Share a hobby you’ve picked up recently — what got you into it?

When the Mind Finds Its Music: The Quiet Joy of Returning to the Keys

There are hobbies we acquire, and there are hobbies that quietly find their way back to us. Recently, I have been spending more time with music, particularly the harmonium and keyboard. It is not entirely a new pursuit; rather, it feels like an old friendship being rekindled after years of silence.

What drew me towards it was perhaps a simple longing for something that does not demand achievement. Life is often measured in outcomes—deadlines met, responsibilities discharged, targets accomplished. Music asks for none of these. It merely asks that we listen.

When I place my fingers on the keys and allow a familiar melody to emerge, something changes within me. The world, with its incessant clamour, seems to retreat a little. A tune from an old Hindi film, a bhajan, or a few phrases of Hindustani classical music can open doors to rooms long forgotten. Music possesses that rare alchemy: it can turn memory into melody and solitude into companionship.

Perhaps that is what attracted me most. In an age of notifications and hurried conversations, music offers an oasis of unhurried time. It teaches patience. A note cannot be forced into beauty; it has to be understood, felt and allowed to breathe. Even a wrong note has its lesson—it reminds us that perfection is not the prerequisite for joy.

I have also discovered that learning an instrument is a humbling experience. Knowledge gathered over a lifetime does not necessarily make one’s fingers more skilful. The hands must begin again, slowly and honestly. There is something profoundly democratic about music: the instrument does not care about one’s position, past achievements or age. It simply waits.

Sometimes I play merely to listen to the sound filling the room. At other times, I try to reproduce a melody that has remained somewhere in the recesses of memory. And occasionally, when the notes fall into place almost effortlessly, there is a fleeting moment of grace—the kind of moment for which hobbies are perhaps invented.

What began as an attempt to occupy my time has gradually become a way of inhabiting it.

I think that is the greatest gift of this newly renewed hobby. It has taught me that retirement, solitude or the passing of years need not signify an emptying of life. There are still melodies waiting to be discovered, pages waiting to be written, and mornings waiting to be given meaning.

Perhaps every human being carries an unwritten song within. We spend much of life listening to everyone else’s music. A hobby, sometimes, is simply the courage to hear our own.

And so, I continue to play—not because I hope to become a great musician, but because, for a few precious minutes, the world becomes quieter and the soul remembers how to sing.