One of my friends forwarded this message to me

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On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to

give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York

City. If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that

getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken

with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and

walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the

stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an

unforgettable sight. He walks painfully, yet majestically, until

he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches

on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back

and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks

up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and

proceeds to play. By now, the audience is used to this ritual.

They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his

chair. They remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps

on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play.

 

But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first

few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear

it snap - it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no

mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he

had to do. People who were there that night thought to themselves:

We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again,

pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage, to either find

another violin or else find another string for this one. But he

didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then

signaled the conductor to begin again.

 

The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And

he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they

had never heard before. Of course, anyone knows that it is

impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I

know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman

refused to know that. You could see him modulating, changing,

recomposing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like

he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they

had never made before.

 

When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And

then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst

of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on

our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to

show how much we appreciated what he had done. He smiled, wiped

the sweat from his brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he

said, not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone:

"You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much

music you can still make with what you have left."

 

What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since

I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the way of life - not

just for artists but for all of us. So, perhaps our task in this

shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to

make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is

no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.

 

Dear friends,

Jai Jinendra

 

The physical disability, the great genius of Itzhak Perlman, the violinist,

the snapped violin string were a result of his Karmas. His decision to go

playing despite the snapped string was his Purusharth. Life is a balance

between Niyati and Purusharth. We are nothing without Purusharth.

 

Yours in Ahinsa,

Manish