I asked my daughter to contribute her Top 15 SPB songs for all time and this is her list. She also said that she doesn't feel sad at his demise because and I quote "if there is anyone who has a shot at immortality it is him as his songs will live on forever!" So here is her list, not in any particular order.
This week I lost two people in India to COVID. They were both 74 years old. One was the legendary singer S.P. Balasubrahmanyam who provided the sound track of my life. The other was my aunt who was with me for many of my firsts. Although I never met the former, and hadn't seen the latter in nearly a decade both the losses feel extremely personal.
My aunt was one of those rare persons in my family who spoke multiple Indian languages and English. She was my aunt by her marriage to my maternal uncle, which explains her linguistic abilities as we just didn't have the genes for it in ours. She was one of the most cheerful people I ever knew. It did not mean she had a trouble free life. She just had the knack of having a sparkling smile and welcoming face no matter what. She, with my uncle, was always there for all my important first steps - my first school, my first job, my first trip abroad - and they, along with my parents set me up for success. She also took care of my maternal grandmother (her Mother-in-law) as though she was her own mother. That's something I would always remember her for. Yes, my grandmom was amazing, but caring for a 97 year old when you yourself are 70 and doing it with cheer is not easy. My uncle has a gruff exterior although he is one of the kindest people I know. You need time to warm up to him. My aunt smoothed his rough edges and made him palatable to strangers. Her death was untimely and completely avoidable. She had breathing issues but unfortunately an overrun medical system unable to handle COVID patients failed her as she could not get a doctor or a hospital to take her in. This fact is going to remain with my uncle and my cousin for a long time. She was a collateral damage to COVID and she will be sorely missed!
COVID also claimed the life of a legend this week. Growing up in Chennai in the '70s to '90s there was one thing constant in my life - seasons, politics, friends, interests and tastes change, life ebbs and flows - but throughout it all the voice of SPB was the one constant. Tamil Nadu is famous for its polarizing dualities - MGR or Sivaji; ADMK or DMK; Kamal or Rajini; (and like that's even possible) Illayaraja or Rahman - but everyone and I mean EVERYONE unified around the voice of SPB. You get a bunch of Tamils in a room, sooner or later we will end up discussing Illayaraja + SPB songs. I definitely went through phases in my musical taste - I learned Carnatic, listened to a lot of pop, love alternate rock and even some metal, now I listen to opera. But once again throughout it all, SPB never left my life. I had seen him in live shows when I was in my undergrad in Chennai and then again in 2012 in California where he mesmerized my then 7 year old who also grew up with his music. I don't remember a day when we didn't have his voice in our midst. One of the earliest memories of my childhood was my brother's Kindergarten "interview". He was 3 and I was 7. My mom desperately wanted him to get into this school as it was close to our home and near mine - as a working mom this was critical for her. But you can't prepare a 3 year old who had a mind of his own! When asked what was his name, he belted out a "My name is Billa". The interviewer burst out laughing, much to the relief of my mother. He was then asked to sing a song (she didn't say rhyme) and so he did - another SPB tune. Subconsciously he covered both bases (Rajini and Kamal) and one can safely assume that the teacher must have been a SPB fan as the school did pick him! My brother and I never agreed on anything until we became adults, but SPB was the one great unifier in our childhood. SPB was with us for all occasions. He sang in 16 Indian languages and he was the one, before globalization and Rupert Mudroch invading our skies, who taught us the numerous genres of music - from disco to Indian classical. There was nothing he could not do. Dulcet tones with emotive power that stirred something deep within us - no wonder he was also a terrific actor although he only acted in a handful of movies. When I moved to the US I made a list of some of my favorite tunes (a couple of hundred) and my dad and brother got them recorded for me in tapes and shipped them for me. My daughter who was born in the US and grew up here, not fluent in Tamil, certainly doesn't understand the lyrics, has a playlist in her iPod for SPB! This is a child who learns the piano, loves Radiohead, Spoon, Imagine Dragons, Adele, Massive Attack and she still thinks SPB is special. There is a SPB for every occasion, she says. We were in Iceland a couple of summers back with our friends, and our kids were being DJs and suddenly they would say "it's time for some good SPB" and there he was - in Iceland, in our van, two families from two different parts of India with kids born and raised in the US listening to his voice! It didn't feel surreal, it felt natural. He was 74 when he passed and normally I would say he had a good life, left us a collection of 40,000 songs, enough for multiple lifetimes. Anyone else, I would say their best days were behind them. But not him - he had so much more to offer. He was 74 when he sang this song (one of his last) - a mindless, opening number - but the energy in his voice is pure magic, that my 15 year old once played it non-stop over a weekend. In Tamil Nadu music he was with us for three golden periods - MSV, Illayaraja and A.R.Rahman - three generations of composers and towards the end of his life sang for composers who as kids grew up listening to him. He was truly ageless that I never imagined there would be a time when we will not have any more new songs from him. This loss feels personal because his voice was personal to each and everyone of us and losing this constant almost feels like the loss of a parent. I was lucky to have had him in my life and thankful for the joy and comfort he provided. Here is a list of my favorites which will remain with me forever
I spent the last couple of months tackling not one, but four, 1000 pagers. I have survived and am here to say that the effort was worth it. The Boundless Sea by David Abulafia, a human history of the oceans, was the only non-fiction of the 4.
The Boundless Sea is a fabulous book meticulous in its details, rich in colorful characters and set a number of facts straight for me. Growing up in India, ironically we accepted texts that stated Vasco Da Gama discovered India, much like Columbus' discovery of America! These statements not only ignored the presence of native population, they also ignored the seafaring adventures across the oceans by the indigenous people of these nations long before Europeans entered into the picture. Until the arrival of European adventurers the oceans were mainly used by traders, and successful trading usually involved learning another culture and customs. Abulafia's book is full of tales about how religions like Buddhism spread through the oceans, evidences of Greeks worshiping Indian Gods, a settlement of Jewish people in India, seals that bear inscriptions from multiple languages. However, the Portuguese and Spanish with the help of Italian seafarers took this to the next level. The big change that the Europeans brought about was the concept of conquest and colonization to control trade routes usually in search of a particular hot commodity. Human history of the oceans appears to be a human history of commodities - myrrh and frankincense, amber, spices (pepper and cinnamon especially), salt, herrings, tea, fur, and later sugar and cotton which in turn led to slavery. Abulafia could have told the story from the point of view of these products and our insatiable need for them. The oceans connect all corners of the earth, so it was no surprise that especially in the 15th century two key factors connect history of all humanity 1) The importance of the Indian & Chinese spice/tea trade to all European nations 2) European Christians wanting to avoid the Red Sea and the Islamic centers of trade in their effort to control the Indies. The colonization of the New World was because of this arms race to discover a route to India and that race determined winners and losers in multiple continents with consequences till date.
This book is not for the faint hearted or those with poor upper body strength (I got a physical copy - a mistake). Many days I wondered if it was for me
too as it was just too much information to process! But Abulafia is a
great storyteller and the book deserves the Wolfson History prize. If you don't want to read the book I recommend listening to this interview
I was introduced to Brandon Sanderson by my daughter. This marked a big moment in our mother-daughter relationship. I remember when I started curating books and movies for my dad and it is inevitable I am at that stage right now. I am a big fan of Sci-fi/ Fantasy/ Speculative fiction. I like to think I don't distinguish between hi-brow literature and genre fiction. I love the great masters of the genre from Tolkien, Frank Herbet, GRR, Ursula Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Neil Gaiman and recently Neal Stephenson, Ann Leckie. I regularly check out the Hugo/Nebula/ Locus award winners. But it's been a long time since I was consumed by an epic fantasy like that of Sanderson's. I have to say he is truly the Tolkien for this generation, and yes I am ranking him higher than GRR! I read Mistborn and Stormlight (3 books in each series) in a span of 2 months and they are still with me. The world creation, character arcs, the plot, the magic systems and the no-gimmick and no-pandering style is just so refreshing. The depth of philosophy and religion in these books and the emphasis on civil discourse is fantastic! Most Sci-fi/fantasy writers fall into the liberal/ atheist category and then there are people like Orson Scott Card who holds despicable views. It is hard to separate art from the artist (which is why I can't bring myself to read Ender's Game or Mists of Avalon). Sanderson doesn't shy away from religion in his books and his life but is not a bigot and doesn't have a hidden agenda to spread the beliefs of LDS. In fact the struggle between the Parshendi and humans in Stormlight seemed to me, a commentary on the relationship between the Paiutes and Mormons in Utah. What is the nature of god when we seem to be tearing each other apart, what does it mean to live a life of honor when everything around you has gone to dogs, what does it mean for a god to die and how does an atheist and a believer react to that - these are all questions raised and discussed in the Cosmere universe, and I found the arguments intellectually stimulating. In one of my favorite quotes from his book a character says (and I paraphrase) a hypocrite is someone who is in the process of changing and without change and flow we cannot evolve. In these times when we are so polarized, listening to another, discussing, understanding and evolving are all crucial if we want to solve existential problems. Sanderson is also very generous as he puts up all his lectures on writing on Youtube something my daughter truly appreciated. I was hesitant to pick up Stormlight as I know he has planned 10 books in this series and has completed only 3. I am already waiting for Winds of Winter from GRR and it feels like an eternity, so I was hesitant to pick up an unfinished series. But the opportunity to read something with my daughter over the next 15 years was too great to pass up and I am richer for it. Now we both are waiting for the fourth book coming this thanksgiving.
RBG's passing was a sad day not just for women but for all underdogs. We shouldn't forget that one of her most successful gender discrimination case was won by her defending the right of a man to collect social security benefits as a home maker! The crazy election cycle just got crazier and I did not want to get sucked into a vortex of negativity. Instead, as a tribute to RBG I spent the day re-reading Mary Beard's Women and Power - A Manifesto. In Western civilization it looks like the first feminists were all lawyers - Maesia and Afrania who both went to court and were ridiculed for their androgyny - an outspoken woman has to be unnatural after all! So it seemed fitting that a petite, gentle lawyer had to school this country on gender equality. As Mary Beard states the problems are deep rooted and structural and as ancient as western civilization and dismantling these structures is going to take time. RIP RBG. The rest of us have work to do to make sure all the gains you made for us are not lost.
The other book I finished this month was Normal People by Sally Rooney which made everyone's list include President Obama's. I didn't think this book would appeal to me as I was not the target audience (or so I thought) but I was pleasantly surprised by the writing. I soon found myself absorbed by Marianne's and Connell's "relationship" - was it friendship or friendship with benefits? If you remember Seinfeld The Deal and thought how funny it was, take that premise subtract the jokes, add in smartphones + social media, depression, violence, alienation, class conflicts you get Normal People. Maybe it is the pandemic but I felt that as we all experience social isolation we realize that it is important to have at least one other person that we can absolutely lean on and in Normal People the two protagonists realize that they have been that person for each other but do not seem to have the ability to articulate that. Can tweets, tiktoks and texts help a human connect at a deeper level with another? At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I have to say that I found that Marianne and Connell (despite being well read, intelligent people who cared for each other) could not communicate openly and this thwarted communication was at the root of all their troubles.
Anyway those were the books of this past month. I am trying a few books now and while non-fiction has been easy to find, I am yet to get Stormlight out of my system and so the quest for fiction books for next month is still ongoing.
I remember the day I took my daughter to a double feature. We were going to see "A Wrinkle in Time" and "Black Panther" back to back. I had been trying to get my daughter to watch superhero movies and somehow she was never drawn to them. When I walked into the theater I assumed she would love Wrinkle, a book she and I read together when she was 7 and maybe not enjoy Panther. It turned out to be the opposite! She found the colorful world of Wrinkle in the movie not jive with her mental image of the world from the book. On the other hand, she fell in love with Black Panther. There was something about the movie that appealed to her and since then we watched the 20 odd Avenger movies and she still ranks Black Panther as her favorite. The movie brought joy to billions and we were no exceptions. You didn't have to be black to appreciate what a force for good that movie was. Believe me, I have seen Indiana Jones Temple of Doom and know a thing or two about stereotypes in Hollywood. But Panther arguably did more than even Henry Louis Gates Jr's brilliant documentary on Africa to challenge Eurocentric (which is inevitably white-centric) views of the world. So, the death of Chadwick Boseman came as a shock to me like it did for the world. But I was unprepared for the intensity to which it would affect me.
I don't know why the death of Chadwick Boseman has hit me hard. I am a cancer-hardened veteran who has lost my dad, two uncles, one of my closest cousins, a couple of friends and more relatives to cancer in the span of 17 years. But this one felt as personal as the deaths in my family. Maybe it was just this man's gentle, lightning smile. Maybe it was his grace and dignity that we saw on and off screen but is now 100X magnified knowing that all that grace was despite facing something as horrendous as cancer. Maybe it was the premium he put on his privacy. But him going through his treatments and still showing up to the sets to bring joy to the world as Black Panther transcends greatness.
Till date, I had only my dad as a model for grace in the face of an uphill struggle against cancer. He was funny, joking and making light of his struggles, thoughtful about his caregivers and the nurses in his hospice till the very end. But in a few rare moments he confessed to me that he was tired of fighting and wanted the end to be quick and made me promise to not put him on life support in case he went into a coma. Cancer can do that to you. Somehow Boseman's death brought back all those intense feelings.
17 years back just after my dad died I found comfort in Rainier NP under the gaze of the mountain. I had not shed any tears in India as I had to make room for my mom's grief and also had to handle the funeral. It was in Rainier amidst the wilderness, in that solitude, that I finally found the space to come to terms with my own grief. I was in Sequoia NP when I found out about Boseman's passing and standing under those trees I sought comfort and saw his spirit in those giants.Very often when people die we collectively remember only their good things. In my dad's case I knew that was all there was to remember. He was 59 when he passed. In my mind he is always the Atticus of Mocking Bird and never the old, cynical, grumpy Atticus of Go Set a Watchman as he never reached that age and I believe his basic nature wouldn't have changed much. I have a feeling Boseman was like that. The goodness that people attribute to him is not simply a case of remembering only the good. It feels like that was the sum total of his soul. May he rest in peace.
