Songs= Window to your memories

I saw an interesting ad recently about each song having a story. It led me to wonder if there are songs that have been a part of my life. As I recalled one song to another, I realized that I could not remember a single song. That was very odd because I listen to music almost all the time; some have been my special favorites and travel with me on my cell phone wherever I go. And yet I thought of nothing as I listened to these songs? How could that be?

My bafflement was so great that I did an exercise; I turned on all the music I had on my computer and discovered songs that did bring back memories, those that have certainly been my friends for life. Although the lyrics, melody and the beat is the same, these songs became the trigger to remember lost memories. I must admit though, all the memories were not happy. So I thought to voice out some interesting “adventures” I have had as certain songs played in the background, just like in the movies...

1.  My hands were shaking, my right foot could not stop fidgeting and my heart was pounding in my throat when a boy next to me tapped me on my shoulder and offered one of his earplugs. I was reluctant to take the earplug from the kindly boy though; I wanted to be left alone in the cocoon of nervousness I was in. It was my first acting performance in my whole life, in front hundreds of people of all age groups and I could not think about anything but my lines and listen to my heart pitter patter as I sat behind the curtain waiting for my curtain call . The kindly boy tapped me on the shoulder again and waved the earplug in front of me; I couldn’t help but take it and insert it into my ear. He then turned on “Amplifier” by Imran Khan and began making silly faces and rolling his head around silently. This song is so ostentatious and it was the no.1 song on all iPods and car radios of Karachi at one point or another. Yet, this song helped me calm down and this song reminds me of the kindness that boy did for me. The moment soon came when I was motioned to go on stage, I gave the boy back his earplug and squeezed his shoulder gratefully and went out to perform. It was only a school play at the Arts Council a couple of years ago, but no matter how big a stage, one always has a nerve-racking moment just before one is about to be somebody completely else. That boy helped me get my bearings and I will always be grateful to him.    
2. This song always brought a smile to my face when I heard after such a long time. It was 2 a.m. when my sister and I were dancing on this song. Yes, we certainly woke up in the morning feeling like P Diddy, in fact we did not sleep much at all. We were youtube-ing some dance moves on this particular dance on my sister’s Dholki. We though to do sort of a sister’s dance number at the Dholki, just the two of us and so we found two Asian sisters who had made an amazing choreography video on “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha. However, unlike the very fit Asian sisters, my sister and I pooped out after a few steps. We abandoned it after a few more tries and then just talked about silly things. I was most probably the happiest at that point. They were just a couple of days left for my sister and I to share a bed with junk food all over, the music on and wearing the shabbiest PJs. We played “Tik Tok” the whole night and we had learned the lyrics by heart as well. It was a point in our lives where we were both young and single and ad no care in the world, exactly what Kesha meant in “Tik Tok”. After that, my sister got married and yet, this is song became a trigger to a very sweet memory. I suppose I will be adding this song to my cell phone again
3. This song does not have one particular memory, it is a collection of my whole pre-teen to abut fourteen years of childhood that I give my thanks to. "Everybody (Backstreet back) by Backstreet Boys" has been my companion through years and years of dance mania, angst and boy craziness. It has been the background music in my head when I would pretend to be a princess who kicked ass at dancing. The song used to console me when the boy I liked in class did not ‘like’ like me back. It was the assurance that even though I would never be able to meet any of the Backstreet boys (since I live on an entirely different continent than them), I knew that I would always be able to meet them in my dreams. Yes, Nick, Kevin, AJ, Simon and Howie were my best friends and I truly bonded over them through their songs but especially with “Everybody”.
4.   There were even some Bollywood songs in my exercise and a couple of quite interesting songs brought back memories. One of them was “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai”-Kuch Kuch Hota Hota Hai. I have seen the film a billion times; the Kajol and Shahrukh Khan combination was one of my favorite Bollywood on-screen couple in the world! All of my friends have seen it and I have a particular group of friends (all girls) who had a tradition of having sleepovers on New Year’s Eve. As time passed and our lives got more complicated and fast-paced, our New Year’s Eve tradition faded. One of life’s changes was that a good friend of ours, R, was moving to Canada and another was soon to get married. We HAD to have a sleepover for the last time when all of us were in the same country and single, hence the sleepovers which come high or low, we all attended no matter what. To keep our childhood alive for that one night, we decided to watch a Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. All of us knew each and every dialogue and we would foretell the next scene to come with explicit detail. When the theme song came up, I sang it out loud along with the film. I was really belting out the lyrics, with a shriek pitch which made my friends beg me to have mercy on them and stop. It was the peak of my contentment to be around friends I love and am loved. One of the best times of my life.

These are just a few of my memories that I wanted to share, I'm sure everybody in this world has at least one song that triggers a fond or perhaps a sorrowful memory, but a memory nonetheless. The point of the exercise was to know how effective a song can be for a person to trigger a thought, memory or feeling. It can consume you until there is nothing but that one song that goes over and over in your mind and sometimes you don't know why the song is stuck in your head in the first place. Yet, it maybe because it brought back a part of yourself long ago, tucked away in the corner of your mind where you had kept bits and pieces to keep safe.

Fishing Rod = My dad's mighty sword.

I wrote a story a month ago in perspective of my dad's fishing rod. I have a soft spot for my dad's passion for fishing. He loves it so much that when my siblings and I were younger and couldn't be left alone at home, he would bundle us up in jackets over our pajamas and take us to the sea-end of my country to fish. Where was my mother? She would be with us too, also dozing off in the boat  and not always happy about being on a boat but she married a fisherman at heart, so what could she do? Anyway, this story is especially dedicated to my dad, the fisherman :)

  September is the time when my master wakes up at 4 a.m. goes to the mosque for prayers at 4:15, comes back home at 5:15 and then goes up to his room. However, rather than switching on his television at 5:20, he comes down again, dressed in frayed khaki pants, black Nike T-shirt and a baseball cap. He switches on the storeroom light at 5:25 and takes me out of that rat hole. Who am I? I’m my master’s servant, his beautiful fishing rod. I anticipate my master’s appearance every day but he fits fishing into his schedule when he has wrapped up most of his obligations at work. In a world where professional competition is a battlefield, my master takes out the time to look after his mechanized sail boat at a fisherman village called Mubarak Goth. I believe my master was a fisherman, living in a rundown shack, in another life. The fact is that I have a bond with my master that he may not even have with his own children, the most primitive characteristic of a man comes alive when he hunts and I am the tool that my master uses to hunt fish.

He was about to put me in the car when he patted his pockets, searching for the car keys. Ah yes, an old habit of my master, he would never remember to take the keys and he would go up to his room, open the lights and look for them everywhere. As I wait for my master’s return by the entrance door, I look down the empty lane. I can see the blue board that says Clifton, Block-9, some punk though spray painted “Anda Group” on it with silver. It is sad the way some humans mistreat public property, heck I’ve seen the fishing rods lying around for rent at the village. They are badly rusted, some loops are missing and the grip is practically ripped off. I am thankful to be in the ownership of such a thoughtful master. I smile grimly at the other graffiti on the walls of bungalows across from me, the crumbling paint on some other wall and the crows, perched on the wires that are entwined with the palm trees and hedges, beginning to get loud as the sky did a transition from a dull grey to a bluish shade. The scent in the air is of early morning, I breath it in deeply, I love this dewy scent. It smells like what clouds would smell like. I’m drinking in the sight of how time has changed the picture of the roads at the end of the lane. I can see what used to be the main Gizri road, which has become quarter of its size on each side due to the flyover built on it. I’ve heard my master grumble about it when it was under construction. The noise was a constant headache, the dust and the rubble was the source of my master’s countless coughing fits, it was a nightmare. It took three years to build that bridge and I thank the Mighty when it got done and the roads were remade. However, time did not change the board signs of the shops across the road, there is still the yellow board of ‘Dunlop’ tyre shop, the image-full of lamps and lights on the ‘Roshni’ board or the four story mosque with its tiled walls and white domes. Oh how I missed being outdoors. A few cars are zipping by to and from, echoes of minibuses and their unique horn tones are audible, I also see some familiar house guards walking by, probably on their way to work, leaving their families even on a Sunday. I felt sorry for the guards, but I didn’t feel sorry for my master leaving his family to go fishing with me. I am the main reason for his steady blood pressure, I can tell the expression on his face since he picked me up from the storeroom, and he looked twelve years old.

My master returns, jiggling the car keys from his finger in stride. He picks me up and puts me diagonally into the car so that my one end lies on the floor of the passenger seat and my other end can almost touch the back wind shield. He settles into the car and turns on the ignition. Then he looks out towards the almost empty road of this maddening city called Karachi and slowly drives the car out of his lane. On his way to go to the fishermen village where the sea awaits him, where there is nothing but fresh air, his underdeveloped boat and I, his friend, his fishing rod.  

Z.

Cinema = Completely fake and exaggerated. Just the way I like it

There have been around 11 movies that I've seen on the big screen in my life time so far. I cannot describe the joy I feel when I'm sitting in the cinema hall, staring at the images playing in front of me. It is the best feeling, like my own world has faded away and it's just the movie and I. Talking about the experiences I've had watching these movies is a bit of a drag, so I shall list down all of them (in random order), but I will give some minor but memorable incidents involved with certain movies.

1. Jurassic Park: Ah yes, as I say in slang: "Whattay Movie!" You see, once upon a time, my parents enjoyed going out with their friends and "chilling out". They would usually love just having a good time, and taking their young ones along so that they could also have a good time. My love for movies is mostly due to the reason that my parents took my siblings and I to the cinema when they would go with their friends. Thus I came to see Jurassic Park on the big screen and boy, did I pee my pants (figuratively). It was the scariest film I had ever seen and dinosaurs were the main characters in my nightmares for ages. Especially the part where the T-Rex snaps off the high voltage electric wires and comes out on the road, where Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and the kids are stranded in the jeeps, I was crying and crying for them, knowing they were going to be ripped into pieces (though that didn't happen).  
2. Cliffhanger: This is the movie in which my brother cried. He was devastated that one of the main characters let go of  the cliff he was holding on to, to save his friends. He was really small at the time though, so my parents consoled him by telling him again and again that the character went to candy land. Unfortunately my brother was inconsolable. I, at the time, had no idea what was happening in the whole film. I thought Sylvester Stallone was really scary. 
3. The Bee Movie: To think that I watched this movie in a cinema is embarrassing! I don't know what I was thinking. What made it worse was that I coaxed my friends to come watch this "amazing" movie with me. It wasn't the movie that was pathetic or anything, but the whole theater room was filled with less than ten year old kids and their mothers or adult chaperons. My friends and I were the only teenagers there and we looked so out of place. Plus the noise, Shoot Me. I could not look at my friends in the eye after the movie was over.
4. Khuda Ke Liye (Pakistani movie): Watching this movie in cinema was the most spontaneous thing my mother has ever done in her life. I don't know what came over her but on a lazy Sunday, when there was practically a rainstorm occurring outside our window, Mum decided to go watch Khuda Ke Liye on the big screen. Another surprise was that my siblings also agreed and well I didn't want to be left behind so I also tagged along (inwardly groaning because I hate watching Lollywood or Bollywood on the big screen, I think it's a waste of money). However, was I in for another surprise. I actually enjoyed the movie. A lot. Perhaps the plot was a bit haywire, but it was a really good attempt.The rain had stopped momentarily and we left our home, reached the cinema and watched the whole movie and even came back home without a heavy shower of rain. However, the flood on the road due to our horrible city sewage system (at the time) to take in excess rain water was unable to take in the rainwater from certain roads. We made a mistake of taking the route where there was A LOT of rainwater and our car got flooded! Literally!. My brother was the designated driver and considering the hysterics Mum, Sis and I were in, he was the superhero of the day because he remained calm the whole time. Bless his soul.
5. New Moon: I predict that whoever reads this is going to groan out loud that I actually went to watch this movie on the big screen. The only reason I went was to see Jacob's awesome pecs, biceps, triceps and six-pack abs. The whistles and hoots when Jacob took off his shirt was deafening.
6. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Dead Man's Chest/ Underworld 2: Why do I have two movies in one heading? Well, that's because I was going to go see the former but ended up watching the latter, which had already come out in DVD. The reason is plain and simple: My friends and I were late getting to the showing on time, and so it was houseful. Totally devastated, I just wanted to sit and sulk but my friends insisted to go see some movie so Underworld 2 was showing, there was also a Bollywood film showing but I refused. I wasn't that desperate.  

The most eventful times were the films I have seen above, here's the rest of the list of movies I've seen on cinema and enjoyed every minute of it. 

1. The Mummy
2. King Kong (New version)  
3. MI3
4. In Time
5. MI4