My music story : #10 : UTC

We moved to Bangalore in 1996, at the UTC Nandidurga quarters, we were put in St. John’s high school! At the Nandidurga campus, every morning we heard piano, coming from Inko’s house! Inko’s dad was Mallu, mom a Korean. He worked as a librarian there at UTC. I heard Inko’s mom play the piano and teaching Inko to play as well. She also bought a dozen mosambis every single day from the push cart fruit vendor who frequented the campus. 

Other than that, there was Benny, tall, long haired cool dude who kept snakes and lizards as pets.who kept practising his bass guitar on the terrace. We never heard a sound from the instrument! Years later I realized that you needed to plug it in to an amp to actually hear it! 

We also had Thomas and Amy from Canada. Amy had a music book with her, with a picture of popcorn kernels on the cover page. I remember seeing what the music notes looked like and she was more than happy to explain them to me. 

Benny’s sister Sharon, invited us to her place to teach songs to perform during Christmas and other celebrations. My sister and I took part in the Carol celebrations as a tree or some other prop! Everyone around us we super talented. Some were school toppers while others  were athletic! All of us kids played Lagori or cricket every evening and my dad banned me from playing because he didn’t want me to fall sick. He didn’t have enough money for medical bills or to feed us. I was left alone with the Casio SK-1 and a red colour Sony portable cassette player. 

We went to Wesley English church and St. John’s church, where there was a cassette sale by ELS. My dad bought a cassette with Psalty as the character which had a lot of songs with bible references. The music was ok, but the singing had a lot of harmony. I listened to this cassette every single day!