The day the music died....

Music has been an integral part of my identity, for various reasons, which I choose not to elucidate, for being labelled a megalomaniac. Not a single instance has passed by when I have not been thankful for the music in my life, whenever I have had the opportunities to indulge myself in exquisite aural pleasure.

It was pretty much smooth sailing until college, for I could listen to stuff as and when I wanted to, without much interference from any external sources. Not being even remotely within striking distance of 'rich' or whatever that is, I had to subsist for most part on a walkman and audio tapes for which I had to save about a fortnight's pocket money, later graduating to a discman (gifted by a dear cousin, who I shamelessly ended up cursing for it not having mp3 compatibility, though telling him that my invectives were in jest) , following which I managed to lay my hands on a then state-of-the-art comp, somewhere in my 5th semester, which I managed to scrounge, due to incessant pleading with my Dad that a comp was mandatory for a lot of 'project work' and for a whole host of other things. Little did my poor Pop know that my definition of project work included accumulating all sorts of music, which I thought I might like to listen to , either now or at any point of time in the most distant future as well.
This resulted in me cramming up the entire hard-disk with mp3s, as well as lots of movies which I put in the 'never to be deleted movies' directory, which I inadvertently deleted for adding more movies to 'absolutely-never-to-be-deleted-movies-folder'. That got deleted too, for want of space.

This entire exercise taught me many things, among which, the main one was that I should probably have put attack on Dad to get me an 80GB hard drive, so that I could accumulate more trash, to delay the inevitable. It also taught me that the digital media penetration was substantial enough for someone else in my immediate circle of friends or in its vicinity to have copies of what I wanted.

The same cousin who gave me the discman, probably for my not being annoying as the rest of his first cousins were (or so I would like to think, to shirk away from facing the bitter truth), also gave me a 'thank-you-for-not-attending-my-wedding-and-being-a-pain-in-my-ass' present, which I guess was also his way of thanking me for absenting myself from the sessions where most of his relatives (quite a whole of the Shenoy/ Kamath /Prabhu /Rao /*.* Konkani surname junta) would gather around, and pull his leg royally about the possible exploits that he would indulge on the day that he was rumoured to consummate his marriage.
He gave me an amazing wireless headphone set, which I can never thank him enough for. He redeemed himself in mine eyes for having given me that non-mp3 compatible discman.

You see, our abode was not exactly what one would like to call big, or even medium-sized, for that matter, and that resulted in our TV and my faithful comp being kept in close proximity, and being the average middle class family that we are, TV crazy, there was quite a cacophony pretty much all the time in our living room cum dining room cum hall cum drawing room cum guest bedroom, with incessant scrambles for the remote control, which used to be carried all over the place by whomsoever was watching the TV, so as not to relinquish control of it. I have been particularly notorious in that aspect, having taken it to the loo once for an extended session when I wanted to watch a football match, which was clashing with some pansy serial that my sister wanted to watch. Considering how United got drubbed by Porto at Old Trafford that evening in the Champions league QF, I think I would have been better off watching that pansy serial myself.

Getting back to the music in my life, it was virtually impossible to listen to music or watch movies on the comp while the infernal idiot box was jabbering away, and these wireless headphones which completely enveloped my ears and drowned out all traces of external noise at the flick of a switch came as a welcome addition to my limited material assets, which numbered 4 then(at an incredible average of one for every 5.5 years of my life!).
This resulted in me being able to play music on the comp, plug in the transmitter of the headphones, and retire to the confines of my bedroom, to read or just space out.
Campus recruited at one of the supposedly happening companies in the Indian IT industry kept me in a sense of suspended animation so far as my limited aspirations of grossly indulging in Bacchanalian orgies were concerned. This was at a period of time in my life when I had not even correlated the meaning of outsourcing in the context of what was supposedly the bustling IT industry.

I started work on september 1st 2004, at this 'happening' IT place, and it was within a short span of time that I realised that work was not what it was projected as being, in the campus presentations that we had, and in everything that was said to all of us that were outside of this vicious circle. It was all about the money, and not about the dum dum da da dum dum, and those that wanted it would not let anything stand in their way.
Kicking myself for my naievete was not really an option, for I had no plan B, and it was either sink or swim, and I plunged into the big bad world of the employed in the IT industry, gasping for breath, but determined to have my place in the sun nevertheless, in one capacity or another.

That was the day that cynicism and a loss of innocence came about in my being, and I think a lot of like-minded brethren in this industry would concur with me, in saying that that was probably the day that the music died.