Of live music!

It's strange how a  song from a distant day can trigger a flood of memories. While shuffling songs on the player today morning, I heard the familiar beats of Tu Aashiqui Hai and was transported back to the year 2008. My second year of graduation. AIIMS annual fest. We were there for the finals of the India Quiz, waiting in the last rows of the auditorium. It must have been 7 in the evening. A music competition was being conducted on stage and I wasn't paying attention. But more than anything that day I remember the performance of a college band who played 'Tu Aashiqui Hai'. It wasn't the era of mobile recordings but till my last breath I will remember their rendition. I do not even remember if they won but it was the beginning of a lifelong romance for live music. I hadn't heard the original but when I did, it did not even remotely capture the magic of that performance, that evening.

What is it with certain notes at certain times that, that moment remains frozen forever. Sometimes I feel as if there is music for our ears and then there is music for our souls. The latter is the kind which strikes a chord deep inside and nourishes from within. I do not as much remember the songs I play everyday as the songs we sang on our journeys, on our special get togethers and the songs I heard my parents or my grand parents sing. That was all the live music we needed then and even now.

December 2018. On a rain drenched christmas eve in Nuremberg, I heard the mellifluous strains of 'Hallelujah'. As people milled around the Europe's oldest Christmas market, it was as if that quartet conveyed the timeless spirit of the festival through their music. That is what a European Christmas will mean forever. Perhaps their notes will carry the sound of their music way too far, for way too long.

And just as I was least expecting any musical interlude, over dinner at a neighbourhood place, I heard the most beautiful piece of violin in my life. Perhaps my word is too small or perhaps my soul hasn't been drenched in enough music as yet. But these three live performances will remain 'alive' forever. Of all the things I try to share in life, these will be exceptions. Nothing could recreate their magic, nothing could replace/replicate those notes etched in my memory.  During my last, I hope these will be the moments that will flash before my eyes. These will be the moments which will assure of a life well lived.