In February this year, Sagar Gandhi (15), a class X student of City Montessori School (CMS), Lucknow became the first student from Uttar Pradesh in 22 years to top grade 2 of the Trinity Guildhall Foundation Level Graded Examination in Musical Performance — an exam written by 200 music students in north India. For this achievement he has been awarded an internationally recognised (electronic keyboard accomplishment) certificate by Trinity College, London which has been examining and certifying musical accomplishment around the world for over a century.
Naturally gifted, Sagar started playing the harmonium at age three, giving his first public performance at the Baha’i conference at Delhi’s Siri Fort Auditorium in 1997 when he was just four years of age. He continued to perform on stage at school, soon graduating to the electronic keyboard on which he started to train formally at age ten.
“Good music needs to be infused with originality. Therefore I often improvise while playing and have composed a few pieces myself. I also try and give my own interpretation to well-established scores and tunes,” says the soft-spoken lad who is training to clear the grade 3 examination in December this year.
Despite his musical talent and proficiency, young Sagar has kept his feet on the ground. “Music is just a pastime and unlikely to become a vocation,” he says. That’s why he hasn’t neglected his academic studies. He averaged an impressive 85 percent in his class IX final exam and lists physics, chemistry and mathematics as his favourite subjects. “You have to be really good to compose music professionally. I am not sure I will be able to make the grade,” he says sagely.
Therefore Sagar has set his eyes on two careers: teacher or science fiction author. The first choice is no surprise given that his grandfather Jagdish Gandhi is the founder-chairman of CMS, a school recognised by Guinness World Records as having the largest aggregate student enrollment (32,114) in a single city. His love of writing comes from his exceptional grasp of English and Hindi and vivid imagination which manifests in the poems he composes. In addition he claims to have already started work on a book on time travel.
Despite an impressive academic lineage and manifest musical talent, Sagar is modest about his achievements. “I am a normal teenager, trying to do my best,” he says.
Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)