I hope that you enjoy reading this post on the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where eleven of us write on the same topic. Today’s topic has been chosen by Shackman. The ten other bloggers who write regularly are, in alphabetical order, Delirious, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Maxi, Maria SF, Padmum, Paul, Rohit,Shackman, The Old Fossil and Will. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, do give some allowance for that too!
“There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to outcarol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain… Or so says the legend.”
~ Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds
I shall restrict myself to the five English songs as most of my regular readers do not follow Indian music. My top five would not contain any English songs at all.
The first one has to be this.
I courted Urmeela with many songs. This was her favourite. Those days, we had music like this to nudge as long.
The next one:
Our very first proper home after marriage. A bed sitter as it would be called in the West or a 1BHK over here. We had a primitive record player amped through an old Murphy Radio. This was one of my favourite songs on a 45 RPM disc. I have even forgotten what the other side contained. My cousin Shankar came to stay with us till he could find digs of his own. Both of us had done a fair bit of wandering. He too fell in love with this song. We were blessed to hear him croak this every morning in the shower. Whenever Shankar and I meet, we still sing this song as a duet and reminisce.
The next one:
For the first decade or so after our marriage, my life was like this. I owed my soul to the company store! Yes, Indian banks did not offer loans to individuals those days and employers were the only ones to oblige.
The next one:
23 years later, almost half my life then, I finally had the guts to say that to my employer. I played this after announcing the National Anthem, on the last day before the packers came, during my farewell party to close friends in the company.
The last one, my all time favourite for obvious reasons, even now.
