Sing in the Rain..I'm sing in the Rain

I’m a good singer. I think so. So does everybody about themselves just as they think that they are above average drivers. If everybody thinks that they are above average drivers, who is then the average?!

Actually, I do have a long career in singing. In my 3rd grade, when I first sang ‘Chikku Bukku Railae’ (with music) in front of the class, my singing career had started. Since that performance, I had been one of the first choice singers in my school to sing all tam hit cine songs during breaks and free hours. And where did I practice? At the shower! My entire household would know when I’m in the shower because I sing so cheerfully (ah! those days!). And there a positive correlation was developing between the decibel levels and the coldness of the water.

In my 9th grade, my reputation as a 'good-tam-hit-song-singer' followed me and naturally I was given the task of choosing a song for an upcoming group singing competition. In 9th grade, everything that I touched turned gold – for example this play that I wrote about earlier, or academics or quiz competitions. So why not singing? Well, it was an ‘English’ singing competition – something like a choir and not pop! And my ability to sing in English had started evaporating ever since I left my kinder garden. My friend JD (a.k.a ‘Peters’ for his high English proficiency) and I initiated the search for that ‘Engleesh’ song.

I always loved the tune of this Eagle(ABBA)song and I suggested the same to JD. He was skeptical since we were supposed to choose some divine prayer song in the name of the good Lord. Good Lord! I somehow managed to convince him and we stuck with the Eagle song. The problem started when we set about writing down the lyrics. In a non-digital age, the only way to know the lyrics is by listening to the song and then writing it down. To make things worse, the tape I had was quite bad. After several rewinds and forwards in a half broken tape recorder, we managed to get the lyrics down....well, most of them; we used our own instead of original lines that we couldn't comprehend.

The next day, our professor (or better known as 'class teacher' in those days) asked us to sing our song in front of the group and at this point I realized that JD and I hadn't tried singing it even once. Least worried about this realization and with absolute overconfidence, we started singing. After around a minute, I realized how absurd it was turning out to be and I stopped. I looked up at my classmates who were looking at us with horrified expressions not because of our singing, probably because they were wondering how they are going to sing this song with such a complex tune. The tune wasn’t complex; we were making it sound so. I touched JD’s arm and he stopped singing and looked at me. Our prof was lost for his words. And then I laughed hard, very hard that I was on my knees clutching my stomach and everyone joined in.

Apparently, we abandoned the song and picked something that our professor suggested and we even won a price for it. The song was the simplest My bonnie lies over the ocean!