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This is the fourth part of a novella “The Confession”.
Read the rest of the novella here –
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Ram helped David settle down in his bedroom, gave him some money and the phone numbers of the closest Dominos outlet, Nandini restaurant and a few other dining options who delivered food home, and then left for office. After all, he had articles to write and deadlines to meet.
David walked up to the bookshelf and picked up one of his all time favorite books and settled down on the recliner in his room when something poked him in the butt. When he put his hand to check what it was, he pulled out his favorite blue iPod Nano from there. Looking at it he smiled as this was one gadget he clearly remembered and loved a lot as well.
Just like books, David’s love for music went back a long way as well. His mother, Nancy was an extremely good singer and also played western classical piano as well. She was a regular part of the choir at her church and even otherwise was found constantly humming her favorite tunes as well. Her taste in music ranged from gospel music to the latest chartbuster which the teenybopper kids of the day enjoyed. David’s love for music therefore was quite genetic in nature given that he had been exposed to quite a fair amount of music even when he was still in his mother’s womb.
The fact that he grew up in what many consider the golden decade of R&B music meant that he was exposed to a lot of variety of music growing up in 80s India. His tastes were quite eclectic and varied from Madonna and Michael Jackson in pop to Iron Maiden and Led Zeppelin in hard rock, from Kenny Rogers in country music to Kenny G in classical instrumental music.
Further, his cosmopolitan upbringing in Bangalore and all the Tam Brahm friends he had meant that he also enjoyed his fair share of Carnatic classical music as well. While he didn’t quite understand the nuances of the craft of Carnatic or Hindustani classical music, he had enough of an ear and sense for music that he was able to appreciate the beauty of the rhythms of the same.
He switched on the iPod and saw that all his favorite tracks were on it. He swiped the Click Wheel and saw that it was as smooth as he could always remember it being. And when he hit on the Hold Switch, the feeble click that he heard was ‘music’ to his ears. He navigated to an ‘all weather favorite’ album of his, Michael Jackson’s Bad and started listening to the tracks in the order in which they appeared. Looking at the Album Art of this particular album, his mind was taken back to his teenage years, when he used to enjoy these songs on a music cassette with his then favorite Sony Walkman.
The sad part was that while he could remember something from 15+ yrs ago when he was a teenager, he couldn’t quite remember the last few years of his life. The irony of the situation was not lost on him as he looked at Michael Jackson in the iPod and smiled melancholically at him. The funny part was that he could clearly remember that the King of Pop died sometime in 2009 and that was only 4 yrs ago. But as hard as he tried, he couldn’t quite remember how he met Ram or became friends with him at all.
It was quite frustrating, trying to live a life not knowing what exactly you were expected to be doing with it. All these thoughts and emotions flooding to him all at once resulted in him getting a headache. He therefore decided to take a small nap.
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This post has been written for the Write Tribe Festival of Words 2 where today’s prompt had to be about music.
This is the fourth post in a novella “The Confession” that I am writing trying to correlate the same to the Write Tribe Festival of Words 2.
Read the rest of the novella here
