The Healing Power of Music: Sameer's Journey Through Ghazals and Shayari

For a long time, he stands in the doorway and then comes and sits across the single bed in the ground floor apartment where seven men with mental health issues live together. Sameer says he loves biryani. When you say chicken, his eyes light up, he smiles, and that is his connection to a world he stepped out of long ago. Memories of food.

He used to be a carpenter and had lived in Kuwait, and at times he talks about the airplane he once sat in. His substance abuse made him slip. He was in a state mental hospital in Maharashtra and then found his way to The Banyan’s Home Again Project a few months ago. But he remembers the shock therapy that was given to him.

He was married once and had a child, but his wife remarried and the son is with her. His sisters come sometimes and bring him food. He sings and recites poems at times.

In the living room, the shrine has multiple gods from multiple faiths.

“Will you sing for us?”

“Yes, I will, but I forget parts in between the songs,” he says.

“But you remember how to sing.”

He smiles and sings. A song, a qawwali and a poem. There is the abundance of that freedom: to forget and to sing what you remember, even if it is in fragments.

Sameer’s Story

I am Sameer. I was born in 1974. I can sing songs, qawwali and ghazals. In my school years, I had two teachers, Zulfikar Sir and Bashir Sir, who were good. In those days, I read plenty of poetry… May my love sustain itself forever on just your name. Also, qawwali… One day or another, all of us must drink to our own destruction. And I liked sher-o-shayari too… The bird shall fly away one day, leaving its cage empty.

And here is another song: The sun that rises, burns, and then slowly it will fade.

I cannot remember all the songs now.

I want to go home.

No, wait—this is my home!

In its August 21 issue, Every Day I Pray For Love, Outlook collaborated with The Banyan India to take a hard look at the community and care provided to those with mental health disorders in India. From the inmates in mental health facilities across India—Ranchi to Lucknow—to the mental health impact of conflict journalism, to the chronic stress caused by the caste system, our reporters and columnists shed light on and questioned the stigma weighing down the vulnerable communities where mental health disorders are prevalent.

This profile is part of a narrative set of lived experiences the residents of The Banyan shared with Outlook’s editor Chinki Sinha. They were published in print as The Bearable Lightness of Being.