I just would like to share an incident which happened a few days back, before that a little bit of background. Its a tradition in my house to celebrate a festival called varmahalaksmi vrata (bascially means worshping goddess lakshmi) , so on that day many neighbour aunties come to my house and seek the blessings of the goddess..
This year it so happened that an aunty whom I dint really like ( I dont really know why I dint like her before, may be I judged her before knowing her) came to my house, and to me and my mom's surprise she told she wants to sing a devarnama(songs dedicated to god), my mom was more than happy to let her sing :) she did sing well and after that my mom tells that even I have been trained in classical music!!
Well, I did learn Carnatic music for a really long time but I never took it seriously and I gave up and I never really made an attempt to sing actually, but as soon as this aunty came to know about that she forced me to sing, I kept saying I dont remember anything and I have a real bad voice but she kept persuading and actually made me SING(after 10 years may be)!! I must say no one has ever forced me like that, infact after I sang I felt so good about myself and I wished someone had actually encouraged me like that when I was actually learning music, and whats more she even challenged me to learn a entire song by next year,and guess what I will learn a devarnama by next year(its strange because I dont really beleive in god!!) that lady had such a positive influence on me..
But the best part about this whole incident is that aunty is 65+ for sure, what I loved about her was the enthusiasim she had for living life, learning new things, never giving up, she told numerous stories of how she learnt music and how she has won prizes which surprisingly dint bore me.. I kept thinking wow this lady has so much of life !!
When I hear stories of young people giving up soon,the alarming increase of suicides and the pressure through which todays children go through it really makes me sad because we dont bother to look around, there is so much that the older generation can teach us!! I definately learnt a lot that day!
