Music medley

This write up on our music collection was published in the Hindu's Open Page on May 28th and the link is here.

I had enjoyed cleaning up our bookshelves, so I decided to sort out the music cassettes. Thanks to YouTube and multiple Internet links, we haven’t been buying music CDs or cassettes for a while now, but the collection we do have is a treasured one. And we are one of the few families that still own a working cassette player.

Sorting out the cassettes was like a trip down Nostalgia Lane. ‘The Call of the Valley’ was the first cassette my husband bought to play on the tiny tape recorder purchased with his first salary. It rested right next to a wonderful jugalbandi between Balamuralikrishna and Bhimsen Joshi, flanked by the glorious Chandraghanta by Pandit Jasraj at one end and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan’s album for young children at the other. Both our sons had grown up listening to that album so many times. Another favourite I found nestling next to Chandraghanta was the album of duets by Bhimsen Joshi and Lata Mangeshkar – what a hit Baaje Muraliya used to be with the family. Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty and M.S. Subbulakshmi were next to each other, and judging by their photographs on the cassette covers, Sudha Raghunathan, Ashwini Bhide and Veena Sahasrabudhe were really young when their music engulfed our home.Jazzmine by Ravi Shankar had been bought with so much pleasure after Asiad 1982 in Delhi. The all-time favourite has always been of Pandit Jasraj and Kavita Krishnamurthy singing Sumiran Kar Le , with L. Subramanian accompanying them on the violin. What a veritable storehouse of music some of our taped 90-minute cassettes were — Kishori Amonkar singing with Balamuralikrishna, Kumar Gandharva’s nirgun bhajans, Chitti Babu, Shobha Gurtu...

Shubha Mudgal was set between the classical and the light music section, as were the Colonial Cousins. The Beatles were in the ‘light’ section, followed by Pink Floyd. The album Thriller with its attractive cover was bought at the height of Michael Jackson fever, and Apache Indian was an addition that was made with trepidation. Led Zeppelin and the Abba, Dire Straits and Boney M — our shelf was a horror story for purists, but we had listened to it all, with pleasure.

Tamil line-up

Thanks to the advent of A.R. Rahman, our collection of Tamil film songs which had initially only boasted of Thiruvilaiyadal and Thillana Mohanambal grew by leaps and bounds. Bombay, Roja, Nayagan, Thiruda Thiruda, Hey Ram …. the list grew. The Hindi versions of so many of these albums joined Swades and Lagaan. Indira, Thalapati, Kannathil Muthamittal and Mudhal Mariyadhai joined the ranks, providing us so many hours of listening pleasure.

The last few were the best — recordings of stories and nursery rhymes by our sons, nephews and nieces. At a time when Skype, Facetime and Google Chat didn’t exist, these cassettes were treasured as personalised messages exchanged within the family — a record of some beautiful holidays spent together.

Of books and bookshelves

This article by me was published in the Hindu's Open Page on Feb 26, 2017, and I was paid 1500/- for my contribution! The link is here.

Books and bookshelves

As a family of readers, our collection of fiction is quite eclectic, ranging from comedy to murder mysteries to fantasy and science fiction to feminist writing– basically a whole gamut of themes. We have tried to keep books of each genre together, though not entirely successfully as I found out last week. While hunting for an Alexander McCall Smith book, I realised that some of our books have found some strange shelf-mates, probably depending on which of the family members did the placing.

I finally found the book tucked away between two Tom Clancy books. Alexander McCall Smith normally shares shelf space with Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers and other mystery writers, given our belief that  Mma Ramotswe would get along famously with Albert Campion, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple and Lord Peter Wimsey.  John le Carré’s Smiley is also to be found in this shelf. 

An entire shelf is dedicated to Tom Clancy, Wilbur Smith, John Grisham and Jeffery Archer.  Maybe this was planned as the ‘fast read’ shelf, as this would explain why I found Markus Zusak’s Book Thief nestled between two of the Courtney series books. Really weighty ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’ is also on this rack – the only explanation I can imagine is that someone tried reading it, and gave it up very fast.

P G Wodehouse shares space with Erma Bombeck.  James Herriot and his wonderful books on life as a Veterinary Doctor in rural England also find space in the same shelf, as does Gerald Durrell.  This must be our ‘Humour’ shelf.  A little further up the rack is Bill Bryson with Jerome K Jerome’s ‘Three men in a boat’ tucked in between two of his books. Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Remains of the Day’ also found its way next to Wodehouse  - one of us must have felt Stevens would be happy next to Jeeves, talking ‘butler’ matters.

The ‘women’ shelf has Jane Austen and I am sure she is proud to be sharing her space with Simone Beauvoir and Erica Jong. Erma Bombeck, one of whose books I found here next to Pride and Prejudice, with her irreverent sense of humour would have got along beautifully with Jane Austen, I think. Amy Tan would also be proud of her place next to her country woman Jung Chang, Jane Austen and Margaret Atwood.  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie also occupies this space proudly. Several Indian authors could have found their place here and, Shashi Deshpande, Arundhati Roy or Anita Desai would surely be quite comfortable holding their own in such enlightened company, but I guess one of us decided they are Indian first. 

The erstwhile Indian shelf has Samit Basu rubbing shoulders with Amitav Ghosh and Chitra Banerjee Divakurni.  R K Narayan would have not minded being placed next to V S Naipaul, who once paid tribute to the author, saying he was ‘immediately enchanted’ by his early works.   Ruskin Bond has Khushwant Singh as a neighbour, possibly because of the ‘Himalayan hill-stations’ connection. I am glad he is in this section rather than with all the ‘English’ authors. 

With the Afghan-born American author Khalid Hosseini and Pakistani authors Bapsi Sidhwa and Kamila Shamsie becoming favourites, the Indian shelf has become more of an Asian shelf. Now with Elif Shafak and Orhan Pamuk joining the list of favoured authors, Turkey is also going to need a place – maybe these books will be the link between Asia and Europe in our bookshelf, just like the nation straddles Eastern Europe and Western Asia.

Thanks to the size of each book of Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy, the Asian shelf is filling up very fast and has started encroaching into other shelves – something like the way Indians themselves are permeating societies everywhere in the world.

A young friend has solved all the dilemma of making decisions about whether books should be segregated geographically or thematically by arranging his bookshelves according to colour. While this is really appealing visually, I am not exactly sure about how one would go about locating a book unless you remembered the colour of the cover!

Thanks to books going ‘walkabout’, we do spend a while locating a book, but then browsing along the racks is a pleasure too! Maybe colour-coded bookshelves are a good idea – something like the Shuffle option for music – you never really know what comes next.