Showering Music!!!

6 40 am.
Our home is busy getting ready for the day ahead. Monday morning - worst of all! ...weekend inertia for everyone! The pressure cooker breaks the morning silence with its shrill whistle as it sweats away to make our take away lunch. I go and knock on the bathroom door, and cry out in a quintessential mother-in-the-morning voice "V you are going to be late !."  That interrupts my little boy's (well little is just because i am used to that term, he is ten now) day dream and i hear the shower head going into full fledged force.

After a few seconds, an incredibly soulful " aaa ahaaa ahaa " is heard along with the sounds of the spraying water . His knowledge of rock music is limited but he loves the tamil cinema numbers that border the genre . He goes on singing loud and clear, the lyrics coming in now. His voice is good and so is his singing. It takes all of my self resistance to overcome my guilt in disturbing his morning reverie.

Well, to be honest, i love singing in the bathroom too. Its a kind of meditative state where you hide away from the world and be the performer and the audience combined into one person. Pure bliss ! Trust me, its not an intentional act. It just happens when you are totally "in the moment" . That is precisely what all self-help books ask us to get into, right ?

Image credit: Me myself and Sketch app

My theory is that bathroom singers are those that can stop a minute to admire the flowers on the way and are in no hurry to join the mad rat race we all are embroiled in. Well, may be thats taking it a bit too far but not a bad theory i suppose!

Apparently the hard tiles and confined space of the bathroom provide an acoustic environment that make us sound very good and that is one of the reasons people start singing in there.

Sometimes i have heard people say " i cant sing...i am just a bathroom singer " . Well one should not demean oneself like that . To me, bathrooms are the best place to test ones vocal abilities. A person who sings well in the bathroom loves music , sings well and can put in a lot of feeling in . Outside of that confined space, he just needs to learn how to get his voice into a similar state of symphony.

Have we not seen in the music competitions on TV - the idols, the super singers etc - judges mentioning " there was not enough feel in there . It lacked the intensity " . Well singing is at the epitome of feeling when one is engulfed in the water droplets pouring out of the shower ....

Immersing oneself up to the in neck-deep water and then singing is a traditional practice that is supposed to soften and strengthen ones vocal chords and singing abilities.

As Sanjeev Kumar rightly sang in a movie, " Tande tande paani se nahaana chaahiye...gaana aaye ya na aaye gaana chaahiye" ....translating to " you must bathe in chill cool water and whether you can or not you must sing! "


....vaazhga valamudan!!