When I was eight years old, I had no friends. I was the loner of my class and was always bullied. I was attending keyboard classes at a prestigious institute but I didn’t think much of them back then. Then one day I came home from school, crying because I had been yet again bullied by my classmates. But that day, something changed.
I started playing the song I was supposed to practise at home on my mini keyboard and somehow, my hands adjusted to the keys of the instrument. Suddenly, the song had meaning. It was as though the sound coming from the instrument was a representation of my life.
From that day, playing keyboard wasn’t just a habit, it became a reason for me to live. What those classmates said about me didn’t matter anymore. It was like music was an entirely different world and only me and my mini keyboard were the citizens of that small, yet such a big world.
The world would have been such a silent or perhaps, a dead place if there was no music. There’s music everywhere around us: the song of the birds, the cry of a newborn, the rustling of the leaves, and the falling of the rain. There’s music for every emotion: anger, love, jealousy, you name it.
On my tenth birthday, my parents gifted me a proper Yamaha keyboard. That was also the year I gave my first international Exam, Trinity, for electronic keyboard. Before music came into my life, I felt I was useless; I felt that I was capable of nothing, that I have no talent.
Finding my passion and haven in music transformed me. Till now, I’ve won three gold, two silver and a bronze medal playing the keyboard. I’ve passed four trinity grades and two of them with distinction. Music has given me the confidence that every person needs when they think they are useless.
I know music and perhaps in some way, music knows me.