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Song, sung, blue...the burdens we gifted have to carry

In college they refused me entry into the band because you know how clannish these types can be, they do not like to be eclipsed. Then when I was a newsman I met Cliff Richard who was visiting Mumbai and I volunteered to share the stage with him and suggested we could do a duet of Outsider.

Many of us are singularly talented as young children and then by a conspiracy of parents, teachers, aunts and uncles and sundry neighbours that talent is brutally murdered and it lies there in the dust wriggling like a crushed worm.
For me it was music. At about the age of ten I realised I was sloshing in rare talent like AR Rahman or Elvis Presley must have felt, an epiphany that you are destined for greatness. I could see myself at Central Park outdoing Simon and Garfunkel.
I shared this ambition with my parents and, the poor dears, they invested in a piano on which I learnt to play Hang down your head, Tom Dooley with what I thought was elan and a certain special sort of flair. However, Mr Francois Gabrielle, from what is now Puducherry and then a renowned musician and also hired to tutor me in the intricacies of `Brahms and Beethoven, was a man without mettle. On the eleventh day, he burst into tears, said,
Cet enfant n'a pas du tout de talent pas un soupcon(this child has no talent at all, not a soupcon) and crushing his hat on his head he said, finis, no more, tu tues chaque note (you kill every note) he left this budding genius and stomped off.
I did even at that tender age think my depth of talent was too much for him and he should have been made of sterner stuff. To be fair, grand ability can be intimidating and therefore there were no dents in my confidence because of his frightfully rude behaviour.
Through life I have had this impact in the music world. It was in Sherwood College where Amitabh Bachchan was a fellow star of the school stage that we were summoned to try out for the school choir. Being to the manner born and fully aware of how lucky they were to have me I sauntered over casually for the trials . much like Lewis Hamilton being called to take a driving test.
Mrs Ludwig, a nice enough lady whose son and I loathed each other with passion was the music teacher and she asked me to sing Little drops of water, little grains of sand. I missed the starting point twice and then rendered the song with great gusto coming in eleven seconds before her piano stopped. You, she said, to the left. As for being distinctive I surely was because I was the only one on the left and only when I was informed I had not made the first cut that I realised it must have been pure envy and the inimical relationship I had with her son.
Undeterred, I soldiered on. In college they refused me entry into the band because you know how clannish these types can be, they do not like to be eclipsed. Then when I was a newsman I met Cliff Richard who was visiting Mumbai and `I volunteered to share the stage with him and suggested we could do a duet of Outsider.
Regrettably, being frail in health, Cliff cancelled his concert though he had an amazing recovery the next day when he was told I had to travel out of town.
I have been trying to meet Mr Rahman and once caught him on a flight but he slept right through it wearing an eyemask.
Now, as I totter into antiquity I still fight the odd assault of prejudice and the inability of people to handle such extraordinary talent, like last evening when I was lustily singing, Those were the days, my friend' in the shower, my daughter hit the door and hissed, dad, can you stop making that racket, the kids are asleep.
See what I mean, no respect for the exceptional. We gifted have such a burden to carry.
bikram@khaleejtimes.com