Sheer Melody

After a long time, I decided it’s time to start contributing to my blog which has been left untouched for some time now. Partly, this is because staying alone in the US can be infinitely boring; and although New York City is much better than most other cities in this country, I realized it could be a trifle too expensive if I tried living life the way I used to in Bombay during the early days in the industry…

I have done something amazing – something I could never have imagined I would do: quit smoking. It was a horrible time, the three weeks after I had my last smoke; but I managed. Yay! I now can talk to fellow-smokers in a condescending tone and tell them how much better it feels not to hold that stick in my hand.

I have started doing a lot of in-house recordings. Maybe it’s because I miss the late-night sessions with Bodhi at my place in Bangalore. The trained reader would have guessed by now that I have left Bangalore and am presently located near the Big Apple. Those were good times – exploring strange, sometimes even quirky, genres of music and cinema; times when we started experimenting in a small way with jazz and learnt to amaze at its immensity. All my recordings are in my folder on esnips.

I have a strange passion now – experimenting with new varieties of beer. Samuel Adams Boston Lager is a good drink. I somehow haven’t been able to take any liking to Jack n Coke.

I also have a new keyboard, a Yamaha YPG 235, one of the portable grand series of Yamaha. The keys have a good feel, partly because they are partially weighted, and partly because the thing’s brand new. The sound’s pretty good – maybe not concert standard – but I especially like the sharp zing the higher notes have when I hit the keys really hard. It also sounds awfully good when I plug it in to my speakers.

I have mixed feelings about leaving Bangalore. Certain things happened in the last month which I guess more communication would have avoided. It certainly did not make my last days in the city any easier – I wanted to be able to say the city had given me a lot – but unlike Mumbai which always feels closer to my heart (there are multiple reasons for this), Bangalore never made the cut.

Aru is happily married and stays in the next building – so quite a few evenings pass in recollections of the Mumbai days – rollicking times spent with the old gang of Sunil, Prantik, Saunak, and of course Aru. This dude just sent me a scandalous reminder of the way we whiled away time in Mumbai at the den – I have been toying with the idea of uploading them to the blog: I am just not sure and comfortable about the reactions I may get when multiple views of the video happen.