Mamma Mia, it’s ABBA!

The best way to move back forth in time is to listen to music of the yesteryears.  Yeah. Hell with H.G Wells and his implausible time machine, I could do the 70s and 80s anytime. Just punch the play button on ABBA songs …and there you go. The rushing moments of yesteryears come at thunderbolt speeds. And the ghosts called the ‘unforgettable moments’ dance around in your memories and you are lost without any sense of time.

In retrospection, I don’t think I have enjoyed any days better than the days when I was a teenager. Life seemed like a huge never-ending roller coaster with many highs and few lows. Only when I got married did I realise that there are more lows than highs. (Ekes! hope my better half isn’t reading this). Anyways, to cut the long story short, I have had a whale of a time growing up. Now I have hit the age, where you are neither young nor old, and the onus of finding out on which plateau you exactly are is too taxing on the depleting grey matter. When  faced with intensely anxious moments such as the one above, I resort  to ABBA as a mental therapy. I tell you it serves my anomalous psyche well.

Flipping over to why I like ABBA better than others. Well, there are countless reasons, but here’s one I would like to expound. There was a close pal of mine who was damn good on the keyboards and I was insanely jealous of his talent. Unfortunately, music was something that evaded me. Then, I realized that music is something that can’t be earned, fought for, stolen from, or even learnt. It has to be a gift from god. Saying that, in no way do I mean I am an absolute dunce. I do manage to play almost all tunes by the ear. But compared to my friend I was a dunce. And this guy, didn’t just have the talent to play music, had the talent to rub it in too!

Whenever he played the ABBA songs, he used to move his fingers little faster than the usual…or stop in the middle to ask me how I liked the piece… or act as if he forgot the tune …he sure did rub it in than the usual. But sucker for music, I tolerated his idiosyncrasies.  Except for those annoying moments, I relished those songs like mad. All said, I got to hand it to my friend for the way he used to translate the songs onto his keyboard in an astonishingly accurate manner. It was a scream. 

The haunting music has been a part of the growing up years. Though we listened to countless numbers of Cliff Richards, Elvis Presley, Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash, Dean Martin…But what  closely stuck with us are these Swedish enthrallers’ numbers. Even now when my friend and  I meet, we pore over those good old days. And he still tries to rub it in…and I say com’n kiddo grow up. You are too good for such shortcomings. And he puts on his mischievous smile. And, ABBA, the group, still remains a mutual friend of ours!