Strains of Memory

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Midway through the 7th episode,
a song started playing and the dancers started swaying their bodies rhythmically.
I was nestled in pillows and blankets.
But I had to get up.
I wondered why the strain sounded so familiar;
it felt like someone has flicked a wand,
and silvery wisps of my childhood have appeared.
Too hard to miss,
too thin to grasp.
But then life knocked on my door
and I stopped trying to remember.
A few weeks later,
I heard the same tune playing as the background score of a 70s film.
Damn, I thought.
I have to get to the bottom of this.
The dark labyrinths of WWW gave me an app.
I hummed into the speaker,
and in a second,
Hava Nagila.
Someone told me once,
associative memory works in funny ways.
You see the rising sun,
and you think of an orange.
That's how
I knew
that right now
as Belafonte's deep voice fills up my bedroom,
I am also witnessing the face of my father,
who, half-reclined on a sofa, sings "Jamaica Farewell".
I am also seeing a 13-year-old in a still-existing Music World,
as she frantically goes through CDs
and beams when Belafonte peeps from a corner.
I am seeing this college girl
who sits on the red marble floor of an old building in North Kolkata
and confidently declares that "Angelina" is the greatest and simplest love song ever written.
And how can I not see the 23-year-old, gripping onto feminist theories steadfast,
cringing at the lyrics of
"Man smart, women smarter".
As I got off my memory train,
I understood a few things.
It's unwise to let
snatches of familiar music pass me by.
And that
Belafonte is special.

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