Finally saw ‘Searching For Sugar Man’ – the oscar winning documentary from 2012. While a lot of people might have seen the movie and then fallen in love with Rodriguez’s songs and voice and lyrics, I happened to do it the other way round.

Got the music from someone in office and put it on the dump of weekly music to discover while driving to and from work – the best time of really listen to music and discover in an everyday life according to me.

Sugar Man is the first song that is lined up in the album of the documentary, and the moment it played for the first time in my car, I was in love. Someone might have noticed that, though, considering I’ve already written about it a couple of days ago when I was discussing how songwriting is just another form of storytelling.

I have pretty much lapped up all of the songs in that album in the last couple of days. As serendipity happens, the same guy who gave me the music some days ago, randomly copied the documentary yesterday on my pen drive. Him and I hadn’t spoken about how great I found Rodriguez’s music. He just handed over the documentary to me without really thinking about it.

Today morning, through the difficulties of the ‘situation’ that I am dealing with right now, I reached a time when I was sitting blankly with my laptop in front of me, fuming, searching for something, anything at all to do that would distract me from the ‘situation’.

Randomly, as it would seem, I landed up in the movies folder and saw the documentary lying in there. I absent-mindedly played it, testing it for something that would help me pass the time. But the moment I had played it, I was riveted to it, screwed into it with the grooves tightly sunk into the plot and the persona, hammered firm like a nail in the matter of the movie.

After 1:45 hours, I had picked up my guitar and was strummimg sugar man on it. After another 30 mins I was playing all the songs that I have inscribed on my guitar – the favorites. After another 30 mins, I was completely calm, at peace, relaxed.

That is the power of art. Right there.

Someone, obscured by time and the vagaries of capitalism until just recently, had such a profound impact on someone sitting in New Delhi on a cold, damp afternoon. It put me at peace. It made me forget about my situation completely. It rekindled the thing that I was searching for to be able to pick up the guitar – even if momentarily.

Somewhere else, it had fuelled and powered a whole revolution.

Somewhere else, it had been trashed for not making any money.

That’s what attracts me towards the arts. The absolute passion that fuels it, and its battle with the absolute non-economics of it which the world as a whole applies to it. And the fact that it emerges victorious some 45-50 years afterwards, halfway around the world, to someone who had never even heard of it a couple of days ago.

Brilliant.