Knicq

I used to think I was a singing sensation. My mother thought me the next Qari Waheed Zafar. Never mind the fact that every kid in my class could render ‘Fasilon ko takalluf‘ better than me, and most even got ‘Zahe Muqaddar’ right. My mother had not heard them – my classmates, and I did not know I was as bad as I was. Unfortunately, falsehoods perpetuated in childhood can linger for impossibly long times; I grew up under the impression that I could sing.

They began being less polite about it all once I got to teenage years, but then those were the years when I thought people disapproved of me on purpose, to spite me. I was never much of a rebel – outwardly. I did stick to my guns though – it was much later when I found out that the technical term for this behavior was passive aggression. As much as passive voice was loved by me, it was no surprise that a sense of proud satisfaction was allowed to overcome me by me upon this discovery; but like I said, this was allowed to happen much later. At the time, I had no idea I was being passively aggressive in persisting with my yodeling despite passionate pleas for respite from my intended and unintended audiences. I was just being confident of my talent. One only has to imagine what an ordinary 13 year old sounds like without trying to sound melodious to understand the true measure of my victims’ agony.

For some reason, we never had a cassette player in our house for a long time. My parents are no music enthusiasts, and given the very nominal role they played in world affairs and Pakistan politics, they had never felt the need to tune in to BBC Urdu Service in the evenings. To borrow an expression from Mushtaq Ahmad Yousufi, they knew and understood that whatever anyone was doing in whatever part of the world was doing so without their express permission or council. They only concerned themselves with making ends meet, and ensuring none of us ever stood second (or third, or fourth, etc.) in his or her class. Unfortunately for them, they got the tougher part right, the meeting of ends that is, but they failed where they thought it mattered most – whatever the other siblings scored, I was too polite to bump the guys ahead of my in class and take their spot and hence their limelight. My parents misinterpreted my courtesy and politeness as passive aggression, and tried to counter it with assertive persuasion at first and active aggression later on. Soon, however, they figured out how inherent these traits were in me, and how impossible a task it was for anyone to persuade me to push people around.

I reckon we must have had a cassette player early on, but it must never have been replaced after it broke down. It was the same with the car audio systems – as long as the “tape” was fine, we got some music in the car, and when the ‘tape’ went out of order, which it invariably did on those Mazdas and Toyotas my father loved, it would sound the death knell for our music as well. Once the ‘tape’ became useless, all that was left of the car audio systems was radio, and back in mid-80’s you did not get much by way of radio. There were no FM stations (Alas! The good old days when people were not being paid to murder common sense, good language, and brain cells on air), and the only Urdu service was Abu Dhabi urdu service, which if I am not wrong was a three or four hour service. Incidentally, the three or four hours co-incided with our homework time, and that was that.  No radio or music for us.

The long and short of it all is just that there was a serious dearth of actual opportunities for me to figure out my shortcomings in the crooning department. Sure, I never got a tune right and I should have taken the hint then, but I always put it down to not having heard the tune enough number of times and not having sung along enough number of times.

Then there came a tim when we bought a Panasonic cassette player, and I went about collecting all kinds of music to play on it. And I sang along. For hours. They say there was a mysterious epidemic in those days, which killed many many bats as far off as Ras Al Khaimah, and it was driving the dogs crazy. The mysterious thing was the dead animals all seemed to be in excellent condition, except for their ears. Apparently, it was a noise that killed them, and left their ears swollen.

And this is a completely random bit of information, which has nothing to do with this sorry excuse of a post. But, that is what you get from me when I have been up all night doing nothing, and decide to update just as the morning updates today’s sun.