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FESTIVALS: OF MUSIC, MEMORIES AND MUSICAL MEMORIES

FESTIVALS: OF MUSIC, MEMORIES AND MUSICAL MEMORIES

by Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri June 21 2025, 12:00 am Estimated Reading Time: 15 mins, 58 secs

Music weaves memory, emotion, and meaning into life’s quietest and loudest moments. On World Music Day, Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri goes down memory lane to relive a few unforgettable moments through the music that shaped those moments. 

Music is more than sound — it is the soul’s language, where emotions find voice and memories find anchor. In this deeply personal and poetic reflection, the author explores music’s timeless ability to stir memory, evoke emotion, and mark life’s most unforgettable moments. From John Denver’s country roads to Abida Parveen’s divine ghazals, from childhood lullabies to qawwalis that echo through decades, each note carries a story of discovery, longing, and transformation. Music transcends time, becoming a bridge to the past, a balm for the present, and an inspiration for the future. This evocative essay captures how music shapes you, heals wounds, and makes life profoundly meaningful.  

‘Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps: silence of paintings. You language where all language ends. You time standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts,’ wrote Rainer Maria Rilke. He called music a ‘language where languages end’, thus highlighting its universality. As someone has observed about this particular poem, ‘He equates it with a sphere in which the rules of normal physical conduct are suspended—statutes breathe, he writes.’

‘Kaun hai aisa jisey phoolon se, geeton se, panchhiyon se pyaar na ho’. This forgotten gem sung by Yesudas, composed and written by Ravindra Jain, has one of life’s essential truths. Show me a human being who does not love flowers, music and birds…and I will show you an empty soul. The film (Radha Aur Seeta) has been forgotten, no one will probably be able to recall the actors on which it was shot. But the song has survived.   

That is the thing with music. Why does that opening guitar refrain in Vishal Bhardwaj’s composition ‘Na jaane kya tha’ (in the album Boodhe Pahadon Par) haunt you so much? What is it about Don Mclean’s ‘American pie’ or Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowing in the wind’ that excites the imagination decades after it was released? Why does Rafi’s rendition of ‘Khoya khoya chand’ still intoxicate? Why does a song, a piece of music make such a profound impact on the soul, and the memory (called the Proust Effect)?  

And above all, the power that music has to evoke a time and place long past. A lot of our memories are shaped around the music that was part of those memories. A late-night walk back home with the strains of ‘Hai apna dil toh awara’ emanating from the corner paan shop. A leisurely walk with a friend on a freezing cold December day with ‘Chal kahin duur nikal jaaye’ playing on the Walkman, evoking the mist and ambience of snow-clad mountains even in the plains. A cold and rainy January day with friends in a college room, the lecturer absent, and me singing ‘Sunshine on my shoulders’. Or a dear friend, Ruchi Sanghi, singing ‘Suhani sham aayi hai kisi ke aane se’ on the campus lawns with friends nursing cups of warm tea on a balmy early winter morning. None of us will probably remember the name of the film (Shaukeen) or anything else about the song, but that moment is inextricably linked to it and resonates in my memory. Each moment stands out primarily because of the accompanying music more than anything else.  

Here are some of life’s finest moments that introduced me to a new music, or new friends, or just a new way of looking at life.

Country roads take me home: John Denver

A hot summer morning. The college vacations had just begun. A group of friends were staying over at a friend’s house whose family had gone away for the vacations. After a really late night, watching a film on the VCP, generally shooting the breeze, I woke up around 9 a.m. The others were still fast asleep. Preparing a cup of tea, I sauntered over to a wall-length window. My eyes fell on a tape-recorder lying on a table, a cassette next to it. I picked it up absent-mindedly. John Denver, it said. I hadn’t heard of him. I put the cassette on. And the strains of ‘Country roads’ came floating by.

I looked out of the window and squinted at the sun, glaring fiercely even at 9 in the morning. As Denver crooned – ‘I hear her voice in the mornin’ hour, she calls me / The radio reminds me of my home far away / Drivin’ down the road, I get a feelin’ / That I should’ve been home yesterday…’ – time seemed to stop. Something about the moment fused with the words, and gave birth in me a lifelong desire to be a vagabond, tramp away all life, yet pine for home. It also birthed in me a love for Denver and English songs. A moment with music that has not faded even thirty-five years later.  

Phir se aiyyo badra bidesi: Namkeen, Asha Bhosle, Gulzar, R.D. Burman

Ek mood, ek kaifiyat geet ka chehra hota hai – it is uncanny how one remembers the exact moment associated with certain epiphanies. A typical summer day in Delhi…my final-year B. Com exams over, the results awaited. I had just completed a week-long summer job for the princely sum of Rs 500! Thrilled with my first income, I returned home with a cassette of songs by Gulzar, accompanied by his commentary: Fursat Ke Raat Din. Settling down to a cup of tea, tired from the week-long exertion under the unforgiving Delhi sun, I put the tape into the recorder. A voice floated in as if from some distant mountainscape aeons in the past, enveloping me in its misty cool folds… Ek mood, ek kaifiyat, geet ka chehra hota hai. Gulzar says everything there is to say about a song in these few lines. 

एक मुड़ एक कैफियत / गीत का चेहरा होता है / कुछ सही से लफ्ज़ जड़ दो / मौज़ू सी धुन की लकीरें खींच दो / तो नगमा सांस लेने लगता है / ज़िन्दा हो जाता है / बस इतनी सी जान होती है गाने की / एक लम्हें की जितनी / हां कुछ लम्हें / बरसों जिंदा रहते हैं / गीत बूढ़े नहीं होते / उनके चेहरे पर झुर्रियां नहीं गिरती / वो पलते रहते हैं चलते रहते हैं / सुनने वालों की उम्र बदल जाती है तो कहते है / हां वो उस पहाड़ का टीला / जब बादलों से ढक जाता था / तो एक आवाज सुनाई दिया करती थी

As the voice faded out, segueing to the plangent strains of Asha Bhosle’s ‘Phir se aaiyo badra bidesi’, something within me shifted. The weariness seeped out, replaced by a wistful longing for something unnameable.

I have always been sceptical of people saying that a moment can alter the course of one’s life. Surely, life is too unfathomable for one episode to usher in such tectonic changes. Yet, looking back, I cannot deny the transformation that moment wrought in me. It set me on course for a lifelong quest, an enduring love affair – for want of a better expression – with Gulzar and with the ambience the song’s picturisation evoked. A quest that continues. (I carry the frayed cover of that cassette in my purse even today!) For the longest time I could not bear to listen to this song in the company of any other person – I had to be all alone to partake of its plangent sorrow.

Har tarannum mein mili hai teri awaaz mujhe: Abida Parveen

Till I had heard this song, my experience of the ghazal was limited to the great albums of Jagjit and Chitra Singh and the evergreen early numbers of Pankaj Udhas. Then, one day, when I was in college, Dad, returning from work, got this four-cassette compilation titled ‘Ghazals from Pakistan’. And a whole new world opened up. This was my introduction to Mehdi Hassan and Ghulam Ali, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Ahmed Faraz, ‘Gulon mein rang bhare’ and ‘Baat karni mujhe’. The anthology also introduced me to Urdu, and had me running to buy an Urdu/Hindi-English dictionary. There was no way I could live another day without understanding what these words meant: ‘Kafas udaas hai yaaron saba se kuchh to kaho, kahin to behr-e-khuda aaj zikr-e-yaar chalein’ or ‘Aaye kuchh abr kuch sharab aaye… / Baam-e-meena se mahtaab utre, Dast-e-saaqi mein aaftaab aaye’.

Yet, of all the gems in this volume, the one that mesmerized me most was Abida Parveen’s ‘Har tarannum mein’, one of the finest odes to love I have listened to. And like all great love songs, this could well be addressed to the beloved or to the divine. I know of few songs of love that say it as evocatively: ‘Ek hi naghma sunata hain har ek saaz mujhe’ – there’s only one song that every instrument renders. Or the sheer aching ecstasy of these lines that articulate the everlasting nature of love: ‘Ishq ka bhi koi anjaam hua karta hai / ishq mein yaad hai aghaaz hi aaghaz mujhe’ (when has love ever known an ending, in love I remember only the beginning). No wonder, falling in loving is such an impossible endeavour.

Chadhta sooraj dheere dheere: Aziz Nazan

This celebrated song by Aziz Nazan, written by Kaiser Ratnagirv, is steeped in the most eloquent philosophy of all great things eventually coming to naught – the greatest of kings, the allure of youth, the highest of laurels and accomplishment, all amount to nothing on the day death comes calling. Who has ever made sense of life? Why do we preen about ourselves given the eternal truth of life?

But before I listened to Aziz Nazan’s great rendition, I heard this song on the Bombay local train during my three-year stay in the city at the cusp of the new millennium. After a particularly tiring day looking for work, I took the slow train – I was in no hurry to get anywhere anyway – from Churchgate to Dahisar (where I stayed at the time). I still remember these two young boys in their mid-teens in ragged clothes board the train at Charni Road. One had a dafli and an ektara, the other a beat-up peti. Both sported bandanas on their heads. I was standing at the door to the compartment, feeling the breeze soothe me, when their voices broke through my tired reverie: 

हुए नामवर…बेनिशां कैसे कैसे… / ज़मीं खा गयी… नौजवान कैसे कैसे… / आज जवानी पर इतरानेवाले कल पछतायेगा / चढ़ता सूरज धीरे धीरे ढलता है ढल जायेगा

(Look, how the once famous have vanished from our memories, / The grave has devoured (what were once) dashing young heroes / Listen you, who are proud of your youth today, you might repent tomorrow, / The sun that is rising now, will slowly but surely set)

For the next ten minutes I listened totally enthralled as their untrained, rustic voices washed over me. It was one of the most shattering experiences of my life till that time. By the time they came to the end of the song and we had reached Lower Parel or Prabhadevi, I was having difficulties holding back my tears. What was it that shook me so? It was only later I would revisit the exceptional words – few songs convey the ultimate truth of life with such stark honesty. But in those ten minutes, the two boys introduced me to something I have not been able to fathom yet – intimations of mortality that I have carried with me ever since? The sheer senselessness of existence, of pride in your achievements (at thirty, I had not achieved anything worthwhile – and I have not done it yet)? I am not sure. Even today, when I listen to Aziz Nazan, my mind goes back to those boys on the evening slow train from Churchgate to Dahisar, giving me one of the most eloquent life lessons.

The Gift of Colleagues: ‘Mann kunto maula’ (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) / ‘Anywhere is’ (Enya)

At the time I was not quite a qawwali fan. In any case, my experience of the qawwali was largely confined to the ones in Hindi films – Amar Akbar Anthony, Hum Kisise Kuma Nahin, and sundry other bastardizations of the form. A colleague at Penguin where I worked at the time – someone with whom I really did not get along well – mentioned Nusrat Ali Khan. I had heard of him only in the context of what Hindi film composers had made of his music with ‘Tu cheez badi hai’ and ‘Mera piya ghar aaya’, and did not understand what the fuss was all about.

The next day, he got me a cassette of the master’s live performances. And the first song in the album, ‘Mann kunto maula’, floored me. How could one sing for the divine with such an ache, and how could God remain immune to a plea such as this? I listened to the cassette and then went out and bought a heap of others, playing ‘Mann kunto maula’ on the loop, which on a tape meant stopping and rewinding time and again. I have forgotten the name of the colleague, but I owe him a huge debt for introducing me to qawwali and to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. 

Another colleague, another song. We were working late into the evening, trying to get a book to press, and to break the monotony, Rukmini Chawla put on a song on her mobile. I was immediately transfixed. The melody, the beats were hypnotic. And after a long day on edits and its nitty-gritty, liberating. Rukmini informed me that the singer-composer was Enya. I had not heard of her. I went on to buy all of Enya’s albums in due course, but ‘Anywhere is’ remains an eternal favourite. As much for that moment when I first experienced its almost cathartic melody – described as ‘an exhilarating up-tempo pop waltz that will turn any car, den, or front stoop into an otherworldly tabernacle of sound’ – as for its lyrics, fifteen stanzas of four lines each, almost hymn-like in the way it articulates ‘life’s search for fulfilment’.  

Even today, the opening and closing quatrains – ‘I walk the maze of moments / But everywhere I turn to / Begins a new beginning / But never finds a finish / The turn I have just taken…The turn that I was making / I might be just beginning / I might be near the end’ – evokes in me an awareness of the circulatory nature of life’s moments and experiences. Every time I find myself down and out, and caught in a rut from where there seems no way out, these words restore the faith. There’s only an endless series of beginnings and that is what counts. Where is the need to arrive?

The Shashwata Medley: ‘Ye hawa’ / ‘Tomar dekha naai re’ / ‘Jeevan se na haar o jeeney waale’

From the time he was born to the time he was around five or six, it was a tradition followed unfailingly. After I returned from work and it was time for Shashwata to sleep, or on weekends when I was home, I would take him in my arms, his head resting on my shoulder, and walk the room with the music system playing one song after the other. While I patted his back to put him to sleep, he would do his own drumming to the beat of the songs on my back with his little fingers. (My mother tells me that my father did this with me, singing ‘Sundar bate tawbo angadkhani’, though I obviously have no memories of it.) Among Shashwata’s favourites at the time was this band called Bhoomi, particularly the songs ‘Tomar dekha naai’, ‘Chal Mini Assam jabo’ and ‘Menoka mathay dilo ghomta’.

Then there was the Mahendra Kapoor song from Gumraah, ‘Aa bhi jaa’. That despite being put to sleep he was focusing on the songs became clear one day when at the age of four he sang the full song in the presence of relatives, leaving all of us stunned with the expression on his face and the emotion in his voice, one that both Mahendra Kapoor and Sunil Dutt would have been proud of!  

Another favourite was the Kishore Kumar song ‘Jeevan se na haar jeene waale’ (Door Ka Rahi). Every time the song ended and he was still not asleep, he would tap me on the shoulder with his fingers, his cheek resting on my shoulders, and I would have to play the song again.

Many years later, I was under huge pressure from every side, work, finances, you name it. I had become very irritable and used to often lose my temper, in the presence of my family members, and in Shashwata’s presence too. It was among the worst phases I have been through. I would not talk with anyone at home for days.

During one such phase I was home on a Sunday, working on my laptop, and as always songs were playing on the system. Shashwata was sitting on the bed, studying, while I worked. My mom and Panchali were also there. And this song came on. He replayed it three or four times. As long as Panchali and my mother were there, he didn’t say anything, just kept replaying the song. Once they had left, he looked up from his book and glancing at me, sideways from under his book (since I was still not talking to anyone), he said, tears in his tremulous voice: ‘Baba, ei gaan-ta te amaar tomar aager katha khoob monay poray.’ (Baba, this song reminds me of you in the past very much.)

I haven’t forgotten those two moments. Walking around with him, putting him to sleep with that song. I can still feel the softness of his cheeks and his fingers on my shoulders, and his warm breath and baby smell. And the pain and sadness in his eyes and voice that day, a world of pain. I never realized what about those earlier moments when he was four or five had imprinted itself on his mind so much … and how I had failed him.

Final Thoughts

Music speaks directly to our emotions, often bypassing rational thought. It can uplift, calm, or energize us, depending on the type of music and our personal experiences. Music helps us process complex emotions, find solace in difficult times, and express ourselves authentically. It is a powerful trigger for nostalgia, which can be bittersweet. It often brings back fond memories of our past, loved ones, or significant events. Nostalgia can provide comfort, a sense of continuity, and connection to our past selves. However, it can also make us feel melancholic or wistful for times gone by.

‘Without music life would be a mistake,’ said Nietzsche. He was right of course. But I would like to add to that: Without music life would not be life at all.    




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