I vividly remember the day when my parents gifted me a guitar. It was a modest instrument with a beautiful curved body and sparkling tuning knobs.

The moment I held the guitar, I fell in love with it. Like any eight-year-old, I started dreaming about the good days in store for my guitar and me. My intuition told me that I would go a long-long way with it.

When I first played the guitar, it didn’t sound mellifluous. Nonetheless, I went on strumming the off tune guitar nonchalantly. The next day, almost bored with my new plaything, I hesitatingly took the guitar to my music teacher. After examining it meticulously, he finally tuned the instrument for me. The same day, I was taught my very first chord. In the beginning it sounded a bit rough but after a lot of practice the sound improved. Soon I started enriching my chord vocabulary. I went on and on, practicing day and night, until I mastered every chord in the dictionary.

Slowly and steadily, music started to be a part of my life. I went on experimenting with my guitar. I was captivated by the enigmatic power of music. I knew, at the depth of my psyche, that my journey with guitar would never come to an end. There would always be new things to try and, sooner or later, I could always come up with a new tune.

I started taking interest in Rock N Roll and Heavy Metal. Albums of Billy Idol, Rod Stewart and George Thorogood started filling up my CD shelve.

At times I was so absorbed in the Rock N Roll cult that I almost sacrificed my sleep trying to play Hot Legs like Rod Stewart.

I was never left with any money because all that I had was spent on buying CDs. Technology then was not so developed. I had to work really hard to figure out the actual way the songs were played.

Even today, music covers a huge fraction of my day and my parents are always telling me to ‘lower the volume.’

They should have thought about it before giving it to me. Poor folks, little did they know then that their home would become a place for practice sessions. I don’t care if anyone has anything to say against my music or me. I vow to continue strumming till the day I die because music has always moved me.