Love love me do.....................

I’m a pretty old dude now. I’m 53, come 19^th January 2005. How time flies!

I was surfing the net this evening. I somehow stumbled on to a music site. Somehow got to a Beatles section. The site was full of midi files.

I click on one at random. I listen to the music. It transports me away silently, on a magic carpet.

Imagine two dimensions to my situation. There is a “here” and there is a “there”.

“Here” is my bedroom, in Bangalore. It’s 1.09 am on a cold night as I write this. The night is very silent. You could probably hear a pin drop if I didn’t have carpeting. There’s no one awake at home except me. I promised everyone that I would sleep early today. But I cannot. The music has woken something that has lain dormant in me for a long time. Sleep eludes me. I am filled with a deep emotion. I am transported back in time…………………..

“There” is Calcutta in the late 1960’s. I am back there in a flash…………..

I was a teenager back then. Having a difficult time. I was helplessly adrift in a sea of loneliness. There was no friend that I could identify with. And in those troubled times the only solace that I took was in music.

The Beatles, to be specific. They looked deep into my soul and gave me the strength, the confidence to live in that vast desolation that surrounded me.

The environment those days was hostile. My father hated me. If I could have had some secret genie come to my aid and have him removed from the scene, I would have gladly done so. But there was no genie to my rescue and my everyday life was hell.

I haven’t ever heard of anyone just going from place to place…………taking a tram or a bus to nowhere…just to be away from home……….but that’s exactly what I did in those days. I tried to stay away as long as I could. Places drifted by in a blur…………sometimes I was in Kalighat, sometimes in Rash Behari Avenue……but the important thing was that I was away from home.

My only “friend” in those days were the Beatles.

I derived the strength from their music that helped me pull on with life.

When my hostile father told me one day, at the breakfast table, when I was all of sixteen years old that he wouldn’t leave me a penny, I just sat there stone faced. I couldn’t care less.

His exact words were: “Son, my money is my money. I will never give it to you." Why he said that, without provocation, I don’t know. In hindsight I should have responded with some statement. I just sat there silently. His barbs bounced off me. When I cried, I cried in private. On the shoulders of Paul and George and Ringo and John.

When I was in college the Beatles were by my side. That was the time their "Abbey Road" album had released. We used to 'come together' quite often.

I was growing up and part of growing up is forgetting one roots. I slowly forgot the Beatles. Others came by to woo me, to gain my attention. Boney M, Abba, Neil Diamond, Cat Stevens, Paul Anka, The Bee Gees……………..

I married. I had kids. The kids grew up and had kids of their own.

I had almost completely forgotten my old friends, The Beatles till this night; this emotional night when I stumbled on their music on the net. I sat and listened. It had been over thirty year since I had heard really listened to my old friends

In a flash I was transported back into time. There I was, the 16 year old lad, in Calcutta. In a hostile environment. Struggling to retain my sanity.

Their pain of their music pricked me like a thousand barbs. The pain of the memories was excruciating.

In that split second I realized that whilst all the other music groups were just acquaintances, The Beatles were family.

They were a part of me that would never go away.

It took me 30 odd years to realize this simple fact (how dense of me!).

And now, the old man is no longer ‘dad’…..add an ‘e’ and you get it. “He’s dead”.

He never left me anything, like he had promised to. I didn't care. I would have been surprised if he had.

We hadn’t even spoken to each other for the past twenty years.

I thought I had everything under control – my emotions and all.

And then my old friends arrived from nowhere and threw me out of emotional synch.

No one else can do that today. Except my wife.

The Beatles are dead. Long live the Beatles.