Soundtracks

After a long time, I writing. I have not been particularly lazy about it, it just that there not much to write about these days. My life has been reduced to a set of countdowns- five days to Baldy’s birthday, eighteen days to the CAT, forty-five to the end of tfhe semester, soon and so forth. You get the idea. And right now I really in no mood to sit for an hour and compose my magnumopuses on relatives, rudeness, and rotational motion, so theyl have to wait until I am more fine of fettle and fleet of thought.

But here something to chew on in the meantime.

I read Asterix and Obelix All at Sea yesterday. And after reading that, I read The Mistress of Spices, by Chitra Banerjee Divakurani.

I liked The Mistress of Spices. The concept is delightful- a witchwoman who casts spells using spices to help the Indian expatriates in Oakland, California. And underneath that, the theme is more of responsibility and the lmits of power- something like Reaper Man or Soul Music by Terry Pratchett. Oom berejoom, it was good.

In fact, it was so good that while I was reading it a soundtrack set itself up and started playing in my head.

If you ask what I mean by this, here’s the answer. While I was reading The Mistress of Spices, songs came into the back of my head and remained there. They played over and over and rather than distracting me from the book, complemented it story and mood. This sort of thing doesn happen very often- only with some books that are especially good.

The first book this ever happened with was Requiem for a Wren, by Nevil Shute. I read it on the Inter-City Express from Delhi to Patiala almost exactly three years ago, and it left me breathless. Metallica Unforgiven played through my head, drowning out the sound of the train, the coffee- and soup- vendors, and the burly Punjabi women who somehow cuss with far more enthusiasm then the menfolk. And towards the ending- which is bittersweet rather than happy- my mental DJ switched the track to Dire Straits’ Wild Theme.

Now, out of the readership that hasn’t actually tapped it forehead significantly and muttered about my ever-rising looniness, I can foresee two reactions. Half, of which Juventas and Asim would be the best examples, will click their tongues approvingly and will make a mental note to themselves to pick Requiem for a Wren up as soon as they get the opportunity. The other half, led by Manasvini, will shake their heads in despair at the kind of music my subconscious considers suitable and wish they had lorgnettes to flash at me.

I would like to point out that I can really help my subconscious. It doesn’t just have a mind of its own, it is a mind by its own. It decides that Metallica goes well with Nevil Shute and I raise no objections. It plays Metallica again when I’m reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Bleeding Me, in this case) and I headbang along. When I reading Don Quixote, it puts U2’s Sweetest Thing on the stereo and I smile wistfully. And last night when it put on Bring Me to Life by Evanescence as I was reading about Tilo unleashing the power of Red Chillis on San Francisco, I was delighted.

In short, I am not responsible for what my subconscious plays. It plays something, and I like it.

And sometimes, of course, it doesn’t play anything. Either when the book is so ordinary as to leave it uninspired, or, at the other extreme, when I reading Terry Pratchett and PG Wodehouse.

The genius of Nevil Shute is that he can write a book that affects you so strongly that the only way to recognise your feelings is to put them into song. The genius of Pratchett and Wodehouse, on the other hand, is that they can write a book that is so wonderful and delightful and absorbing that your subconscious is never given the opportunity to turn on its stereo. It’s there along with the conscious racing to catch up as they both chase the story. Occasionally they pause so that they can make me roll on the floor laughing, but there no time for music.

And that is that. Tinkerty-tonk.

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