the song book

in the year 1988, my parents gave my sister a new year's diary which she used as a song book. in those years there was deadly competition between us over new year diaries. we got a handful for the house and i, being the youngest, always ended up with the worst ones. (no i'm not just being sore about it, it's true.) that year, my sister ended up with two. i'm not sure how that was fair, and i made my feelings abundantly clear (for years to come) by writing (in ink) on the very first page of her diary (no regard for saraswati, obviously) - "this is my diary. you have a very fat one."

well, that didn't make it my diary. and unfortunately, i got told off for it (as expected). the words stayed on forever because ripping the page could've caused other pages to fall out, and we just didn't have correction tape in those days.

over the years my sister added many, many songs to her diary. there were many old songs i hadn't ever heard. some were songs i had only ever heard my mom sing (albeit beautifully). and but a few i was familiar with. i remember "aaja sanam" was one of my favorites, although i had learnt it listening only to mom, and "deewana hua baadal" from kashmir ki kali. the diary was a most-loved possession, and while i understood, at some point, that i was not to hold a pen to it - i was joyous enough to sing from it. as a kid i was perennially bursting into song, and the diary was my sole companion. i would make song requests to my sister, and she would rewind/fast-forward our tape player repeatedly, until she had all the words down. she would listen to a song, write all she could, then listen again and fill in the blanks. even when i graduated to writing down words of a song, it was she alone who did the writing in the diary, for it was she who had the beautiful hindi handwriting. i didn't mind that though, all i wanted was the words... soundness and completeness were a must.

[it was at the age of 10 that i first fell in love with songs from ijaazat, and i remember asking sis to write down the words. she did so - and i first learned "katra katra". that song stuck with me forever, becoming one of my all-time favorites. i just heard it now on youtube, and it put me in a happy place. i wonder how they do that - put people in happy places - but i love that they do.]

when my sister first left home to go to iimc, i took charge of the diary. i was old enough, at 14, and had acquired a legible handwriting myself. of course, my initial contributions were frowned upon (i wrote the lyrics of "seene mein dil hai" from srk's raju ban gaya gentleman... the song in which every verse ends with "i love you". embarrassing!), but soon enough i was doing justice to the diary's illustrious past.

alas, i lost the diary in my third year at berkeley (when i was 20). that didn't hurt my sister as much, but it did hurt me a fair bit. even though it was the age of the internet, and all lyrics were available online, the book took invaluable childhood memories with it. singing, after all, had been everything. what hurt more was that it was lost irresponsibly. i gave it to a not-very-close friend... on the offer that she would lend me her rilke. rilke was precious to her, and this was precious to me. seemed like a fair deal. except it wasn't. duh. rilke was replaceable for some amount of money... this wasn't, obviously. i kept her rilke, and she kept my song book. years later when we met, i asked her about my song book, and she claimed to have no memory of it. it was lost beyond hope.

perhaps it would have no better place than my box of memories... but at least it would have that. right now, i wonder where it is. does it exist? and who else might have read it, without a realization of what that book meant to me. that, when it wasn't mine to begin with...

excuse me while i dedicate a tear.