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He sits silently in the shadows, the light from his laptop glowing onto his face. Headphones on, he is listening to that one song he always goes to in times of depression. He adjusts the volume button, conscious of how when it’s too loud, one of the earphones go silent automatically. He is engulfed in darkness, and the only thing heavier than this darkness is his heart. He has just felt the sorrows of past and present come crashing onto him. His sensations overloaded, tears naturally started building up. The song goes on, barely stirring any new emotions inside the listener. But unmistakably he can feel the old emotions churned into turbulence as the singer’s sad voice corroborates with the pressing emotions and the painfully honest musical instruments that lament his unspoken worries. The guitar riffs cried with him as the flood of tears broke free of all restraints. The darkness and absolute solitude would help hide the taboo expression of emotions. ‘look how they shine for you, look at the stars look how they shine for you’ the singer would continue to repeat in the most grief stricken voice and somehow summarize every emotion and unleash more torrents of tears. Oh how he wished to able to respond with a composition of his own! It seemed as if his options of lamenting were limited by his inabilities in life. His failures seemed so strong; they would even corrupt his right to repent in a befitting manner.

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Of course music was the one class they all liked. This was what made the module bearable, they said. A certain Yousaf Kerai was presenting South Asian music today. Last time it was the fakirs with Sindhi Sufi poetry. The haunting folk tunes had left an ever lasting impression on all. What could possibly be better than that? Certainly not a typical history and tradition lecture from a Mathematics major. Or so they thought before Kerai and the young boy accompanying him started their kaleidoscope of nuances. A tabla and sitar was all they had, in addition to generations’ worth of knowledge and experience of reveling in the classics. A Kashmiri raag was presented first, it’s lightly energetic melody echoing off the huge walls of lecture hall, composing a uniquely entrenched mixture. Then Punjabi tunes were fused onto the now familiar Sindhi folk music; upbeat energy getting humbled by the light symphony. Some old and long forgotten Bengali tune was played. Bits and pieces from old, well known ghazals followed. Then they played the aymen raag. The oldest raag, kerai said, from the genius of Amir Khusro himself. The boy on the sitar worked his fingers back and forth, up and down delicately yet swiftly, pressing the right place at the right time, coordinating listening to wrist movements and to the dexterously playing fingers to respond to the changing flow of music. This instrument, this inanimate magician, was conceived some eight hundred years ago, as Kerai further elaborated. The base was made from dried pumpkin and the hilt from a special wood. The elders had impersonated emotions onto every string, cord and fret. Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Da Ni Sa. Every piece of wonder was a collage of these basic elements. But it was Kerai’s tabla that truly spoke a multitude of South Asian dialects. Kerai played a steady four beat rhythm to set the stage for the boy. 1,2,3,4 clap 1,2,3,4 clap. “words cannot express this expression” he teased the limits of verbal language while they both continued to churn magic out of their inanimate magicians. And then they made this quick, steady transition to the sixteen beat variant of these same symphonies. The audience fell deeper and deeper into a trance as the musicians’ hands worked increasingly furiously, but with surgical precision and delicacy, on the instruments. The spell was being cast around these passive observers. The tabla flowed naturally in a direction, inviting the sitar to follow its lead while also enhancing its expression amidst the tabla taps. It was at this point that the hearts and souls of the whole audience united, all now prisoners to this immortal beauty of music, a beauty that words could never capture.