Houston, we have a problem.
Jispa has been active on the ‘taking part in school activities’ circuit. We encourage her to take part in sports, elocution and everything else. We take her elocution seriously and decide eth poetry for Hindi and English elocutions well before the announcement. Typically the lead is always lower so jasmine and I figured it meant sense to be prepared at the start for the year. This way she can learn the poetry by heart and be ready with all the drama. Earlier in the year the English elocution was done and now she is ready for the Hindi elocution competition.
A few days back she comes in and says as a matter of fact, ‘hey, I gave my name for the singing competition in school.’ ‘huh? Singing. Errrr. Ok’. I looked at my wife in disbelief. Singing? I am prone to drama but singing has always been a no no. I have wanted to sing, I never knew how to sing. I can’t understand singing. I for sure can’t teach singing. “Why Jispa? Why did you give your name for singing?” I asked her. As sweet as I could muster up. “I thought you would be happy, she said”. “oh yes. We are happy. Very very happy.” What else could I say. IDIOT... I and your mom have NO CLUE on singing. We never sang ever. We ran away from simple picnic singing. When I open my mouth, I bray. You know there is this one singer or is it composer of eth yesteryears called Chandu Atma or something. Since he was a Sindhi and my college was a Sindhi college, he was called to college to take a lecture demonstration of singing. He came with his harmonium on a Sunday Afternoon for the class. Since I was one of the committee guys I too was there. He was teaching the guys to sing. Luckily as a whole group. I remember him looking at me when we were all singing. I think he was a bit amused that I came to the class. He singled me out from 30 kids singing together. I WAS that bad.
We are such a non singing household that we have one really cheap two in one for a music system at home. The servant puts it on while cleaning the vessels. When I am in for dinner at the time, I switch it off as it sounds pretty bad. Jasmine likes to sing in private, actually make that PRIVATE. I typically don’t know any wordings, nor any tune. I hum away most of the time to irritate people.
So in the background of all that “that’s great Jispa. Its a good thing you participated”. ‘yes dad, now you have to teach me for the competition.” “oh ok. will figure”. What on earth man. We have a problem. Jasmine is looking at me for ideas. Ok. ok. lets think simple songs. What is it that she can sing that is ridiculously simple. Simple words and simple tune. Any body singing it would sound good. A ha... do re me? Nopes not that says Jasmine. YES, I got it. There is another one. Queserasera, what ever will be will be, the future is not ours to see,.... that one is ridiculously simple. Real simple and easy. We download it on the computer, download the lyrics as well. now that wasn’t so tough.
Till yesterday when she comes back from school and says – no ‘do re mi’ and ‘queserasera’, those are tuning songs, not real songs. You have to sing a real song. Oh shit. They have obviously wisened up to us. Now what. So back to me thinking about real simple songs.. I jogged my memory to the days while I was in the fourth grade. We had once a week music class. There the brother would have a guitar and teach the whole class to sing. Now what were the songs we learnt. One was ‘we shall overcome’ and the other was ‘karma chameleon’ and one was ‘I just called to say I love you’. One was too slow, other too long or too difficult.
While I was at it, I learnt that ‘we shall overcome was a resistance song. I couldn’t but help thinking that for a song so anti establishment, the govt of India itself, converted the song into hindi ‘hum honge kamayab’ and blared it down the only government owned entertainment channel, while I was growing up. I guess they wanted to apportion it but before any other rebel could. Possibly the congress wanted to show itself as a rebel that was the establishment. Funny nah? It doesn’t make sense.
Then I tried to remember the good old days (around the fourth / fifth grade) we kids from the area had formed a club. A really nice idea that went crazy. We got together to organise activities, contests, contribute jointly for the bat and balls, annual plays etc etc. Simple cheap free stuff. We even all donated books towards the library. At the time we also had singing contests. I think the club membership swelled to a max strength of 40 kids ranging from 5 to 20 year olds. It ended when one guy came in and brought in a lot of rules, processes, wrote the manifesto or something, brought discipline and order, recorded minutes... I might be unfair and the club probably dissolved as the kids grew older, but the guy did try his best to ‘institutionalise’ the club.
At the singing competition I remember one song was particularly popular amongst the girls. Yes. That one was simple to sing as well. That one would do. A google search threw it up in youtube. The song I am referring to is ‘I am on top of the world, looking down on creation and the only....’. It’s a song by carpenters. I couldn’t care less. I downloaded it and now loaded it on my cell phone and on Jasmine’s music player. The lyrics are easy as well. When I made Jispa hear it, she was like’ ya sure. It’s simple. It’s like jingle bells’. Exactly. I can teach you jingle bells at best.
So now hopefully that’s the song she will sing and I will be done with this singing competition. What a real mess. Jasmine and I were talking to each other – well at least this shows that she likes going on stage and is not afraid. It’s a good thing. As Jispa later told me, she gave her name as she likes singing as well. Good. Do well. Making you listen to it on the car deck is as best as I can ever hope to do.
Here you listen to it as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crWGGy2oBT0
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