The Songs of Childhood Never Leaves Us

Some songs do not merely stay with you. They quietly take up permanent residence. They do not ask for rent, they do not announce their arrival, and they certainly refuse to leave. They wait patiently, sometimes for decades, and then one fine day they tap you gently on the shoulder and say, “Remember me?”

That is exactly what happened recently when I came across a video of a young girl singing Uthi Uthi Gopala. Within seconds, I was no longer where I was. I was transported back to the mid-seventies, to a small house where mornings began not with alarm clocks, notifications, or motivational podcasts, but with my father’s voice.

My father sang Uthi Uthi Gopala to wake me up for kindergarten. Not once or twice, but unfailingly, every morning, with a sincerity that suggested Lord Krishna himself might take personal offence if I overslept. At that age, I had no idea who Gopala was, why he needed waking up, or why my own awakening appeared equally critical to the cosmic order. All I knew was that mornings sounded gentle, reassuring, and safe.

Uthi Uthi Gopala (Wake Up, Wake Up, Gopala) is a beautiful Marathi devotional song sung by Pt. Kumar Gandharva, with lyrics by Bal Kolhatkar. It is an early morning invocation to Lord Krishna, describing the break of dawn, the stirring of nature, and preparations for worship with incense, lamps, and offerings. We still have the vinyl record at home, a tangible reminder of a time when listening to music was an act of intention. You took the record out, wiped it carefully, placed the needle with reverence, and then you listened. Not while scrolling, not while multitasking, but properly. Perhaps that is why the music stayed.

Kumar Gandharva’s Original

Alongside it lived another permanent resident of my mornings, Ghanashyama Sundara. The words themselves mean “the dark-hued, beautiful one,” a lyrical description of Lord Krishna. Written by Kavi Honaji Bala and famously sung by Lata Mangeshkar in the film Amar Bhoopali, the song paints vivid scenes of rural dawns: cows stirring, women walking to the river, the village slowly coming alive, all held together by the quiet, magnetic presence of Krishna. Even if you did not understand the poetry, you could never miss the mood.

Ghana Shyama sundara

As a child, I understood none of this. And yet, the songs worked flawlessly. They calmed the mind, softened the resistance to waking up, and prepared one for the day ahead. In retrospect, they were performing serious emotional labour, without once demanding acknowledgement or compensation.

Then time, as it always does, moved on. Childhood quietly packed its bags and left without a farewell speech. In its place arrived adulthood, which did what it does best. It complicated things.

Mornings were no longer about waking up to a familiar voice or a gentle melody, but about alarms that sounded suspiciously like rebukes. Days began with lists, deadlines, meetings, and the persistent feeling that one was already late for something, even when one wasn’t quite sure what. Faith became more structured, occasionally conditional, and frequently postponed. Silence became rare. Calm became a luxury item. Courage was no longer something you woke up with; it had to be consciously summoned, preferably after a strong cup of coffee.

Adulthood has a remarkable talent for convincing us that we are too busy to pause, too practical for poetry, and far too sophisticated for the simple magic that once carried us through the day. It replaces morning prayers with calendar alerts, devotion with deliverables, and then confidently calls this arrangement “progress.”

Somewhere in all this earnest complexity, those old songs slipped quietly into the background.

Years later, when I returned to them and finally understood their lyrics, they felt even richer. What I feel now, when I listen to Uthi Uthi Gopala and Ghanashyama Sundara, is prayer, calm, reassurance, and a quiet courage for the day ahead, all wrapped into melody. They do not insist on belief. They simply offer steadiness.

There is a line attributed to the writer Robert Brault that captures this beautifully: “There are some things we never really get over; they become part of who we are.” Music from childhood does exactly that. It embeds itself so deeply within us that it resurfaces when we least expect it, often when we most need it.

And there is another truth that becomes clear with time. When you finally go back to your old music, you realise it wasn’t the old music you missed, but your childhood. The music is merely the key. The door it opens leads to a simpler time, when mornings were slower, voices were gentler, and faith existed without explanation.

Sometimes it takes an unexpected moment, a shared video, or a child’s unselfconscious voice to unlock memories we did not even know we were carrying. One such moment recently sent me gently, and without warning, back to my own childhood.

Some journeys do not require tickets, luggage, or time machines. They only require the right song, heard at the right moment, usually in the early hours of the day, when the world is still quiet enough to listen.

My Cousin Ananth . In Remembrance

 

My earliest memories of Ananth take me back to childhood, to the long and eagerly awaited annual trips to Mangalore for Ganesh Chaturthi. Along with my father, mother, little sister and little brother, I would join the rest of the family in what was always a joyous celebration. Cousins, uncles and aunts gathered together, the whole house buzzing with energy. One of the highlights was the procession to the idol maker’s shop, where we brought home the sacred Ganesha idol. The air was filled with laughter, teasing, and the sound of footsteps that carried both devotion and delight.

For Ananth and me, the real contest was always over the clay mouse that accompanied Lord Ganesha. We both wanted it, as if the little mouse carried a magic of its own. Since the original mouse had to be immersed along with the idol, Ananth’s father, who was also my father’s elder brother, would carefully make an extra clay mouse so that neither of us went away heartbroken. To us as children, those mice were not trifles but treasures, proof of the small but sacred battles of our youth.

Once, in our boundless creativity, we even decided to make our own Ganesha. We took one of Ananth’s play dolls and stuck a clay trunk on it. To our young eyes, it was a proper idol, though looking back now I smile at the thought of that misshapen creation. Yet the memory is precious, because it reminds me of how Ananth and I shared not just festivals but imagination, innocence and laughter.

Tragedy entered his life early, with the passing of his mother when he was only four. But life also gave him a blessing, for my uncle married again, and his new mother raised Ananth as her very own son. He grew up surrounded by love and carried that love with him into everything he did.

One memory that always makes me smile is of his Munji, the sacred thread ceremony. In those days there was a tradition that the boy would briefly be without clothes while the priest prepared to dress him in sacred garments. All of us cousins were waiting eagerly, determined to tease him for it all day. But Ananth was cleverer than us. He quietly slipped away earlier, and by the time we cousins gathered he had already gone through the ritual privately. We never had the chance to tease him. That was Ananth even as a boy, always a step ahead, always composed, always wise in his own way.

As we grew older, distance and studies carried us away from Mangalore and its festivals. Yet when Ananth finished engineering and began working in Bangalore, our paths crossed again. He quickly learnt the ropes, built his career, and established himself. But what always stood out was his deep sense of responsibility. For every family function, whether it was a wedding, a Munji or Ganesh Chaturthi, Ananth would be there, working quietly in the background, ensuring that everything went smoothly.

At my own wedding, when the day was full of rituals and exhaustion, it was Ananth who not only ran around to retrieve my brother’s delayed baggage but also made sure that my bride and I were kept hydrated. He would slip us cold juices and water with a quiet smile, never drawing attention to his efforts. That was Ananth’s way of showing love, not through big declarations but through small, thoughtful acts that made all the difference.

Ganesh Chaturthi, celebrated each year under the leadership of my cousin Nagendra Anna, was another place where Ananth shone. He was the backbone of the celebration, making sure the ornaments were polished, the arrangements complete, and above all that the idol was adorned with beauty and care. Thanks to him, our idol was always admired and remembered. His devotion to Lord Ganesha was not just ritual but heartfelt. He built a collection of idols in his home, and alongside this devotion he also cultivated interests that reflected his patient and meticulous nature. He was a passionate numismatist with a remarkable coin collection and a philatelist with a wide range of first day covers. His mind was curious, his hands skilful, and his heart quietly full of devotion.

And then came the morning of September 20th. Without warning, Ananth was taken from us. At only forty eight, he felt giddy, collapsed in the restroom, and was gone before any of us could even grasp what was happening. A sudden brain haemorrhage ended a life that was so full of vigour, care, and quiet strength. Even now I find myself in shock, repeating the question that has no answer. Why him, and why so soon.

The Bhagavad Gita reminds us that the soul is eternal. In Chapter 2, verse 20, it says:

न जायते म्रियते वा कदाचि
नायं भूत्वा भविता वा न भूय: |
अजो नित्य: शाश्वतोऽयं पुराणो
न हन्यते हन्यमाने शरीरे || 20||

na jāyate mriyate vā kadāchin
nāyaṁ bhūtvā bhavitā vā na bhūyaḥ
ajo nityaḥ śhāśhvato ’yaṁ purāṇo
na hanyate hanyamāne śharīre

“For the soul there is neither birth nor death at any time. It has not come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into being. It is unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval. It is not slain when the body is slain.”

These words are meant to give us strength, to remind us that what we lose in body we do not lose in spirit. Yet grief does not always heed wisdom. I find myself weeping without tears, silently rolling through memories of clay mice, crooked Ganeshas, sly escapes, and thoughtful acts. In mourning Ananth, I am reminded of my own mortality. His life, though short, was filled with meaning. He lived as a son, a cousin, a devotee, a collector, a helper, a doer, and above all, as a man who gave of himself to others.

Like all of us, Ananth had but one life to live. He lived it beautifully, not in search of grandeur, but in service, in devotion, and in love. That is no small achievement. It is, in fact, a life well lived.

Ananth, you will be missed in every festival, in every gathering, in every memory. Adieu, dear cousin. May your soul find peace in the embrace of the divine, and may the love you gave so quietly and fully remain with us forever.

The Sweetness of a Fool

It all began with a video casually dropped into our school WhatsApp group by my dear friend Chandrashekar Mallya. A little girl, barely two years old, bowed in a proper namaskar to a swamiji. The adults around her burst out laughing, and I, curious about what provoked the mirth, asked for context. Before anyone could explain, my old classmate Pravin Joshi made a remark about how this was “the bar to which we have descended” and wandered off into an aside about the 5 Star bar being the only bar of our time.

Normally, such comments disappear into the WhatsApp void, but this one triggered a rush of nostalgia that surprised me. The mere mention of 5 Star transported me straight back to my childhood and youth, and I found myself smiling at the oddest of details. George Santayana once wrote, “The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.” In that moment, I laughed like a fool and then grew misty eyed, not for the chocolate, but for the memories it carried.

As a child, the sight of a Cadbury 5 Star was enough to make me giddy with joy. During my summer holidays in Mandya at my maternal grandparents’ house, my uncle (Prakash Maam, my godfather in spirit, who taught me more than any book ever could, and whom I still miss deeply six years after his passing )  would often bring me a 5 Star. I never bothered about what went inside it: nougat, caramel, or “what not,” as the advertisements trumpeted. All I knew was that it was happiness, neatly wrapped in golden foil.

Fast forward to the start of my working life. Thirty-one years ago, my salary was modest enough to make uncle Scrooge laugh, but I allowed myself one indulgence. Every Saturday evening (yes, Saturdays were working days back then, at the place where I used to earn my daily bread), I would stop at a bakery on my way home, buy a 5 Star, and eat it slowly for half an hour while watching the world go by. A chocolate bar may not sound like much, but when you are twenty-one and full of bravado, you need little else to feel that life is worth living. I sometimes think I owe that little bar of chocolate as much as I owe life  for teaching me resilience.

Today, three decades later, I still keep 5 Stars everywhere: in my car, in my office bag, and in the fridge at home. Not only because of nostalgia, but also because hypoglycaemia has a habit of visiting me without warning, and nothing restores balance faster than a quick bite. Ralph Waldo Emerson once remarked, “There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.” For me, that window of perfection extends to the 5 Star ,except mine has stretched across five decades and shows no signs of closing.

Some childhood favourites fade with time, but a few defy age, inflation, and dentists alike. The 5 Star has been that constant: my childhood joy, my youthful luxury, and now my middle-aged ally. As Oscar Wilde quipped, “I can resist everything except temptation.” And so it is with me: even today, the temptation of a 5 Star is one I never resist.

So thank you, Chandrashekar, for posting that video, and thank you, Pravin, for your comment that set this chain of thoughts in motion. You both reminded this self-confessed fool that sometimes it takes only a bar of chocolate to stitch together memory

and heart.

Or, to borrow from my mother tongue Konkani: Pisso Nhave , 5 Star ache pisshe mhaka sodchen Zaaina ( I am a fool, hence will never let go of my 5 Star.) 

#cadbury, #5star

When a song took us home

 Shraddha Jain’s playful retelling of what Mile Sur Mera Tumhara meant to us is riotously funny—but somewhere between the bursts of laughter, it pries open the sepia-toned reels of our childhood. With a single quip, she transports us back to those grainy Doordarshan afternoons, when the static hum preceded the broadcast, the television gave off the faintly warm scent of heated circuits, and the first notes of that familiar melody felt like a gentle hand on the shoulder of a young nation still learning to dream together.

We were children then, living in a time when the future was still an unopened parcel—mysterious, thrilling, and faintly intimidating. Success was measured in modest currencies: a full tiffin box (a mark of abundance that meant you could share bites with friends), the occasional treat at Balan’s Canteen in Delhi Kannada School—where the main attraction was a limp, petrified dosa, utterly unappealing by today’s standards, but a king’s feast to us then—a bottle of Rasika, a bicycle whose bell actually worked, and the prized Rs. 12.30 DTC all-route pass that promised the city as your playground.

In the midst of this innocent arithmetic of happiness came Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, not with pomp or proclamation, but with the soft persuasion of melody, quietly stitching us into the larger fabric of belonging. Every face on screen was a colossus of their field: musicians, athletes, actors, icons whose very presence felt like a medal pinned upon our collective chest. Yet they were human, approachable, familiar, like neighbours we’d never met but always known.

And it wasn’t alone. The airwaves then were peppered with cultural companions, advertisements like Hamara Bajaj, which sang not of products but of pride, and the hauntingly beautiful Bela Gulab Juhi Champa Chameli from the National Film Development Corporation, which could make even the most restless child pause and watch in wide-eyed wonder. Together, these moments didn’t just entertain, they nurtured a sense of shared identity, a national joie de vivre so tender yet so stirring, the kind of exhilaration that blooms only once in a generation, and perhaps never again.

For a fleeting moment, Shraddha Jain has let us live that childhood again—to remember not only the song but the time and the tender dream it carried. And for that, we owe her our thanks.

🎥 Watch the video here

On Women’s Day , 08 Mar 2025 

The Silent Pillar 

Men may lead the families they are born,

Guiding forth with voice and name.

Yet women shape the home each morn,

A quiet force, a steadfast flame.

They weave the bonds, both strong and true,

Through whispered care and unseen hands.

They build the walls, they shape the view,

Yet few will see where mother stands.

Far from the tree, never falls the acorn,

It grows, embraced in love’s warm frame.

Yet roots run deep where hearts are sworn,

And mothers bear both joy and pain.

Through sacrifice, their strength is spun,

A fortress held with tender grace.

The work unpraised, the praise undone,

Yet love still lingers in its place.

For though the world may claim its kings,

Its thrones and crowns and mighty call,

The ones who shape the home of things

Are those most seldom seen at all.

Happy Women’s day to all the lovely women in the group

Sweet Talk: Sharkara to Sugar

The beguiling story of sugar traces back to the ancient plains of India, where the discovery of crystalline sweetness forever altered human taste and trade. The first documented evidence of sugar production appears in India around the 4th century BCE, where it was known as śarkarā in Sanskrit—a word that evocatively suggests both “gravel” and “sweetness,” due to the resemblance of sugar crystals to tiny pebbles. The innovation of crystallizing sugarcane juice, a feat of culinary alchemy, turned India into the primordial sugar-bowl, enticing cultures far and wide with this novel delicacy.

As Indian traders and scholars journeyed to the Arab world, śarkarā found itself a new home and a slightly altered nomenclature, becoming sukkar in Arabic. This adaptation moved seamlessly across linguistic and geographic boundaries, embedding itself in Greek as sakkharon and ultimately reaching Latin as succarum. With this, the foundational sounds and essence of the word wove their way into Western European tongues, where succarum transmuted over centuries into the English term we know today: sugar.

But sugar’s transformation was far from over. India’s original brown, unrefined sugar—what we might today call gur or jaggery—was taken by travelers and traders to ancient China. There, in the Middle Kingdom, the sugar refining process was elevated to a delicate art, giving the world its first taste of fine, white sugar. From this Chinese refinement came the Hindi and Urdu term chini, derived directly from the Chinese name for this now ubiquitous substance. The term subtly underscores the origins of white sugar in Chinese innovation, an etymological relic of cross-cultural culinary evolution.

With Diwali approaching, India’s deep-rooted love for sweetness reaches an extraordinary crescendo. Over the three-day Diwali weekend, Indians are estimated to consume as much sugar as the world does in an entire month. This astonishing statistic underscores sugar’s centrality to celebration in Indian culture and the enduring bond between sweetness and festivity, a testament to traditions passed down for millennia.

Thus, what began as Indian śarkarā, through a journey marked by linguistic morphing and culinary refinement, became an ingredient and word of global significance, universally recognizable yet regionally distinct. It serves as a testament to the sweetness of shared human endeavor, and how a simple crystalline substance could bridge diverse cultures and span millennia.

Shake Your Booty :A Retro Reverie

In a time when bell-bottoms were fashionable and vinyl was the pinnacle of audio fidelity, my father's Philips EL 3302 tape recorder reigned supreme. This venerable gadget, a masterpiece of pre-digital ingenuity, housed a collection of self-recorded tapes that were nothing short of aural gold. My father's eclectic assembly featured the luminaries of Indian classical music—Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, Kumar Gandharva, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, and DV Paluskar, to name a few. His method of recording was delightfully quaint: he would place the recorder in front of another tape player, creating a charmingly lo-fi soundscape that transformed our living room into a concert hall.

Yet, amidst this pantheon of musical greats, one tape held a unique charm. It was a recording of the legendary movie *Sholay*, complete with its dialogue and soundtrack, and a bonus track that went something like "Shake, Shake, Shake…". At the innocent age of eight, my appreciation for Indian classical music was as developed as a caterpillar in a cocoon. However, this mysterious song piqued my curiosity. With my limited English vocabulary, I deciphered the lyrics to mean "Shake, Shake, Shake…shake your two legs."

In those days, devoid of television, my imagination painted a vivid picture of a white-suited man vigorously shaking his legs to the infectious rhythm. This whimsical misinterpretation became my personal anthem, one I would hum with nonchalant abandon, blissfully unaware of the song's true meaning.

Fast forward to a few days ago. My colleagues and I, braving the incessant Bengaluru rain, decided to take refuge in a quaint restaurant for a coffee break. As fate would have it, the restaurant's sound system began to play none other than the fabled "Shake, Shake, Shake…" tune. Nostalgia washed over me like a monsoon deluge, and I found myself singing along with the fervor of a long-lost reunion. However, my lyrical rendition seemed as harmonious as a cat in a dog kennel.

Curiosity, that relentless beast, led me to consult the omniscient oracle of our age—the internet. To my astonishment, I discovered the song was "Shake Your Booty" by KC and the Sunshine Band. The lyrics, far from the innocuous "Shake your two legs," were an exuberant exhortation to "Shake your booty." 

Reflecting on the myriad occasions I had unwittingly performed my erroneous version, I couldn't help but chuckle. Imagine the bemused expressions of my contemporaries who undoubtedly knew the correct lyrics. As the great philosopher Socrates once said, "I know that I know nothing," and boy, did I embody that sentiment. It was, in retrospect, a rather unflattering moment, highlighting the perils of clinging too fervently to childhood memories without subjecting them to scrutiny.

As I have often mused, memories are a cruel gift. They possess the dual power to delight and deceive, to comfort and confound. Perhaps there is wisdom in allowing some memories to remain untouched, preserving the innocence with which we first embraced them. As Mark Twain so aptly put it, "When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not." Indeed, in the end, it is not the accuracy of our recollections that matters, but the joy and wonder they inspire within our hearts.

In the spirit of humor and reflection, I leave you with this thought: "Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans" (Allen Saunders). So, here's to the innocence of our youth, the charm of our misconceptions, and the timeless joy of a good old-fashioned mix-up.