My finger tips are calloused where the strings cut the skin, as I press them hard on the fret to play the tunes from my music book... d d f g e d f… I practice my guitar.
I attended few guitar classes in 2006… before my baby and in between jobs. After a long time I picked it up again recently, my beloved guitar or rather, my husband's. So here I am, a 33 something mother of a busy body toddler, strumming at the 6 strings, totally enjoying myself. I love playing it. I could sit the whole day and practice if I had the time. Sadly, there are too many things that demand my attention and I squeeze minutes here and there practicing the chords.
I have always wanted to learn to play the guitar. It was my child hood dream. But my parents sent me to Bharatanatyam dance classes instead! I love dancing now but I hated it then. I would make faces to go to the Sunday classes when my friends stayed home watching Ramayana and Mahabharata on Doordarshan. I used to give dance performances on stage, but the introvert and shy me hated it and would sulk when my parents pleaded me to go on stage. I was good at dancing but I wasn’t passionate about it. Besides I was extremely stage shy. I have been dancing all my school days. But I never got to like it. Until I used the excuse of studies to stop performances when I reached my 12th. I stopped practicing. And have never danced except in group dances in college. No one knows I am or rather was a trained Bharatanatyam dancer. Years later as I see dances on television, I suddenly get this urge to dance. And I have even had thoughts of restarting dancing. Perhaps learn a new style of dance like Kathak or Mohiniattom. But the fancies have remained fancies. But the guitar.. That’s a different story. You might ask what I am hoping to achieve learning to play the guitar at this age?! Well... for one, it’s for purely selfish reasons. I want to learn because I want to play it!
And sometimes I wonder… what if my parents had decided to succumb to my whims and get me a guitar and perhaps I joined a class while still at a school... May be I would have become an accomplished player by now, perhaps performing on stage some where. But then again, may be I would have dropped it. The fact that I nursed the desire to play the guitar for all those years in my bosom today explodes into these exhilarating moments when I sit with the guitar. Sometimes, being denied something acts like this wind that keep the sparks of desires simmering, that bursts into a blaze at the right time…