Passing along our dreams to our children

It has been more than 6 weeks and this thought is still stuck with me. Many things happened but I cannot write about them unless I take this out.I was resisting writing about it, didn’t want to make it a whining post. But it just stopped me from writing anything else so today is a day when it has to be out..

In March during one musical show I met two of my online friends. We had never met before face to face but it felt we have known each other for a long time. The common factor was Hindi Music. We three could talk hours about our love for music, what we liked and who was out favorite singer, musician and lyrists. One of them even runs a site for nonstop music. That day we talked how our kids are not so much in love with our music, what will they do with our collection after us and what not.

I always felt that our children are very lucky. They have exposure to so many things music included. They develop their taste on their own and then they choose what they like most. I shouldn’t and cannot expect them to love Jagjit Singh’s the way I do. They won’t hum or sing those old Hindi songs I grew up with but still as parents we give them the opportunity and drag them to many of these concerts.

The Learn Quest Music Festival was one of those times. I took Ajey to listen Malladi Brothers and he witnesses the magic of sitar from Ustad Shahid Parvez. He was happy and had great time. He had too many questions and loose ends and I needed to find someone to answer all these. The next day he listened to none other than M. BalmuraliKrishna and there he found the full circle of Hindustani Music. And that’s where I found how sad I was. I could see him enjoying and living the moment and couldn’t stop thinking how badly I so wish I could give Anand the same experience. I felt sad for me and him that I cannot provide and enrich him with this experience. He is missing an familiarity which is so important to me. As a mom at that time I didn’t need to worry if Ajey will ever listen to Hindustani Music I was just sad that Anand will not experience the beauty of this kind of music. He loves music and is a great fan of Pink Floyd and electronic music and whatever his brother or dad listened to. But it aches to think he would not know the beauty of sitar or ragas or a khayal or thumari or Bollywood music.

Well we can just try and hope for and admit sometime that we cannot pass on everything to our kids or atleast I couldn’t do that. I wish you very best that you can..

By the way if you want to read Ajey’s experience here is the link.