Memory lane

As I was trying to sing some songs to teach Aditya, I could not remember even a line from the latest songs that could have appeal this young boy. Aditya is five year old boy and a son of my friend. Some time  he has to stay with me, when Alka is busy at her work. Unlike others I am not a music fan and nor I believe music is life. So, maybe its not strange that I could only remember couple of lines of old songs, which I used to sing during my school days years. Yet I was thinking why can't I remember a single song to sing with this boy ! Strange we all get exposed to all types of music channels and some entertainment channels, many of them repeats same song again and again if one song hits the chart. Yet, I can't even remember couple of lines from a new song to teach him. However, this incident or may be more than that this particular month really have power to take me back in my memory lane of childhood time, where we used to take part in after school programs.

After school programs and the training period, is one of the sweetest memory of my life. Being participants used to give us an opportunity to stay away from school for long time and this was the real deal for me as a student. We used to practice months for this one event which used to happen once in every year and that is the birthday celebration of Queen mother. It used to fall on 4th of Bhadra. As the day used to get closer, so the plan for a big ceremony also used to get pressure. This part is one of the thing that has a lasting impact in my life.

At the end of this month we used to get busy with our teachers for completing our dance, song or dramas, so that we could take part in pre-competition in front of the committee board appointed by the royal family. There used to be lots of participants from many school from Nepal. This process used to take about 10-12 days and after that all the selected team has to go to Pragya Pratisthan for final days show. It used to take about fifteen days or so to be used to with the big stage and the final day show. During this practice time, we used to get exposed with all the songs and dance from other schools and we also used to learn most of the dance from the other participants.

This is also the time we used to practice the song but if we are a dance participants then we could copy the song of other teams and then we used to sing it in Bal Mandir. If its a new song then others who were not taking part in this after school program also used to catch up on with us. So it so used to happen that one gang used to sing a song and the other gang who were passing by used to catch up on the same song and they used to cross the path and both are singing the song. The whole ambiance of Bal Mandir used to fill with all new kind of song  children  singing with much enthusiastic and cheerful manner. Most of those competition songs hardly used to come on Radio before the competition yet the children used to copy things pretty fast.

I know once our dance teacher was stunned to see us doing a whole dance sequence ditto after those competition. He was wondering how could we copy all that dance without being taught when we used to take so much time to learn from him. We also used to get exposed to out side world and people during this time and it sure was a pleasant experience from our day-to-day life in Bal Mandir. All those song and dance used to be the part of our daily life after the final day used to end. I used to love the five star food we used to get during the rehearsal time and that too almost whole day food. It was such a nice escape from the regular food we used to eat in Bal Mandir.

Those careless and carefree time  of childhood filled with so much fun filled memories, sure is  hard to forget.