Weaving Magic: an ode to a song…

“Jodi aaro kare bhaalo baasho, jodi aaro phire nahi aasho….
jodi aaro kare bhalo baasho, jodi aaro phire nahi aasho,
Tobe tumi jaha chaayo, taayi jeno paayo,
aami joto dukho paayi go…
Aamaro porano jaha chaaye,
tumi taayi, tumi taayi go…
Tuma chada aar e jogote mor keho naaye, kichu naayi go…
Aamaro porano jaha chaaye…” — Rabindranath Tagore

“If it’s someone else that you love, if to me you never return,
Then all that you wish for, I hope becomes yours.
No matter how much sorrow befalls me.
For all that my heart desires for,
is you, is only you.
Apart from you, in this whole wide world,
I have no one, I have nothing.
For all that my heart desires for,
is you, is only you…”

There’s something about the song. Something divine, mystic, hypnotizing. I have been listening and I have been listening to it since last evening and it was what I woke up to at dawn. Maybe it’s the longing in the voice, the sheer beauty and innocence and selflessness. Or maybe it’s some magic running its course.

The song brings to my mind bygone days from an era I have long left behind me. Mornings spent picking up bottlebrush from newly scrubbed lanes, with a June sun streaming in through cracks in the window. I don’t know what it is about bottlebrush that requires only the slightest catalyst to peep into my thoughts. The song reminds me of anjali on Ashtami mornings, the most auspicious day of Durga Puja. Married women playing with sindoor on Bijoya Doshomi, their hair and cheeks all bright red. Ironically, the song also reminds me of dark evenings spent by myself, brooding on the swing in our front yard, watching the traffic move aimlessly ahead. Nights spent looking out of the window, straining my ears to listen to the melancholic strands of an illusional violin softly playing by itself somewhere in the mist. Crying into my pillow over things I can’t change and waking up to a fitting, overcast sky the next morning, too dully black to retain the romance of a rain shower.

Strange indeed, what a song can do to you. Something makes me want to dedicate this to someone who is too far away today to listen right away…. But if the wind carries my message, this is for you:

“Aamaro porano jaha chaaye,
tumi taayi, tumi taayi go,
Aamaro porano jaha chaaye…”

Image From: Adnan Quaium’s Blog