Sing song

If you have ever watched Peter Sellers imitate the Indian accent, you may get influenced into thinking that all of us have a singsong voice. Incidentally, “there was no Peter Sellers” author Bruce Jay Friedman once wrote. “He was close to panic as himself and came alive only when he was impersonating someone else.” Even though he was known to be a very insecure and detached individual in real life, the legendary actor managed to give memorable performances on the silver screen.

Stereotyping India as a nation of singsong voiced people is slightly off the mark. A more accurate description would be calling us a country of singers because our national pastime, if anyone were to evaluate that, is singing. One might even accuse us of singing our own praises and very often we are guilty as charged but mostly we like to express our emotions vocally in the form of a song. Believe me, it’s true.

When I meet Jordanians, whose only familiarity with India is through the solitary Arabic Bollywood channel on local TV, they ask me if we sing and dance all the time like it is portrayed in the dubbed soap operas. The answer is somewhat ambivalent because even though in reality we don’t, the fact is that we do. Let me explain it better. What I mean is, if you visit the towns, localities and cities in India, you will see people going about their daily chores like the rest of the world, with no excessive singing or dancing. But on a closer look, you will observe people singing in random places like in the queue of a checkout counter, getting in or out of a metro, going up or down in an elevator, in temples, churches, mosques and other places of worship, while walking, swimming, jogging, talking and so on and so forth.

There is no method in this madness. Moreover it is not even considered ridiculous for anybody to start singing at any given moment irrespective of the time or circumstance. 

With dancing we are slightly controlled because of the space constraints. We have crossed the 1 billion mark as far as our population is concerned and our land mass cannot accommodate so many dancing bodies. But that caveat becomes ineffective during festive occasions when instinctively everyone breaks into a dance. However this is generally restricted to smaller groups unlike the singing that is executed universally.

Now, one does not have to be a good singer to sing in my home country. It is neither a necessary nor a sufficient requirement. I have a friend, who is a terrible singer and he confesses that the tune that plays in his head is without fault but the vocals that come out of his mouth are tuneless. This little flaw does not bother him in the least and given half a chance he likes to sing out what he wants to tell, rather than, well, tell it. The other day he came over to my house.

“I want to say something,” he sang an old film song. 

“I also want to say something,” his wife joined in.

“First you,” he continued.

“First you,” she crooned back.

“First you,” he repeated. 

“First you,” she responded.

“You,” he hummed.

“You,” she trilled.

“You,” his voice shot up.

“You,” her voice matched his.

“Let’s go shopping,” I cut in.

There was a pin drop silence.

“Bye bye miss good night, see you tomorrow,” they chorused.