Matters of the heart are always messy.. Age no bar!

Songs are hypnotic things - they have the ability to take us back in time. Ronan Keating’s “When you say nothing at all” is my wound-of-the-past song. I was watching Notting Hill today on Zee Studio for the millionth time and I heard this song being played in the background and for a moment I just froze.

Snippets of my life came flashing in front of my eyes for the briefest painful moment. 18 year old me, fresher’s day in college, my seniors making me rehearse this song on and on and on until it sounded good enough. I had a bass voice according to one of them who was a “professional musician” and by professional I mean a girl with a nose ring and could play a guitar (whose footsteps I soon followed but failed miserably!) Still have the nose pin though, so yaay me!

Anyway.. back to my story. There I was standing in front of a crowd of at least a few 100s, onstage, mike in front of me and I saw him.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   He who I had a mad crush on when I was in school, he who was a cool long haired guitarist playing in a popular city band, he who was a complete jerk and broke my heart on our first meeting by calling me fat.  

As my luck would have it, he was judging the singing competition that I was partaking in and he happened to be dating someone from my college. After about a 30 second heart-attack I began singing Ronan Keating’s “When you say nothing at all”. I have no idea how I sang, whether I was in sync to the karaoke CD or whether I even finished the song. But when I got off stage my seniors patted me on the back and said “Good job!”

I lost. He made his girlfriend’s junior win. The sweetness of this song is lost on me now.

Years later I saw him.. at my gym. Panting like a dog and looking like a gorilla. I thanked my stars that I didn’t have to end up with him.

This chapter in my life made me set my standards very high for the kind of man I would end up with – a non jerk long haired bad boy guitarist who looked dangerous, but was really sweet and most importantly would never make fun of me or laugh at me ever!