A Heart of Stone
It is my sincere regret and an item on my long list of worries that I am incapable of understanding the gravity of a situation right when it's happening. I'm not sure how much longer "I'm too young to understand" will remain an excuse. This doubt is the result of a few scattered incidents; only two of them stand out. In the beginning of 2011, when I was 10 years old and in fifth grade, Pt. Bhimsen Joshi had passed away. I did not understand the full weight of this (despite having researched him so my class could give a presentation on him), lil' young-in that I was. Five years later, I heard a few songs he sang, and I realized something: enjoying beauty and recognizing beauty are two different things. I recognize the beauty in the voices of Jayteerth Mevundi, Anand Bhate, Dr. Vasantrao Deshpande, Kumar Gandharva, and other classical music singers. I consider it a flaw, a side effect of the fact that I am a teenage, that I cannot enjoy this. But I digress. ...