For the last six days I’ve played out my musical memories in the form of words. I’ve written about songs that, just like time machines, have transported me back to moments I will never forget.
I’ve zoomed into the microscopic details of every recollection, from the magic to the tragic, and I’ve felt every feeling as if it were the first time.
The tickle of an ivory, the toot of a flute and the strumming of a guitar can take you anywhere. It’s quite amazing really.
And when I was thinking about my final song for the week, one that’s defined my more recent years, it has to be one I’ve listened to a thousand times but still don’t quite know the name of.
I first heard it playing as I lay amongst the bubbles in my bath, turning the very first page of a very special book.
I watched wisps of nag champa incense dance along to the sounds of an Indian flute and I knew then that it was so much more than just music – and that Shantaram was so much more than just a book.
The two together were my emancipation.
Over the weeks and months that followed, as I devoured Gregory David Robert’s every word, I listened to a collection of sounds that came to be the soundtrack of my new beginning.
His poetically posed philosophies slowly freed me from the past.
And it was there, somewhere between lying beneath the bubbles in my bath and wandering the streets of Mumbai, that I began falling in love with life again.