Where Words Fail, Music Speaks.

by Devika Taneja

Humans use words to express their thoughts ,ideas and feelings but what if these words fail to express our emotions then to the rescue comes music. Music is a form of art  of working melody and rhythm in harmony. Music has played a major role in my life and has made it easier for me to overcome dark things in my life, for me the art of music is moonlight in gloomy night of life. When the world around becomes quite and still at night I listen to music , it is magical with its calm and soothing melodies it takes me to a new world .

When I was young I was a sort of stubborn and aggressive child. At the age of 7  my mother bought me a synthesizer ,made me join music classes. There I learned playing different melodies on keyboard for about a year or two, during these years my mother saw a drastic change in my behaviour and personality. Learning music made me calm ,confident and more concentrated. My music teacher at school made me join the school choir. Every morning singing melodies with the choir gave me peace and happiness.

After a few years I learnt to play Harmonium, driven more towards classical music made me realise how magnificent ,melodious and magical is music of India is.  Learning different types of Swars ,Raags and Taals everyday provided a complete brain workout.

In the year 2015,my mother suffered from a critical health condition due to Low b
lood pressure, the doctor while addressing treatments for her health condition told her to hear her favourite kind of music everyday to release stress. Seeing her in such a condition my whole family was under stress ,so we decided that every night we would spend time together during these hours we used to play karaoke sing songs ,play games and had quality time. Music is the medicine of mind, it helped my mother feel more relived and optimistic and positive about everything happening around her ,music worked like a cure.

 

During my 10 boards ,mathematics was my most hated subject. Numbers ,equations ,algebra , trigonometry all these mathematics algorithms were too hard for me too understand and focus upon. In my pre boards the lowest I scored was in maths. My elder brother who was during the same year preparing for JEE entrance exam, after constantly being insisted to teach me by my mother was ready to teach me maths everyday for an hour. He use to teachy me for about an hour and then would give me questions to solve on my own with this work he would ask me plug in earphones and listen to any instrumental music. This trick of his actually worked, earlier question that I would solve in about 10 minutes that too with wrong answer, was now easily solved correctly in about 7 minutes. My focus and attentiveness increased and so does my marks in mathematics. Even in my 12^th where I took Arts as my main stream subject, music helped me write theory. In history I would connect certain songs with historical events and then the stories of kings and kingdoms would stay rent free in my mind .I realised that every song is like a painting ,a song with its lyrics and tone draws and portrays the whole story in front of us.

In 2022 after 2 distressing years of covid pandemic all my batchmates were united ,we thought things would have changed, but for the last time singing that School Anthem together as the 2022 pass out batch made us all feel the same emotions. All of us sung together in harmony ,unity and coordination and this time the Anthem turned out to be the most melodious. In every school assembly we were told that ‘family that prays together stays together’, on our farewell day the school anthem made each one of us remember how from past 14 years every morning we started our day, it made us realise that we are family that will stay together always.

With incidents from every phase of my life from past 19 years ,I have acquired that no worries on what life offers me, music will always lend a helping hand.