The new year eve of 2007. It was the age when we did not have a computer at home and my father, ever excited to watch and make me watch the well known classics of his time, used to get a DVD player from a store that rented out DVD players and DVDs. I loved every film that he ever suggested and this time it was the 1965 American musical drama The Sound of Music. I was in the seventh standard when I watched it and I was absolutely mesmerized.
I kept suggesting more of the same movie to all of my friends in the following years and even made them watch it with me. I believe I made five of my friends watch it; which means I re-watched the film five times after the one first time. I had a stupid notion that I was destined to watch the film five times so that I could appreciate it five times over, much as a justification to the five Academy Awards that it had won. I managed to break that stupid belief when I made Aniruddha watch it in a small hotel room in Patna on the laptop.
I do not know whether the film impacted my friends or even Aniruddha as much as it did to me at that age. Later in 2009, I confessed to my father that I actually fantasize that I am in the green meadows amidst the Alps with Maria (the protagonist of the movie played by Julie Andrews), playing and singing around with her. I imagined I was one of the Von Trapp family kids. I believe the impact of the watch was so strong, that I used to play the tape that my father had mixed, of all the songs of the musical, about once everyday until I knew all the songs by heart. However, after the confession, I was not encouraged to play the mix tape at home anymore. I believe I was building a parallel universe in my head and that was not allowing me to focus on my current surroundings. I recovered from the fantasizing syndrome soon enough and in 2010, after I cleared my ICSE Board exams, my father gifted me the DVD of the film. I remember, I actually smuggled that same DVD in my bag later in 2016 when I wanted to screen the film for Aniruddha when he came to visit me in Patna for five days after four months of staying away.
Yes! Life was hard with all the travelling that we had to do back then just to be with each other for a couple of days. The distance relationship brought installments of love and surprise to our lives for about six years, until 2017. Things changed in 2018, a year after we moved in US. 2018 was the year when we got to be in one city and one school. 2018 was the year I realized the purity of this song, ‘Something Good’ from my most loved musical drama.
I attach the lyrics of the song below:
Maria:
Perhaps I had a wicked childhood
Perhaps I had a miserable youth
But somewhere in my wicked, miserable past
There must have been a moment of truth
For here you are, standing there, loving me
Whether or not you should
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good
Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good
Captain:
For here you are, standing there, loving me
Whether or not you should
Maria:
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good
Maria and the Captain:
Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could
Maria:
So somewhere in my youth
Captain:
Or childhood
Maria:
I must have done something . . .
Maria and the Captain:
Something good
