Mixtapes were a labour of love

The mixtape was the most personal body of music we could construct where each song carried meaning even the singer never intended

- SANDIP ROY

With age, my mother slowly started to lose her hearing. A few weeks before she died, she suddenly started hearing songs. Entire songs.

"Can't you hear them?" she asked us perplexedly as if our hearing was the problem. "I think someone is playing a cassette next door."

It wasn't just musical noise. She could even name the songs, songs like Asru Nodir Sudur Paarey. Rabindrasangeet, a genre that was a lifelong favourite. Male singers, female singers, sometimes a duet. She didn't mind the songs. She just wished they would not play on loop, over and over again.

My mother's mind was clear. Her memory was spot on. She didn't suffer from any mental confusion. She remembered more names than I did. So we didn't worry too much about the songs in her head because they did not seem to bother her too much. We had other more quantifiable issues to fret about, like blood pressure, urine cultures, sodium levels and so forth. "Do you want to listen to your Saregama Carvaan?" I asked her. The music player with its pre-loaded songs had been her afternoon companion for years, a sort of radio for the elderly.

"Hmm, I am already listening to one song," she said warily. "What if some song I don't like comes on and gets stuck in my head?"

As the son of a musically inclined mother, it always made me sad that I enjoyed music but was completely tone deaf. I suspect it was my mother's secret disappointment too. I could not be packed off to sarod class. I envied those who could carry a tune.