My father used to always say before an exam (now that i am in ckp i dont have any), that its your responsibility to study, prepare, To Do you Job, and the results will be in gods hands. And for a long time , i believed that was true.. I believed that if you got bad marks, its because of your fault (most of the time), if you did something stupid when you were angry, it was your fault to lose your temper in the first place..but what happened today…man, seriously screwed up my mind.

..(still laughing at what happened)…okay, so here is the situation to what happened today in Jain College aka  SBJC (J.C Road)..

I participate in the western acoustic event. I wait patiently in the 200 seater conference hall for the event to begin. Coincidentally my name came up first.  I am not the nervous type, neither was i today. I confidently sat down, while the volunteers set up the mic system. Then one of them tell me that there is no mic stand and only a small one enough for the acoustic guitar. So i have 2 minutes to make a decision and decide to sing without a mic.  I speak up to the packed hall that i wont be using a mic and sing a trail song (Heart of Life)  to check whether they can hear me..

Then i start with my song, a cover of Free Falling by John Mayer. And honestly, i gave the best performance of my life and the applause at the end of the song was proof enough. To be completely honest, i was full of myself after that, i mean why shouldn’t i be? My main goal was not to disappoint myself and hear those dreaded words “Kenneth, you sang better during practice”..I wanted to sing the best i could and i did. The next performances that followed me all suffered the same problem, bad sound system. The vocals couldn’t be heard due to the poor mics..There were two performances that really gave me chills (sorry don’t remember the names). One was a friend of my classmate (She sang , while a guy with my future hairstyle accompanied her on the guitar)  and another was a girl who sang  “Summer” something ( a very Jazzy song). I cant possibly forget the gospel tamil singer who wailed his way into history and our very own Ricky Martin who kept referring to a certain “whore”. lol

It was just a matter of time before the results were announced. and i was tensed…and the fact that the judges were passing the results paper around didn’t help much. Finally the moment came…and WHAMMY!!!

I don’t get the first place (the fact that all the participants are staring at me in horror made me realize that it actually happened) , but the shock was who got it. Honestly, the two girls i mentioned earlier deserved it, if i was to get second.

DOUBLE WHAMMY!! I don’t get second place either (again, sitting at the last row where everyone looks at you in shock was making me really uncomfortable), and

TRIPLE WHAMMY!!! I don’t get the third place either..by now, the crowd (which has shrunk to 30%, mainly only the participants) goes crazy..As i get up to leave , what was really heartening that almost every particpate came over to me and congratulated me and told me how i deserved first place (wanted to thank you all at that moment for that, whoever you guys are, but i was still recovering from what happened)..

I walk out and go home. I couldn’t help it, but i was hurt.

Who wouldn’t be? People who have heard me sing, think that i am “naturally” good at singing. (Doesn’t mean i dont appreciate you guys tolerate my singing) , but they don’t know about the countless nights at home when my whole family is sleeping and i take my guitar and practice, practice for hours to get that song right, to do justice to that song. When i sing a song, i believe that i wrote every single word of it and its my job to make sure that the listeners feel, and understand the purpose of the song. When you literally put you heart and soul into something…and then dont get what you deserve..you can’t help but feel bad.

But like everything, this experience has taught me something. It made me ask myself, why i sing?

Today, 200 music lovers gave me first place, while two judges thought i don’t deserve anything.

I guess that makes me a winner