Music in Me...

I don’t know if there is music in me,
Perhaps – there is
Perhaps –
I don’t even know what it means –
To have music in a person.

As a baby sleeping in a makeshift cradle,
I must have heard my father sing.
As a foetus growing in my mother’s womb,
I must have felt - that part of him in me -
singing his soothing lullabies in a soundless voice.

I was said to have sung,
even when I was a baby,
Humming along as my father practised ragas after ragas
In-between his rocking of my cradle.

They say children’s memories don’t withstand the years,
But I can still see flashed in front of my mind’s eye -
The days when I sang.

No more than four,
Seated cross-legged at the verandah of my childhood home,
Singing into the tin-can telephone my brothers had made for me –
singing as though the whole world sat at my feet listening
Into the ears of little boys listening in rapture and pride -
admiring the little singing star they believed they had helped create.

But you see – even then,
I didn’t know if there was music in me.
Perhaps – it was
Perhaps –
I was too young to even know what it meant –
to have music in a person...

But sing I did...
With no sense of musical notes,
No regard for diction,
No knowledge of what I sang.

Even now,
I still don’t know what it means -
to have music in a person.
And perhaps that’s why –
I sing no more into anyone’s ears
Except, that of mine.

But there is one thing I do know...

Even in the absence of this physical body -
this 'me' that I am known to be today,
this 'me' that I once was - the 3 year old singing star of her family

Even in the absence of it all,
The music within, and without me - will continue

Even if it was, or could be sung -
...only in a soundless voice.