The Rockstar...

No I am not talking about Ranbir Kapoor.I am talking about my own, very own rockstar.

All this happened a month ago.

The mother thought that its high time to infuse some music into the son.
And she thought that he might like guitar. 

And she went ahead and put him in a guitar lesson. 

I know your quirked eyebrows are saying "You call yourself a modern mother? One who is flexible and lets HIM decide things for himself?"
Actually if you go back to the last few sentences there are some flexible-modern-inconclusive words like "thought" or "might" which CLEARLY differentiates me from my mom who "decided" that I "will" learn singing, when I was a child.

;-)

Fortunately, he took to guitar as a fish takes to water...no, thats exaggeration !! The more realistic comparison would have been as a hen or a dog or a man takes to water (remember, all of them can also walk on ground?). That leaves some "ground" for me not to be shattered if he does not like it later...phew!

Anyway, this little boy just loved the guitar. He looked at his own guitar, face radiant with pride, eyes shining with happiness, a shy smile of disbelief.... it was as if he was eager to absorb the intricacies and delve into the mysteries of the stringed instrument immediately..

Offcourse I was happy. Very happy. I still am.(touch wood)

To be honest, I did not expect this kind of enthusiasm.

There must be an explanation, I thought.

I was almost getting ready to explain this super-enthusiastic-phenomemon by trying to link it to the fact that he has it in his blood (my mom is a wonderful singer)...or dedicating this to the wonderful "Mozart for babies" CD that I religiously played for him everyday when he was a baby... or saying with a know-it-all-motherly-attitude "I knew from the very beginning that he would be good"...or ..something even more fancy like nanoparticles or big bang theory that explains everything...or....whatever...till he announced proudly, 

"Mama , guitar is COOL! "

...and then he struck all the strings at once ( a bit too hard, I would say, its a new guitar!!) and said,

"I am a ROCKSTAR!!"

...and this all happened when we returned from our FIRST guitar lesson!

I have to admit, such a small person with a guitar in hand, sitting in style, one foot up on the small stool so that the guitar does not slide off his leg...looking at the notes intently....does make a "cool" picture.

 I take him to his guitar lessons every Monday. Its a one to one lesson so I am allowed to sit in the same room. I try to observe how music is taught here. I love the interaction between the young teacher and Arno. I feel good when he plays good, I  love the way the teacher playfully introduces him to the different notes, I get a bit impatient if he is looking around the room while the teacher is talking, I am tempted to turn the page for him as he plays on, I tend to smile when he asks a totally un-guitarlike question to the teacher like "do you have a cat?". In other words , I am involved.

C'mon, I am the mother. 

Actually,I "feel" like doing the things above but in reality I am just sitting and reading a magazine...really!.....lost in my own thoughts...

Memories of my music class comes back to me. With all due respect to my Guruji back home who taught me all that I know of music today, I have to admit that the classes here are more fun. When I learned the seven notes , they were presented to me as seven notes. Full stop. I was not asked to make a poem with the seven notes or draw how a note might look like after listening to its sound or try to make a song from the first three of them or choose "my favourite note"! Instead I was almost "forced" to just practise what the teacher taught...every single day...no questions. It did teach me ...but I did not learn to "love" it while I was learning..

After three lessons, Arno believes that HE can "create" music! 

He thinks that G looks more serious than C!

He thinks that playing E three times "sounds" like "jingle bells, jingle bells"!

He drums all the strings at once and THINKS that he is a rockstar!

Music here is "taught"  in such a way that the child is eager to come back for more.

...... I come back to the present. Class is over, time to pack up my rockstar and go home.