Anthems

Today, we celebrate five years of Prajnya. Prajnya started as a response to things I felt needed doing, that I could help do, in my head, and today it stands outside my head looming large over me, grabbing physical space around, monopolizing my brain sometimes, with a significant group of volunteers who also own Prajnya and a very large extended community who support and keep in touch with us. Wow! You cannot imagine how hard it is to believe.

I feel, at the same time, somewhat tattered and exhausted. Like a person who has fought through fire, wind and rain to walk down the world's longest wind corridor with a large, open bag of cotton-wool intact. Or something like. You get the idea. Embattled, exhausted. And in recent weeks, as we've planned our celebration, getting to something like excitement and exhilaration.Music has kept me on course.

I want to doff my hat to four songs that I rarely listen to but that since childhood, have been my idea of how to life.

Climb Ev'ry Mountain, The Sound of Music 

The Sound of Music was the first film I saw, I am told. And this song has been a part of the soundtrack of my life forever. The words are rich with meaning, and a gentle nudge even when I am really fed up, that nothing's over yet.

The Impossible Dream

I first heard this song on a tribute collection of Glen Campbell songs that someone got me. It never fails to draw me up beyond whatever moment I am in, towards something else, something more important than I am. So here it is, almost the version I first heard.

Somewhere over the rainbow

And what keeps me on this road is the belief, no doubt some would label it delusion, that "there's a land... where troubles melt like lemondrops." And it's up to us to find that land and bring it to where we are.

And closer home, two songs that resonate in the same way.

Jeena isi ka naam hai

The words echo the ideas that 'Vaishnava janato' spells out--living is about giving. I like that idea. Sometimes I also like receiving, but on the whole, giving is good! And it's another thing that the tune takes me straight to another Raj Kapoor song with an entirely different mood, 'Aasmaan pe hai khuda.' I still like this, and would list it over many other Zindagi songs with the same philosophy.

And finally.... (why are you surprised?)... Ruk jaana nahin tu kahin haarke

What's left to say? Except, "Thank you for the music"! :-)