In the past year there have been four special occasions where my understanding and emotion towards music was changed drastically. The most recent of those events happened last evening. These events were occasions that were so beautiful that I took a moment to take a deep breath and cherished being alive.

The first of the moments happened early in the year. It was an Instrumental performance with Balabhaskara on the electric Violin, Shivmani on the Drums, Keith Peters on the Bass Guitar and Giridhar Udupa on the Ghatam. It was the first time in my life that I had listened to the electric violin and I was totally in love with the instrument. When combined with the sweetness of the Ghatam, smoothness of the bass guitar and the reverberations of the Drums, it was simply magic.

The next occasion was a very unexpected event. A bunch of my friends and I had decided to drop into a friend’s place for his birthday. The place was almost an hour out of town and we ended up there pretty late. After all the birthday celebrations we settled down on comfortable seats and played audience to a couple of my friends performing on the mridungam combined with some exquisite classical vocals. Later another friend wowed us with her amazing dancing talent. That evening we spent almost four hours entirely spellbound to the magic of music.

The third occasion was on the return journey from one of my trips to Honey Valley. A friend and I had to leave earlier than the gang that we had come there with. We realized we did not have many music cds with us and ended up picking a few random disks from another friend. One of the disks was a collection of songs by Louie Armstrong. That was the evening I fell in love with Jazz. I always liked the music when it appeared in movies but that day listening to that CD left me in a trance of a different kind.

The final and the latest event was yesterday when I attended a musical performance at the Misfit Theater Factory. The intimate space of the Theater factory was decorated with the breathtaking music of the Tabla accompanied by the beautiful renditions of the flute and a lovely performance on the Guitar. Added to the magic of the instruments were truly amazing classical vocals. What made the evening more special was the fact that these were performed by friends that I have known for years now. From classics from the yesteryears of Bollywood to the foottapping numbers in Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam, the evening was truly multilingual and multifaceted. The event was aptly called the “Evening of Music”.

These four musical moments truly touched my heart and as I drove back home last evening I wondered why I had never mentioned them in my blog. So here it is, my salute to those special days, the days that made me feel truly blessed to be alive :)