A long time ago, when I was still a teenager, I was reading a D H Lawrence book ("Sons and lovers", I think it was), in which the author describes a scene where this young man deeply in love with a young woman, serenades her every night by playing the violin and singing under her window. His song is filled with love and longing, because, unfortunately for him, she does not return his affection. Reading it, I somehow couldn"t relate to that emotion, since I had then not yet fallen in love :) I thought about it for many days and then forgot about it, until months later, on Doordarshan (this was before the multitude of channels took away the magic :)) I watched this black-and-white song for the first time. I have not heard a song since that conveyed the feeling of longing with such an intensity that I immediately understood the emotion of the young man in the book. (Of course, the performance by the lead actress helped too, longing written on every line of her face and body.)

Well, now I"m nearly old and much wizened and longing has assailed my heart many times, so I decided to write a post about it :) We long for so many things, the loving to be loved by one person, or many, to be accepted by a group. To be in a certain place, maybe filled with memorable happy memories, or even go back to the innocence of childhood. We long for career fulfillment, meaning in life, freedom from illness, we thirst for more and more knowledge, for adventure. Notice how all of them are experiences.

When one longing is fulfilled we move to the next one, it appears that our lives are spent in the fulfillment of one unfulfilled longing after another. If not anything, we long for freedom from longing. It seems to me that longing is hard-wired into our system. I wonder if all these longings are a mask for the one longing we fail to acknowledge - the longing to be one with our Source. I wonder, if all those other longings are fulfilled, will we still say, like Radha says to Krishna in Geeta Dutt"s haunting voice, "main hoon antar ghat tak pyaasi……"

I dedicate this song to Kush babu, our young erudite friend, only he will understand the reasons …… :)

So here it is, the song that introduced me to longing ……


Click here to view the song