Delhi-6, Dev D, and my mid-life crisis
Sukumar Ranganathan -
Monday, January 26, 2009 7:15 PM
I'm calling it my own middle-aged crisis.
I've never been into Hindi music. Maybe it is because I grew up in a household where most people listened to Carnatic music.
Maybe it is because my first language has always been English -- not Hindi, not Tamil.
Or maybe it is because I started off listening to rock because it was cool to do so -- I can't say this for sure, although I can say that at the age of 15, I started smoking because I thought it was cool; I stopped exactly a decade later -- and the music just grew on me.
Whatever it is: I've never really been into Hindi film music.
And for a few days last week, I was.
Let me explain the context.
I have a dog called Jabba the Hutt who is anything but huttish. He's petrified of crackers and, unfortunately, I live in a particularly nice part of Delhi where people like to burst crackers for almost everything (weddings, cricket matches, religious festivals apart from Diwali). This usually happens late at night (after 11, just around the time I get back from work), and the only thing to do is to sit in a room and play something, music or the television, very loudly.
With some amount of experimentation, I'd discovered that music didn't work very well (not even the loudest Focus I could rustle up).
TV worked better. And Tamil music channel Sun Music worked the best, even if they weren't playing music (I have no idea why; maybe its the way Tamil is spoken in movies).
So, many are the nights I have spent reading a book and trying not to get drawn into watching TV that is guaranteed to turn your brain to jelly.
Then, one day last week, just before I switched the TV off I surfed channels, and came across this song from a movie called Delhi-6 that I liked. I have no idea what it's called but it features pigeons.
Then came a song from another movie called Dev D that I liked. Again, I don't know the name of the song but it has two guys dressed up as Elvis performing the song.
I have no idea why I liked the songs; I just did.
For a couple of days, I even listened to FM on my drive to and from work. And then, as inexplicably as it had started, the phase passed.
Like I said, it was probably my own mid-life crisis.
But it's behind me now.