Attitude or Talent?

A month back, I got a message on “WhatsApp” from an acquaintance asking whether I would like to sing a prayer in a prayer meet being organized to help people who have lost their loved ones to the Covid-19 pandemic and are going through tough times. "Prayers can heal", said the acquaintance.

"I love singing, yes, that's true. However, I am a terrible singer. I really have no singing talent. Thanks for the offer, but you would have to excuse me", I replied.

"Don't worry, I know you love singing. Your singing can be fine-tuned with practice. If you can decide quickly and let me know, I will share with my cousin, Bikram. He is the organizer of the event. Besides being an amazing singer, he is a director and chief cardiac surgeon in a top Delhi hospital. He has also acted in a small role in the Hollywood movie "Eat, Pray and Love" alongside Julia Roberts." She said.

"Well, I only have to sing a prayer, right? I just have to sing, record and send the music file to you, right?” I said always loving a new challenge coming my way.

“No, it is a virtual online prayer meeting. You have to sing live. I am sending you the event poster", she mentioned and promptly sent me the poster.

“Prayer Meet by "Odisha Positive" over zoom at 7:30PM Indian standard time/10:00AM US Eastern Standard Time”, the poster mentioned. “Oh, it is an international event with attendees from around the world”, I thought to myself.

""Ahe Nila Shaila" is my favorite prayer song, Rasmita. However, I sing terrible. People should not feel bad. I never sang in my life, before last year. I just started singing 10 months back and my friends make fun of my singing. I sing for my own pleasure, but singing to heal others is a long way to go. Prayers should heal. But if the singing irritates, it would serve the opposite of what you are trying to accomplish", I said being torn between the chance to take up a new challenge and being aware of my almost non-existent singing talent.

"OK, take your call", she replied.

It felt like I wasted a good challenge and opportunity. "Listen, I know I sing terrible. Nevertheless, this is a noble cause. I do not want to say no to such a cause. I will definitely try", I answered.

"Wonderful! We are getting overwhelming response to participate and it is getting difficult to accommodate everyone. Your decision is final, right?"

"Yes, final".

"Great", she messaged back with an emoji.

"By the way Rasmita, who referred my name?" I was curious to know. I only share in my close circle and in personal Facebook page, which has, less than 200 close relatives and friends and she is not one of them. How did she know that I love singing!

"Nobody referred. However, I think I came across a video where you had sung and posted in FB few months back. Or, maybe your poetry narration. Don't remember exactly."

"Oh, poetry narration. Maybe you have seen that. I posted that in my public Facebook page", I said. I have two Facebook accounts, one for my close circle, which is private, and one for my journey as a poet that is a public profile. I had posted my poetry narration video on my poet account. Now, it made sense to me that she has seen one of my videos.

"But that was a poetry narration", I clarified. "Narrating poetry is not same as singing a song, that also live in front of an international audience"

"So what? You have been singing and sharing a lot in your personal Facebook page. I know that Subhransu. It's a small world. I have common friends, Sangeeta and Amar. I get to know that", she said and ended with a wink emoji.

"Oh, now I get it. So they are the culprits?” I was getting friendly mischievous with her.

"But did they not inform you that I have no singing talent?” I asked.

"What they told me is that you really enjoy your singing. You put your 100% to it. We do not need extraordinary singers. We need people who can pour their heart and emotions to the prayers. We do not need people who want to highlight their talent; we want people who will make us feel that they are singing for others. It is OK if you cannot sing well. It is not a competition. Let's not worry too much", she answered. 

I took some time to absorb that. "Thanks for the opportunity", I messaged back after 2 hours.

"My pleasure. You can also learn from others by listening to their songs in the event", she messaged back promptly. "So start preparing for the session. I will add you to the 3M group, "Melody, Music & Memory" WhatsApp group".

Thus, she added me to the group. I practiced the prayer and did the best I could in singing the prayer song in the prayer meet.

"Well done! Your voice is very good, but you need some practice. That was the feedback from Bikram Bhai." I got the message from Rasmita the day after the prayer meet.

I felt satisfied. I had never thought that someone would invite me to sing a song live in an event. I love music, but I had never sung anything in my life before Aug 1, 2020. This singing experiment started when I heard one of wife's students singing on "Starmaker" app. The eighth grader was passing time in the lockdown singing. I liked the idea of easy Karaoke singing with an app. Then I figured out that "Smule" app maybe a better one since the listener need not install the app to listen. In addition, since "Smule" is a paid app, I thought maybe more genuine people would be in it.

I just thought of trying out the free subscription for a week. I started with a few easy songs and shared on my personal Facebook page and some of my WhatsApp groups. The reception on some groups was very hostile. Some of my friends made lot of jokes on my singing. Well, friend groups are meant for fun. However, many comments went much beyond fun and were downright personal and derogatory. Talks on how I need to operate on my vocal cord, how I don't know anything about facial expressions, how bad is my Hindi pronunciation, how I can never bring emotions to the songs, how I am singing like reading news on TV, etc., etc. “This art is not for you”, declared a friend in a group.

People who were more cultured pinged me personally and gave lots of free advice. I just came out of some very toxic groups and enjoyed my bashing in few other more "civilized" groups. People who cannot sing even one line started to give expert advice. Well, people are always ready to judge others and started giving “Gyan” to make me the next Mukesh Kumar, next Mohd Rafi and next Kishore Kumar, famous Bollywood singers. Not realizing that my whole aim is to be happy exploring a new stuff, a new challenge and not be the next singing sensation.

That was quite interesting. As naturally inclined to observe stuff around me and inclined to document the observations, I thought of extending the supposed to be one-week experiment to 2 months to gather enough data to write a research paper. I actually paid for the subscription, extended my experiment, and started noting down the reactions from people for my paper. This is an interesting paper, I thought, since very rarely if any time normal people put some stuff on public domain at which they are not good. All of us want to show only our positive sides to the outside world. This will be a landmark paper in social studies and human reactions over social media, I dreamt (pun intended).

Those 2 months of singing slowly made me realize a lot about singing styles, pauses, voice modulation, etc. Some kind friends came forward and pinged me about some constructive suggestions while encouraging me at the same time. While working on the paper, I started enjoying singing more and more. 

Even after the research paper project was done, I continued to sing. One big thing I realized is that for performing arts like singing, dancing and acting, shedding inhibitions are very important. Otherwise, it is not possible to bring the "feel" to the performance. However, people like me, coming from conservative backgrounds and being "good" boys throughout, feel naturally very restrained. We have to let ourselves open up to enjoy the facets of life, which we have never experienced.

As they say, it is never too late to enjoy something in life and there is no life if we do not come out of our comfort zones. Who knows, we may get some opportunity based on our attitude only, even without any significant talent! As important, as talent may be and as hard as we may like to get a perfect balance of talent and attitude, attitude alone may sometimes be just about enough to give us a good break :-)