GOLDEN OLDIES FOR GROWING OLDIES

I love The Beatles and Paul McCartney's "Yesterday" is one of my top favourites. I am in good company; the song had been voted as the Best Song of the 20th century in a 1999 BBC Radio2 poll of music experts and listeners and number one Pop Song of all time by MTV and Rolling Stone magazine in 2000.

One particular line from the song plays a lot in my mind these days: 'I'm not half the man I used to be.' Of course, in the song it is used in a different context but I find it an apt description of the aged me. Where is the man who was bold, full of optimism and energy, always seeking adventure and on the go? I look in the mirror and see a reflection of a haggard, gray-haired and balding man with wrinkles, puffy eyes and white eyebrows- yes, half the man at best even with lengthening nose and ears!

One thought leads to another and I started remembering songs about old age and times. I harked back to my school days and songs Father Mackessack taught us in his after school singing class. One was of 1860 vintage by the famous composer Stephen Foster with a stirring version by Paul Robeson in 1930s, "Old Black Joe" -

"Gone are the days when my heart was young and gay,

Gone are the friends from the cotton fields away,

Gone from the earth to a better land, I know,

I hear their gentle voices calling, Old Black Joe.

I'm coming, I'm coming, for my head is bending low,

I hear their gentle voices calling, Old Black Joe."

Another treasure from Foster/Mackessack was "Old Folks At Home". For the singer "all de world am sad and dreary ebry where I roam...all up and down de whole creation sadly I roam, still longing for de old plantation, and for de old folks at home." Similar to The Beach Boys in "Sloop John B" who sang, "I feel so broke up, I wanna go home." Well, for me, home is Jaipur and that's where I wanna go though most old folks are no longer at home and have gone to a 'better place'.

A song that touchingly described melancholy and consolation over lost youth was "When You And I Were Young, Maggie". It owed its origin to a 1864 poem and had many versions including one by Bing Crosby and his son Gary. Some bittersweet lyrics-

"Oh they say that I'm feeble with age Maggie, my steps are much slower than then

My face is a well written page Maggie, and time all along was the pen.

Oh they say we have outlived our time Maggie, as dated as songs that we've sung

But to me you're as fair as you were Maggie, when you and I were young."

Time marches on relentlessly and we are busy with our lives till one day we suddenly look back and wonder how fast it has flown by. "Sunrise Sunset" from the popular musical "Fiddler on the Roof" captures this beautifully:-

"Is this the little girl I carried?

Is this the little boy at play?

I don't remember growing older, when did they?

When did she get to be a beauty?

When did he get to be so tall?

Wasn't it yesterday when they were so small?

Sunrise, sunset, swiftly flow the days

Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers, blossoming even as we gaze,

Sunrise, sunset, swiftly fly the years

One season following another, laden with happiness and tears.

What words of wisdom can I give them, how can I help to ease their way?

Now they must learn from one another, day by day."

Well, I must accept my ageing happily and look at the brighter side of getting old. Remember Maurice Chevalier in "Gigi" observing the lovestruck, bewitched and bewildered character played by Louis Jourdan? Chevalier sings contentedly, "I'm Glad I'm Not Young Anymore"-

"Poor boy, poor boy, downhearted and depressed and in a spin,

Poor boy, poor boy, oh, youth can really do a fellow in,

How lovely to sit here in the shade with none of the woes of man and maid,

I'm glad that I'm not young anymore."

Frank Sinatra though, advises one to remain "Young At Heart" regardless of age-

"And if you should survive to a hundred and five

Look at all you'll derive out of being alive

And here is the best part, you've had a head start,

If you are among the very young at heart."

And, I must be content and happy to have lived my life "My Way" as sang good old Frank Sinatra in his signature song-

"I've lived a life that's full, I've travelled each and every highway,

And more, much more than this, I did it my way.

Regrets, I've had a few, but again too few to mention....

I've loved, I've laughed and cried, I've had my fill, my share of losing,

And now as tears subside, I find it all so amusing,

To think I did all that, and may I say not in a shy way,

I did it my way."

SAILOR SONGS

 "In her hair, she wore a yellow ribbon,

She wore it in the springtime and the merry month of May,

Hey, hey, and if you asked her why the hell she wore it,

She wore it for a sailor who is far, far away."

These lines have been going around in my head for some days now. Maybe because it is the month of May which, however, is not very merry in India though real summer heat has still to set in Delhi this year. But the song brings on nostalgia with sweet memories for me.

It was in late 1940s during his first leave after joining the Navy that I heard Vinnie Mama sing this shanty and learnt it from him. I didn't know nor inquired about the significance of the girl wearing a 'yellow ribbon' and took it that it was her or her sailor's favourite colour. But now that we have internet and the know-all Dr./Prof. Google, I thought of checking and discovered that it is believed that the tradition had its origins in the US Civil War when a yellow ribbon in a woman's hair indicated that she was "taken" by a man who was absent due to service in the US Army Cavalry.

There is another popular shanty, "Ship Ahoy", which is an English music hall song dating back to 1908. Its chorus goes-

"All the nice girls love a sailor, all the nice girls love a tar,

For there's something about a sailor, well, you know what sailors are,

Bright and breezy, free and easy, he's the ladies' pride and joy,

Falls in love with Kate and Jane, then he's off to sea again!"

I have an issue with the last line; it echoes the saying which much maligns a sailor by stating that he has a girl in every port. Having been a sailor, I know that's not true. Let alone every port, I didn't have a girl in any, not even in my home port. If at all I had a girl, she was in a town far inland though a river runs through it. Actually, a sailor pines to quickly get done with the sailing and return home hoping his girl is waiting for him and that absence has made her heart grow fonder for him and not somebody else! Remember the 1956 Eddie Fisher song-

"Cindy, Oh Cindy, Cindy don't let me down'

Write me a letter soon and I"ll be homeward bound.... 

I know my Cindy is waiting, as I walk the decks alone,

Her loving arms reach out to me, soon I"ll be heading home,

Then my sailing days will be over, and no more will I roam...."

At times the sailor falls in love with a girl in a visiting port but, heartbroken, has to leave her. Listen to Harry Belafonte in "Jamaican Farewell":

"But I'm sad to say I'm on my way, won't be back for many a day,

My heart is down my head is turning around,

I had to leave a little girl in Kingston town."

If the sailor can't go back, he wishes that somehow the girl is brought to him as in an old Scottish shanty-

"My Bonnie lies over the ocean, my Bonnie lies over the sea.

My Bonnie lies over the ocean, oh, bring back my Bonnie to me.

Bring back, bring back, bring back my Bonnie to me, to me...."

Or better still, bring her back along with himself as many Indian naval officers who went for training to UK in the early days did though sometimes the unsuspecting parents were shocked out of their wits to get a cable out of the blue saying "Coming home with Dorothy!"

I must confess one sin most sailors are guilty of and that is their fondness for a drink, particularly Rum. In his famous novel "Treasure Island", Robert Louis Stevenson invented a song, "Dead Man's Chest", for his pirate characters and wrote the chorus: 

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest.

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

Drink and the devil had done for the rest,

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum."

The chorus with added lyrics has been used in many songs in subsequent plays, TV serials and movies and the phrase "Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum" is universally popular. 

Traditionally in the British Navy, a 'tot' of rum was given to sailors as a morale booster and reward for hard work as also a medicine with the rum mixed with lime juice to keep scurvy at bay. One drink leads to another particularly for a lonely sailor far away from his home and girl. So we have the shanty, "Drunken Sailor":

"What shall we do with a drunken sailor, what shall we do with a drunken sailor,

What shall we do with a drunken sailor early in the morning?

Shave his belly with a rusty razor....

Put him in a long boat till he's sober....

Stick him in a scupper with a hosepipe bottom...."

And naughtily or nautically'

"Put him in the bed with the captain's daughter....

Early in the morning!"

Fondness for drink could get sailors, young and old, in trouble. The Beach Boys described it in "Sloop John B"-

"We come on the sloop John B, my grandfather and me,

Around Nassau town we did roam,

Drinking all night, got into a fight,

Well, I feel so broke up, I wanna go home."

Yes, all said and done, a sailor's life is a lonely one with him looking forward to return home to his loved ones. He eagerly awaits the words "Anchors Aweigh" as in the marching song we were first introduced to in our NDA days:

"Anchors aweigh, my boys, anchors aweigh,

Farewell to foreign shores, we sail at break of day-ay-ay-ay,

Through our last night ashore, drink to the foam,

Until we meet once more.

Here's wishing you a happy voyage home."

And now that we have girl sailors, they'll sing similar tunes and know that ‘a girl in every port’ is as much a myth as would be ‘a boy in every port.’