life is a journey of discovery. A person learns more and more about himself as he grows. I too have been discovering myself.
The mystery of life has not unraveled one bit due to the discoveries I have made about myself. If anything, the mystery has only deepened. Some of the self-revelations have not been gratifying but I have no choice but to live with them. Music has been one of the agents that have made me understand myself. Strangely, music has shown me why there is disharmony in my life.
Right from my school days, I savoured my father's great collection of Western music by illustrious composers like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn and Wagner. I would spend hours listening to their music on the record player at my home. And then there were luminous names from the world of Hindi film music-Shankar-Jaikishan, Kalyanji-Anandji, lakshmikant-Pyarelal, Naushad, SD Burman, RD Burman
When I was in school, I was enamoured by a gift a relative had-composing music. He would win a lot of applause at social gatherings by singing Hindi and Urdu poems set to music by him. I was intrigued by music composing, a talent so few people are blessed with. I wondered how some people could create tunes seemingly out of nothing. Infinite tunes existed, each different from the other, created by composers over centuries in different lands. And still, innumerable more tunes could be created. Where did the music come fromIJ How was a tune conjuredIJ What was the process behind itIJ The presence of a good music composer in close proximity in the form of my relative and the appreciation bestowed on his talent made me want to become a composer myself.
I would pick up good poetry while I was in school and try to set it to music. I kept failing and my fascination for music composing kept growing. But slowly my attempts started bearing fruit and in my first year in college, I gave a tune to a famous Majrooh Sultanpuri ghazal, "Mujhe sahal ho gayiin manzilein wo hawa ke rukh bhi badal gaye / Tera haath haath mein aa gaya ke chiragh raah mein jal gaye …" (It became easy to reach my destinations and the course of my life changed. lamps lighted my path when you became my companion.) I sang my composition to a few close friends to see the response, but they were not very enthused. I had to check out the response of others because I was not very sure how good my tune was. A trickle of compositions kept flowing from my efforts, but I was never sure about their quality.
My compositions sounded good to my ears and my mother said that a key test for music is that it should be karna-priya, that is, pleasant to the ears. Well, I had succeeded on that score as far as I was concerned-my music was pleasant to my ears. Then there was the question of grammar. Was my music grammatically soundIJ I had no idea about that. My compositions were set to a beat but I didn't know whether they adhered to the grammar of music because I had never learned classical Indian music.
A very low period came in my life after college. During that period, I found a book that had poems by the four chhayavaad (Romantic) poets of Hindi-Mahadevi Verma, Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala', Sumitranandan Pant and Jaishankar Prasad. I was drawn strongly to their poetry and kept trying to set it to music. It is said that music heals and creativity flowers in the dark moments of life. A deluge of compositions ensued from me during the time I was feeling low. These compositions lifted my self-esteem and brought celebratory moments in my life. For a few years I was prolific at creating music. I set the poetry of many famous Hindi and Urdu poets to music. The compositions emerged effortlessly. I seemed to have been blessed with the Midas touch in music. I would take up a poem, and lo and behold, its first rendering by me would be an original music score. I treasured my compositions. Each of them was dear to me like a child to a parent. The moments of creativity were sheer magic. They were moments of fulfillment. I sang my compositions to some masters of classical music and felt tremendously relieved when they put their stamp of approval on them. They said the compositions needed some polishing but were basically okay and based on ragas. I felt blessed. I had created music based on ragas without any knowledge about them and formal training in music.
Shouldn't I have felt satisfied with the gift I had receivedIJ Should it not have been enough for me that a long cherished prayer had been answeredIJ I was capable of creating good music. Had not this been my fond desire for yearsIJ Alas, I had not been aware of the nature of mind and its desires. Instead of giving me happiness, my music soon became a source of misery. Once music composing became natural for me, it ceased to be something special. The high it gave me was over. I now wanted my music to yield recognition and money. I wanted to bring my music to the market and become a celebrity. I took raw recordings of my compositions done at home to some music companies, but they didn't show interest. I lost heart very soon when I was not able to sell my music. It was not enough for me that I could create music. That aim had been achieved and was no longer a matter of joy for me. A new desire had arisen on the horizon-achieving fame and money from the music.
I realized I was chasing the horizon. However much I ran after the horizon, it would always remain out of reach. But my desire to get something out of my music did not go away even after realizing this. The fulfillment of my desire to be a music composer had failed to give me satisfaction and happiness because a new desire had become reason for discontent and unhappiness. At a superficial level of the mind, I knew that it was futile to chase this new desire because its fulfillment would be followed by another desire that would keep me miserable. I counselled myself, "Oh let go, Amit, let go of your pining. Remember what lord Buddha said: desires are the cause of misery. Desires are endless. They can never be fulfilled. Drop them if you want to be happy. Don't run after mirages."
The self-sermonising has been in vain. My desires are too deep-seated to get uprooted by mere intellectual reasoning. Desires mean discontentment. And discontentment is unhappiness. Once upon a time I was an unhappy soul who could not make music. Now I am an unhappy soul who can create music. Some day I too would be Buddha, wise and content. Till then, I will have to be content with being discontent. And, alas, foolish too. Some self-discovery. Thanks a ton, music, for showing the discord within me.