I spent years mourning the violin I could no longer play, and the Bach double I would never perform with my daughter. Then I picked up a tabla, and everything changed.
At first, I did not understand what was happening to my violin playing. The exhaustion was so overwhelming that I described it to my doctors as “not normal tiredness.” I kept falling off my bike, yet it never occurred to me that these problems were connected to the fact that my notes were increasingly out of tune. It was only when the right side of my body stopped obeying me, making it impossible to hold a pen or walk without a stick, that the thought finally surfaced: this feels neurological.
By the time the neurologist reviewed my MRI results, I had already imagined worst-case scenarios, from a brain tumour to plain stress. The actual diagnosis, remitting-relapsing multiple sclerosis, felt almost like a relief. My eight-year-old daughter was not going to lose her mother. There were disease modifying therapies that, I hoped, would lessen the frequency and severity of attacks.
In time, the disease went into remission, and my body returned close to its old self. I set aside the walking stick, at least between relapses, and went back to typing my overdue PhD thesis. But my balance and fine motor skills had been permanently damaged. I never rode a bike again. The violin stayed silent in its case.
I had been playing the violin since I was seven, but I never rose beyond being an ordinary player. Still, the thought of a life without music was unbearable. No more impromptu jam sessions with friends, family, or strangers. No more playing cheerful tunes for children. No more lifting my spirits with a Vivaldi concerto or a Handel sonata. I reminded myself that I had never been more than a mediocre violinist, but that did not soften the sting of the loss.
As a single mother on a low income, I used to busk outside the local shops while my daughter Adalya twirled in time with the music. As soon as she was old enough to hold a violin, she demanded one of her own. I had imagined the two of us one day playing the Bach double violin concerto together. My friend Althea and I had performed that piece in high school, but after multiple sclerosis, I could barely manage the simple Mozart duets I had learned in primary school. I had to settle for watching Adalya play from the sidelines.
It took me a long time to accept that my violin skills were never coming back. When I finally handed my violin down to my daughter, I bought a cheap instrument for myself, convinced that my fine motor skills would somehow return overnight. I told myself that one day I would play the Bach double with Adalya, even if only once, even if Bach turned in his grave at my discordant double stops.
At the rehabilitation clinic, an occupational therapist asked me to list the activities that multiple sclerosis had taken from me, so we could work on bringing them back. I put “field research in Pakistan” at the top of the list, but the OT wisely ignored that, focusing instead on “playing the Bach double with my daughter” and “riding my bike.” There are alternatives, he told me. Maybe a tricycle instead of a bike. Maybe a guitar instead of a violin.
I tried his suggestion with a guitar I rescued from the hard rubbish. A badly played guitar is less painful to listen to than a badly played violin, but it soon stopped being fun. The frets kept me in tune, yet my fingers still fumbled the signals from my brain. In the end, I gave the guitar to a friend rather than store it with the violin.
Tabla. I cannot say exactly where the idea came from, twenty years after my diagnosis. I had seen tabla players as a child in India, and I remembered vividly a performance by tabla legend Ustad Zakir Hussein during one of his Australian tours. I had even bought myself a dholak, another kind of south Asian drum, while travelling in Pakistan. I once dreamed of learning a stringed instrument like the sarod or sitar, but the tabla, a pair of traditional hand drums, seemed more realistic. Both instruments demand equal skill to master, but the tabla is far more forgiving when your manual dexterity is limited.
The Afghan shopkeeper who sold me my dholak was a fine musician who had fled to Pakistan to escape the Taliban’s ban on music. Yet he told me he would never let his daughters learn an instrument, fearing it would blemish their reputations. Today, female tabla players are far more accepted across south Asia than they were in the 1970s, when people considered the instrument too physically demanding for girls. Compared with what those women had to overcome, multiple sclerosis seemed like a minor hurdle.
For the past eighteen months, I have been taking tabla lessons. I am learning correct finger positions for each stroke, how to recite the bols, or notes, and how to play simple compositions. Making music again, even on a new instrument, feels like coming home. When I hold a violin, I feel the distance I have slipped. On the tabla, I can enjoy measured, steady progress.
I will never play the Bach double with my daughter. But that does not mean we will never make music together again. Violin and tabla, it turns out, can form a beautiful combination.
I will never play the Bach double with my daughter. But that does not mean we will never make music together again. Violin and tabla, it turns out, can form a beautiful combination.
