My playing of piano

 

                                             My life-changing experience 

School life was filled with marvellous and glorious moments. It was not about academics only but also about sports , learning to dance, spending humongous amount of time in the library and the best thing of all was learning to play the piano. How had learning to play the piano caught my fancy , no one knew or questioned it for that matter; it was sufficient that I wanted to learn it and so it was effectuated.

 My first teacher was a gentle French nun who was called Sister Mary – reverently. A gentle soul who helped me plod along all the basic scales , C major onwards. The constant playing and replaying of scales on a loop , called practising was down right tedious . As resolute  Sister Mary was about beginning every piano lesson with the oh so monotonous scales, I was equally determined  to play them out as soon as possible on the hopes of playing something interesting and then maybe progressing on to writing a couple of symphonies like Beethoven or maybe Mozart – oh the grandiose dreams of a child!  Our acquaintance, however, was short lived as Sister Mary was transferred to the Darjeeling branch of our School.

It was my next piano teacher who was my real mentor. Sister Francine was an absolute delight, a friend, philosopher and guide. She had a total no nonsense air about her yet was very patient while teaching. Right from how to hold up my hands above the piano such that the fingers would hover above the keys , striking the correct key at the right time and then moving on to the next note, the next key. To reading out and writing of the notes, she made the lessons interactive  and fun more so with the interjection of humorous comments. She reduced the time of playing of scales to the first ten minutes of the class and we progressed on to playing short pieces of music.  To play them at the correct beat she introduced the steady tick-tock of a metronome. The more I played short snippets of music under the able guidance of Sister Francine the more enthralled I became with playing the piano .It had become a life changing experience for me. Sister Francine’s expert, effective and competent instruction had adroitly stoked my interest for playing the piano. At certain times I used to play the piano for a couple of hours every day after school hours, in one of the beautiful piano rooms of my school. Each room with its  huge French windows had a beautiful  piano, a cupboard full of piano music sheets, books, metronome and two stools. 

A very interesting shift in this piano playing journey happened when I chanced about one musical piece called “The Gypsy’s Dance”. It was a very beautiful allegro, vivacious and  full of pizzazz. I learnt to play the entire musical piece in a couple of days. Then onwards, as soon as   school got over, I rushed to one of the piano rooms, opened the piano; set up the metronome at a quick speed and – submerged myself in playing it continually till Sister Francine came and we started our lessons in earnest.

A few days later, my friends started coming over to the piano room to hear me play “The Gypsy’s Dance” they were as enthralled  listening to it as I was playing it. This had never happened before. In the ensuing days, more classmates would stroll over and inform me that they would be  coming to hear me play “The Gypsy’s Dance” and so they did. Those were the times when my fingers danced over the piano keys in sync not only with the  tune, beat and metronome but also my elation; Exhilaration for the incredible accomplishment. 

Moreover, I had played this composition so many times  that it had became imprinted in my mind and I started to play it with my eyes closed.It was at one such moment, surrounded by my friends , playing this melody with eyes closed, that Sister Francine happened to come along. My friends told me later that she had stood at the door and heard me play the entire tune before coming into the room. She asked my friends  whether they liked the music played by the budding Beethoven of our school- as my eyes were closed ; they had  laughed and then replied in affirmative . My zeal for playing the piano continues.