That was my 5th
standard youth festival time.All my classmates were busy deciding the items for
participation. Most of them cancelled their selected items due to practical
difficulties like practicing and performing.Finally 2 group songs were left from
our class in youth festival competition. I wished to enter in any of the 2
groups but they didn’t add me as the groups were already filled. So I decided
to form a new group.
I approached merlin baby,one of my classmate who had shown
a motherly affection on me for help. She said she would arrange a song and
promised me that she would write the lyrics and hand over to me the very
next day. I felt so much happy and thanked her many times and I formed a group
of my own with the remaining students who wished to sing like me. We wished to
sing , not have any qualification that a singer should posses. We wished that’s
it. I gave the name of participants and participating item to the teacher. She asked
me ‘who is the leader?’ I said i am with a great pride. So one more group –chinchu susan
thomas and party were formed from our class. One more chinchu was there. She was
also a leader of another group. So the teacher wrote my full name to avoid
judge’s confusion.
Merlin baby handed over the lyrics and cassette. I learned
the song from home and taught my team members. I don’t actually remember who
were all my team members. 2 other members inaddition to me had good voice.
The
youth festival day had come. We were ready on the back stage and was listening
to chinchu anand’s group performance on stage. That was an excellent
performance,they could be the team who won the prize. I felt like fainting and
loosing my power. My legs were shivering.my body heat went down. When my name
was called for the next performance I lost my vision too. When we moved on to
the stage chinchu anand said an all the best.I smiled at her with all the
confidence of a singer but my heart beat was countless. I felt thirsty.Nothing
could have be done other than singing. We positioned as I told them before. I was standing
at the center. The mike was closer to me. We started the song.during the 2nd
half I felt some difficult in singing. My throat became dry. My sound was heard
like a disturbing unpleasent noise. We finished it anyway.
I saw chinchu anand
standing at the back stage. I asked her about our performance. She said it was
good but from the 2nd half portion I heard a noisy sound’. I said ‘
really who was that?,I havent heard such noise’. She said she couldn’t identify
the person with a dry voice. I became happy. My wish had succeeded and I decided
not to participate in a group song anymore guided by me.
From next year onwards
chinchu anand added me too in her group by god's grace. She never known the fact that it was my voice that created a disturbance on stage performance. We were together for national anthem competion
too. We got prizes because of her and I got the idea to stop singing when my
voice become dry later on and I did moking only. I kept this
as a secret of my own for years till now.
My life as a singer ended when
my classmate arathi bhargavan’s father,a music teacher made a voice test for
all the participants who were going to sing in district level. He did voice
test twice on me. He told me that my voice is not good for singing and he said I
had pitch problems too. He threw me away.
When I came back to my class my
friends asked me why did you come back from song practice?’. I said I am dispalced. My friends got angry and asked me again ‘how could you displaced?You were
also there when your team won the youth festival prize , weren't you?Why they avoided you
in next level?’. I said ‘that man was so cruel and he added some other girl
instead of me to hide my pitch problem from my friends. That was the end
to my desire of singing. When my friends were talking about doing some tricky
play on arathi bhargavan,I was thinking about the next area
where i could show my talents.
