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The Prodigy

The news of her reaching the finals of a singing competition did not come as any surprise to anybody. She was gifted with a voice which her friends in her high school were jealous of. She won all singing competitions in the school. She won all singing competitions in the locality. She had been singing since she was 3 or maybe since she was 2. Even she didn't remember since when she was singing. She just dreamt of making it big in singing, and maybe one day she would have many super hit music albums to her name. Her dream was to be the biggest singing sensation in the country. She dreamt of giving autographs to people wherever she went. In fact, she had practiced different styles and zeroed in on what autograph she would give once she was famous. As of now she had to clear the last hurdle before giving a shot to becoming a singing sensation

The Talent Hunt show was being aired at a prime time slot at a premier TV channel. It had 3 stages before the finals with participants being eliminated at each stage. The final round had 10 contestants and was supposed to be aired for four weekends. The participants were supposed to exhibit their singing talents in front of judges, who were the famous singers and music directors of the Bollywood. No historinics expected. They had to come on stage, sing and hope that judges shower truckloads of praise on them and the audience vote for them through SMS. Maybe a few lines about themselves might help voters decide upon whom to vote. After all, they needed to know about person whom they would be voting for. Apart from that few lines about the show, their expectations from the show etc would have been more than sufficient. No role of fake emotions, region to which contestant belonged, religion, caste or any other details. Just pure talent. After all, this show was different from any other talent hunt show. This was the only show that selected winners based upon talent. Other talent hunt show were nothing but sham!


The preparations consisted of rehearsing for hours together. She had to also prepare her introduction and answers to some random questions that could be posed to her. Her mother did not want her to look awkward as compared to other urbane contestants. After all, she had come so far and a win here would lead to opening of floodgates to her dreams, her destiny. The last thing she would wish would be to get eliminated even after performing well. With all the preparations, she went to the preliminaries. The preliminaries came as a big jolt to her chances. Not that she didn't perform well. But then, there were 9 others, all equally talented and all competing for that coveted spot. She would be competing for next few days with the best singers. A loss here would be a heartbreak. In the first round of the finals, one of the judge was not that forgiving as she would have liked. He kept quarreling with other judges who seemed quite impressed with her, at the end of which he just bluntly stated - "You don't have control over your pitch. With this you can expect nothing in the music industry".

That was like a heartbreak.

For the first time in the competition she risked getting eliminated. Thankfully, there were no eliminations in the last stage when there were only 10 contestants left. This show was, after all quite different from other shows. The producers wanted to disappoint nobody! Still, she ranked seventh int he first round of polls. But all was not lost. She had 3 more rounds to bounce back. But that would require her to showcase something more than singing talent. Maybe, her singing didn't connect her well with the voting audience. Somehow, that emotional connect was missing. She needed to work on this. Yes, next week she would perform much better. Her mom came up with an idea. She realized that it is often the audience who votes. Ultimately it may not be so discerning about who is slightly better than whom. Maybe, there can be some other techniques to win. What about making an emotional pitch?

Next week came and she sang well, as did the others. But this time, some other judge was unforgiving. The real talent lied in overcoming these hurdles and connecting with the audience. And she hit bang on! A bit of smile smile, followed by some crib and lots of tears proved to be a trump card. In a week her rankings jumped to third. Now the competition was extremely intense. The top two were equally adept in making emotional appeals to the audience. The penultimate round saw no change in top three ranks. Now winning was a herculean task.

Maybe, some luck on her side ... or maybe a quick analysis would help. Then came one of the eureka moment when she realized that she was the only one from that part of the country. Maybe, that vote bank would help. She could easily make emotional appeals pertaining to that region. Perhaps her parents would help her in her endeavour. The top two contestants couldn't make such appeal. Both of them were from Mumbai. They would eat into each other's votes, and in the process she would gain. She just needed to apply herself well, and leave the rest to the public, which was after all the best judge, mature enough to decide who was the best.

The trick clicked. She had won. She became the first among equals. That was her ticket to stardom. She couldn't believe this. She could see her on covers of music albums, on stage performing with the likes of AR Rahman. Her career was ready to take off. She was into the big league now

In a year's time when would have her first music album. She would record few more songs before her career would begin to fizzle out. Then, there would be a new star coming from a even more rigorous contest. But by then, someone else would have noticed her talents and she would rule the small screen as a actor, courtesy few soaps with some strange spellings and surprisingly, all starting with alphabet 'K'. After all, she had the power to move people!

Comments

  1. Unbelievable! The prodigy got 2nd place on a list of the best banned videos ever! You guys should check this out, I just found it! http://www.weshow.com/top10/en/music/top-10-banned-music-videos

    ReplyDelete

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