Site content © Roopa Farooki 2014
Extras
Parvez’s Playlist
A musical dilattante’s favourite tracks
… Abbu would cover the cracks by sharing his music collection with us - his vinyl and tapes and CDs, like sympathetic comrades, providing wise words and comfort, and sometimes a searing insight so sharp that it hurt him like a physical pain. At those moments, his sorrow was tangible, palpable…My father had always appreciated music, but now he began to cherish it, pouring his emotion and energy into it and using it to fill the vacuum left by love. When he listened to O Mio Babbino Caro in our living room, his handsome face became equal to the most beautifully crafted cinematographic shot of weeping Mafiosi in La Scala.
But he didn’t simply weep - he was transported. He became more democratic in his tastes, now treating jazz and opera, pop and soul, and classical Indian melodies as equal in his own United Nations of Music. It was a bittersweet gift as, despite all his efforts, he could never play a tune as he would want it heard. He could never write a melody that would transport him. His displaced yearning for the love he had lost made him a musical dilettante - a jack of all instruments but a master of none….
(Bitter Sweets © Roopa Farooki 2007, first published 2007 by Pan Macmillan)
But he didn’t simply weep - he was transported. He became more democratic in his tastes, now treating jazz and opera, pop and soul, and classical Indian melodies as equal in his own United Nations of Music. It was a bittersweet gift as, despite all his efforts, he could never play a tune as he would want it heard. He could never write a melody that would transport him. His displaced yearning for the love he had lost made him a musical dilettante - a jack of all instruments but a master of none….
(Bitter Sweets © Roopa Farooki 2007, first published 2007 by Pan Macmillan)
