For Those Who Can't Sing

Then I was probably in Class V and we had a song competition in our school. Those days, I used to top in debate, recitation, GK etc. The frequency of success in curricular activities was so regular that I thought why not have a try in singing...it could only be a matter of making an attempt. The competition had already begun. In stead of seating idle like an audience I drove into my classroom, opened my Oriya book and started practising one of the poems having lyrical component to qualify in the competition. After a 15-minute rehearsal, I went back to the common hall where the event was on its way. Mid-way I got my name entered and soon came my number. I started like an ever-confident school boy, aspiring to add another feather in his cap. There was huge appalause and I was on cloud nine. With more appalause, I accelerated my tempo, the tone and tenor got a push which was a little beyond accuracy. Adding one more feather was reverberating in my mind. I am a school-teacher's son and the son can't be defeated in presence of his father, no matter how cruel the gathering might be. There was more appalause and I had raised my tone to such an extent that it was sounding more of a debate than a song. But I was committed to finish. Every school-teacher's son bears that huge responsibility in that phase of life that you have to win despite everything. As good luck would have it, I had finally finished the poem and returned to sit amid huge huge appalause. Then, I had taken a vow not to participate in any song competition ever.


Today, after so many years, I was watching karaoke singing competition. With me was my beautiful wife. It was rather she dragged me to be part of that occasion. We were there till the end, even to hear who was taking the trophy home. But during the competition, I found someone singing much like my fifth class experience. Backbenchers were shouting once more, once more. But I could sympathise with the engineer singer for the fact that he made an attempt. He was at his ease for the sake of being ease with himself. There is a pleasure of being not perfect at all. There is a pleasure of throwing out that "what others will think" complexity from ourself once and for all. There is a pleasure in doing small small things that you used to think undoable and take excuse for time's sake.

If I can learn swimming at the age of 30 why can't I sing, dance and do all such stuff that I could not do at the true stage of life because of either my past context or complexity I used to have.