Seeing my enthusiasm, my mother admitted me to a nearby music school when I was in my second standard.
On our next visit to Kolkata, my father bought me a harmonium. I loved it. I just had one complaint against it. The upper removable cover of the harmonium and the front portion of the bellows had the name of the shop,"DAS FLUTES", engraved on it. I wanted my name or at least my surname to be engraved instead of it. I asked the shopkeeper to change its upper cover but the shopkeeper and my father laughed off my request! I was very angry on both of them :D!
Back home, initially I used to wake up quite early in the morning for riyaaz, thus disturbing the sleep of my parents and my poor neighbours!
But then after some days this impulse of mine faded away and my practice was more or less limited to just the evenings!As a child, I never missed any chance to show my skills whenever someone asked me to sing.
I remember, once one of my aunts had come to our house and she asked me to sing. I sat with my harmonium and started singing right from the beginning, all those I had learnt in the past months. After some time when I showed no signs of stopping, she just turned the pages casually and saw that there were 30-40 more sargams left.She asked me apprehensively if I was going to sing all that was there written in the diary.... and I happily nodded my head saying yes, without interrupting my singing :P....
As of now I can recall another related funny incident. My sister had once mocked at me saying I had learnt music uselessly.... as never did I get a chance to record any song like big singers get :D! My singer's ego was hurt :P ! My father came to know about this incident and he brought a blank audio cassette for me.
He said to me that he would record my songs on it :P . I was overjoyed! I sang on my harmonium and recorded it on our tape recorder! For the next few days I played the cassette and listened to my own songs :D . My sis told me then that there wasn't any significant difference between me and Lata Mangeshkar :P! We both are unmarried, we both are trained singers :P , and most importantly we both have recorded songs :P ;)
The sweet memories of my childhood related to the harmonium are tucked safely in my mind. It is still one of my prized possessions as it used to be when I was young :) ....
