A soundtrack of growing up

The choir concerts are always a mix of classical, folk, and contemporary music. My first year in choir, we focused on classical and Baroque compositions, which we only managed to perform the second year due to COVID. The colours of our outfits for each concert always, sometimes unintentionally, reflect and embody the general mood of the songs chosen that year, and always influence how I approach each concert. For my first concert we wore black, which brought out the elegance of the classical pieces. The next year we wore red for our program centered around bold, vibrant contemporary songs and the year after, green for that year’s hopeful folk songs.

I’ve been in Auroville for six years now, during which I’ve changed schools and been part of so many other activities, but choir is the only thing I’ve done consistently for all six years. No matter what would happen in my life, through the ups and downs of my teenage years, I have always, at least, known what I would be doing every Saturday from 2 to 3:30pm. The sense of comfort and stability the choir has given me is irreplaceable.

All of us in choir are different ages and from different schools and in different friend groups, but somehow so much of that gets left outside the door when we step in. The faces around me every weekend have changed year to year, but this remains.

And though there are so many people in choir that I don’t interact with during the rest of the week, and don’t necessarily consider myself friends with, there is something about seeing people so regularly, every week for six years, that has made them strangely dear to me. It really has felt like a family, or at least a very large sports team – this group of fifty or so who share so many jokes and references and, of course, know so many of the same songs. It’s an odd feeling to realise you’re going to miss so many people even though you’ve barely said two sentences to some of them these past years.

When I joined the choir, I was terrified and in awe of the ‘seniors’ who led the group with such confidence. It was so surprising to look around at the beginning of the previous season and realise I was the oldest person in the room. It feels like the choir has watched me grow up.

Concerts are such a major highlight at the end of every school year. The audience watches an hour-long performance, but for us, it means so much more. Our extra rehearsals on Thursday night, arguing over which colour to wear, resting all day before the concert and then warming up and getting ready backstage while we listen to CRIPA fill up with the audience. And after, when your friends swarm you backstage with flowers, as you take in that the choir season has ended, and summer has begun. 

I have never known an Auroville without choir as part of my life, and it has come to be so deeply intertwined with my experience here and the person I’ve grown into. Growing too old for the youth choir, in some senses, symbolises that I’m not going to be a teenager much longer, and brings it home to me that I’ve also grown too old for my established pattern of life here. I think I’m still trying to come to terms with that.