Songs of the not-so innocent

I wrote this as an email to a friend and was unsure about posting it here.  A couple of weeks ago, a friend asked me how I extricate myself out of black moods/blue funks. Later, an anonymous commenter on this post pointed out that one legacy of the Covid-19 experience will be the enormous strain on mental health. As I typed the email, word came out that we'd be in lock-down till May 3rd. I drafted and redrafted this piece, struggling to craft something of Value. It took me a while to understand (I am not a smart man) that articulating any solution is a fool's errand. The base ingredient of a blue funk is ripe despair but everything else in the pot comes from what is available in your mind's larder. Something that sets off an episode for me may only elicit a slight raise of an eyebrow from you and vice versa. So, if the expectation isn't that of a Wiki-How, you won't be disappointed. Besides, there's no point. Whether you think rationally or irrationally mo

This morning, a bleary-eyed me staggered into the drawing room and found the father watching a Hindi movie called Pyaar Kiya Jaaye  Pyaar Kiye Ja on the Zee Classic channel. For a second, I was nonplussed as the scenes and acting thrummed with a familiarity I could not put a finger on. Then, it came to me. In the late 1980s, I bid farewell to my childhood friends as our family upped sticks and moved to Abu Dhabi in the U.A.E. What a sensory overload the whole experience was, even before we left the country. For one, the flight was delayed by more than 8 hours, so my dad decided we'd rent a hotel room rather than risk Bombay traffic again. As far as I can remember, we'd never stayed in a hotel before so the simplest of things like Room Service took on the kind of childishly, charming sense of wonder that I'd give anything to tap into now. I don't recall anything of the room's layout or the view. Just the service and what I ate - Salt & Pepper bread sandwiches.