Samir Shukla
By Samir Shukla
The summer between the final year of high school and beginning of college flashed by like a speeding 1972 Chevy Nova. A couple of days after I moved into the dorm to embark on college life, in the fall of 1981, music was flowing out of the open door in a room down the hallway.
There was also the pungent aroma of weed flowing into the common area, though most of it wafted out the open windows in that room.
A Bob Marley record was spinning on an old turntable. The sinewy guitars, the warm bass, the unmistakable reggae beat, and Marley’s powerful words hooked me. I had heard his music before, but in this setting, in this new world, a fresh college kid’s musical education and expansion launched further into the stratosphere.
Our house was always filled with music. Dad has played and taught music since very early in his life. Mom was a choreographer for Indian dances. Music lived in our house as much as we lived there.
In high school, music was the all-purpose ointment for awkward teen dilemmas, anxieties, and tribulations. Landing in college further unfurled the restrictions of underage youth and music was the foundation that girded this growth. It was, and still is, always there, lurking in the background and often with full on sound.
High school was largely rock ‘n’ roll, as that was mostly what I gravitated to, and what the radio stations played became the soundtrack to those years. Songs that are decades old remain good songs because they have good bones. A beloved song becomes one because it has good bones, the structure for longevity.
In college, the musical doors flew wide open. Driving around town in the 1972 Chevy Nova I had bought for $200 during my first year of college, the music helped drown out the multiple mysterious and creaky noises the car made. It broke down every few weeks, but hey, what do you expect for 200 bucks? The car at least had good speakers and the cassette deck was the friend that played mix tapes upon demand. It was an overused, beat-up car when I bought it in 1982, but it had good bones.
I often think about that car and the early days of musical education as I push further into my sixth decade surfing life on our blue, watery world.
On this February night, I’m thinking of that car and some of the tapes I used to play at maximum volume. It’s very cold. I hate the cold. I can’t stand winter. My, ahem, good bones like to be toasty warm all the time and those cold days and stark nights of winter are their biggest enemy.
Even worse than winter cold is the indoor cold of summertime, courtesy of fully blasting air conditioners. Yeah, you know it, like when you go to a restaurant or movie theater, or a friend’s house, and the AC is set at blizzard level temperatures or lower. I’ve walked out of freezing restaurants and sneakily turned up the temperature settings of air conditioners at family or friends’ homes during the summer. Toasty works for me; a little too cold and my good bones start to shrivel.
Speaking of that old car that kept me mobile in college, let’s fast forward to today. We bought a sizeable piece of land a couple of years ago that had an old house tucked between a grove of Oaks. The house was built in the early 1950s. It was abandoned for several years and was in sad shape with a leaky roof, rotting floors, and myriad other issues and problems.
We were interested in the land, and the house just happened to be there. A little bonus, if you will.
After much family discussion, instead of tearing it down, we renovated it, because, according to several contractors we interviewed, they said the house had good bones and that we should fix it up. So, we did.
People fix up old houses because the house may look decrepit, but it has good bones. I tried to keep the cranky 72 Chevy Nova fixed and running with what little money I had in college, because, well, that roadster had good bones. “Man, that thing looks rough, but it’s got them good bones.” A mechanic told me once.
I miss that old muscle car, but I still have many of the mixed tapes I used to play in the car’s tape deck. Music was my oxygen back then and remains so today. It helps keep my good bones healthy and toasty, functional. Good bones are foundational requirements for pretty much everything.
Anything in life can work, function, be productive, stand tall and upright, if it has them good bones.
Samir Shukla is the Editor of Saathee Magazine
Contact: samir@saathee.com
Twitter/X: @ShuklaWrites
Newsletter: ShuklaWrites.Substack.com
