joyride

life in colour and music and sound and patterns. life without any words needed, except the lyrics, conveying everything. this video is a self portrait, in ways that are too personal, but once i break it down, you will understand.

the song you hear in the background is one of the biggest hits in india. i would say north india, but having lived in telangana for so long, i have been hearing this sound everywhere, weddings, political rallies, in holy processions — coloured gods dancing to it, all of them blue and yellow; the former my beloved, the latter a cross i have to bear when i do. the heat these days has crossed the threshold of yellow, it is white, like alum. like ash. it is mustard seeds in hot oil. i am not going to make this all about yellow.

saat samundar paar, main tere peechhe peechhe aa gayi.

o zulmi meri jaan tere kadmon ke neeche aa gayi

across the seven seas, i have followed you

o tyrant, my life, i am under your spell, helpless

this song is 34 years old, the actress in this died when she was nineteen. she was seventeen in this song, ready to cross the seven seas, climb up and down every hill, for an indifferent lover.

but that’s the thing, the lover is not indifferent, he is not speaking in the song, it is her ballad, her declaration. who hasn’t been called cruel in love? who hasn’t been cruel in love? and has love not persisted, still?

when i was seventeen, i was somebody i am unable to recall or recognise. at 23, i remember my 13 year old self vividly. today on a phone call i was talking about my fourth grade experience. maybe when i am 35, seventeen will make sense. it will arrive when it is right. i cannot sit with the rigidity of past versions weighing down on me, there’s so much to do in future that i will have to bear. and you can do nothing but watch — a helpless audience. and that’s who we are for each other — helpless, audience, tyrants.

this song is very close to my heart. if i were brave, i would dance on it at a wedding, making flirty eyes at my lover.

the song has existed before i did, it will go on until a new melody arises, with a heroine destined for tragedy shaking and shimmying her way. even in her death, a gory one too, divya bharathi is still the saat samundar girl, still the only actress who was brave enough and talented enough to compete with sridevi — the golden goose of films at that time. both actresses met with a doomed fate decades apart, both still shining bright on phone screens and in the movements of drunk uncles and aunties reaching menopause.

lata mangeshkar died too. she had a song. naam ghum jayega, chehra ye badal jayega, meri awaaz hee pehchaan hai meri, gar yaad rahe. my name will disappear, this face will be replaced, my voice is all i have, but only if you remember it. waqt ke sitam kam haseen nahi, aaj hai yahan, kal kahin nahin. the trials of time too, are beautiful; here today, tomorrow nowhere to be seen.

one method by which sound waves tend to die is absorption by the medium. as long as i live on, these songs and these stories will live on. the day i am done saying everything, i will leave it up to the trees.

even then the sound never dies, memory never exhausts itself. you and i may forget, but the world remembers, even as it crumbles. and so lives on, the revolution, the joy, the music, the dancing.