After a heaping dose of anti-histamine, waking up late was natural. The unnatural thing was to wake up to 7 missed calls from my father. And this has almost never happened before. But I think I get this habit from him, the perseverance of calling people on the loop. Anyways, back to today, I was petrified if something had happened. After the first call, switching the video call on, all I saw was my father's fabulous ear because the sound quality was bad.
When I asked him if everything was alright, he replied saying that I called you to ask about a said guy who was a senior to you in previous university and a possible groom for a dear friend's daughter. That was unexpected but the day carried on well.
Fast-forward to this evening where my supervisor was listening to classical music midst modern coding. For music can be a drug and coding an addiction in itself. With the flow of ragas on the air, the creative does take a spiral. A jolt of my memory was visited at that point. All I remembered was an ustad singing to profound sitar music from back in the days. Unable to recall the song at that time, I walked back home to discover the song, it was the one associated to my father.
My father, he was the only man in my life during those days, when I was 16. And like any devoted daughter it was my mission to make my father happy. The thing that made my father happy was Pandit Jasraj. Having attended his live performance during his college days in India, my father had his hands on a limited edition of high quality Pandit Jasraj CD. My father almost lives like Shiva besides wearing striped animal pants, in a nutshell he is a minimalist. Never have I seen my father have a sense of entitlement towards earthly things. With the exception of this CD. Hence when CD players became outdated and he wanted to listen to the music, I had copied this encrypted CD to his pendrive. This was the time, windows media player's special edition allowed files saved in other formats to be converted to mp3 forms and using internet was still not an easy option.
Thus the nightmare began, every car ride with father was magnum opus of Pandit Jasraj. Unlike my current self, I was not a fan of his music. If I were a fan of his music at 16, I would probably have entirely missed my childhood. And there we were suffering, we being, me, my siblings and even my mother. After a femme protest on stopping the music, my father made a dialogue, "Don't I own this car, don't I drive you guys around? Can't I have my liberties? If you guys dislike the music, I suggest you travel though public vehicle." Now you see, I am pretty sure a lot of fathers say that, but he is not anyone's father. Never has my father ever said that to us. Since he has always been a friend, we have treated him as equal, in terms of respect as well as criticism. And there was our father, just once ever in his life pushing his wishes on us. And so we suffered, for the love of our dearest man.
And to his surprise the music vanished from his car a couple of days after the incident. The CD was never found again. I am not sure who among the elder women in my family did it but I am sure my mother was a willing participant in this event. For it was my mother who had saved the CD all these years because it was one of the few things loved by the man she loved.
When I asked him if everything was alright, he replied saying that I called you to ask about a said guy who was a senior to you in previous university and a possible groom for a dear friend's daughter. That was unexpected but the day carried on well.
Fast-forward to this evening where my supervisor was listening to classical music midst modern coding. For music can be a drug and coding an addiction in itself. With the flow of ragas on the air, the creative does take a spiral. A jolt of my memory was visited at that point. All I remembered was an ustad singing to profound sitar music from back in the days. Unable to recall the song at that time, I walked back home to discover the song, it was the one associated to my father.
My father, he was the only man in my life during those days, when I was 16. And like any devoted daughter it was my mission to make my father happy. The thing that made my father happy was Pandit Jasraj. Having attended his live performance during his college days in India, my father had his hands on a limited edition of high quality Pandit Jasraj CD. My father almost lives like Shiva besides wearing striped animal pants, in a nutshell he is a minimalist. Never have I seen my father have a sense of entitlement towards earthly things. With the exception of this CD. Hence when CD players became outdated and he wanted to listen to the music, I had copied this encrypted CD to his pendrive. This was the time, windows media player's special edition allowed files saved in other formats to be converted to mp3 forms and using internet was still not an easy option.
Thus the nightmare began, every car ride with father was magnum opus of Pandit Jasraj. Unlike my current self, I was not a fan of his music. If I were a fan of his music at 16, I would probably have entirely missed my childhood. And there we were suffering, we being, me, my siblings and even my mother. After a femme protest on stopping the music, my father made a dialogue, "Don't I own this car, don't I drive you guys around? Can't I have my liberties? If you guys dislike the music, I suggest you travel though public vehicle." Now you see, I am pretty sure a lot of fathers say that, but he is not anyone's father. Never has my father ever said that to us. Since he has always been a friend, we have treated him as equal, in terms of respect as well as criticism. And there was our father, just once ever in his life pushing his wishes on us. And so we suffered, for the love of our dearest man.
And to his surprise the music vanished from his car a couple of days after the incident. The CD was never found again. I am not sure who among the elder women in my family did it but I am sure my mother was a willing participant in this event. For it was my mother who had saved the CD all these years because it was one of the few things loved by the man she loved.
