California To Chennai

Recently my bike (White Rabbit!) broke down. Like in the movie Padikathavan, I said and kicked it... Rabbit’tu start.. start Rabbit.. start.. startaaaa. There was no sign of life in it, not even an inch of ignition. I decided to punish it. Yes, I boycotted it for one week, I didn't even touch it. While it was bathing in the street dust, I would happily watch it suffer and took the bus to office.

It was a while since I travelled in the bus (Periya Zamindar parambaree). First day, just like a small kid, I grabbed a window seat and I was happy to take pictures using my mobile (You can find some of those here). I then noticed that almost every living! person in the bus, except the driver and the conductor sported a headset and they were listening to music. From the cheap Korean mobiles to swanky Apples, everyone had their own choice of headsets, some with small earphones and some with big headphones, like the ones used in a recording theater.

After two days, I joined their the club, Chennai MTC bus consumed me. I started looking for the songs in my mobile. Music is not my consistent pastime, even though I have wide variety of songs across genres, I hardly listen to it. Browsing through the songs I found this song. 

Now a small flashback, few years back, I started my first job in HCL. During our training, this song was sung by one of my batch-mate. I liked it then and downloaded the entire album. But as years past, this song was buried deep inside my computer’ hard drive and then into my mobile.

Back in the bus, I started listening to that song, once, then again, then again and then again and again. It went on non-stop. Same story for the next day too, same song, repeated. By fourth day, I almost got the entire lyrics. Although, I couldn't completely decipher the meaning of the song, I kind of liked it. It may be the singer’ voice or the guitar sound (I’m not even an music novice! to differentiate between acoustic and electric guitar!).

Without more suspense, this is the Hotel California from Eagles.

My interpretation, a man checks into a hotel, at first he feels everything is cool, then he experiences something bad\weird and tries to escape, only to realize later that he cannot leave the hotel.

I feel the same is applicable for me (almost everyone irrespective of the city). Cities are like heaven initially, it lures you first, you make all the effort to get into it. Once you are in, you long to go to your town\village (Orr Pasam), but you cannot leave, it becomes a prison. You become a prisoner and also a guardian. That’s the last line of the song,

‘you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave’

If you haven't listened to the song yet then YouTube it “Hotel California”. On the dark desert highway…

**Image by the blogger :-)