Shankar, I think-I’m in Love, In Parts!

I am, I have no doubt about it.

I hardly have ever fallen in love with humans, rather I haven’t understood completely this unpolished (forced) organic definition of love. If you cannot love one place, book, type of food, music, etc. How can you fall in love with one person and be satisfied? Confusing!

You surely can like a person enough to settle on a forever, but love? I think we just pick on people for an easy forever, conveniently adjusting to the best from the lot. No, we don’t love them entirely either. Do you really feel your parents are soulmates? I think a subway is my soulmate- beat that? Anyway, this is debatable, and the land where I come from (India), to talk like this is incessantly displeasing and sinful (which also happen to be my self assigned KRA traits).

But coming back to Shankar, I have time and again, fell in love with this guy, (innumerable times). But oh this time, he has swept me off my feet and put me in a state of trance that I don’t think I’m coming out of anytime soon. To give you a perspective – Shankar Mahadevan is a renowned Indian (also fairly international) musician, who I think has a voice that doesn’t age and keeps getting better. So when I say, I love him, I only mean his vocal cords (or wherever that voice is coming out from).

So amazon prime came up with this web series ‘Bandish Bandits’, which basically does not have much of a story, TBH, has some really nonsensical attempts of pop music, almost painful to the ears. But the Indian classical, the city, the local-regional influence on music, each bit is breathtaking (and that’s an understatement). I haven’t in a very long time gotten hooked to a ‘raag’ per say, to a certain kind of music, or even a recreated regional techno mix (I like those recreated fused versions, judge me all you want, some fusions are beautiful). But this set of a few classical numbers has legitimately made me want to put on my headphones and not take them off at all (I haven’t since I started). What a beauty!

Although, just out of curiosity, I don’t really understand the desperate need to turn everything into a love story in most of the Indian web stories, where one person is always struggling to impress the other. Why can’t people just respect each other generally as a human for their talent and grow into each other eventually, I mean, for once be normal, and not maybe show crazy royalties?

Anyway, the idea of glorifying love is never going away from the cinema. Let’s be honest, today – you cannot sell Gatsby, like you can sell Gosling!