Talent Is A Hard Task Master

by Bala
(Mumbai, Maharashtra, India)

DECEMBER in Chennai means the ‘Season’.

Yes, the music season when there is a feast of carnatic music concerts in various sabhas in different parts of the city throughout the day for the connoisseurs. There is intense competition for the prestigious evening concerts in leading sabhas among the popular artists.

Lalitha was one of the most promising and rising artists. She was recognized as a child prodigy. She was getting offers from many sabhas to display the various phases of her HIDDEN talent to the increasing number of her fans.

Music reviewers, sabha secretaries and all those people whose opinions matter in the music world had hailed her and were already predicting that she would become the top ranked musician very soon.

All THROUGH her SCHOOL years she had put in back breaking number of hours of practice getting up EARLY in the morning to hone her talent to take her to this position.

Even though she was a classical musician she was also very good in LIGHT music, so that she was getting increasing number of offers from music directors of films as well as TV serial producers for singing their songs.

While her singing gave immense pleasure to her fans, she had to endure extreme pain in doing so since she was under the complete domination of her maternal uncle and aunt. Her parents had died in a road accident when she was 16 turning her into an orphan and her uncle took charge of her allowing her to stay in his HOUSE.


They knew about her immense musical talent and wanted to make use of that in every possible way to earn high income in return for bearing the expenses of giving her shelter, security and education.

They were constantly chasing music companies to give her a chance to produce their next music or video albums and TV serial producers, film producers and music directors for getting the maximum number of songs for her.

It did not matter to them whether it was RAIN or shine, hot or COLD season. What mattered to them was that there must be some high income producing assignment for her every day, most of which would be swallowed by them leaving only a small fraction for her use. Otherwise she could not ESCAPE their hostility.

The common man is glamour stuck and constantly chases the stars to get their autographs or to get his photos taken with them or to simply talk to them etc. But he does not realize how much suffering, pain, sorrow and heart breaks the stars have to endure to reach that kind of status and maintain that status.

Lalitha had to hide her pain and put on her smiling face to meet such unrelenting fans also in addition to her uncle and aunt. She realized that it was the price she had to pay in return for the mercy god had shown her while endowing her with so much talent.


The End