April 8, 2024

 It is heartening to see my mum showing signs of recovery from her knee replacement. Everyone is of the opinion that most of the recovery is because I am here. I dont know how all of this works, but I am fine if it does. I know I will need to be here with a much greater frequency and for many more reasons. Short and sweet weekend trips to Jamshedpur is likely to be the norm for the foreseeable future. The other good thing so far is that I am eating in most of the time, and so far I have not picked up a cold or other similar viral ailment. I am also now two-for-two with my 50 lap routine at Beldih Club. On the first day I chose to swim around 5.30 Pm and that was a terrible idea. There were a million kids hovering all over and it was really an ordeal for me to press on with my laps, almost always bumping into them at the shallow end. I had such a feeling of Deja Vu. Back in the day when we were kids, we used to often spalsha round at the Golmuri Club pool where there was one "uncle"- must have been in his late 50s- who regularly did laps. And he bumped into us, we into him and often we bore the brunt of his foul mood on account of this. Within ourselves, we used to really curse this man for always spoiling our fun. Why the hell did he have to do laps- why could he not just splasha round like us?  We did not for a moment realise that the man needed to look after his health - at his age, and using a daily routine for a proper swim was a really good idea for an excercise regimen.  Health problems were so alien for all of us back then, and to be honest for me until I turned 40, I never for a moment thought about my health other than to try not to be overweight- and only for aesthetic reasons. In any case, having somehow completed my evening of karma at the club, I told myself I will try another time slot next time. And the following day I showed up early- at 6.30 AM. It was a much more pleasant experience - and more importantly I was getting back into a routine. I plan to go for another swim tomorrow to try and make it 3 for 3. I cannot recall the last time I swim on 3 consecutive days. 

Aside of swimmming, I had dome time to reflect on my music as well. I spent a few hours noodling on my guitar ( I have one handy at home in Jamshedpur), and late last night I called Pankaj in the US- since whatsapp calls are possible in India unlike the UAE. He was adding all kinds of light effects to his band performances- it was his new thing. I told him I would like to be able to put msyelf together as a bona-fide acoustic solo performer- possibly play house parties and such in Dubai at some point. This is a really ambitious aspiration for someone who picked up th guitar only three years ago- but given my progress I really want to push myself as much as I can. If I have such an outlandish ambition, I might get atleast half-way close to it. The moment you think about performing, even somewhat semi-professionally, you have consider so many other aspects. You need a gear combo that makes you sound clean live- and it should be portable and still be loud enough for small to medium audiences. Then you need to think of a repertoire and playlist. Initially I thought I should learn a 100 songs- but now I feel because my repertoire is all over the place, I need more like 200. I need to be able to curate the list based on the audience. And one needs a bit to read the room to finalise this, it is not really possible to do this ahead of time. In general if it is an Indian party, I figure it needs to be 80% bollywood- and even within that, I need songs from the old and new. The age profile of the audience would ultimately dictate if I do more songs from the 80s or the noughties,  Learning lyrics and chords for 200 songs is not easy- and I see most people reading from a tab while performing. This is one element where I want to differentiate myself. I need these 200 songs to be second nature- can be performed on demand without any prompts- either for the chords nor for the lyrics. It is hard, but it will be an excercise that will keep my memory in good use- possibly this will be a step towards preventing or atleast delaying cognitive decline.

Parallel to being battle-ready with 200 songs across multiple genres and languages, I am also considering booking some studio time and making some professional recordings that I can put on my channel. Heck, if we are doing this might as well go all in. It’s not like I have to work on a startup and pitch to VCs like many of my peers. I get no energy from that and in general the type of people who do this type of stuff tend to not sit well with me- maybe it is just a case of sour grapes, but I am too old to bother with adjusting may attitude. I would rather use the limited amount of time and energy available to me ( and it is only going to plummet rapidly in the near future) to pursue something I can stand behind.  I dont know if anything will come out of it, but sometimes I feel that all my gifts are meant to come together some day and in a way that will make my offering to the universe a little bit more noticeable and noteworthy than it currently is. I shall drink some Bunnabahain to that- which by the way I am trying for the first time and I am not finding it particularly impressive.