I got ragged and I sang. As a matter of fact, I sang well. Needless to say, I got to do a lot of singing from then on.
I used to get an order to reach one or the other rooms in the mens hostel at some specified time. So I would jump the gate of our first year annexe and then jump the mens hostel gate and make my way to the specified room.
I learnt something about body language even then, because i realized that i had to walk at least like a 2nd year. If anyone knew that a fresher was walking thru the hallowed corridors of MH (mens hostel) there would be murder and yours truly would be in the thick of the happenings!
I’ve stood in doorways, providing background entertainment, while my seniors wrote their assignments. I’ve gone out for dinners at roadside thattu kada’s (food joints). They ate. I would stand in a lungi and a Tshirt, with a banana in my hand, singing rock songs in front of the highly amused localites who lived around our college. I also paid for the meal, quite a lot of times!
I sang on buses, trains, roadsides etc and I had fun. The ragging in our college never really turned bad and I had probably a lot of fun for a guy who was getting ragged. I definitely met a lot of my seniors , pretty women and made good friends all over college.
Then after the months of ragging, my performances graduated into the cultural clubs, the college festival etc. I was soon going out of college to other intercollegiate festivals and having a whale of a time.This went on without incident for 2 years and then one day i was at a family friends home,she (tessy) had just joined college. I remember her mom saying, "Suraj, I hear you are a great singer in college?"
My dad, my sisters and my cousin all virtually choked on their coffee. I mean I had never told them that I was singing in college. It just wasn't possible for me to walk into my home at the age of 18 and say, "by the way, for everyones info around here, I am a star!" Especially not to my immediate and extended family. A very closely knitted group that does not encourage delusions of grandeur or fools easily.
Well with the skeleton out of the closet, I got fully into singing and even started singing aloud at home. Many of my seniors introduced me to the gods of rock. Most notable among them (my seniors i.e) was Suresh Varma, a soul that I connected to immediately. Then there were the Nagas. We had 4 nagas every batch and all of the seemed to know how to play the guitar and sing. That was like a miracle to me since I had never ever seen anyone play an instrument with any conviction or real skill in my life before. I even picked up some rudimentaries of playing guitar from them.
These were the guys along with Suresh, who would tell me to become a professional singer. I always laughed it off.Always. It is a shame that Indians do not really respect dignity of labour. At that time at least. And I was one of that group myself. At no time did I ever think singing would ever be anything more than a passion that I excelled at. To consider it as a profession actually felt sinful and suggested a weakness of character!
This is a sentiment that i have chosen to explore as a hidden topic in one of our songs called "maya", which on the surface is about the indian girlchild. I keep saying that our special talents are as beautiful and vulnerable as a girl child, who has always seemed to receive a raw deal at the hands of an unnapreciative society. I wonder whether you have met your "maya" and whether you nurture her? Not because she is the most beautiful child in the world, but because she is yours. Because, even if she may not be worthy of the devotion of the universe today, the tenderness of your gaze and the warmth of your embrace, is always her birth right.
Today, Suresh knows that I am doing what he advised me to. Yan Tan, Nisawuto Sachi, Dominic, Chuba Toshi, Zachary are people that I have lost touch with after we left college.
14 years after i left college, my band, motherjane is going to perform in Dimapur sometime in march. How I wish I could meet my naga brothers once again. Music really does bind the most diverse of groups. That’s something that hits me time and again at our various shows.
And that, by itself, is enough to make a rocker's world go around.
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