Tag: aspirations

  • 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…

  • Growth, or the lack of it….

    At every cross road, there are opportunities that have not been taken. There are choices that have been made, options that have been taken, the first with a steely resolve, and the second, with a sense of compromise. The first is more often than not, a happy tone that comes from knowing exactly what we want, and the second one is a tone of resignation, which comes from knowing somewhere deep inside that by giving up a little, much could have been gained, if only we could bring ourselves to do it, if only we could be sure…

    I’ve always wondered about why I have a problem with giving up a few comforts, a few perks, a few advantages in life, especially if it means I could have an opportunity to connect with what I was meant to do in this life. At first, i thought it could be because I wasn’t sure what exactly it was. But then, I was even giving up chances of finding out what it could be.

    I came across a new logic a while back. One thats rooted in my small town origins. Of course, its no longer a small town, its what they call a tier 2 city. 🙂 Growing up in a small town means that you’re always on ‘add to shopping cart’ mode in terms of aspirations. Growing up in an age when the cans of cola in the hands of videsi relatives evoked a sense of envy, didn’t help. While a lot of the shopping cart items were thrown out with age and what I hope is maturity, there are some deep seated ones which are difficult to get over. Which explains the constant striving for growth. And as each upgrade is done with, it becomes more difficult to give up what has been achieved after so much of work has gone into it. While it can be argued that the potential growth by letting go is much larger, or that the movement is only lateral, when you come in from what is relatively nowhere, it is difficult to imagine even risking going back there.

    until next time, hedging the bets