Tak Tak Dhum Dhum

It was already light outside. It was an easy slow run on the treadmill.

I didn’t put on music – I was preoccupied with thoughts about work. Planning the day, conversations and meetings as a recurrent rehearsal in the mind.

Playing with the elevation every minute or so but not the speed, I kept the run mindfully easy.

At some point, a distinctive sound and pattern began to emerge from the steps on the treadmill – a tak tak dhum dhum dhum dhum. I could hear it clearly. Was it the way my feet were landing or was it just the mind finding a pattern? I couldn’t be sure. But it made the last ten odd minutes enjoyable – playing with the incline and the sound of my feet.

When I typed – whimsically – the sound above – the search immediately resulted in a song by Lata Mangeshkar, Tak Tak Dhoom Dhoom from the 1957 movie, Do Ankhen Barah Haath. Everyone knows the song, Ae Malik Tere Bande Hum from this movie, but I certainly didn’t know the Tak Tak song.

Later in the day, I read about the film and the many awards it had received. To think a pattern on a treadmill led to a bit of curious surfing.