~~Memories: Learning flute~~

During my days in Cochin there would be lots of time to kill, so after going to many weekend getaways, seeing loads of movies we decided to do something useful.So our gang decided to learn any musical instrument, one of my room mate choose to learn guitar other choose violin and Ashwin went on with flute.Not to be left out from the crowd I choose to learn flute because it doesn't need much investment(60 bucks for a good flute),easy to carry,very easy to maintain and finally I can always piggyback with Ashwin when ever he goes to the class.

In Cochin there is famous school named Kalabhavan which teaches fine arts,many film artists to musicians have been trained there.As we always go for the best we decided to enroll for classes there. On one fine weekend myself and Ashwin went to the place which was full of kids ranging from 5-10 year old. Still not losing our confidence we went on to the office registered for flute class and got our ID cards.Once done we were instructed to goto the class on the second floor.

Once there we found there there were quite a mix of the age group there were kids but we found there was a person in mid 30's and a person in 60's who came to learn the instrument after retirement.This gave me a little courage that I can also blow that instrument easily. Our tutor was a nice guy who said its easily to master the instrument but only thing we need to practise it daily(the only difficult part).

He gave us a flute told us to how to place our hands and how to place it near the mouth .He asked us to blow the air gently from the mouth, at the beginning the sound which came from it was like from a rice cooker and after few minutes of effort I got something like of a milk cooker.I was happy that I could make a sound from the instrument on my own.Then our master asked us to buy flutes from the nearby shop,once there shopkeeper showed us a basket and asked us to pick one from it.As if we are masters in that instrument we started selecting one by one and blowing the air out of it and placing it back saying it was not good.Finally I found one with which I could make some sound from it and immediately took it.Ashwin still not satisfied with any of the pieces left in the shop compromised for the best of the worst thing in that.



From that day onwards we started going to the classes on every weekends,Ashwin being sincere enough used to practise the notes on whatever freetime he got, in his secret place where no one can listen to it.Once our flat manager heard some noise was coming from the 20th floor of our apartment so he went there for inspection, it was around 7pm then.On hearing his footsteps he found that the music(!) got stopped which confirmed him that the place was haunted.Then he freaked out when saw a dark figure emerging from that place.He finally got his life back when he found it was Ashwin who was mastering his flute skills.

It was fun going to classes every weekend,most of the time I used to go there unprepared and embarress myself by playing all possible wrong notes but never once my master lost his temper with me.After four months into the class I was asked to goto Bangalore for taking up a project and I had to stay there for almost 5 months.When I returned back to Cochin,Ashwin went to Sydney for his project.So I was not interested to pursue it alone and thus the world got saved from ME!