It was a simpler time. Back when you knew your neighbours. When you could run over to their place when the smell of a freshly baked pie wafted through the open doors. Back when you had a dog eared copy of the phone book lay on the coffee table. Back when you counted the minutes as you dialled your friend on the fixed line in the living room. A time when you had stacks of cassettes in the corner shelf next to the high fidelity system that lit up like a slot machine with the equaliser overlay bouncing in synchrony with the diaphragm as the beats engulfed the house. Back when you needed the muscle strength of a plumber to wind the windows of the car. When the glove compartment was filled with a short stack of the absolute must have cassettes When you embarked on that road trip. When the navigator carried a physical map and you fancied yourself a cartographer and took the unlisted road to learn that “short cut”. Before the world was subsumed by the Internet. Before the information highway brought forward the best and only thing it did – proximal availability.

I was on the precipice. The awkward phase between being a child who tasted endless freedom as he cycles down a desolate road with the wind in his hair to an adolescent who is trying to figure out what he is actually made of and who he really is. On one gloomy September evening, my cool aunt handed me a gift which she had picked up overseas. A walkman, and a cassette titled “Meteora”. I shyly accepted clutching it to my chest, afraid that if I didn’t hold on to it tight enough then it would slip away. I retreated to the corner of the overcrowded unit that I called my room. Slid in the AA batteries with the same intention that a soldier does as he loads his gun. The headphones engulfed my ears. I placed the cassette in the tray and pressed the spring loaded button to play and saw the wheels turning.

It started obscurely with the sound of a hammer on a nail with the rain pattering in the background. And then, in a fraction, it transitioned with the gentle fire of the guitar roaring into an inferno. I didn’t need Active Noise Cancellation to mute the background. It was my first experience of raw emotion translated into rock music. I lay there in awe mesmerised by Chester’s voice. It was the angst in my heart that he had so eloquently vocalized. It was transcendental. I went through all of Side A in one sitting and then flipped over to Side B. This tape went through countless turns with me listening to each song over and over and over again until I had memorised the depth of the black radius I needed to hit to get to my favourite parts. I remember thinking – This is the shit. It shone the light on the path.

Fast forward 20 years into the future. I’d traversed many a treacherous path. At the nadir, I had lost all of myself. Heart shattered, mind worn out, body weak. I was on the brink of surrender. It was on one of those lonely indistinct drive back home amidst throngs of humans all heading home and me heading nowhere, that I plugged into the album again this time on Apple Music.

It was instinctive, the way that it all came back to me. The lyrics resounding from the deepest crevices hidden in the convolutions of my brain reverberating throughout the universe. Never goes away… Never goes away…

Just like that, it helped me find myself back to me. The kid who had slipped sideways found the resolve to pick himself off and dust himself off. To rebuild.

Linkin Park is not a band, its not just music, its an identity of millions like me who found their calling and courage to stand tall amidst the storm.

This Is The Shit.