“How did you learn about Roxy Music, Hollinghurst, and the likes?”
I asked him as we lay in bed after a brunch of fried eggs, toast, Oxford sausages, waffles with gooseberry preserve, and coffee.
“Well, long story. Unlike your generation, we had to solely rely on books and magazines, and it was difficult to get hold of them. I used to pick them up from the road-side vendors.”
He’s more animated than he is usually, and this despite him not feeling well.
“The ones on Causeway and near VT. I would pick up these magazines about music, design, art, fashion, pornography. I guess I must have read about The Swimming Pool Library in one of these. I wanted it and I got it as soon as it became available.”
I ask, “What types of magazines? Stuff like NME and What Hi-fi”?
“Well, not only those famous ones. In fact, most of them were less popular. Not even mass market. The ones that people would buy abroad and bring them back on their flights and would discard them. These vendors would somehow pick them up and put them on sale. I would go with five or ten rupees—you know, whatever it must have cost in those days—in my pocket, and I’d pick as many as I could.”
I could see the passion that once he had, the one that has now seemingly vanished, at least about those things that I care more about these days.
“I’d bring these back and read them cover to cover. And in there would be these reviews of the new books and authors and songs and albums and movies. And I’d note these down mentally, sometimes even make physical notes where I needed to see if I could buy some of the things being written about. The world was on to something, and I was trying to get as much knowledge and information as I could.”
He draws a deep breath, some hurt slipping through.
“You know, my friends would ask me, ‘Why do you care about all of this? These things are not about what’s available here, what you could get. So why even bother? Why are you wasting your money on these?’”
The pain grows deeper and the eyes have lost their shine, and is there a hint of a tear?
“I stopped understanding my friends because of this.”
He takes a pause. He is coughing. There is another virus in the air, apparently. He reaches out to the flask with cold water, opens it, takes a couple of mouthfuls and continues. The water must have assuaged some of the pain.
“Nads was the lone one who I could impress on about my learning,” some pride manifesting.
“He once went to Canada on a vacation. So just before he left, I went over and told him about this wonderful new album by Stevie Wonder. I asked him to get one for me. He did, but he liked it so much that he kept it for himself.”
He smiles and carries on.
“You know, I’d go over to his place and listen to the album. And we’d both listen to it. I couldn’t have enough of I Just Called To Say I Love You.”
“It was a cassette. Then I’d borrow it for a couple days and listen to it, and then bring it back to his place and listen to it. It was crazy to even imagine that we’d done this.”
And then he goes on to his favorite story about discovering his favorite band. That’s the only one of these stories that I’d heard before. I let him continue, enjoying his reliving the joy.
“I was in Darjeeling once and there was this shop that had all sort of things. I was attracted to the boy behind the counter. I thought he was the most handsome man in the world. So I would drop in to the shop twice or thrice every day, just to get a chance to take him in.”
This is where the conversation starter was being referenced directly. I had originally asked him about what he thought about my observation on the characters in Hollinghurst’s books. I thought that they were so much more funny, knowledgeable, and sharp than the average Indian gay man. About food, architecture, art, and sex. About them talking about their attractions to other men and how they submitted to it.
“And one day I saw this album Avalon in a cassette form. I remember slipping it into my Walkman and walking out of the shop. The cassette was fully rewound and I heard those first notes of More Than This. That experience remains with me as clear as day even today. That’s how Roxy Music came into my life.”
“How could you possibly remember about these bands and albums?” I asked, genuinely perplexed by the happenstance of finding something that you wouldn’t know you wanted until you had it.
“One of those books, you know the one that I’m talking about? It was something like The Best 300 albums of All Time or something. I had picked it up from one of these magazine vendors and it was a book I treasured.”
He turns and looks at me with those eyes that let on how he would have liked me to have met his mother.
“My Mom hated me for this. She thought I would spend too much time on this book, you know. I’d be on it as soon as I’d be back after one of these trips to check out what the vendors have to offer. They would sometime even have vinyls, and they were more expensive.”
“So I’d end up choosing about ten records and I’d not have the money to even buy two. So I’d come back home and make a note of the ones that I must-must have, and I’d go back to the vendor. They would offer me a deal for returning a record if I didn’t like it within two days or something, and I could get something in exchange.”
There was a pause and, assuming that he had finished, I said, “You know, it’s not that different. Our generations. I used to go to the British Library and check out these magazines and tabloids and learn about these things.”
He said, “For some reason, my relationship with the British Library was not like this. I never engaged with it like this. I stuck to the street vendors. More raw exposure. Unlike the curated collections in the libraries.”
That seemed like a meaningful end to an interesting conversation, that had started about the overt acknowledgement of the need for more truthful, raw experience in The Swimming Pool Library, which I had started yesterday.
We both readjusted our positions, trying to find a slightly more comfortable situation, just like we must have we were young—trying to learn more about the world surrounding us, despite not having sufficient support from our families and friends in our quests.
Engayging Life 