I have always liked studying with the television on. I like studying with music on, but usually I get more involved with music and get easily distracted. Ideally, the television should be playing one of those old Hindi and Tamil films that I have seen so many times, that I know every damn dialogue, situation and costume. I just look up when I think the scene is particularly interesting. But today when Yaadon Ki Baraat was on, I was stunned by an acute realization.
We don’t have a family song. (Gasp!)
What if a dear one and I go to some mela and get bichdo-fied? How will we find each other? What song will we sing? Since I am not fond of tattoos, there’s no way we can get the same matching-matching tattoo either. It will have to be a song. Then, another stunning realization.
When I was growing up, we didn’t have a family song either.
Such is the mark of callous parenting, that my parents just made me mug up our address, phone number, pin code, their work numbers, neighbour’s number etc. Apart from that, I also had to carry some form of an ID. But no song? What if I had gotten lost while my mother was lovingly buying tomatoes? What if I had lost my way home, what song would I sing at the police station to communicate to the cops that they had to look for a person who knew the same song? Come to think of it, my parents never made me and my sister wear similar clothes either. Unlike the perfect family in this song – where the kids were similar black bow ties with grey shorts and a strange coloured shirt.
I need a unique song. Need of the hour. I have now decided that composing a family song with suitably mushy lyrics about love, bonding, blood, separating etc is more important than disserting. Family comes first. Okay?
nehamaami 
Good one.
Haven’t heard the phrase “mug up” in a long time…thanks for jogging my memory.
My husband and I keep joking about the need for a family song, but are yet to come up with one.
Good luck with your dissertation.
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Pusthagatha tharakarthu valakennai sapdra mathri irukko?
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Perhaps a handkerchief. Perhaps a growing ring around the finger. perhaps a photograph in the suitcase. Perhaps a way of sneezing…perhaps a codeword when you burp…
All these are effective alternatives to the song….well, good luck on the song. But in the meantime..you can start off with these as well !!
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How about you and Sri have one half of a locket, obviously no one else in the whole wide world will have the similar lockets and yours are the only one which will fit the others’ perfectly.
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Even if you did have a family song, how would the cops know that you were, er, singing ? Okay, that’s probably just me 🙂
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How about taking a locket and breaking it into two? Or two halves of same handkerchief. A photo of you two split into two, with each person holding the other’s image? Maybe in keeping with today’s electronic age, two halves of a cellphone, or headphones if you don’t want to break a cellphone.
OK, I should get back to work before that list grows too long.
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Maybe you could come up with a novel idea involving the blog, like splitting the pwd into two or something. I am so jobless right now, will be back with more
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Please don’t make it yaadon ki baarat. You need something really special
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how do you manage to catch with all these old movies .. and then to top it up, point out the most hillarious song or sequence with formidable evidence from utube 🙂
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Neha
Don’t invent, buy. How about ‘Beedi’? 🙂
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Borrow a pet butterfly from Love 2050. Works not only internationally. But also across time barriers.
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I read family song. I personally feel that every family should have their own family song. isn’t it?
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Beedi? How does that work, do you both have half a beedi each? But then what happens if you are stressed out over the dissertation and you smoke your half? That would be very sad ending to the story.
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Sri doesn’t like chains/ lockets/ rings. So that idea goes poof! As for similar handkerchiefs, what if my sinus acts up and I use it to fill snot with? Song is the only memory based thing – of course we all know that no matter how traumatic an accident, a person still remembers songs, as we have frequently seen in our cinema. Therefore song it is.
But I like the pet butterfly idea a lot.
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I vote yaadon ki baraat – which is the declared best ever lost brother reunion movie according to V. He never tires of watching the songs. And I mean ever!
And snot point is very valid….
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I think all the good old hindi film songs are family songs. I and my sister would enact ‘parda hai, parda hai,’ just when we started to use chunnis (over frocks). I would sing to her, sitting on the swing, and tell her how to lift the dupatta slowly, not in the first stanza, because the purpose of the song is then over. I can never listen to this song without thinking of her, and of our childhood.
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After watching that lovely DVD you kindly gave me, I am left with no other option but to suggest that you should tear a green saree into two and have one half each. Grrr
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Great Blog Neha..lovely post. Reminds me of my childhood when me and my sister came up with this theme song for the 2 of us: Phoolon ka taaron ka, sabka kehna hai, ek hazaaron main meri behna hai !
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Knowing my family, they’ll get my brother to compose a theme and we’ll learn our parts and play them on six instruments and use GarageBand on my new Mac to record them and trasfer them on to our iPods. I hope none of them reads this blog!
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Hmm..what about a half a banknote, to be kept by both of you?
Much more convenient to carry around than half a locket or half a sari!
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Putting my thoughts on writing a family song. Then remembered that I am not a kid and I still don’t have a family. I am only nearing thirty. When I do marry, my first condition for the girl would be that she should write a family song 🙂
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Hi….got to your blog thro the roll on my friends blog. Really loved this post on the family song.
The best part………the idea of a family song like in the movie !! unique.
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