August’24 Issue: Non-Fiction & Personal Essay

Notes from a Revolution by Sukhjit Singh

Whenever I was home in my village and a tractor passed, with a sound system to compete with DJs – with every youngster in the village busy trying to outdo others in this acoustics race – leaving meaningless words of meaningless songs in its wake, I would think, ‘What a waste of money!’

How wrong they proved me.

The beats changed.

The words changed.

For a short while, the same speakers sang the songs of a revolution.

For a short while, the same youngsters changed.

‘Khichle Jatta

Khichle Kirtiya

Khichlayo Mundeyo

Khichle Baba

Khichle Bebe

Khich Tayari

Pecha pai gaya centre naal.’

‘Brace up farmer

Brace up worker

Brace up boys

Brace up father

Brace up mother

Get ready

We are fighting the government.’

Much before other songs became anthems of the farmers’ protest at Delhi’s borders it was this call, Pecha, of Kanwar Grewal that awoke Punjab’s peasantry, youth and elder alike. November 26, 2020, the day the Sarkari barriers were breached at the Punjab-Haryana borders and subsequently at various other points on the highways in Haryana, UP and Rajasthan leading to Delhi, every single tractor out of thousands in that march to the capital, played songs of rebellion. On repeat.

***

As the dust settled on the highways leading to Delhi’s borders and the beats of their march and its music found its way into the homes and hearts of those who watched them from afar, it became clear that this was one for the ages.

It wasn’t going to be a quick trip to Delhi and back to the fields. It would be a test of their belief in the cause, their patience and their endurance. They were in it for a long haul.

Soon the marching tractors and trolleys became seeds in the hands of these farmers and across the borders of Delhi, tractor-trolley-tent townships took root and grew under their care. Singhu, Tikri, Ghazipur would soon become the new milestones in the history of revolutions.

And it was not all music and beats. The Tribune on December 10, 2020, reported, “The farmers’ struggle is not a picnic with lavish langars or macho songs, it is a battle being waged at a high cost. In the past two weeks, on an average, one dead body is coming back every day to Punjab from the Singhu and Tikri borders of Delhi, but the government is lingering on the issue.” By the time the government stops lingering, nearly 15 months later, the count of dead will have reached 730.

***

It’s a cold, freezing January night at the Singhu border. I’m snuggled inside a sleeping bag in a small tent, one of the five put up by a young farmer from Hoshiarpur. He has named this small tent city Kisanistan (Farmer Land). Kisanistan is right under a highway signboard that says Delhi – 31 km. This, I assume, is the distance to either the ISBT bus stand or Rajghat. The farmers are sitting at Delhi’s borders, so this tent is only about 1,500 m away from Delhi. Right next to the signboard, on one side of the road, is a vacant plot that has been cleaned and is being used by a group of Haryana farmers. One of the tractors has his music system on at full volume. The decibel levels haven’t come down since early evening. The youngsters offer water, tea, snacks to everyone, along with a dance floor. Even this late in the day there are a few dancers challenging the powers that be.

Musician after musician from Punjab and Haryana have composed, recorded and released songs on the farmers’ protest. The highway and its surroundings have only known the sound of passing traffic. Now it’s come alive to the music of a people’s movement. The energy of the Kisan Anthem, Ailaan, Jindabad Jawani Jindabad Kisaani and many other songs pulses through the asphalt roads. The words of the songs inform and challenge Delhi. Inform them of the farmers’ plight and their rights. Challenge them to be aware of their strength and resolution.

***

A singer sings ‘Ni Tainu lagda dharna, delhiye, sanu lagda mela.’ ‘Delhi – You think it’s a protest site. For us it’s a carnival.’

And who better than Surjit Patar to define this carnival. In his dedication to the farmers’ movement, he answers the state’s misleading questions on who is participating in these protests.  

Ehde vich dharat shamal, birkh, paani, paun shamal ne,

Ehde vich saade haase, hanjhu, saade gaun shamal ne,

Te tainu kuch pata hi nahi, ehde vich kaun shamal ne?

The soil is in attendance here, the trees, water and air are     ,

Our laughter, our tears, our songs are here,

And you still don’t know, who is here?

Ehde vich purkheyan da rangla itehaas shamal hai

Ehde vich sidak sada, sabar, saadi aas shamal hai

Ehde vich shabad, surti, dhun ate ardaas shamal hai

Te tainu kuch pata hi nahi?

Our forefather’s celebrated history is present here,

Our faith, patience, hope are     ,

Our words, awareness, melody and prayer are here,                                

And you know none of this?

Ehde vich vartman, ateet naal bhavikh shamal hai

Ehde vich Hindu Muslim Budh Jain te Sikh shamal hai

Bada kuch dikh reh ate kinna hor adikh shamal hai

Eh Mela hai.

This moment includes the present , past and future     ,

It has in it Hindus, Muslims, Budhhists, Jains and Sikhs     ,

Many things are evident and yet more remain unseen is here,

This is a carnival.

In this carnival, I wake up to notes of shabad kirtan. Soon after settling down at the protest site, the farmer unions set up a stage at the front and placed speakers along the length of the township. This ensured that all the words from the stage were      heard along the miles of the resistance. Our day starts with words and notes of prayer and the activity on the stage ends with the same.

I step out and join a group of farmers around a fire. There is hot tea and biscuits. And there is warmth and camaraderie. There is a twinkle in their eyes. There is an awareness that they are part of a living thing that is bigger than anything they have been part of all their lives. A tractor arrives with milk from nearby villages and notes of ‘Modi ji thari tob kare hum Dilli aagaye’. Around them, this living thing sings itself into life. Another day starts at this carnival of resistance.

After breakfast, I walk towards the main stage. The tractor trolleys are decorated with posters. Posters that speak to farmers and to the establishment via images and slogans. New slogans are coined every day. In the narrative war against the BJP      IT cell, sons and daughters of farmers have taken up the challenge. And they’ve done wonderfully well. An abandoned and out-of- use mall on the roadside is now a tent city for farmers. In the vacant plot next to the mall building, several community kitchens run 24 hours a day. The building used to have a KFC outlet, and while the KFC signboard atop the multistorey building still exists, a banner now hangs alongside it – Kisan Food Corner (also KFC). In one corner of this plot, a group of volunteers have started a Sath – a space for community gathering. They run a school during the day and the children who have been living on the sides of these roads find not only food at this KFC, but teachers as well. When the children leave, they go singing ‘Jai Jawan Jai Kisan’ ,‘Modi sarkar murdabad’. Their words and passion      don’t diminish even when they are lost to sight – the musical notes of their loyalty to their newfound friends linger     in the air  for a long time.

In the evening the Sath comes alive. Young and old, male and female all gather here to share their stories. Last evening, I got to hear Bapu Jagraj sing his songs.

Bapu Jagraj is now in his sixties. He was sixteen when he composed his first song in memory of Shaheed Bhagat Singh. Bapu has since written hundreds of songs – some have found space in newspapers and magazines, but Bapu hasn’t made any money from his writings. He sings at various morchas.

On November 26     , 2020, as he stood along with ‘his people’ at the Punjab-Haryana Shambhu border, a tear gas shell hit him – first his right hand and then his leg. It only made his resolve stronger. The little diary he always carries with him is full now and a second diary is fast filling up with revolutionary songs he has been busy writing and singing at the Singhu morcha.

Besides his own compositions, he sings songs and poems by other revolutionary poets like Sant Ram Udasi and Lal Singh Dil. Bapu says that the present struggle is for farmers and farm labour as the black laws impact both. Himself a farm labourer when he’s asked why he is here, he says ‘Haq lain layi turna painda hai’ ‘Need to walk the talk to fight for rights’ and sings a few lines.

Mehnatkash lokaan khatir ladna paina hai,

Kadman de naal kadam milake khadna paina hai,

Chup kitiyaan nahiyon sarna

Madho Das ton Banda Bahadur banna paina hai.

We need to fight for all the hard-working people,

March with them, stand with them     .

Keeping quiet is not an option,

Madho Das, Banda Bahadur we must become.

***

Amidst all the songs that various artists      composed for the movement a few rattled the establishment, and these were banned (like Kanwar Grewal’s Ailaan). But a singer rattled the establishment not because of her song, but a tweet she posted. That was Rihanna.

As the world of social media went into overdrive over Rihanna’s tweet in support of the farmers’ protest, life and its beats at Delhi’s borders continued as usual.

Nidhi Suresh from Newslaundry (with a mischievous      twinkle in her eyes and an equally prankish smile under her mask) asks an elderly farmer – Aapne kabhi Rihana ke baare mein suna hai? ‘Have you heard about Rihanna?’

He answers (with all sincerity) – ‘Suna hai.’ ‘Yes.’

Nidhi – ‘Kya suna hai?’ ‘What have you heard?’

He says – ‘Kya baat poochna chahte ho poocho. Haryana hamara padosi hai.’ ‘Ask what you actually want to. Haryana is our neighbour.’

Such everyday humour, engendered by the phonetic similarity between Rihanna and Haryana also registered its own note in the farmer’s movement.

It was these sincere elderly farmers who led from the front. And after the government had lingered long enough, they got what they had come for. The three farm laws were repealed.

***

I am at the Ghazipur border the evening before farmers prepare to head back to their homes, their fields, their lives.

A short distance away from the main stage, just outside the shed in front of the main stage, a DJ is playing the songs of the farmers’ revolution. Here, on this unlikeliest of dance floors – the NH-24 Delhi Meerut expressway, farmers from UP and Uttarakhand display Bhangra moves they’ve learned from their Punjabi brothers in the past 15 months.

In those 15 months, the artists of the region, especially Punjabi and Haryanvi musicians delivered songs on demand, fit for the day and occasion. From the calls to get ready, ‘Ailaan’ and march towards Delhi, to capturing the spirit of the march in ‘Farmers Anthem,’ to songs of ‘Patshah’ and patience and sacrifice when the going got tough, to the victory songs of the last few days, theirs was an all-encompassing musical repertoire.

Aun waali peerhi dendi rahu gi gawahi,

UP Haryana te Punjab tinen bhai

Barricadan utte rakh ke gulaab chaleya,

Ni tainu dilliye…. dilliye ni jittke Punjab chaleya.

Coming generations will bear witness

Of this brotherhood of UP Haryana and Punjab

Over your barbed barricades, roses we keep.

Dilli – having conquered you, Punjab departs.

More than conquering Delhi, they conquered hearts from all over India and the world. Theirs was a movement that generations will remember. Along with the musical notes they left behind.

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Music in the American Civil Rights Movement– And How It Inspired Me. by Santosh Bakaya

It was while doing my research on Martin Luther King Jr. at the American Center, Delhi, for my biography, [Only in Darkness can you see the Stars]  on the great icon, poring over heaps of books, that I came to realize the humongous power that music had played in the Civil Rights Movement. After returning from the library, a new song would erupt in my heart and start hovering on my lips, waiting to burst forth.

Those African-American spirituals and folk music gospel songs, inspired me so much, that in a trance- like state,  I found myself holding hands with the activists, walking on the streets, singing songs- sad, mirthful, and inspiring, often humming,  “I am gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days, Hallelujah.”  

I recall having read that In 1958 Jamila Jones visited the Highlander Folk School for nonviolent activist training. Highlander was raided by the police, who shut off all the lights in the building. Jones found the strength to sing out into the darkness, adding a new verse, “We are not afraid,” to the song,
 “We Shall Overcome.” To quote her,  “We got louder and louder with singing that verse, until one of the policemen came and said “If you have to sing,” and he was actually shaking, “do you have to sing so loud?”  And I could not believe it.  Here these people had all the guns, the billy clubs, the power, we thought. And he was asking me, with a shake, if I would not sing so loud.  And it was that time that I really understood the power of our music.”

Yes, the power of music!
It is strange that it was during this period of my research that although musically challenged, I created tunes, to songs that I wrote during the time I was supposedly working on my PhD Thesis on The Political Theory of Robert Nozick, but actually finding escape routes from the topic – reading book after book on MLK Jr, and listening to the songs which influenced the Civil Rights Movement! I got so involved in King that then and there I decided to do my post- doctoral research on MLK. Jr, which of course I never did manage to do. 

The legendary Pete Seeger, environmentalist, folk singer and civil rights activist, helped spread the song “We Shall Overcome” to civil rights workers at the Highlander Folk School. The moving, powerful simplicity of this song galvanized protests across the country.  In 1964 he came to Jackson, Mississippi, to support the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s Mississippi Freedom Summer Project. During his stay, he recalled, “I was singing to about two hundred people in a church when they gave me a piece of paper, ‘They’ve found the bodies of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney.’  And I made this announcement.  There was no shouting.  There was no anger.  I saw lips moving in prayer.  And I think I sang this song that Fred Hellerman made up, ‘O healing river, send down your waters.  Send down your waters upon this land’ … Let the seed of freedom awake and flourish …”

After reading this, I went home and kept listening to this song for many hours, smitten  by the beauty of the music and  lyrics.

During the Civil Rights History Project, folk singers Guy and Candie Carawan sang “Tree of Life,” “Eyes on the Prize,” and “We Shall Overcome.” The Carawans worked at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, where activists from around the country came to be trained in nonviolent philosophy and learned the songs of the movement. Candie explains, “There were songs for every mood.  You know, there were the very jubilant songs.  There were the very sad songs when someone was killed.  You know, there were the songs you used at parties.  There was all the humor where you picked fun at people, the satire.”

The lines of the song written by Pete Seeger Keep your Eyes on the Prize,
‘Freedom’s name is mighty sweet
And soon we’re gonna meet
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on,’ have perked me up on many a bleak day. In 1963, during the March on Washington, Joan Baez, sang We Shall Overcome along with Martin Luther King Junior fueling the civil rights movement.
It was during this period that I also discovered Jamaican-American musician and human rights activist Harry Belafonte, and his Civil Rights Connection. Instrumental in the Civil Rights movement, becoming one of MLK Jr’s confidants, leading a life of indefatigable activism, he was present during many civil rights activities, protesting for equality in America. Not only the songs Jamaica Farewell with its haunting lyrics and music, or Banana Boat, but his freedom songs which were to a great extent helpful in pushing a racially segregated nation towards some semblance of equality.   
Music indeed has transformative powers. “If music be the food of love, play on”, Shakespeare had said, and I am a staunch believer in the power of love. So, music is very much a part of my life, be they Hindi or English songs, they lift me to a different level altogether.

I always write in the backdrop of music, and the kind of songs that I listen to, depends on what I am writing at the moment. It can calm the nerves especially in these unprecedented times.

I have my special favorites too. There is this iconic song from Casablanca which I always keep listening to, Play it, Sam, and the way Ingrid Bergman says, “Play it once, for old time’s sake”, has such an endearing quality to it that it makes me keep listening to it- it is an all-time favourite.
The world will always welcome lovers
As time goes by.
Songs of Leonard Cohen, Frank Sinatra, Mark Knopfler and many more have lifted my spirits at different writing moments. The Sounds of Silence, [Simon and Garfunkel] is also one of the songs I keep listening to, while writing.

Some Hindi songs have an ethereal quality and I love to be serenaded by their soothing strains. It is while the songs of Bhupen Hazarika [especially Dil Hoom hoom kare] and Sachin Dev Burman’s compositions, lyrics of Shailendra [Especially songs of Bandini, Merey saajan hain Uss paar and  songs of Kabuliwala –especially Ganga aaye kahaan sey, [Salil Choudhury, Hemant Kumar] are playing in the background, that I have churned out many of my poems.

The Siren’s Songs by Jey Sushil

Everything we do is music – John Cage

Thrice a day, like a musical note, a dim chug that began as a train coming from afar and then galloping at a great speed broke the slumber called life in any industrial colony. The sound of the factory siren was music to my ears. The first one went off at 6:30 a.m. to awaken everyone. Mothers, primary schoolgoers, and fathers doing early shifts would have woken up earlier, much earlier to listen to the siren so they could leave for their schools and work. The officers must have designed it that way so they could leave the bed only after hearing the siren call out like an early morning melody. That’s when they would have their bed-tea and prepare for office. We, the labourers, listened to the siren more as a musical warning to reach the factory gate on time. Father would rush Mother, “Ponga baj gaya, Chai jaldi de do.” He would slurp the tea from a saucer if it was served after the siren went off. Before the siren, he would sip it leisurely. Hearing the siren, his head moved in a rhythm, a signal to himself that he was ready for work.

At noon, exactly at 12 pm, another siren would go off. That must have been only for housewives to get ready for their husbands who would come home for lunch. I never saw anyone feeling irritated by the siren. As kids when we were home, we used to come out of our one-room apartments, delighted to hear the loud sound. We would shout as if to challenge the siren. It was part of our life. The siren reminded us of Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary. Every year without fail on January 31, the siren would go off twice. At 11.58 p.m. and 12.00 noon. Two minutes of silence. If the day fell on a weekend or on father’s day-off, he would still stand and be quiet for two minutes. Mothers would stop cooking or take a break from household chores to stay quiet for those moments. We followed what our parents did. At school, we stood up to mark Gandhiji’s sacrifice.

Late in the night the last siren would be sounded at 10.30 p.m. As we grew up, we would try to stay awake just to hear it. The sound of the same siren felt different at night. It talked to us. At night it whispered, “Sleep.” In the morning it said, “Get ready!” At noon, the siren felt abrupt, asking people to eat and return to work. I loved the “sleep” siren. It transported me to a dream world where I envisioned myself becoming a siren-man in the future.

There was no music in those days except during the Tusu mela when Adivasis played their drums and flutes or during Durga puja in the colony when we could hear Bengali dhaak and Michael Jackson at the same time.

I doubt if we understood the meaning of Jackson’s iconic songs, but we could recite them without any trouble, having memorized them — I am bad I am bad I am bad bad bad. Even a three-year-old in our colony could do this. I could repeat the words:  They don’t really care about us without knowing what it meant or what the song’s context was. Jackson was universal, or as the cliché goes, music is universal. All the break dancers in our vicinity had Michael Jackson in their homes playing on their coveted tape recorders, which we called decks. The sound of siren slowly faded from our consciousness with the onslaught of tape recorders and television. Jackson remained in my memory, though, with his songs, his white glove, white socks, black pump-shoes, locks and his girlish voice.

Real music entered our lives through cassette tapes. Before that, occasional movies in an open-air theatre and Binaca Geetmala presented to us film songs. I could never relate to them. Our fathers coveted the radio while our elder brothers monopolized the tape recorders and television sets. For me, sounds became music, and in search of new sounds, I would go with a friend to the forest, walking with goats wearing bells. We would sit and listen to the sound of the small waterfall and throw stones to hear the chhap, Chhap-Chhhap, Chhhhapaaaaaaak rippling sounds. “Kitna mast hai na awaaz iska,” my friend would say. It wasn’t a question but a declaration: Isn’t this a beautiful sound. The rustle of tree leaves, the occasional bleating of goats, the thumps of an elephant herd, of a human walking barefoot and asking us, “What are you doing here?”, our innocent laughs in response saying, “Nothing.” An entire musical universe of a hot summer afternoon, devoid of any electronic equipment. Occasionally a Bullet would pass through the road, and we knew that the local contractor and moneylender Sattar bhai was on his rounds to extract his dues from the laborers. We could recognize the music in the thud of that blue bullet. Dhak, Dhak, Dhak…. like the heart pumping blood. Sattar Bhai owned our fathers. We hated Sattar Bhai when he came on pay day, but we loved his bullet and its thumping sound. I carried that note within me, dreaming of owning a Bullet the day I got a job.

***

By the time I reached Delhi, I’d heard enough Bollywood songs and pop albums such as Gurdaas maan, Sukhbir, Malkeet Singh and others. Michael Jackson was a distant past, and the only sound that mattered was the annoying click-clack of fading typewriters and the softer notes of their younger cousin — the computer keyboard. While working in a news agency, the only music for my ears was the sound of the machine that printed the newsreels. Kirrrrr…. kirrrr. kirrrrrr……kirrrrrrrrrrrrrr. In three years, I’d learned to predict if someone had just typed a three-paragraph news story or six-paragraph one by listening to the sound of their typing. During night shifts, when I slept on my chair, I only waited for the machine to make that sound- Kirrrrrr……. Kirrrrr…….Kirrrrr — a particular sound that implied a flash — the precursor to today’s breaking news. Then it was called FLASH. The phrase Breaking News came much later. If the machine printed for longer, I wouldn’t wake up, but three small beats meant it was printing breaking news. My ears got attuned to the kirrrrrr…kirrrr. After working nights for a whole week, it was difficult to fall asleep without that noise. It felt like a soothing lullaby for a troubled soul. I would wake up with nightmares of remaining asleep during the breaking news….

Music, real music, arrived much later in my life. I had heard names of classical musicians as any journalist would, but never went to any concert. But in life, some things are meant to happen. While on a motorcycle trip (I loved my Royal Enfield Bullet only for its thump-thump sound and had even got it modified to get the exact sound I wanted from my childhood) to Rajasthan, my wife and I stayed with a Gandhi Fellow* who worked in a village school. He had this strange habit of playing music early in the morning — from around 5 a.m. until 8.30 a.m. before he left with us for the school. We were there to paint the walls of the school with the students. During the four days we lived with him, our ears got tuned to the sounds of tabla, mandolin, ghatam and guitar, thanks to the music of Shakti group in which James Maclauglin played guitar, L Shankar, violin, Zakir Hussain, tabla , Vinayakram, ghatam, U Srinivas, mandolin with vocals by Shankar Mahadevan whom I’d heard as a Bollywood singer. The music sounded familiar, enjoyable, and refreshing. Our friend would start the morning by playing vocals by M.S.Subbulakshmi and then move on to Kishori Amonkar by 7 a.m. At 7.45a.m., he would change to Shakti and crank the volume up. We waited for Shakti while washing up and sipping tea. We had a sense that the music was Indian but were pleasantly surprised to know that it was a bit of fusion. Zakir Hussain was already a household name because of his Waah Taj tea advertisements. Shakti’s music was rooted, pleasurable, and addictive. On our third day, I asked our friend , “I don’t understand classical music (especially the kind you play early in the morning but why do I like Shakti so much.” He gave me this response, , “Because our ears are tuned to bad music. Shakti’s music is familiar because of the sounds of tabla, ghatam, violin, and guitar but it is elevated music. It’s fast paced rather as compared to the long alaaps of classical vocals, but if you keep listening, you’ll see a change in your listening.” He gave us a pen drive with multiple recordings of what he had. That was my first introduction to pure music. It has been fourteen years: Though I am not a religious person, my mornings start with Subbulakshmi’s Suprabhatam, which makes me feel like I’m in a temple. Her voice takes me to India in a way I can’t explain.

While listening to these, I also explored the music of Kumar Gandharv, , Uday Bhawalkar (Dhrupad) and Kabirvani of Madhup Mudgal. This discovery reminded me that many years ago I had bought cassette tapes of Prahlad Singh Tipanya, a folk singer who sang Kabir in the Malvi dialect.

I moved between folk and classical, and they became my friends in the early days of my life in the United States. I was a house-husband, a lonely, irritated creature with a baby. Music saved me. It helped me during depressing mornings when I was trying to sing a lullaby and my son wouldn’t sleep. That was when I found Kayan Kalhor and Toumani Diabate on You tube. Kalhor is a kamancheh (an Iranian bowed string instrument) player and Diabate plays kora, an African harp-lute string instrument. The finding was not a coincidence. As part of her art research, my wife came to know of an artist named Bani Al Sadr. We found an interview of Al Sadr where he explained that while painting, he would listen to Kayan Kalhor. That name itself had music in it; I googled him and found his music. Slowly I also figured out that when we played a specific duet by Kalhor and Diabate, my son enjoyed it immensely and fell asleep. My son is now six and to this day when he has trouble sleeping, he asks me, “Papa can you play that music.” Recently Kayan Kalhor was in St. Louis (where I live) for a performance, and luckily, we found tickets at an affordable price. When he came on stage, my son was ecstatic and shouted, “He is my friend.” He recognized Kalhor from the videos he’d watched. After the performance he met Kalhor and gave him a hug. He hugs only his friends and not strangers. The child believed that Kalhor, whom he was meeting for the first time, was his friend. That’s the kind of connection music brings about.

With my musical explorations, I landed upon an eclectic collection of African musicians such as Ali Farka Toure, Issa Bagayogo and an album by an immigrant group from Syria and other Middle Eastern countries assembled by the brilliant Mehdi Aminian. These songs helped me understand my mental map: I was looking for happiness with Toure and Bagayogo’s music, whereas Aminian’s concert “Quieter than Silence” sounded depressing yet soul-stirring. Late in the night when my son and wife were asleep, I listened to the long concert and wept uncontrollably.  That is the power of music. Time passes but music remains with you, somewhere in the back of your mind. That feeling of joy, sadness, tears, heart pumping blood slowly as if life’s ebbing out on a lonely night.

Now my days are filled with different sounds. My son’s constant talk and his favorite music, Punjabi songs by Sukhbir. He found them on Spotify and plays them every morning after our Subbulakshmi recitals. His dance reminds me of my boyhood when Sukhbir used to be a big hit. Almost 20 years have passed and Sukhbir and his songs have found a new listener. Music doesn’t know generation gap. Music doesn’t fade. It comes in different avatars, different ways into your life.

In his famed piece 4.33, where musician John Cage sits on a piano without playing it, he invites us to imagine, listening to our heart, our selves. One can be anywhere for those 4.33 minutes and if we’re inside the mind without thinking anything, we can hear a distant sound coming from the back of our head, a sharp, shrill sound like that of a siren, which fades if we focus too much. Cage tells us that in Harvard, he went to an absolute soundproof room where after a few moments, he could hear a siren. He asked about it and was told it was the sound of his nervous system. That inspired Cage to make the silent piece, 4.33. Cage has said: Everything we do is music. I would go a step further and say: what are we if not sounds?

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*** Peeramal Foundation in Rajasthan runs a program called Gandhi Fellowship where selected fellows work with the schools in the villages.

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