If music be the food of love

There was a wonderful moment on our last trip to Mumbai. A young man asked Second Sight trustee Francisca van Holthoon what her day job was.
‘I am a violin teacher’ she said.
His eyes widened.
‘Wow!’ he said.

It was a wow moment for us, too. There is a strict hierarchy of admiration for certain professions in India – ‘second only to God’ status for doctors and now, almost displacing them from their pedestals, engineers (especially daughters). And of course, joining a successful multi-national family business is considered a commendable occupation for many Mumbai offspring – like our young acquaintance. They are also expected to get involved in sewa– an Indian concept referring to selfless service for others. This young man’s father felt that our work in Bihar fitted the description of sewa. He therefore wanted us to inspire his son.
However, no visible sparks of enthusiasm were lit by our tales. But then the young man asked his question. And lo and behold Francisca’s musicality provided an unexpected muse for him – a source of momentary inspiration at least.

And how apt a reaction, I thought on reflection.
Because music - played, remembered, appreciated and experimented with, music sung and danced to and even used as a kind of comfort blanket – well, it has been important in the Second Sight Story right from the start.

What do you think caught my imagination about Dr Victor Rambo?
Was it because this American missionary doctor, an ophthalmic legend in north India, was the first to start mobile eye camps in order to treat patients unable to reach hospital? That he dedicated 50 years of his life to eye care for the poor? That he ensured his legacy in the Himalayas by training my good friend Dennis Kendall, now in his 90s and who is still doing a stalwart job in the foothills?
Truthfully, no.
What captivated me was hearing that, when 15 mules transported Dr Rambo’s baggage across dangerous mountain passes, this baggage included not just ophthalmic equipment, food and clothing…but a record player. Dr Rambo loved jazz and would dance to its accompaniment to relax patients before surgery. I had already heard that Dr Rambo once said that curing the blind was ‘the happiest work in the world.’ Now I totally got it.

When Francisca and I travel to India we try to take an old violin and a cheap guitar. They are wonderful accessories going through Indian airport security. When the diligent and, usually, extremely polite and youthful personnel find my small pocket ophthalmoscope they treat it with mild suspicion – it could just be a small explosive device. When told that it is a solar-powered instrument for examining the eye, they are impressed, then immediately display hyperchondriacal anxiety and ask nervously ‘my eyes are ok?’
With the guitar they might request a quick song or strumming of chords. Far more fun for everybody.

Singing can also be revelatory. What and how people sing can convey much useful information about them.
When I first visited my friend Dr Helen Rao’s eye department at The Duncan Mission Hospital two decades ago, she invited me to Morning Devotions in the chapel. In the front pews were rows of young nurses, wearing the old fashioned traditional white caps. They rocked from side to side, black hair and white caps bobbing in perfect synchronicity, singing like happy angels. Later, their enjoyment of their medical work matched the joyful singing at daily worship.
Years later, Helen headed another eye department at a Christian mission hospital known for its rather fiery and frightening evangelicalism. We were asked to judge a singing competition. We sat through one group after another of stern, unsmiling nurses, shouting hymns at us. Helen told them to pipe down. I laughed at her irritation. What did you expect I asked. The same young women had been in her eye department earlier when she was giving her gentle, informative post-operative briefing to patients.  As soon as Helen had left for her ward round, these nurses had taken the opportunity to bellow Bible readings at the patients as they waited for transport home. Vocal vehemence seemed to be part of the job description.  And proselytising took precedence over caring.

Once, on a freezing winter’s night in rural Bihar, we gathered at a farmhouse. Crammed into a small rooftop bedroom was photographer Jenny Matthews, two of the bosses of Laxman Eye Hospital and the farmer who had helped arrange the very successful village screening programme earlier that day. The locals sang us folk songs; we sang them Leonard Cohen. By the time we went to bed, we all felt a lot warmer. The next morning, on the same rooftop, we each carried out our usual morning routines – yoga, prayers, bodily ablutions, reading the newspaper – as if we had lived and worked together all our lives. Call it due diligence Second Sight Style.

Last summer we finally got round to visiting an eye hospital in the Seohar region of Bihar. They had been asking for our guidance for years but something had always prevented us getting there. The super-excited hospital founder wanted to get the Welcome banner just right. So he sent me a picture of the design before getting it printed.
He had found a photo of ‘me’  on the internet that was actually BBC broadcaster Samira Ahmed and described her/me as the ‘greatest humanitarian’….
Please, no welcome banner necessary I messaged. Just ask a patient to greet us, in their own way.
A smiling post-operative cataract patient did just this. He came from a village famous for generations of sanga players. ( Sangas are traditional Indian wood instruments, resembling giant upside down smoking pipes, the kind my Dad used to smoke) . Anyway, this patient brought three sanga musicians along with him who provided a spontaneous, enthusiastic welcome for me and Second Sight trustee Sabilah Bundhoo.

Sabilah doesn’t herself play a musical instrument. But she has an even more impressive musical ability – she can sing every single song in every single Hindi movie ever made. (I exaggerate only slightly). Nothing else can endear you to more people in India. In Bihar, where Bhojpuri is spoken in many areas, Bhojpuri movie songs are popular. She knows some of these, too. Whether it is a radio in a car, a fellow traveller humming in a bus or a movie poster at train station that sets her off, Sabilah will break into song, with the expressive hand movements, head wobbles and coy eye movements learned from a lifetime of watching Hindi movies. Those who can, join in. Those who cannot wobble their heads in appreciation.
In the India of 2024, there is a more serious side of connecting through music in this way. It was put well in an article I read in NewLines Magazine last month.
‘Historically, the shared passion for Bollywood films united a country made up of multiple faiths. Nowhere is this more evident than in the fact that for over three decades the reigning superstars in India have been three Muslim actors: Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan. However, in the India of recent years, there has been a worrying polarisation along religious grounds, fed and encouraged by PM Modi’s Hindu Nationalist Government. So every move to remind people of the power to bring people together to recognise that they share more than what separates them is now super important.’

If music be the food of love, play on said Shakespeare’s Duke Orsino. And that’s the page we are on. This summer we were unable to take our guitars and violins and singing voices to Bihar as we usually do. But we have been busy in the UK using the power of music to help the Second Sight work. My wonderful BGA gospel choir – representative of London’s vibrant, open-minded, multi-cultural and multi-faith population, held two fundraising concerts for us. The Second Sight ceilidh band had people dancing at marriage and birthday celebrations in the villages of Devon and who paid for their entertainment with donations that would cure the blind villagers of Bihar.
The summer concluded with the charity’s biggest annual fundraiser -Firestone Music festival, also in Devon. The event is organised by Fiddler Extraordinaire Francisca van Holthoon and her family. Violins had a good showing but there were also electric guitars, drums and bass, brass and wind instruments galore and a domed, metallic instrument resembling a UFO which emitted a rich cosmic sound when played. The Bihari sanga musicians would have felt at home. This year, Firestone raised over £10,000 – that equates to at least 500 blind patients getting their sight restored this coming winter.

I think that might warrant a ‘Wow.’

Lucy Mathen