The Death Of A King: Michael Jackson Passes Away

Michael Jackson is gone. He was my very first introduction to pop music, our generation's pop music. If it weren't for him, our times would not have had any star to show for itself, no Elvis, no Beatle mania. We from the 90s would have passed by without a craze. Instead the 90s gave the world its King Of Pop. His biggest and best selling albums were made popular by my generation. We were the teenagers who followed his moonwalking footsteps and filtered his lyrics through the funnels of our walkman headphones. I remember hearing the scream, the sounds of shattering glass weaved into his music, the irreverant howl, the vulnerable quiver of his voice and the startling hiccup that punctuated his songs so in contrast to the steady, unbroken, melancholy notes of Indian music. It was different, like nothing I had ever heard before and so a pre-teen eager for something to define me, I fought valiantly for rights over the sole music system which my father's Jagjit Singh and Ghulam Ali albums had monopolized for preceding years.

At my all girl's convent school, every annual function had a dance on a catchy Michael Jackson number. Girls dressed in black and white, with big plastic hoops for earrings performed what could not really be called a break dance but when the famed "crotch" move came along, howls ensued from the crowd and loud clucks came forth from the nuns. In an otherwise solemn classroom, when Sister Maria asked us who was the first man to walk on the moon, our whispered answers amidst suppressed giggles included "Michael Jackson". In India, somehow we never saw Michael Jackson as Whacko Jacko. For us, he was merely this one representation of what the West itself was: eccentric, different, crazy and laden with bling-blings. If you asked a kid off the streets what America was to him, he would promptly say "Michael Jackson" and bust a break dance move. Johny Lever even created an Indian counterpart including "Mai-ka Lal Jaikishan" (Mother's pet, Lord Krishna) for one of his comic routines and everybody in audience, young or old knew whose name he was parodying.

When Michael Jackson arrived in India, even the usually Hindutva and nationalistic fervor ridden Bal Thackeray was smitten, raving to delighted news reporters about how MJ had stopped at his home and used his toilet. The concert was something I could not even dream of attending. Instead I fed on the remnants of the wave that his arrival set forth in Bombay. Riding on the buses the next day, we pointed to each other, flyers and posters of the concert and the places that we speculated MJ must have surely passed through on the way to his hotel. "Look", we cried excitedly, "They said he stopped there before they drove from his hotel to the concert!". Street children wore the one white glove symbolic of the King's visit and street hawkers made a killing selling MJ hats with a lock of curly hair attached. I was one of Bombay's teeming middle class. being part of the concert was not for us unless its traffic manifestations counted. We only took pride in the fact that MJ had decided to visit our city. He knew he had fans here, we told ourselves and therefore he knew us at some level. He had come all that way to our city and bathed it with his music, matched the beat of our crowded local trains with the rhythm of his songs and even put in a bharatnatyam dancer in his album. He acknowledged us and we loved him for that. He folded his hands and said namaste and even the grandmothers dismissive of his moves were touched. Mai-Ka-Lal-Jai-Kishen.

At my own grandmother's house, there lived a beautiful new god that had just made its way into India: cable TV. This tele-caravan of non-stop entertainment brought with itself, MTV and VTV. I watched MJ move around Naomi Campbell crooning "In The Closet" and that to date remains my favorite dance MJ number, its sensuality somehow ripening with age, mine and the song's. At thirteen, this to me was sex in the West. A voluptuous, scantily clad woman sashaying with a tall, frail man clutching his crotch. One monsoon day on our way to a movie theatre, the shattering of glass and a well-delivered scream in Jam, startled my dad when maneuvering our fiat through Bombay's tricky traffic. And much to my dismay MJ was banned from playing in our car.

"Do you even know what he is saying? Can you even tell?" my mother asked one day, challenging my adoration as I stared into the TV and let the the beats consume me. I turned up the volume and pretended to ignore her but her comment set me off. Up until then I did not understand his accent. I only knew that the beats of his songs excited me and made me want to dance. So the next time I made sure to look through the little lyric booklet that came with the cassette and learned a new language, his language. Suddenly, I was even more in love, not just moving with the beats and humming the tune but singing with the song. My mother immediately regretted having unintentionally led me into this karaoke phase. As I recognized the words, the message in "Black or White" and the angst in "Stranger In Moscow" were delivered with the beats. When our richer cousins bought a gigantic stereo system with speakers in every corner of the room, consumed with a mixture of pride and envy,I feigned nonchalance but only until "Blood On The Dance Floor" made its way into my tapping feet through their shuddering marble floor. I had never heard an MJ song being played like that before, at such a dangerous volume.

Through all his legal trials and the plastic surgeries, it became somewhat shameful or embarassing to admit that you liked him and adored him. And yet his music remained his one true face, untarnished and whole bringing discotheques alive when the 90s were called upon. Yesterday, I got back after a long day at work and just as suddenly as the shattering of glass and his trademark howl had entered my world, startling me years ago, I found out he was dead. I felt an urgency to listen to one of his songs. It is amazing how a tune can transport one back into the time to which that music belongs. Last night, I sat on my sofa, turned up the volume, closed my eyes and was a teenager again.

"Do you remember the time, when we were in love. We were young and innocent then"