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Simple Delights



I’ve been a bit out of sorts lately. I couldn’t do anything properly. Not even reading. My blogging met with unusual intervals and I ascribed that to writer’s block though my heart said it wasn’t. The whole mood changed today, a few minutes back. Life is so simple, sometimes.

My car’s music system had stopped functioning a few weeks back. I gave my car for an earlier-than-usual service because driving had felt as dull as a movie without dialogue or food without salt ever since the music system went silent. The car was serviced but the music didn’t turn on. “You’ll have to change the speakers,” the service mechanic said.

I managed to find time this morning to get the speakers changed. And my life changed radically. Happiness is so simple an affair.

The young boy who was replacing the speakers turned on the stereo system as he was working and the song that came instantly was from a Malayalam movie of 1989. Let me give the link to the song and the scene in the movie below. I’m sure you’ll be as aroused by it as my young mechanic who raised the volume of my car’s system so much that the entire neighbourhood could hear the song that was romance at its best.

Listen [and watch the movie scene too]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqBlIV7a2p4

Where’s the sweet fragrance of sandal coming from? From the breeze or my beloved? For whom has my beloved kept a vermilion melody in her ruby lips? You, my beloved, have just completed your ritual worship in the temple, but I can see yearning for another god in your eyes…

More and more such romantic songs from the movies of my youth followed and the young mechanic who probably wasn’t even aware of those movies kept keeping the volume of the songs as high as he could without the sound jarring as he worked with the fixing of my car’s speakers.

I could feel a whole new life surging through my veins once more. Music can work more wonders than gods, I tell you. It was the silence of my car’s music system that had ruined my mood in the past couple of weeks!

Don’t assume that the fragrance of sandal oil from the body of a young femme fatale bathing in a belligerent Kshatriya family pool is the dominant theme in my car’s music system. There is a whole range of devotional songs too in my car’s pen drive, including Hindu melodies. Music has no religion. Rather, good music takes us beyond religion.

Listen to this song, for example, yet another one you’ll hear if you take a ride with me in my car:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5BtBrQhwzs&list=RDy5BtBrQhwzs&start_radio=1

Happiness lies in very simple things, I realised yet again. Like in music. Maybe even in a bowl of soup. Why not? 

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Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanSeptember 16, 2025 at 3:05 PM

    Hari OM
    Just right! (Though it is worth noting that there may have been some tail off from the virus you had... post-viral syndrome is a thing...) YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jose D. MaliekalSeptember 16, 2025 at 4:36 PM

    Great, that you have regained yourself, rediscovering yourself through music. Yes. The Malayalam. movie songs of the 80s, have a depth of their own. The lyric and the melody and the music. Doing some intense writing, this September. And would like to listen to the songs of yesteryears as I write on and into the laptop, to. Keep myself awake.. .. But my laptop's speakers are jarring... So, no music, until I get them set aright... Music is divine... Let the music overwhelm us.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 16, 2025 at 6:19 PM

      There's no romance now in real life. So the music is rap/rape today.

      Delete
  3. Liz A.September 17, 2025 at 7:38 AM

    You were out of sorts, and it turned out just to be a lack of music? Well, at least you figured out the cause. Nice. Next time something like that happens, you'll have to remember you need your daily dose of music.

    ReplyDelete

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