His youngest fan

Children I am back. How is the world treating y’all? You must be wondering what’s going on in my life (err say yes ok)? Apart from my work, my niece keeps me busy. A two month old bijli paTaaki is my family’s sole source of entertainment. We are yet to name her. Much to her annoyance we continue to call her by different inane names. For all you know she might be thinking “aiyo you folks! get a life and leave me alone. And switch on the fan before you leave.” Ceiling fan is her current obsession.
Anyway for the sake of blogging I have decided to name her Puttudu (meaning ‘little one’ in Kannada). That’s what we call her at home too :).

Talking about fans, guess who else likes AR Rahman? yes-yes it's my niece. This happened when she was not even a month old and I had to keep a watchful eye while Putttudu slept. [But you know in reality, my role is redundant. My niece wakes up even if I flip a piece of paper; when our dear old BMTC screeches to halt, I get all jumpy and panicky but do nothing]. It was during one such screech-startle-wake-up time, that I discovered she loved music. Yeah I know! I played Aye hairathe ashiqui from Guru and my happiness knew no boundaries when I saw her listening to it with an intense expression. That was not all, we also figured that she listened only to songs composed by AR Rahman. Wheeeee… Can you imagine the kind of joy I felt?

Now, the first thing we all do when we wake up is worship ARR. There is an empty photo frame, which I plan to fill with a scanned picture of Rahman's right foot, so everyday we assume there is a picture of his right foot and do "jota" (fold hands and pray). And if you happen to pass Malleshwaram at 6.30 in the morning you can hear groggy voices singing aye hairathe ashiqui jagaa math. I normally sing Jaage hai der tak hamein kuch der sone do (to the background music of my alarm clock- rrrrrrrriiiing *snooze* rrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnggg *snooze* rrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiingggggggggggg. Dang!).

Thanks to ARR and two of his tracks, my niece promptly stops wailing and/or screaming as soon as she recognizes the prelude. For instance, she drinks her dreadfully bitter syrup, without making a fuss, while listening to this song and drifts off to la la land when we play this. She refuses to listen to other music directors. yeyeyey. More power to ARR!
When people ask- “oh-ho just like Chikki (short for Chikkamma meaning aunt, meaning me) she will also learn music-aa?” I feel like hugging them but then they add “hope she does not turn out as lazy as her chikki teehee” pffffttt grrr.

Give her a keyboard someone :p