musingswhileunlearning

Insomniacs and light sleepers would know what it is like to lie there waiting for sleep to take over or wake up after an hour of dozing off, feeling both groggy and awake at once, desperate to salvage the remaining hours available for shut eye! I have been battling this off and on for years while trying a number of remedies suggested by many, sailing in the same boat as me. My final resort, usually, is to accept the fact that sleep is not written for me on that night and I just commit myself to keeping my eyes shut and chanting “Om Namah Shivaiy”. I do eventually get sleep on such days about half an hour or an hour before the alarm goes off! I love the stillness and the almost sinister quiet of the afternoons but at night I am restless. I cannot appreciate the night because the thought of getting on with the chores of next day without being able to rest creates panic in my system. Last night was one such night. We had gone over to my parents’ place for lunch a...

As a child, one of my favourite songs used to be “Raindrops on roses…” from the classic movie “The Sound of Music”. It made me smile. I’d learn stanza after stanza on my own till I knew the song by heart. (It was only after Google that I found out what schnitzel and apple strudel looked like) Lyrics were very important to me-they still are. I am in no way suggesting that being fascinated by lyrics meant that I listened to only “deep” numbers. We had lousy Hindi Songs as I grew up in the late eighties and nineties unlike today, where our industry is churning out brilliant numbers both in terms of melody and lyrics. I quite enjoyed those songs too (all Govinda-Karishma numbers with their cheap and meaningless words). It is just that no matter what the words are, I need to know them. I am not writing about songs and lyrics though but of all those things that uplift my spirits; and music, perhaps, tops the list. From grade six (that is when I got a room to myself) till date, I need a...