for over ten years since i found music, i have been trying to find answers in it. i always maintained that i was part of the woodstock generation and it was in that the answers lied. today after watching "leaving home, the life and music of indian ocean", it feels like i was looking in the wrong places. for the first time i am questioning it; for the first time it feels like - maybe i was just another brown wannabe white. maybe i just talked and talked, maybe i am just one big phony.
i would always worry (not having worried about this problem for anything else in life, anything), maybe i am not a natural at this, maybe it's not really my thing, but then there would be these moments, few of them, very few, that would transport me, that would let me lose myself, that would reinstate my faith in my connection with music.
i've been realizing as i've been growing up that it is not enough to lie in the wake of some generation. this is my generation and there are people beating the odds, doing great, amazing things. musicians, filmmakers, techies, sportspersons. and i held them in great regard because they really are you voice, they really say what you want to. but today after watching indian ocean, it feels so stupid. it feels like all this while i've been so blind. it's like i was trying to learn a new words to understand a language, when here there was somebody singing in my language all along. and i'm not talking about english or hindi
i loved the zeppelin and dylan and they touched my soul, but they sang about different problems, i can relate to them, love them but not find my solution there. they haven't faced communal riots, caste systems. they saw a generation of questions, but different questions. they had problems, sure, but they didn't have the problems that evoke anger in me. all of a sudden it feels like i'll have to start all over again. all of a sudden, i feel completely stupid. where have i been all these years? genius was happening right here. all this while i was swearing at indians for watching white models in clothes and wanting to buy them, and it feels like i'm one of them, the worst of them.
i don't believe in the boundaries of nations, i never did. i always thought why should my consumption of beauty be dependent on boundaries. true, of course they shouldn't be, but there are few things that need to be here. they need to be within the same consciousness you share, withing a particular ecosystem. in all likelihood, this will be one more of those useless epiphanies, but probably the one that left me feeling most stupid.
"bagal mein chora, shahar mein dhindora" - hats off to indian ocean
