Thanks to the interest I had then, Dad bought me a Casio when I was in school. You’d have played with one at some point in your life? The ones with 100 instrument simulations and background beats? It was good fun to learn Bolly numbers by self, practice till it was perfected, and then try out alternate beats and backgrounds. It was also tougher to play carnatic, quite unwieldy, and therefore more fun.

It lost out quite a bit towards the last two years of school life thanks to the school team’s cricket and cultural calendar. Just like quizzing lost when Dumb C became an obsession, around the same time. And while the singing had a longer shelf life, that too stopped after college. Campus politics was also fun, and sometimes  serious, just like beaches and business studies. 🙂

A few keys and out came the snapshot of life. Meanwhile, remember the room? The keyboard sits on the cupboard, high up on the topmost shelf. Out of reach, out of reckoning, thanks to some carelessness (left the batteries inside too long). Like the aspirations it had kindled a long time back – out of reach? Out of reckoning? When, sometime in life,  fun took a backseat, perhaps unconsciously. When i go home, I fiddle with the keyboard, no sound comes out, and I never bother to change the batteries and try to make it work.

Today is friday, it is my day to do what i want
Mama can tell me that i’m goin nowhere, i’m just a prisoner of my fate

I could say fate, or I could say time, or I could say priorities, and after a while, all these would amount to what I could call baggage, but I doubt if any of them would quite satisfy my own mind. I sometimes think its fear, of what would happen if I explored what once used to be fun, and found out I had changed. Maybe these things are safer in the past, maybe we couldn’t handle each other in the present..or future. I’m still wondering how I should go ahead with a few of these unfinished businesses, and also wondering if there’s such a thing as a last bus.

until next time, to get the drive…