I have a gift. It is a tragedy at how few people are aware of their gifts. How seldom they find the time to reflect, and try to decipher what is it they really want. Perhaps, it is the inadequacy of relevant sources to point you in the direction – our exposure is subjective.

One of my aunt helped me develop a habit of reading newspaper. Everyday after getting back from school, “Ma, paper kutha?” ‘mom, where’s the newspaper. While growing up in a very remote village in very remote times, I somehow stumbled upon Kafka, Joan Baez, and The Beatles. My life has been on steroids ever since.

I realised early on the essence of curiosity. And my parents almost always supported any of my weird idea or obsessions. This is what my gift is – curiosity. I’m curious, eternally, everywhere, when I wake up, when I go to sleep, when I walk, when I listen, curiosity is how I function. However, it also encourages an obsessive behaviour if not kept it check, well, I have gotten lost more times than I care to remember.

Regardless of my personal innuendos and carriages, curiosity in general is what makes you grow as a human being. Curiosity to know, to feel, to experience. And this is exactly the job of a teacher. To not calculate potential of a student, rather help them cultivate curiosity as a core human value.

Whenever I have gotten a chance in life to tutor, I’ve had the most fun really. One could imagine this being a subconscious desire to hold power, but in essence the act of teaching is never really a power-play, in fact the opposite – inform the student of their existence.

During covid, I started a songwriting course titled Indie 101. I had spent months designing the most relevant and to the best of my capacity a course that would if not help but at least guide people in a certain about how to think and act like a songwriter. I don’t know how many people signed up but all I know is that I remember each and every person I’ve ever had a session with.

In the very first session ever, it hit me like a lightning bolt – that this is what I want to do – teach, share what I know, assist, help people, teach art, and do it my way – the way I would teach myself, not in a class, not in a group, but in conversations, one on one, alone, vulnerable, safe. Teaching has truly been a blessing.

In the first season of this songwriting course, it was already clear that I need to study. People started opening up, they started sharing their troubles, insecurities, their deepest darkest secrets and all of this information really put me in a difficult stage. Because if someone shares with you that their equation with their father is not in the right context, then you have to be sure, that you really understand the problem and can see for what it really is.

It is obvious too, because once you start writing, your subverted emotions will surface, it puts you in front of your darkest fears, it is obvious and part of the reason we write is because we want to know. But it is me to whom these stories are being disclosed. It is me who has to bear the burden of abandonment, envy, destitute, loneliness, sadness, heartbreak. And God knows I’d already had my fair share.

Teaching has showed me a way. Through analytical psychology, dreadful routines of philosophy, existential dreads of being, through harrowing tales of dishonour, teaching has opened hundred of portals of understanding life not just as me.

I’ve been studying music since I was five. I have grown up in a culture where even before a bicycle, you’re given a harmonium. In a way, music & musical training just exist for me as a part of my life, not as a todo item to check off. It is just how I live. I practice, and I write songs. But because of these sessions, courses, I had to go beyond the subjective realms of art and craft, and dig deep into the human mind. It has been seven years now, that I have been consistently studying psychology, philosophy, behaviour and any thing remotely to do with the human consciousness.

From the scriptures of Freud, long rhetorics of Jung, from weird books of life and death from the east, and the Indian mythology and science, these sessions brooded with my curious ego have taken me to places far beyond my understanding.

There is a crucial element I have realised about learning any kind of art. Before heading into it, let’s just simmer over what art actually is. We may consider Picasso, or Whitman, or Pink Floyd, or Banksy, we could take any of the masterpieces and really nail into the technical, objective parameters of what makes great art, but this is essentially a betrayal. It is delusion to get into a highly subjective matter, analyse and deduce it to certain fundamentals, and claim the grandeur of a work; of course there are principles and formulas and what not, but our human existence isn’t really a subject of dogmas.

Consider love, how can we really deduce love into an objective, universal definition. By doing so, we commit what I graciously call a cardinal sin. It is betrayal of those who feel different than us. To take a palette, and select a few of your favourite shades and concur it as a universal principle is bias. And it needs to be addressed.

Art can only be experienced through the process – of either creating or through that of an observer. But at its deepest, most vulnerable state, the observer and the observed conclude into a singularity. To understand it, consider your favourite song. The song you’ve belted your throat dry to, that song that has helped you make sense of the world, the song which is as true as your soul is to you, consider such particular song, and question yourself – do you really care who wrote it, or when, or how. It is all about your internal process that happens while you are in the zone.

While learning any form of art, this is the most crucial step that any artist takes, either consciously or through a repulsive rebellion to conventional choices. People who are original, they don’t sound like anything or anyone, they are just singular, individual in an age of algorithms, labels and platforms. The identity needs to dissolve.

This is exactly how I perceive teaching – help the student disregard every rule by enabling them to experience their own identity.

It sounds weird, it sound confusing, and even ironic to a certain extent, but there are two steps that we, as humans, need to imbibe in our understanding. One, to acknowledge what there is, and two, to let it go.

Teaching is a profound act of human existence. It is primal, almost encoded in our DNA. It is one of the most natural things you could possibly practice as a human being.

Go watch some videos on the internet about how animals teach their young ones. To anthropomorphise it, as is our most perverse act as conscious beings, teaching for animals is as natural as to hunt, or to fly, or to do whatever they do.

Sharing what I know about the arts, the human condition has been the most valuable excurtion I have ever undertaken. It has not only made me a better musician, but has engraved a lot of virutes that I only could admire. Patience, honesty, perseverance, consistency, and a plethora of others that seems rather redundant to even mention, because our journeys are individual, personal and they happen in a place where no one could ever belong.

My guru said, “Saby, don’t teach the things I am teaching to just anyone. Always have a filter”. For ages I kept questioning this only to later realise that I have no filter, I don’t want to have a filter. Every one who has ever existed share the same equal right to explore their self and human emotions through art, and in a way I am just following what my guru asked me to do – having no filter is in itself a filter.

If you have ever wanted to realise an artist self in you, give me the honour to assist you in your journey. You know how to find me.