Childhood days - learning music.

I didn't learn music and it's not that I didn't get a chance to learn it. Here are couple of options that I had as a child to pick up music and to learn more about it.

In my school, (probably in most schools those days) there was a period dedicated for music once every week. But the problem was that it was meant mainly for girls. Teacher will come, take attendance and will tell that boys can skip the class if they like. Given an option like that what will we do - we all will run out of the class room. Hence it developed the impression that learning music is meant mainly for the girls. :-)

But there is always a second chance and I too had that. There was a music teacher who used to come to my house. My elder brother had the inborn talent for singing and my mother will put me also along with him to learn singing. But here also things didn't work out that well. The teacher used to come during evenings and mostly on Saturdays/Sundays. Those were the days, I will go out to play cricket with my friends and relatives and by the time I come back - all my voice would be gone !!! So when I try to sing, my voice would be so feeble that nobody could tell whether I'm doing an "arohanam" or "avarohanam". Repeating this multiple times ensured that my music learning is going to have a premature end. :-) Finally, one day the master said that it would be better for him as well as myself if I stopped trying it and without a second thought I latched on to that offer. :-)

But eventhough things were like this, during that I days I had the impression that I can sing well !!! There was a movie song - "Kalippattamayi kanmani" - that caught my fancy and I used to sing it whenever someone asked me to sing - thinking that my voice is so good and they are all enjoying it. But later only I realized that it was not particularly my voice that was being enjoyed but it was just the way I sung. :-)

Looking back, yes, I do feel that I should have tried a little bit more or atleast the music teacher should have :-) But again, I believe music is divine and you need to have an inborn talent for it. Only very few people are blessed with the gift of singing and I was not one of them.

Also, I'm happy that though I'm not a good singer, atleast I have the interest to listen to good songs and appreciate them. I like to listen to all types of songs - be it classical, devotional, film songs, albums, poems and I enjoy listening to them.

It feels nice to revisit those good old days and to jolt it down here. Also I'm just learning to take myself lightly and to see the funny side of things and that made me write this blog. Signing off for now....