I realised reading some of my earlier writing that 2013 was
a bad year. A lot of my blogs from 2013 were dark. Darker than the person most
of you know me as. I was feeling immense loneliness in a new city and within my
home. I often like to use music as mirror to reflect; when I’m feeling happy or
ready to party I put on my House music playlist, when I want to psyche myself
up I put on my rock and so on. But I had no “sad” music. Or even any “introspective”
music. That’s when I discovered a long-forgotten playlist: my friend Kit’s
dubstep playlist, which he had picked for me with such precision.
Kit is one of my best friends from university and he loves
his music. His iTunes is the most meticulous database this side of the NSA. He
particularly loves his thoughtful, soulful dubstep. It is the kind of music you
play when you want to think long and hard about something. Good dubstep doesn’t
force you to listen and it doesn’t flit around in the background either.
Instead it’s sort of takes your deepest thoughts and amplifies them and gives
clarity to your emotions, which otherwise would have been blunt and primitive.
Good dubstep helps you reflect. Kit is someone who thinks about things a lot (more
than, perhaps, he talks about them) and maybe that’s why the music resonates so
much with him. Before Kit, my exposure to dubstep was horrific stuff from
Skrillex and his ilk; pure cacophony.
But I found myself in a rickshaw on a sweltering Mumbai
morning, a year after having left the Birmingham house Kit and I shared, listening
to that same dubstep. And it felt so apt. It allowed me to delve into my heart
and step outside my body and look at myself and my surroundings. You know when
you’re listening to music in a moving train and you feel like you’re in a
movie? Well this was that. Except this music was powerful and yet so modern. As
far as reflective music goes, I love opera. But that can get quite dramatic.
Sometimes, you just want clever drums and humbling melodies as you ride the
train to work to figure out if today is going to be a good or a bad day; you
have the power to choose.
I didn’t like every song on the playlist. But as I listened,
I fell in love with more and more. And for different reasons. Soon I started
finding parts of Bombay that I loved: early mornings train rides towards
Churchgate, for those 12 seconds between Marine Lines and Charni Road, where
the vista opens out and you can see the greens of the cricket clubs and the
blues of the ocean behind it. And there was music for that calm too. You hurtle
along through the brown and grey of the Western Line but for those 12 seconds,
every passenger in the compartment escapes and becomes one of those boys
playing carefree cricket by the sea. Then the wall starts again and you’re
swallowed back into the brown-grey whirlpool. But if you time your music with
that sliver of freedom, those 12 seconds last for the entire day.
Some songs are night songs. Some music is just better heard
when the sky is dim and the city lights are growling silently at each other. Every
evening from our old office in Matunga, I would take the train towards
Elphinstone Road to my gym. It used to be largely empty since commuters were
heading in the opposite direction. Again, I had the freedom of the open
compartment door to muse. The oblivious sparkling glass skyscrapers look truly
beautiful from the train. You slink past their ankles, unnoticed. They actually
make me proud of my city. Most of Lower Parel lives beneath the flyovers that
criss-cross it. Every now and then you emerge into a skyscape dominated by the
IndiaBulls Centres and their smaller luminous cousins. With Kit’s dubstep to
insulate me from the noise of the train, you are able to appreciate their
boldness. They’re so big, but they belong to you too.
By the end of 2013, I had found a really great group of
friends. The 4 of us used to cruise around town looking for new places to eat. We
even took a road-trip to a music festival in Pune. Now Kit’s dubstep has become
an elixir of excitement. It was upbeat. There was no reason to feel downbeat –
or at least, none that struck me at the time. The music was groovy and in the
car we each felt the sense of anticipation grow as we got nearer the festival
venue. The synth and the vocals flirted playfully with each other as if to
remind you of the romance in the night ahead. It need not be the romance that
requires a significant girl - just the romance that opens your eyes to the
privilege of spending an evening with friends and the freedom to do whatever
you want. It’s the romance of youth. It’s the romance of the weekend and
adventure. It’s the romance of possibly, maybe, hopefully, finding actual
romance.
Now I listen to Kit’s dubstep more to remember than to
reflect. I listen to it on sunny Saturday mornings when I want to remember good
times or lonely Sunday nights when I want to feel alone. Am I overplaying the
impact of music? I don’t think so. Those of us who love music, I’m sure, feel
emotion to similar degrees brought on by songs or artists or genres that speak
to a certain time in our lives. Kit’s dubstep was one of the many things that got
me through 2013. It hummed in and out of my life when I needed to escape. Kit
is the kind of guy who will go on holiday alone and have an absolute ball. He’s
not a loner but I think he has understood how cool it is to hang out by
yourself and take the world in as you want it. Sometimes being alone with
yourself is wonderful.
You’re amazing – do you know that? You and yourself have the
same taste in food, music and almost everything else. You have a bank of
memories that you don’t need to explain to anyone else. You can just sit somewhere
and let them swirl around in your head and smile and cry and swoon. I love Kit’s
dubstep because it reminds me of the power of and happiness in self-reflection.
You can put your earphones in and get on a train and think about things and you
don’t need anyone else to have a great time. You don’t need to be ashamed of
it. In fact, you need to be fully aware if you really want to take the plunge
into your own sea of emotions and recollections. If you’re in a dark spot (or
year), look to your friends and family for help. But don’t forget you have a
great bubbling sea of ideas and love within you. You just need the right
playlist to breathe down there.
So thank you Kit, for the dubstep.
