My family is not known for its singing skills. But that doesn’t stop us from singing our hearts out even in front of an audience. My brother-in-law, the newest addition to our family, is an exception to the pack and is a wonderful vocalist. He explores different scales while singing and never fails to amaze us with the depth of each emotion that he displays even in high notes. I on the other hand almost always sing off-pitch, to the chagrin of others. Far from being just a bathroom singer, I delight in inventing tunes and words as I sing at the top of my voice without caring whether I have a willing audience present or not. My 9-year-old cousin, at the time 7, once confronted me and asked me to stop singing all the time. Alas, it only gave me another way of annoying the poor little fellow.
Sounds do affect our day-to-day life. I consider myself fortunate to have grown up with the sound of birds in the City Beautiful. Living far from the traffic, we’ve also been spared from the sound of honks and loud shouts from busy travellers. Just behind the premises of our house is a park where kids can be heard playing. Come summer or winter, the squeak of the iron swings, the thud of the ball against the bat and all types of excited, scared, angry screams echo through the air.
My beagle, Joey, too, has found his music. Every time the cat comes, first we hear the birds starting to chirping animatedly, as they announce the arrival of the predator. Then, we hear Joey bark, after which there comes a ‘thud’ of the back door closing and finally the air is filled with howls and yelps of despair upon him having always missed the cat by a hair’s breadth.
In Bangalore, while I was pursuing a course in Arts Based Therapy, I got to experience sound a lot. The ‘dhum’ of my hands coming in contact with the surface of the djembe soon became my favourite. Each ‘dhum’ welcomed any emotion that simmered within our psyche, waiting for a release. Later, while residing in Mumbai for a month, the daily sounds I got to hear during my commute were at first the cars swishing by as I walked to the metro station.
Then the relatively silent hum of the metro came next being followed by the loud ‘khrrrrrr’ of the auto. When after three weeks of staying in those chaotic sounds, I finally reached Bandstand, the roar of the waves crashing against the rocks enveloped me. For a while, I couldn’t speak because all I could hear was the rumble of the sea that drowned out all other noises. ‘Listen to the sound of the waves within you,’ said Rumi. It was truly surreal.
The sounds that I recall the most are from my childhood. I can recall the hum of the rocket rocketing up in the smoky Diwali sky with a feeling of excitement.
There was also the dreaded sound of the night chowkidar hitting the ground with his stick which brought fear upon us. My favourite memory that always warms my heart is of my parents singing lullabies and chants to my sister and me as we dozed off on our bunk bed.
‘Sound or vibration is the most powerful force in the universe,’ said Paramahansa Yogananda, author of the book Autobiography of a Yogi. With her magical voice, the nightingale Lata Mangeshkar transformed music for us Indians forever. The music of ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’, ‘Chariots of Fire’, ‘Titanic’ or ‘Top Gun’ sends us into a nostalgic realm.
Each sound, word and note has a special memory and emotion attached to it in our lives. I think that the bedtime lullabies and Joey’s excited yelps will remain as some of my favourite remembrances of all time. And if not that, then well, there’s always a possibility to start humming an abstract tune to connect with life. Which can be followed by inventing words as you sing at the top of your voice, making up your own song as you go.