If music be the food of life... play on!

I’m a pampered girl, I think… I’m used the good things in life like living in comfort and having access to basic amenities (defined as a stereo system, TV and a clean bathroom)… so when looking for a place to live in, I don’t mind paying a few extra bucks just for the comfort, cleanliness and niceness! My philosophy? - After all, what do we earn for?! Why do we slog our heads off the whole day if we can’t come back to enjoy a nice home? Not that I can’t live in difficult conditions, if I have no choice! And I can do so without complaining, unlike many people who crib and crib and give you a headache after a while (does not refer to anyone in particular)…

So when I moved to this new city, I decided to spend a few extra dollars to get myself a nice apartment which I can call home… and (barring the cat hair that I’ve already spoken about earlier) it turned out to be quite a delightful place! It’s clean, well furnished and has the most awesome speakers, all courtesy the girl whose rented the place to me (while she’s gone to Cornell to attend some summer conferences). It even has an A/C, which is a real blessing even this side of the seven seas and makes up for no TV… I have to dwell on the speakers for a bit though, to explain to you just how big a part music plays in my life (after all, the title of the post is related to music, so its best I come to the point soon!)…

Last Monday was one of the worst days of my life in a long time, in terms of how awfully wrong things can go and how badly Murphy’s Law can kick in… At the very outset of the day, I forgot to take my cell with me when I left for office… Then when I remembered my cell and came back home to get it, I missed the bus returning towards office... So had to call a cab, ended up spending too much money getting to office to find that I couldn’t work... My new laptop crashed at the first instance of being booted and I spent most of the day explaining the issue to tech support… In the evening, the bus was 15 min late, which is unbearable around here… Back at home, my front door refused to open, and I struggled with the rotten key for 10 min! Finally when I stomped in and settled down to heat some dinner for myself, the glass pot that I had kept on the gas plate shattered into a million pieces due to the heat and took my home-cooked dal with it! (Hey, don’t tell me the obvious… this was a Pyrex glass pot, it was supposed to withstand high temperatures!) And while I was trying to get it off the gas, the napkin got burnt and the whole kitchen smelt terrible (needless to say, both glass pot and napkin belonged to the girl who’s rented the place to me!)

So I slumped myself into the easy chair and let out a long sigh! What a day I was going through… I was scared of touching anything else in the apartment lest it falls apart! And then I happened to look at the speakers mounted on the wall in the living room… I think, oh, these speakers may be working! I quickly connected them to my mp3 player and switched them on…

And they had (still have, touchwood!) the most amazing bass ever! I’m talking about Altec speakers which can make even the most mundane sound seem unearthly! A sense of relief flooded me, like some magical Cheering Charm (yeah, I’ve caught the Harry Potter fever too!) was relaxing me and easing out my stress… I closed my eyes and let the sounds seep in, increased the volume to fill the whole apartment, unmindful of my neighbors and enjoying the moment… And I’m a great one for dancing around in the room with the music blasted… So I did just that… I pranced around the entire apartment doing my when-no-one-is-watching moves, utterly unconscious of the open blinds on my windows and possible onlookers! I totally forgot my pains of the day, the shattered glass, the lost home-cooked meal, the burnt carpet (did I mention I also burnt the carpet sometime during that day?!), etc, and was completely lost in the moment, immersed deep in the rhythms of my favorite music!

Anyhow, I’m sure this experience is not unique… so many people I know de-stress with music (though they probably don’t dance around like loonies)… But it’s only sometimes that you understand the true potential of music and its importance in your life… And since today was another one of those mindlessly-long-meetings, missing-bus-connections day when I came back home in a really bad mood, but was magically and instantly cheered up with the nicest line up of songs on the radio (seems like the host knows me so well, she’s been playing all my fav numbers!), I felt I just had to write about it…

You know, just to pay my respects!


P.S: While we’re on the topic of homes, I recently saw a sticker which read “So this is not Home Sweet Home... ADJUST!” … totally cracked me up!