The first time I heard the violin being played was when I was seven. My mother loved music and after saving for many months, she had enough to buy a used radio. I still remember the excitement and happiness in her voice as she came home that evening. The first thing that she did was to gleefully proclaim, “I’ve bought it”. Everyone knew what ‘it’ was – even my three year old sister. And as my mother turned on the radio, the last strains of a Mozart sonata could be heard.

                                      And then the announcer declared that the next song would be Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. From the moment the piece began, there was only one thought in my mind – to learn to be able to play the violin. My mother had once told me that Beethoven had composed the Fifth symphony while he was under the agony of discovering that he was beginning to go deaf. And as I listened to the haunting and disturbing melody, I could feel the very emotions that must have raced through his mind when he wrote it.

                                                The music that emanated from that old radio spoke the language of my soul and from that day, music was everything to me. My spirit seemed to be released from the chains that had impeded its growth. Till that moment, I had wondered why God had created me. I blamed myself for the sorrow that made my mother weep every night. It was because of me that father had left us. Until that magical evening when my terminus in life was revealed to me by the hands of Fate herself, I had been living a life of despair, despondency and disillusionment.

                                      But everything changed as I listened, spellbound and overwhelmed by the voice of what I knew to be my destiny. It was not a mere thought that made me want to learn the violin. Instead, the first strains of that music had instilled into me a belief – a belief that I could be a violinist. Even if the universe itself conspired to stop me, I would not be hindered. I would grab the first ray of hope that I had ever received and transform it to reality.