Blowing in the wind -Madhubani

 

“And how many deaths will it take till he knows

That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind

The answer is blowing in the wind”

With tension brewing at the frontier of our nation and the unfortunate death of several military personnel, what could be a better time to remember these haunting lyrics by the pop-legend Bob Dylan? Be it the bohemian ‘Tambourine man’ or the fiercely bold ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ or the flirtatious ‘Just like a woman’, his words never lose their relevance and his tunes flow through every melophile’s veins.

You may ask – why bring up a musician in a club that mainly talks about books? In fact, that was probably what was going on in a lot of people’s minds when Dylan was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” That brings us to the question – how can music, break boundaries, to become generation-defining literature?

Songs have always been the form of literature closest to the common man. Good music has time and again formed the language of revolution. As for Dylan, for many, he is more of a revolutionary poet than a musician. For others, he is that carefree, disorganized lad, beaming with passion, who can never grow old. Some say, his music is like a breath of fresh air – different with a classic touch.

We started the meet grooving to the tune of ‘Tambourine man’ in the early hours of twilight. The song gave way to a discussion about Bob Dylan’s immense impact in the 1960s and 70s continuing till date, the anti-war themes he dealt with, his life and era as a whole. The session ended with each of us singing our favorite English songs till we finally called it a day when it grew dark.

I was introduced to Dylan at the impressionable age of sixteen. I still remember the tears rolling down my cheeks as I listened to ‘Blowing in the wind’ on loop or the shy smile I hid while listening to ‘Just like a woman’. ‘Don’t think twice it’s alright’ has always been with me on bad days while ‘Queen Jane Approximately’ continues to be my favorite.

There may be a lot of technical things to do with Dylan’s song-writing or a lot of grammar that I don’t understand. Yet, for me, Bob Dylan is that loud voice ringing through the cacophony of that jingle-jangle morning and that bold pair of eyes that saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken. Be it love or pain or revolution or simply the truth, Dylan speaks what nobody else does. His words are those of time itself, his voice is the voice of the soul!