Love is the seventh wave

Last time I remembered I was in an emotional relationship…it was way way back…it was when George W Bush was the president of USA…google had just become popular…you could only open Gmail accounts with an invite…and there was no Facebook but only Orkut….If you are yet to guess what times do I talk about, there was no whatsapp, Instagram or snapchat…and blackberry was the best phone around and it was still an year to go before iPhone (first generation) was launched. Yes, I’m talking about 2006.

While the relationship part is easy (might sound strange), the tough part was breaking up.. and the tougher part was getting over the relationship.

Based upon my wide experience of getting into and coming out of relationships…(yes sir…I was your regular sears and roebuck of relationships) there are two things which bug you a lot while you are getting out:

a) Activity status: What’s the other person doing right now? And if it is anything other than thinking about you – you enter the crap zone. (Crap zone is a devastating and despaired state of mind where you feel that nothing that is happening is good. There is a constant fog in your brain which covers everything you do or try to do. And the more you want to not think about the other person, more deeper you get into the zone. – basically feeling super crappy all the time is crapzone)

b) Movement status: Has the other person moved on? Most of the times you can’t figure out whether that has happened or not – but if you get to know somehow (like through a friend etc) – Hello crap zone.

So the only time you could find out about whats happening with the other person is when someone mentioned something on the scrapbook. In 2006, I got to know that the other person was moving on before that person confronted me – but through Orkut when someone had congratulated that person for getting engaged – I know what you would have been think – now that’s crapzone extravaganza. Now this was a devastation from both Activity status and Movement status perspective. You know that the other person would either be hanging out with the other person, thinking about him and talking to him whereas from a Movement status perspective – its a no-brainer. So unless and until you plan to disrupt the wedding on the wedding day or she tries to pull ‘the Runaway bride’ – its a tough road ahead.

Comparing this to a simple relationship between two people which ended in 2019 – both of you mutually decided to move on since the relationship could not sail through owing to any of the reasons – the ways and means available in today’s world would make it tougher for you to move on. Let me try to decipher how

a) Whatsapp – As we all know, whatsapp is not just a chat medium – its also a personal tracker – on whatsapp, we can see the profile pic, the text status and last viewed time. Unless and until you make some dramatic changes to your whatsapp account (like blocking that person etc) these features would still exist. Now when you are out of a relationship and in the transition zone, you typically get a very strong urge, quite a few times during the day, to know what that other person is upto – you constantly check the whatsapp status and the profile photo to see what are they upto next. So if the status is all chirpy and happy – that means the person is moving ahead in life while you are still sitting here as a dud – welcome to crap zone.

b) Facebook and instagram – I think Facebook and instagram are one of the most crucial element if you wanna push the other person in the crap zone. Post some pics of a great travel trip, add some songs that are all chirpy and happy – you are home. Now, the cardinal rule is, once you break up – you would have to show that you are strong enough and these things dont matter to you (although they might be making you shit bricks) so any dramatic step like unfollow on instagram or unfriend on facebook tend to indicate that you are not strong enough to handle the break-up and tends to give the other person an edge – which is a complete no no. You would want to strictly demonstrate that you are Mr Strong and whatever is happening on these stupid social media sites doesn’t matter to you.

Advice in theory

In order to deal with these situations, there are some theoretical advice that you may get from your friends (which Im sure never work).

a) Stop thinking about them and move on: This is one of the wisest advice that you get from most of the people, especially who have never got into a relationship throughout their lives – my small question to them is – How? Its like someone saying – the sun is gonna rise at 6 AM in the morning – we should do something about it.

b) There’s plenty fish in the sea: Another brilliant advice (which is typically pawned off by your horny friend who has never gotten over the porno mags and jerk offs). Its like dude – had i been able to catch any fish – I wouldn’t be sitting here chin wagging with the likes of you.

c) Get busy living or get busy dying: Every person who has seen the Shawshank Redemption pulls out this line one time or the other in their lives. All of these people, who would crap in their pants at the sight of darkness, think of themselves of Andy Dufresne – the man who crawled through 500 yards of shit and came out clean the other end. Mate – had I known how to do it – I wouldn’t have come to you in the first place.

Now for some Practical advice – from my own experience – Parental Advisory – it may or may not work in your case but these are my observations of getting in and coming out of quite a few relationships.

a) Reality check: The sooner you admit, the earlier you would get a chance to come out of it – the crap zone is here to stay – for sometime at least. If you think or try to think that it would get over by tomorrow, its a mistake and would further aggravate the situation. Accept it and let it take its own course. With time, the intensity would reduce and you would be able to move on to a new relationship or move on with your life.

b) Short cut measures: While people are in the crap zone, most of them want to find someone new quickly to move on. The main reason for this is not exactly the crapzone, but an underlying competition as to who can find a better person next. My advice – please dont get into a new relationship while you are still in the crap zone – why? let me try and articulate i) While you are trying to find someone while being in the crap zone, your thinking and feeling senses are incapacitated by the thoughts and remains of the relationship which just went by. While you look for similar kind of perfection or quality in the new relationship – you may be blindsided on some of the not so great things which could prove to be vital for the new relationship to sustain. Eg while you may be looking for someone with a great taste in travel places as your ex – you may see that the new person, who may be traveling to all these new places, is doing it for work and may not enjoy a leisurely trip with you since he has already been travelling so much. Now this may provide a temporary relief but this could further lead to a potentially toxic relationship and more crapzone to follow. ii) Most of the times – you find your soulmates by spending time with people, and that too without rushing into anything. If you are holding a wedding tiara in your hand while you are interacting with every girl that comes your way – trust me – you are bound to fail or end up in a toxic relationship. While you are getting out of a crapzone of an existing relationship, owing to the self inflicted competition to find a new person first would impair your senses towards enjoying the new relationship whereas in a hurry to get out of the existing relationship you will find the next person in line which in all probabilities, may not be the right one.

c) Sit back and let it all pass: In case anybody who is in the crapzone right now is reading this, I’m sure you feel that this would never pass – you will get old and die feeling the same crappy way. Good news – that,s not the case – Our brain cells have been made out of magical stuff – they absorb things quickly but with time, they are ready to absorb new stuff. So don’t get mistaken that by hearing a song it would pass in a jiffy – or for a moment you are feeling out of the crapzone – you are finally out of it. Let it pass – don’t put a timer on as to by when it should pass – or do stupid things as going out with the wrong person to distract yourself – it will only add up to the misery and that too long term. Take small steps – change your routine a bit – take some classes (not with a view point to meet someone but to shake up your routine) – get involved in some more work – and with time you would realise that you are way past the crap zone (or maybe you wont even know when you are past the crapzone and into something new). Trust me, there would come a time when you would look back and smile at the time when you were in and out of the relationship and how stupid you acted while in the crapzone.

So in my humble opinion – just sit back and enjoy the show – because you only bought the tickets for this. But soon the show would be over and you would be ready for the new releases :-).

Automatic for the people and me

As any music lover of the 90s, who was plagued by the MTV fever, you have to start off with Michael Jackson – and when I entered my teenage and when MTV entered India, one of the videos of Dangerous (a popular album by Michael Jackson or MJ as he was popularly known in those times) always on TV, whether it was either MJ jumping around in a basketball court with another MJ (Jordan this time) or MacCauly Culkin – who was transporting his parents off to another continent using ‘Are you nuts’ feature on his guitar amp.

But being a serious guy since childhood, you realized that you needed something more to your musical catalogue than the crisp beats of Michael Jackson – not as if I had anything against it but as you grow, you realise that you need something more in sync with your emotional maturity.

By the time I was 14 years of age, I decided that I would started exploring music other than Michael Jackson. In early 90s, ironically, I did not have a lot of people to discuss the kind of music I listen to with (except my younger brother who was 9 by then). Also, since internet was relatively new (and not so easily available), there was no way you could read about music and find out which one would suit your pallet.

Around October-November of 1994, REM came out with their new album called Monster. The first song released from the album was “What’s the frequency Kenneth” which was a green coloured video, a lot of distortion and the lead singer dancing away to glory with a mic. So I decided to invest in an album which was other than a Michael Jackson, Ace of Base or Enigma.

On November 22, 1994, I went to the music shop and bought Monster more as a birthday gift on my 15th birthday. After a small birthday party at the local fast food chain, I was back home and decided to give the album a listen. First time I played the album, the first track was fine (which was the same “whats the frequency… track). But to my surprise, the remaining album had that similar distortion (and no plausible rhythm) which I was not much used to – except by Eddie Van Halen on Beat it or Slash on Give in to me.  All and all I hated that album – I hated it so much – I visited the music shop the next day and requested him if he could change it. And this was not a typical practice with the music shops – to replace the tapes after few days of use. This goes against the very fabric of the music business and once you have bought an album – you are stuck with it whether you like it or not. It’s like Forrest Gump saying ‘Life is like a box of chocolates…you never know what you are going to get.’

But I hated that album so much that I pleaded that guy to replace it – After much pleading – he agreed to replace it (with a 25% discount on the price) and asked me to choose another album – I do not know what happened – but the video of the song – ‘Everybody Hurts’ flashed into my mind. With a sea of cars on a freeway jam and people’s feelings are shown as subtitles – and in the end – all those people just get out of the car and start walking. The eerie slow guitar rhythm further pierces into your brain and lingers on forever. I asked the music shop guy to give me Automatic for the People by REM.

The album had a beautiful grey, black and white cover with a weird cross like structure. When I checked the tracks names there were few tracks that were familiar but the others had a weird sound to it – such as Nightswimming (more like a soft porn video), Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite (No idea what this guy wanted to say – had to pick up dictionary to check the meaning of sidewinder – which is supposed to be some animal), Monty got a raw deal (sounded like a song about Jimmy Hoffa and one of his associates Monty who got wasted by the Don) etc.

While walking back on the cold evening of late November 1994, there was a fear in my mind that this album could potentially be worse than Monster since it had some of the most twisted names that you can call a song.  

  • As soon as I played the album, the first song – Drive was quite familiar – It had a beautiful acoustic guitar opening which graduated as the song moved along. To top it all – the voice of the singer – which was like a recent crack in the voice box having varied bass and treble modulations, haunts you long after the song ends. And I vaguely recalled the video also – a black and white video with a guy being carried on by a sea of people.
  • The next song – Try not to breath sounds like an aching ballad of a person who is in pain but would like to cross the line to the threshold to be happy. Its like a song of an old person who had a great life and is now longing for a great death – and his description of great death would be to have someone who can cry over his grave.
  • Sidewinder sleeps tonite sounds like a happy song. Atleast the beat is – Since the song was sung too fast – I used to mishear it as “Calling try wake her”. In those days, we did not have any access to internet and most of the tapes did not have lyric leaflet, I could not figure out what this song meant (ironically the band is also not sure what this song is all about – it’s supposed to be a spoof on ‘Lion Sleeps Tonite’) but this was one of the happiest song on the album.
  • New Orleans is the instrumental track on the album. The best part about the song is that you can hear when the singer says (1-2-3 at the back) and the music starts in a deep bass tone. If you can manage to hear this song in complete silence of the start of winter – this song can be a boat to your drift in the endless memories of childhood, old friends, lost love and all the other beautiful things in life that you cherish in your memories, but owing to the cacophony of our daily routine, are not able to hear them clearly.
  • Nightswimming, evidently is my favourite song on the entire album. It is a song about friends reminiscing about their childhood and their experiences of swimming. The best part of the song is the beautiful and consistent piano rhythm coupled with the heart piercing lyrics which are so intensely carried on the voice of the lead singer.

My favourite lines of the song are ‘You, I thought I knew you..You I cannot judge…You, I thought you knew me…This one laughing quietly.. Underneath my breath’. I do not completely understand the meaning of these lyrics but its sounds like someone is trying to take stock of a past relationship and figure out what went wrong with it.

It’s been over 25 years that I first bought this album… during this period I have listened to so much more music, but this album knows how to stand the test of time. From 1994 till 2000, I could not figure out the lyrics of most of the songs but was not clear about all of them.  In the year 2000, when I got access to the internet, I could figure out the complete lyrics but to my surprise, my estimation of lyrics while hearing this album over and over again was almost accurate.

When I read some of the other reviews, or what the band has to say about this album, this album is about death, mortality and gloom that lingers in one’s life as we move on from one day to another. But for me, this album is much more than the gloom because those days were the start of my emotional venture into the world of adulthood with adult problems. Whenever I think about those years, I could not help but wonder that how can an album so beautiful could appear in my life at such an important juncture that it would become a lifeboat in the tough times to come. There have been times when I was happy and content with my life and this album goes to the backburner and more upbeat songs take its place. However, in the hours of sadness, I could not help but cling to this album as my guiding star or more so as a teleportation to those years where it all started. Although the lyrics and music remain the same, as you grow up, the meaning of the music and lyrics tend to fit in the situation that you have been facing and somehow ease the suffering of the situation.

MTV and the case of the long winding mixed tapes

I always thought that I am one abnormal and weird bloke. Sitting on the sofa, minding my own business, suddenly there is a flash and I am teleported back to June of 1994. I am coming back from those damn extra classes which our (and I bet all the other schools) used to conduct for 10th standard boards – the heat of the afternoon felt like Dante’s Inferno – and mind you this is the time much before the Uber, Delhi Metro or any other of the logistical comforts without which we now cannot even imagine how life existed on the earth.

I put on the TV at 2 PM in the afternoon – wanted to see what’s on MTV – and I see Green Day in a green coloured video, at a hospital riffing away to glory in Basket Case…I know, most of you millennials would say – MTV and music?? Isn’t MTV synonymous to Hindi curses on Roadies and soft porn on Splitzvilla? To give you some insight – MTV was the only western music channel that was available across the world (including in India) – The ‘M’ in MTV means (or at least meant) ‘Music’.

And I am talking about times when bands used to release Music albums out of which few of the songs were handpicked to be converted into videos which could be popularized across Music channels (such as MTV). And man there were some good videos in those times. From November Rains by Guns and Roses where the red roses bled out on top of a piano in rains to Mr Wendel by Arrested Development with few black guys dancing around singing about a homeless black guy.

I was never one of those outdoorsy guy and was not at all into sports. My sole goal in life was to watch MTV and gather as many albums as I can (with little or no pocket money we used to get). Now – to give you a perspective, I am talking about times before Google, Facebook, Spotify or Apple music – even before Napster, Winamp and MP3s were invented (Im sorry Millennials for you may not have heard of these ghosts – pls use google or this blog could turn into a book which obviously is a horror to most of you)… There were only three sources through which you could extract music – 1) MTV – where you were at mercy of the power companies and cable guys 2) One channel on FM radio – where they played some awesome music when you in a rush and 3) Tapes and tape recorders where you could control when and where you played music.

Those days, buying tapes used to put a heavy dent on your pocket – the albums which were 45 bucks in 1993-94 suddenly shot up to 125 bucks by 96-97 – Thanks to MTV – and 125 bucks was a lot of money those days (mind you a bottle of coke was only 5 bucks). So you had to improvise and innovate – at this stage – the music shop pirates helped a lot – they used to charge 5 bucks a song to record music on a tape which either you provided or they did – blank tapes were quite cheap – anything between 15 bucks (for a T Series) to 40 bucks for a Sony – and voila – we had mixed tapes. And I was the king of mixed tapes – making them for myself (and most of the times for the girls I trying my shot with). I bought a box of blank T Series tapes with 20 tapes for 300 so buck and converted them into mixed tapes in 2 weeks. Some of them were had those obscure songs which nobody listened to from REM, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Green Day or it was a mushy mushy compilation for my girl with Kenny G, soundtrack to Dirty Dancing etc. And obviously – 90s teenage cannot be complete without rock music creeping into your soul – so we had GnR, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Mother Love Bone, Firehouse, Mr Big and the list goes on.

And as one wise man has said that it’s the journey that matters and not the destination, visit to the music shop in those days was nothing less than a trip to a music concert. And mind you this is before times we have dedicated music shops in the mall such as Planet M etc. My favorite music shop was 5 kms away from my home and me and my friend used to walk all this way without breaking a sweat. Most of the times I barely had enough money to buy one tape – but I loved asking the shop owner to pull out at least 30 tapes which I would love to buy. Gauging the threshold of the shop owner’s irritation, I used to put an end to my drill of pulling out more tapes and pay for the one I wanted to buy.

When I tell my son these stories he can’t even start to imagine that finding music was so hard which is so easily available now at the click of a button on your phone. But I think that struggle made it worthwhile. It’s fun when you know that all the albums that you ever dreamed of are now available at a click of a button – anytime you want. And it’s much cheaper and much better quality than those tapes…But I think after sometime, you hit a roadblock – what should I listen to now? And when it’s this dilemma for a man who has been listening to music 3-4 hours each day average for the past 20-25 years, then something is not right.

In the albums that we used to buy in those days, for obvious reasons, not all the songs were great or featured on a music video. And to add to the joke, these songs were placed as the last song of the album. The reason was that before you reach the best song, you could listen to the entire album. Although not all the songs were great but every album told a story and sometimes the pieces of these stories fit into your own life or situation like your child fits a piece of a puzzle into place. And there were times when you bought an album because you liked a particular song on MTV – you ended up with a favorite song which is not as popular or not turned into a music video. This struggle to reach to your favorite song always had the sense of excitement, the pleasure of delayed gratification which is somehow missing when you click a button to play the music. But as all good things came to an end – tapes graduated to CDs which further graduated to computer music and winamps and now we have Spotify – genie for instant musical gratification. Although I have gotten used to the new technology and ways of listening to music but there are moments when I look back and couldn’t help but smile – thinking about times when finding and listening to music was a project – when getting an album was not less than getting a gold mine – but all and all – we loved those projects