On Earworms, or the things that go Hmmm at night

It has been a long lull here. Not that ideas never came up. They did, and some pretty interesting ones too. However, as any experienced person, who has done a thing or two of his own initiative in life, would tell you, ideas are cheap; it is the execution that takes the real effort. There are many such half germinated ideas, lodged in the magnetic nooks of my hard drive – perhaps they would see this portal someday, perhaps they might comprise a book; or perhaps, most probably, they shall go with me to my pyre. Writing anything is rather hazardous these days; more so in a job where political correctness is of utmost importance. So, like Jim Hacker of “Yes Minister / Yes Prime Minister”, whose sole reason for elevation was the fact that no camp hated him, a rather unlikely topic is being presented here, in the hope that, well, it is harmless. We are discussing – earworms.

Wikipedia defines – ‘An earworm, sometimes known as a brainworm, sticky music, or stuck song syndrome, is a catchy piece of music that continually repeats through a person's mind after it is no longer playing. Phrases used to describe an earworm include "musical imagery repetition", "involuntary musical imagery", and "stuck song syndrome".’ Almost all of us have experienced this phenomenon. Some of us have the irritating habit of humming them out, so that the ‘infection’ spreads on. Others, like yours truly, keep this affliction inside for years on, longing for release.

It is not the first writing on the topic of year worms. 200 years ago, none less than William Wordworth had written the Solitary Reaper. The masterpiece is reproduced here – 

“Behold her, single in the field,

Yon solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping and singing by herself;

Stop here, or gently pass!

Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

And sings a melancholy strain;

O listen! for the Vale profound

Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt

More welcome notes to weary bands

Of travellers in some shady haunt,

Among Arabian sands:

A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard

In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,

Breaking the silence of the seas

Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?—

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

For old, unhappy, far-off things,

And battles long ago:

Or is it some more humble lay,

Familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang

As if her song could have no ending;

I saw her singing at her work,

And o'er the sickle bending;—

I listened, motionless and still;

And, as I mounted up the hill,

The music in my heart I bore,

Long after it was heard no more.”  

Thus, even Sir Wordsworth was not immune to earworms. More recently, in the Shawshank Redemption, Andrew Dufresne locks up the prison guard as he notches up the volume on the song being played on the record player, and mesmerizes the whole prison yard. He takes the earworm with him to the solitary bin – and speaks of it in an affectionate way.

Growing up, my father’s railway quarters were almost always right next to the Grand Trunk Road. Railways and major roads are aligned – not a surprise. So I had a lot of buses and other means of public transport, blaring the latest music on their sound system, pass my house. I recall as a morning phenomenon. Maybe the traffic jam of the morning ensured the vehicles passed slowly, and I got to hear more of the music. May be the fact that the toilets were at the farther end of the corridor, ensured that one was closer to the source of the music. Anyhow, everyday, I was bombarded with pieces of catchy 90s music, and I could do nothing about it.  I am speaking of the times before I went to the boarding school in Mussoorie – at the age of 8. In those days, salaries used to be in the range of Rs.2000 to Rs.3000. Audio cassettes used to cost Rs. 30 to Rs. 40. One could not expect to ask father to spend on cassettes everyday! Infact, in those times of pre internet middle class upbringing, asking for anything which was not a necessity was a rather unheard thing. So I continued to live with these 90s earworms, for about 10 to 15 years! My boarding school years were rather shielded that way. There were no passing buses to bring in new strains of music. Anything which was played in the campus was played on the school ‘deck’. One knew which song was playing, to which album it belonged to – and if one did not know, one had a large group of peers to ask from. Then, again, those were the days when 2 deck cassette recorders had become available, and it was not really necessary to buy a whole cassette for one song. One’s own customized playlists could be recorded on Rs.25 worth 90-minute ‘blank cassettes’. The fifth pay commission had made that look not so tall an ask, either. However, the earworms picked up before the boarding school, before the fifth pay commission, still existed, lodged deep inside the brain, coming to the fore suddenly, at the time of their choosing, and making one desperate to find the whole songs whose ghosts tormented me.

It finally became possible in the later part of the first decade of this millennium. Fast internet, and Youtube, both came into my life gradually. Google became more and more powerful. Now I could type out the few words into the search box, and get to know the name of the song and the album. Later, even the Youtube links for the same were displayed as the first option. Thus, life became easier. Most of the earworms, I think about 95 %, were slain within a year. They included most of the Kumar Sanu songs of the Kumar Sanu era, and songs from within the serial Chandrakaanta - recall "Oopar Ambar Neeche Dharti"! However, a few of the tenacious earworms persisted.

One kind of persistant worms comprised of songs which were not really the mainstream albums. For example, this song used to play every morning, when Iwas not even going to school yet. I had the lyrics in mind, but the lyrics just did not throw up anything on the internet. Then one day, a blogpost on thetopic came up on the search. So, there were kindred souls, tormented by this same earworm. So our search was crowdsourced. Finally, in March 2015, after 25 years of solitary suffering and 6 years of crowd search, this one was finally found – Bharatiyam, by Vani Jayaram. Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, the blogmaster has locked his blog from public view now. The comments section would have been a treasure trove of human endeavor.

Even tougher are the earworms with no lyrics. In my very early childhood days, there used to play on Sunday mornings, the mythological serial Mahabharat. Just after that, there used to be a commercial for Dunlop tyres. It featured an airplane landing on its obviously Dunlop landing gear. In the back ground used to play a techno musical piece. That one haunted me till about 2-3 years back. How can you search for music without lyrics. How can you even begin to describe it. Then help arrived in the form of plagiarizing Indian music directors, and I heard this song. I immediately recognized the music to be a clone of my ghost. Rest was easy. There are sites dedicated to tell us from where did the Indian musician plagiarize this or that piece of music. So now, I know the name of that tune – Pulstar by Vangelis. It is now my ringtone on the personal phone.

There still remain some still elusive earworms – almost all of them advertisements. The fact is I recall lyrics for most of them, to a great degree of certainty. Yet, my searches come to a naught. One is a very early 90s ad for Ponds’ Dreamflower Talc. It went like – “Har baat tumhari manchaahi…” In fact, last year, another ad for Dreamflower, with the same freaking tune, with a slight modification – “Har baat hogi manchaahi..”, was shown. Unfortunately, both the ads now elude the combined might of Google and Youtube. Another ad, as I recall from mid 90s Sundays, was an ad for Shalimaar coconut oil. It featured a little girl feeling the rains dropping from the eaves on her little palms, and then in minute or two of montage, she grows up and gets married. The mother is also present along with her in the montage – the mother daughter bond was the theme. I recall even more of the lyrics – “Subah subah ki barish, chhuwan mamta bhari.” Yet, there are many ads for Shalimaar coconut oil on Youtube; sadly, none of them is this. Maybe somehow no one has added the said ads on the internet yet. May be Providence would be kind to me, (or some employee of HUL or Shalimaar, for that matter!) and get the ads uploaded. Perhaps the ads are uploaded some where, but the keywords are so different that my searches have not succeeded. Finally, there is the frightening possibility that no copies of these ads survived, and I must live with these traces alone. Then there are songs from within the serials, whose name one has forgotten, and whose lyrics recall is very very patchy. There was this serial from very early 90s, in which I recall Shekhar Suman playing the spoilt offspring of a rich dad, who rags his simpleton college roommate - including feeding him cake and then telling him it contained eggs (the simpleton was a vegetarian). They both liked the same girl, I guess, and in the end, the simpleton shoots Shekhar Suman. There was this song, "Madhur Pralay ke sapne sajaaye" that haunts me with no hope of rescue. (Or was it "Madhur Pranay" - sweet cataclysm versus sweet love - what's the difference anyway!) There was  May be that would not be so sad. Most persons who died before the internet revolution (and those who continue to die without much command over the internet) must have died with their quests unfulfilled, still tormented by the earworms. May be it is not so bad. As is true for most things about love, the quest is usually better than the end. For, in lieu of some forgotten country song, the quest gave us ‘The Solitary Reaper’