Have you ever found the right music for the right book? The two or three times I have, it has felt as if the notes crawled into the book and the words stretched out into music. After a while, I cannot think of one without thinking of the other. It's happening nowadays with this book I am reading -- Aatish Taseer's 'Stranger to history'...a journey through Islamic lands. And a journey I am holding hands and going along, thanks to Yamini who decided it was "my kind of book".  And so every night, at 10.00 or so, I put on a combination of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Rahat, Kailash Kher, Fateh Ali Khan (of the Gwalior gharana), Ali Zafar, Ali Azmat and Atif Aslam, slowly, quietly, switch off most of the lights in the home, lean back on my blue cushions and go on this journey. I have stilled all my speed-reader instincts for this one. This is one journey that encompasses humanity, universalism, or the lack of it, empathy or the want of it and places that have swallowed yearning whole. Speeding along will not work here, will it?

Right now, we have crossed over to Iran from Mecca and a "sun-bleached Tehran" fell over me the whole of yesterday night in waves -- racy dreams of winding my way through my imagined streets of Iran (or was that Syria) calling out to my mom who was just, just a few feet in front of me but never was able to hear me.

I will remember these nights.  

P.S: 'Equal Music' went very well with Beethoven symphonies; and snatches of 'A Suitable Boy' merged seamlessly with 'Zubeidaa'. And those are the ones I remember. I would love to hear about others.

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