WHY MUSIC?

WHY MUSIC?

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”

(- Friedrich Nietzsche)

Music stays with you as you grow up, unlike most form of sports.

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By music, I refer to both listening to and playing music. But playing music increases another dimension of your life.

Music keeps your soul alive.

Playing music is like meditation, keeps your mind uncluttered before everyday buzz.

Playing music teaches to stay focused as you concentrate on your notes and your music at one time.

Playing music teaches you discipline. If you play the violin anyway you want, it will not sound good enough. You have to play as the composer has dictated centuries ago.

Music teaches you humility. If you hear the players around you, some are better, some are worse. You know where you stand.

Music teaches you hard work- violin playing especially teaches you hard work, long hours of dedicated playing to achieve some decent music.

Music teaches you need to repeat and practice to be perfect. “If I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it- Quote from Jascha Heifetz, the best violinist of last century.


Music teaches you patience. Even in your childhood , you realize that you cannot play difficult music like the expert, out of the blue. You need to practice over the years to gradually achieve greatness.
 


Music teaches you team work. However good you are, when you play in an orchestra, you need to play with the group the way everyone plays with the same intonation and speed.
 


Music makes friends from everywhere. A tough consultant boss in UK softened up on learning that I am too a fellow violinist.
 


Playing music in a group teaches you to mentor and supervise. If someone is having difficulty playing a certain musical passage, you learn to impart your knowledge without expecting anything in return.

Several musicians have helped to improve the quality of my violin by making adjustments, which I never know existed.
 


Music teaches you to be a good leader. Choir master needs to cajole, encourage the weaker singers to join up, with the rest to ensure maximum output.


Music teaches you to give selflessly. A distinguished music friend of mine Antony Raja hunts music sheets as well as midi music files for me (when I find it difficult to procure them) not expecting anything in return , but just the sheer joy of sharing.
 


Violin music (or any instrumental music) improves your manual dexterity if you are going to be a surgeon it trains both your hands to work equally well and fast.
 


Using of hands in instrumental music develops your brain as a child, as brain has large representative areas in the cerebral cortex for the fingers and thumbs.
 


                                 Figure with Cortical Brain Respresentation for Thumb and Fingers

Playing music elevates your mood. It helps to alleviate depression.
 


With increasing years and constant hours of practice daily, in music you can only getter better, faster and can perform more difficult music.


I started learning the violin on my fifth birthday. Thanks to my father’s persistence, I qualified by passing the highest (grade8) grade exam in Trinity College of Music London before I finished school.
 


Now I am a surgeon but still continue to play harder, more difficult and faster sequences now than ever before.

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU CELEBRATE BIRTHDAYS?

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU CELEBRATE BIRTHDAYS?

For everything, there is a season

And a time for every matter under heaven:

… A time to weep, a time to laugh

A time to mourn, and a time to dance..”

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

This birthday is special to my batchmates and me. We are the batch of 1970 - medical students of CMC Vellore.

Everyone is asking, each other, ”How did you celebrate your special birthday?”

This question got me wondering what is great about birthday or better still why celebrate it all. Is it just the parties , which our parents arranged when we were kids, which our spouses did to gather friends and later the children do for us?

Birth is the beginning of life, and to enjoy the fruits of life, it is good to celebrate the tree event which bore the fruit namely the birth itself. This is the reason for celebrating the birthday.

All of us are thankful to the almighty, God, the force, mother nature that we are safe and sound one more year… ; for all the things we have in life so far. So birthday is yet another reason for saying to say,” Thank you” to the bigger force in life before we return to the earth.

My dad used to visit orphanages to feed during his birthday and my children do the same.

Friends of mine feed the poor by the roadside and do not wait for birthdays to do so- Rotary Texcity of Coimbatore!

What do you do when you celebrate?

In the younger years, one decides to be the best, competes and sets special goals in the occupation. Nothing wrong with this.

But after decades pass by, it is time to wonder if life is going the way you planned……. Are your goals in profession and life being achieved?

In my batch of classmates, most guys are now changing directions- in jobs, locations, habits. I did this a year ago.

It is time to decide if you want to change the direction of your life and the goals for the future. I see an occasional younger colleague changing  more quickly and earlier if this is indeed warranted . Good for him as normally wisdom only comes with age. You live only once and you must be what you want to be!

On this special birthday for my batch, the families gather around and arrange special surprise parties.  One spouse arranged a surprise overseas trip for the husband and the family.

I left the corporate practice, after 24 years for setting up my own ambulatory surgical centre for advanced laparoscopy and bariatrics, with the family.

I now serve the prince and the pauper…. Right  from ‘Redo Bariatric Surgery‘ on overseas patients to doing ‘Whipple’s radical pancreatectomy for cancer of the pancreas’ in the poorest of the poor. There is no need to turn away anyone who cannot afford, as we can always make provisions for most who need surgery, under this roof using the most modern equipment.

I continued with my surgical work on my birthday, as surgery is what I wish to do in my life. This is my forte!

I feel at last that I am doing justice to “ Not to be ministered unto, but to minister” the motto of my alma mater.

I also finish my 2 years of tenure of heading the professional body of laparoscopic surgeons of India; as a team, we have done a lot of good to a lot of surgeons and the feeling is mutually satisfactory.

So it comes to what do you do on your birthday…

• DO SOMETHING GOOD
• DO SOMETHING GOOD YOU NORMALLY DID NOT DO THE DAY BEFORE
• DO SOMETHING NO ONE IS COMPELLING YOU TO DO
• DO SOMETHING OUT OF THE  KINDNESS OF YOUR HEART
• DO SOMETHING TO EXPRESS HUMAN KINDNESS AND NOT FOR PROFIT IN RETURN

Cooking as a ‘man – hobby’

Cooking as a ‘man – hobby’

Hobby is something you enjoy. I do not do it for money….. just for the sheer fun of it. 

Cooking by a man, least of all by someone doing surgery is not the ‘done thing’ in India!

I used to make deserts for my boys when they were little as my wife had an evening clinic. I had plenty of time in the evenings… so the boys not only enjoyed the bread pudding, making chocolates with nuts, jellys, but also learnt table manners at home.

We had a book of table etiquette for the armed forces. Pravin, Mervyn and I used to read this together… we learnt how to lay the table, which spoon goes where,who sits where, etc.

Now my boys have grown up to fine men and we still talk about those times. I nearly choked when my son Mervyn now abroad wanted the phone to be passed from my wife so that he could get my bread pudding recipie for a guest!

So cooking improves family ties first of all. My boys are game for washing up after a meal- so the manners are easy.

When I resided in Chennai for a few years, away from my family, my resolve, as a novice, was to cook all on my own and that I would never venture out for food as a necessity.

So armed with cook book donated by the author Renuka Rajkumar my cousin, I ventured into the unknown.

My wife Neena donated an entire kitchen. My sister in law Lalitha donated her mixie. My close friends chipped in with bits and bobs whenever needed.

Cooking can be traditional sticking to the rules and regulations. But once you get the hang of the usual stuff, you tend to delve deeper.

 Like for instance, making dosas from the ready made flour was not good enough for me. I started grind the dough for idlies and dosa on twice a week basis.. which most housewives abhor.

Then graduated to Appams starting from the making the doughs as ingredients, different types of murukkus; then from Tamilian to Kerala Cooking!- to Goan Cooking; from Biriyani ( fresh made ingredients) to Chinese cooking. Google and hours of desperate  phone calls to my sister, cook friends, old classmates  helped!

From the regular to high protein, low calorie cooking…. From frying to grilling fish, chicken . And this helped my patients who understood me better while talking of food in obesity. After all obesity surgery is close to my heart, and food with exercise forms  the main chunk of advice before and after obesity ( bariatric ) surgery.

Once I returned to Coimbatore and got involved with our own hospital, there has not been much spare time. But we have an excellent maid who would cook as you tell her. 

Though those who know me well accept my interest in cooking. It creates a controversial curiosity  in those who  do not know me well.

The average Tamilian woman thinks it is below the dignity of a man to cook on his own! Most Tamilian men believe this!!

I have learnt plenty  in cooking, which I apply in life

• ·         Patience
• ·        Breaking tradition
• ·        Learn to ask for help or advice
• ·        Everyone can teach you something you do not know
• ·        Staying healthy
• ·        Never anyone tell you what you can and what you cannot do!
• ·        All of us have a good cook in us trying to get out!
• ·        Most important of all, – First ask’ “Why?” and then, “Why not?”..... This makes life and cooking   a great combination!

Why do we wait till someone passes away before appreciating the good things?

Why do we wait till someone passes away before appreciating the good things?

“Making one person smile can change the world – 

maybe not the whole world, 

but their world."

I hear about relatives, friends or close college mates who pass away … sometimes suddenly; only good things come to my mind...special things which I took for granted and never said to them.

And then you hear people say how good so and so has been, how talented he or she has been or how much useful he has been to the community.

It got me thinking- what is the point in anyone saying good things about anyone after demise as in my eulogy, except to be just formal.

It serves no one any  positive purpose when good things are said when they are gone...at least to the person who died. Certainly he or she won’t be there to hear it.

It is definitely good to tell people who are alive and kicking … how much you appreciate them, how well they are doing and that really makes the latter person perform better.

A friend of mine posted in FB how her colleague gave money unexpectedly for charity all of sudden, when it was badly needed… this surprised her. She thanked him profusely. This will indeed make the donor a better person and continue to carry on his good deeds. 

Certainly, when someone passes away, we should say good things about them…it is expected of us. It is a good time to remember and celebrate in memory of the deceased person. I am not denying this good habit and by all means it should continue!

But taking this further, all I am saying is that we must appreciate openly good things about the people close to us when they are still living (friends, neighbors, colleagues, for instance). This will bear fruit for the giver and the receiver. It cements a healthy relationship between people and makes others look up to both of them.

And I mean appreciating without expecting anything in return. Appreciation of any deed expecting a reward is plain flattery and this is not what I refer to.

A select group of people who actually practice this all the time are the musicians … who openly admire the other - singers or players. They congratulate each other; this certainly improves the team performance and good will.

After all, Christmas season is here- season of good will!