My Life: A Musical Montage

Beautiful- Eminem

It was more than a decade ago and I was having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that life isn’t fair. Sitting at the back of an over-heated college bus in mid-July, on my way back home from classes that I couldn’t be less interested in, I was trying to convince myself of a number of things: it was just the heat getting to me and my life was not as terrible as I was making it out to be, that most Asian parents force decisions upon their children and mine was not a misery the likes of which had gone unwitnessed before, that all of my friends getting to make their own choices in life did not fill me with envy. Little did I know that this would not just be a one-time occurrence, my naivete had led to the conviction that if I could just bring this home, I would win my parents over. Toiling to classes in mornings and evenings alike would be forgotten all too easily once I had that final approbation. Artists whose personal lives were riddled with adversities captivated me, consequently, this was my anthem in those days.

Society- Eddie Vedder

I was still in pre-med and had no hopes of scoring well enough to get a fully funded scholarship to any medical school, but I was trying my best. My best, however, was not good enough to keep my mother from passing statements that bordered more along the lines of discouragement than motivation. My naps would be cut short by snide remarks, hangouts with friends would end up in guilt-trips of being a waste of time, resources and hopes only to be followed by an all-time favorite: comparisons to ridiculously distant cousins with superior intellects. I was trying to navigate through these times the best I could, the best anyone without a shred of emotional support or affirmation could. I did have friends but not ones I could relate to, not ones who knew what it felt like to be so unfulfilled, to have to fight for approval every single day and never get it, to always be made to feel like they had fallen short of mark in some way. Those were the days I chanced upon 'Into the Wild', both the movie and its music felt like they had been tailored for me.

The Smiths – There Is a Light That Never Goes Out

It happened! After a gap year, 2 MCATs and countless prayers later I had gotten an almost fully-funded scholarship to study Medicine. It was the first day of the first year of medical school and I was already a month behind everyone else due to some unwelcome technicalities which cost me many nights' sleep and are too agonizing to revisit. As I stepped foot in the most spacious class I'd ever been in I noticed I was surrounded by a sea of confident faces, so sure of themselves and at the kind of ease I had only ever dreamt about. I looked around the lecture Hall and already knew that it was not going to be easy to find a friend here, especially not when I was saving every scrap of my energy for the sizeable volumes of 'Guyton and Halls' textbook of Physiology' I had just purchased. It would be a gross understatement to say that things were not as I had expected, when you're in a room full of legal adults who are all assumed to be the crème de la crème you involuntarily develop expectations of poise and maturity. But, as I took my sweet time to develop an understanding of the ambiance, as I usually do, I was disappointed to learn that everyone was only obsessed with appearing interesting and going to uncomfortable lengths for their 5 minutes in the spotlight.

Thanks to my fine luck (or the lack of it), I did not have time for any of this as my mental health had hit a new low leading to deteriorating physical fitness. The entire year ended up being a haze of fighting my mind in Dissection Halls, wheezing through Asthma attacks and keeping my legs from giving out as I took the stairs to the 3rd floor Biochemistry Lecture Hall while simultaneously trying to appear as ‘normal’ as the rest of them. The only thing I do remember clearly from that year is this song playing in the background, constantly.

Arctic Monkeys- AM

It was a year later and I had somewhat pulled myself together, partly due to the fact that I was doing exceptionally well in my classes and growing to like Medicine. The atmosphere in the classes was still quite clique-y for me and I didn’t have any close friends but people respected me and took me seriously which was more than I could ask for.

I didn’t go to any events, my extra-curriculars weren’t exactly thriving, I refused to have anything to do with sports even though I had been good at basketball since my school days. But now my days were filled with books (both academic and non-academic), soaking up the sun and resting. Every afternoon after classes, I’d sit cross-legged in the grass under brilliant blue skies, a few feet from the famous gazebo which was the meeting place for most societies and listen to this album until I was forced to get up by my gurgling stomach, a pending assignment or the encroaching shadows.

Joy Division- Unknown Pleasures/ Love will Tear us Apart

Long gone were the days of Basic Sciences, we were in the deep end now with nothing but tales of horrors of pharmacology to weigh us further down. I take it as a great sign that the only things I can recall from this year are the stunning notes I managed to take down and the still more stunning music I managed to find while doing that.

I don’t exactly remember how I discovered Joy Division but I know it felt like an awakening. I would go through each song on the album individually and refuse to move on to the next one until I had dissected the preceding one. There wasn’t a day so horrible it couldn’t be made better by listening to ‘Disorder’, no study break was complete without ‘She’s Lost Control’. For some Reason, Curtis’ suffering felt extremely personal to me and as much as I love recommending good music when somebody asks, Joy Division is one of the very few artists that I gatekeep to this day.

Nirvana- Nevermind

I had listened more ‘of’ Nirvana than ‘to’ them before this point but I firmly believe that like much else in life, both art and the time of its revelation are predestined for each one of us. I was already in 4th year by then and this time it wasn’t the circumstances making things difficult, it was me. I was pushing myself to tipping points, I would stay up nights studying when I didn’t have to. No matter how many times I went through the syllabus or how well I scored in mocks it was never good enough, I was convinced I was going to fail despite the fact I had scored remarkably well during the first three years. Come Finals season, I was having panic attacks and there were times when the left half of my body would feel paralyzed which I later learned was what we call ‘Somatic Symptom Disorder’. But this learning came much later and until then I had to deal with the distressing symptoms and worry about some major underlying disease being their cause. One of my grounding techniques was to put this album on and drown everything else out until I felt like I had regained motor function in all of limbs again.

Hozier- Hozier/Wasteland Baby!

One tedious March morning as most of us were sleeping with our eyes open while the professor rambled on about Rheumatic Heart Disease, an announcement was made for everyone to pack their bags and head home as the classes were being cancelled for the foreseeable future. It was the year that covid hit and the world went into hiding. We waited, for days and then weeks but things only seemed to be getting worse and there was no predicting when, if ever, 'routine' would be a part of our lives again. I would go weeks without leaving home, my days were a relentless cycle of cleaning, eating, watching Netflix and self-studying. I often wondered if this was it, if this is how the world would end, with me having nothing but straight A's and questionable mental and physical health to show for it.

P.S. the parental approval I had initially done everything for turned out to be a folklore since I was still considered a disappointment for a multitude of other reasons.

During that phase of seclusion and uncertainty these Albums felt like a warm embrace. Simply put they made me feel like things were going to be OK, like the world wasn’t ending and even if it was it was still fine. And If I ended up dying without ever having lived how I had wanted to, it was acceptable. Most people know Hozier for ‘Take Me to Church’ but I didn’t get to it until very late in my listening to his work, it was instead ‘From Eden’ that had me enthralled. I hadn’t heard a better love song than ‘Work Song’ in years. The sheer brilliance of his poetry was unlike anything I had heard in modern music. His music was about the most important things in life which helped me take a step back and re-evaluate my own priorities. Eventually we were called back for classes, made to sit through test after test until the finals were upon us. Those last finals were the longest exams I have ever been through, I hadn't slept properly in months and was running on chai, coffee and these albums to keep my brain functional. Tears were the new bookmarks, you could find someone having a breakdown at every corner of every building.

A month later as I pressed enter after typing in my roll number to see my results, a constant prayer on my lips, the tiny green column with 'pass' written on it felt like I had been allowed to take a deep breath after 5 years of shallow breathing. It was done! We were officially doctors.

Bade Acche Lagte Hain (1976)

Being Southeast Asian, I could just as easily name Urdu/Hindi songs for each phase of my life. But the 70’s-80’s Hindi music has an unparalleled charm to it. From an interminable list of favorites that belong to this era, this is the song that ended up weaving itself into the fabric of cherished memories.

I can't assign it to a single memory or time in my life as I have been listening to it since I was a kid, but the significance it holds has increased manyfold in the last few years. My internship year was one of the best years of my life, maybe because it was the only time that I was living more outside than inside my head. The days were not as heavy as they had been before, I could drown myself in meaningful and interesting work, I met some new people and learned new things about the old ones. An old acquaintance ended up becoming my best friend, we were lucky enough to work nearly all of our shifts together and after 30 hours of being on call we would sit outside the 'Old Tree Café' (which qualified more as a tuck-shop with patio chairs arranged in circles out front than as a café) with overcast skies and play this song while we sipped on our cups of chai. We both sang it at the top of our voices as we were headed back after the last night shift of our internship, before she moved back home 400 miles away.

That best part, perhaps, is that it is equally suitable for platonic and romantic love. If there ever such a thing as a perfect love, this would be the song to go with it.

Kun Faya Kun

The year went by in a flash. Internship was over and the realities of life came crashing back in with newfound worries of postgraduation and personal relationships. I was desperate to know if others felt as lost as I did so I contacted anyone I could from old classmates to recent colleagues and they all told me they were in the same boat. I feared the thought of moving on from the life I had created for myself, of having to spend so much time at home and inside my head again. This happened to be the perfect time to rediscover an old favorite.

Some of the most soulful music I have ever had the honor of experiencing is on the Rockstar(2011) Soundtrack. Songs Like ‘Nadaan Parinday’, ‘Tum Ho’, ‘Aur Ho’ and ‘Phir se Udd Chala’ all have their own magic but ‘Kun Faya Kun’ is one that I have never gotten enough of. It sounds like it was created for the most hopeless of times, it makes you want to own the loneliness, makes you feel like the strongest person in the world, it liberates you from the constant need for tangible support systems. I cannot stress how important it is to feel like that occasionally, to stand in the face of adversity with no safety-net to fall back on. Whether you know the language or not, everyone should listen to this song at least once in their lifetime.