If Music be the Food of Love, Play On…

If Music be the Food of Love, Play On…: William Shakespeare had it absolutely down pat in the ‘Twelfth Night’. Some voices are immortal and can never be silenced or forgotten. When people talk about communication, they usually mean words, but it’s actually music that binds random hearts and has the power to bring us together

THIS TOO SHALL PASS
By Punam Bakshi Mohandas

This week’s column has been triggered by a couple of random incidents I came across on social media. The first was on Twitter, just ahead of Mohammed Rafi’s death anniversary which falls on the 31^st July. A Twitter user bemoaned the “once popular, now forgotten” singer’s death.

I’ll share something deeply personal here, which I’ve never revealed to anyone before. When Rafi died, I was in school. It was like losing my father all over again; Mohammed Rafi to me, was synonymous with my dad (probably because both gents were similarly balding!) My classmates couldn’t understand why I was weeping all over the place over a singer.

There were other popular male singers at the time and I know my dad liked quite a few Mahendra Kapoor numbers but Rafi, to me, is my childhood. Early mornings, my dad would be shaving; the radio would be on; Binaca Geet Mala and Ameen Sayyani’s sonorous voice would fill the room, announcing the next song…‘Aaj kal tere mere pyaar ke charche’ and ‘Humdum mere maan bhi jaao’ were topping the charts; these two songs in particular send me into an instant spiral of nostalgia even now.

Despite the plethora of singers now and, of course, Coke Studio that comes out with some truly terrific compositions and talents, Rafi still transports me to an era filled with romance and natkhat or deep poignancy, according to mood. It’s not just people of my generation; my children and their friends listen to Rafi with great abandonment and enjoyment, so I really don’t understand why that Twitter user was bewailing the fact that he’s forgotten.

Rafi is not someone to be forgotten; his voice is immortal; even now, his songs blare out across many a galli. I recall an incident where the Corps Commander of a particular area had visited our battalion with his wife and my husband and I accompanied them to the Rajasthan border. Of course, such information flies across the grapevine quicker than one can say ‘Jack Robinson’, despite best attempts at keeping it all schtum and so, as we were gazing out at the Pakistani border post, the soldiers there blared out a Rafi song in greeting as well as acknowledgement of our presence, shattering all stoicism and military gravity! We burst out laughing on our side; encouraged at seeing this, the Pakistanis turned up the volume even louder.

Speaking of Pakistanis leads me to the second incident that I stumbled across purely by chance while surfing YouTube. As we’re all aware, the singer KK passed away tragically while performing at his concert in Kolkata. Farhan Saeed, one of Pakistan’s most popular young talents currently, who’s a singer as well as an actor, paid homage to KK recently during his Dubai concert, by singing a few lines from a medley of KK songs. It was such a heartwarming gesture; a sincere tribute from one artiste to another.

I’ve danced my way into Shanghainese hearts at an impromptu weekend musical do in a public park, with the typical Punjabi steps! My British friend Susie and I did a bit of a jig at a concert held in a public park in Bucharest (Romania), to some absolutely foot-tapping beats. It goes a long way to show that music transcends all boundaries, all man-made borders and serves to underline emphatically that, at heart, we are but human and can be swayed by emotion, by love, by poetry…

Play on. Don’t let the music stop.

Also by the same author: Kindness is a circle. We must make sure we keep the circle going by giving back & being helpful – THE NEWS PORTER

Punam Bakshi Mohandas is a journalist and writer with 25-years of work experience across India, Dubai and Thailand. A nomad at heart, having travelled over 43-countries at last count, Punam is also a film critic. She was a weekly columnist for the Hindustan Times (New Delhi edition), Delhi Midday, The Financial Express, The Statesman and the Times of India (Kolkata edition). She is also the author of the book, ‘Fallen Angels. The views are personal.