The first time I heard someone sing and play Que sera, sera was in our school's music room. A tiny, damp, stinking cubicle with no utilities, we were made to sit on the ground and the lyrics for the new hymn would be on the board before we could settle inside. In a year, we probably learned 5 new hymns, even if we had a music class once every week. For one, the teachers would frequently resign, and when we did have the staff, some other teacher would take that class to finish their respective syllabi.
The music room itself is another story. The board was cracked and overused; you could smell feet and heaps of carpets, leaving little scope for learning after countering the olfactory instinct to throw up.
Yet, Que sera, sera was etched in my mind. As was Iko Iko. Two tracks I learnt at school. The most memorable of them all— one of the many—this music teacher was a young man from Goa, who was instrumental in getting the school to win prizes for several competitions for years. Despite that, he had little interest in nurturing any talent. Sure, he taught when he wanted to and passionately at that; but having the music room next to the most strict nun's room wasn't helpful in nurturing any wunderkind. I recall him calling her names and making the kids laugh. Probably his biggest contribution to junior school (aka my batch) was that he was sternly against the management, perhaps because he abhorred authorities.
In years to come, when I left school with half-baked bass lessons and got shortlisted to play for college in the year first year, I thought about my time at school a lot. My friends and others who I played with, had been taught. Their parents paid for lessons over the years and the other pals had attended institutions where the school paid attention to teaching music, or well, attempting to hone the skill. I lacked it all, but it was probably intent that put me on equal footing with the folks I met.
A few years after college, I learned that a senior who had become a prominent figure in music, had forged a sort of relationship (professional definitely, personal probably) with the erstwhile music teacher from Goa. He was, now, older and uglier but certainly full of talent. Cause why else would an impressionable young girl form an alliance with him. She was all sorts of popular in school and later in life too. One of those who don't stop peaking till they die kind.
As life goes, she ends up marrying someone else. Traded the mic for an editor in chief role at a top music publication in the country, ditched the old music teacher (or whatever happened between them god knows) but basically she was out with the old and in with the new. It was magnetic, her new vibe. Everything about her screamed a makeover and the teacher? He was lost in oblivion.
I don't know what propelled me to think about him yesterday, but I found him on gram. Complete with a story on how it's great to be single as an artist (it really isn't but sure), he's teaching/performing in Goa. I don't know what was I expecting, googling an old teacher after over 20 years but he was there. Performing Hindi covers, something I could not ever imagine him doing, at various resorts and hopping from venue to venue (to cover rent? alcohol?) doing the same thing. His old crew with the school senior abandoned (or did he abandon them?) and he found a new way of life in the new music; the kind I could never expect him to do.
Since yesterday, I hovered to his account several times trying to make sense of what is it that really changed. Did I imagine the whole music class experience with him as a fever dream or did he really change as well with the time? I wish I didn't think of these things in the middle of the day as I counter anxiety hourly. Or that, every step we take changes the course of our life. If my parents had put me to a school where they focused on music, I'd be a music journalist today; if I hadn't swiped right on my last boyfriend, I wouldn't have rebounded with the present one.
The future is always ours to see, only if we take accountability towards goddamn action.
