Hopefully not deserted for long!!! :'(

one thing that has always hovered my mind has been music. Be it marriage, funeral, exams, interviews, tough day at the office some music has always haunted. I always found myself humming some tune all the time. Even during my twelfth board exams, i was warned by the invigilator on all days of the exams.....

Yes...even when i had to travel for 120 mins on a 20min long stretch inside the city, the music was always there in my mind which brought peace.....the reason behind such a beautiful asset in me has a good history. My mom is the first critical incident in that beautiful history. She sings well till date. Sadly she never took it seriously. The next good thing that happened in my life was having two sisters :):)....people of my tribe always thought the fairer sex must have a good knowledge of the carnatic music. So be it!! and a master visited our abode to train my sisters vocals....This was the phase and i was really inclined to think there was no good thing other than this glorious music and i hope my thoughts are still the same today, HOPEFULLY!!!!!:(

My dad too contributed his share of music in me. he was an avid lover of music. "Rock to ragaas" that was the first carnatic cassette given to me by dad. It was awesome. That was the time when A R Rahman had become a sensation and i was thinking more about him as the icon of music.....Yes he is indeed. But my tribe though they never opposed cini music, gave more preference to the carnatic.....

The cover had the great saint tyagaraja sporting a guitar in a traditional panjagajam:):). That really struck a chord in me. "Swagatham krishna", "paluke bangara", "provabharama", "raghuvamsa ", "pibare rama rasam" those were the first set of songs that i heard and kept blabbering all the time. With no formal classes and no idea of the fundamental tala, raga and laya found it really hard to reproduce the song the way they arrived at my ears. With occasional guidance from mom, soon i learnt to control my pitch and understood what it would be to sing soothingly :):) but unfortunately i never was able to deliver the same consistently...lets not talk consistency when i cannot sing the same verse the same way twice :):)

People always applauded me whenever i sang something....Ya coz i was a kid then...and i was singing with no coaching.....slowly as i grew, the feeling of inferiority of no formal training started encroaching my mind. As time went by, i sang less....though i always knew i had a better calibre, a voice that was gifted by the almighty which many craved for, i never really bothered to put them to use.... The big thing along this journey has been the entry of a great singer's audio collection in my shelf. Maharajapuram Santhanam, the voice always brought great smile and peace. oothukadu collection, tyagarja krithis the lists are endless...Be it any song, he always fascinated me. At the same time the calls of, "please sing that song" made me feel embarrassed and really pissed me off.....

For me music was divine and to commit a mistake deliberately in the world of divinity is unforgivable. Yup. I knew, i lacked the clarity on alpana, raga, thala and laya, the basic things of a sweet music. I never wanted to sing in front of a crowd (remember more than two is a crowd) even though the crowd had no knowledge. But my denial was always perceived as me being hypocrite :'( :'( sadly did people realise what i went through on those circumstances....

Slowly i started singing when i was alone. I sang for a peace of mind, for a beautiful solitude, an enlightened mind and above all to check if i can re-produce atleast a part of the song like the masters :):)...it always ended in vain.....

May be the feeling of embarrassment and being a villian in front of others made me more distanced from the clan. And today i find myself more distanced from the beautiful music that has always been with me during the tough and best times....

Will i ever get back that tunes running through my souls? Will i be able to bridge the distance between the loved ones i dug a long time back? Only time alone holds the answer.....

After all to be down and low, and to come out stronger has been every human's history and i guess i will be no different....