The Shuffle

It’s amazing how a string of notes can take me on a journey through time, to the exact moment, to the exact feeling. I find this process more fulfilling than looking at old photographs. Putting my iPod on shuffle is the first step. And next I am drifting back to a past that I long to be a part of.
I am back in front of the mirror with a felt tip marker in my hand impersonating George Michael. I had my then silky hair spiked up. The audience asked for more as I ended my last song “Wake Me up before You Go” with a cheeky smile. But then a gap opens in the ground, like the ones found for portals used for time travel.
And next, I am being substituted in a crucial soccer match for my club. The match has reached the penalty shoot out and I have been called up as one of the penalty takers. 3-4, the score. If I score, we win. Oasis’s “Morning Glory” rotund in my mind as my right foot touches the ball. The net bulges and figures from all around are jumping over me. Yet again I am falling down the hole.
I know quite well where I’m headed now. Islamabad: 1996. Those were the days when ripped jeans and flannel shirts were the in thing. I walk the Jinnah-Super market in search of the Afghani Chips man. He comes here every day with his strange, but finely cut French Fries. All of the children rush to him as they hear the voice of the “Chips Wala!” from afar. Shahzad Audio Store was being supplied with the new Vital Signs album “Aitebaar” putting me in a dilemma, whether to forsake the fries for a day or not?
Through the hole again, I am living the dream this day. I reach the falsetto part of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game”. Although I have my eyes closed, I feel that the audience is quite impressed by the justice I have done to the song. As I stepped down from the stage, a check was placed on a box in my long-term to-do list. But as I stepped down- yes- you guessed it: the hole opened up yet again.
But this time something strange happens. The shuffle also holds the power to go beyond today.
I am in a strangely familiar place but conversely I have never been to this place. The golden sun hovers above the Holy Land. And it strikes me, I have come to Jerusalem to experience God’s calling from three different sides. Which way is God? Boards of Canada’s psychedelic instrumental “Dayvan Cowboy” takes me to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The hole this time leads me to a secluded beach. A small hut overlooking the sea gives me a view of an epic sunset, away from everything. It is a place where at night I can lay back and look at the sky, which is the deepest of all seas. Where I can let my thoughts float without the honking horns, the industrial smoke and all the negative forces that hinder the path, that is, a longing for peace. Away from the concept of time with Schiller’s ‘Fernweh’ creating this Utopian atmosphere.
All I know is that when the next shuffle takes place I want to be a part of it. I want to lay the corner stone for the foundations of change. Today the shuffle holds this type of power, who knows; maybe tomorrow it might morph into something much greater. Whatever it maybe: developing new technology, laying new designs, or even bringing up the next big idea. I want to be a part of it so that when the next teenager shuffles, I should play a part in his travels.
Well, now I know how Alice must have felt when she fell through the rabbit hole. I am falling all the time!
Quite redundant it is, but my iPod has 5000 songs. And I can go wherever and whenever I want to go. Maybe you can too. Just Shuffle.