A Music Therapy Research Trip in India, part 1: the hatching of a plan

It all started over an ice cream, as so many of the best things do.

After class, before a rehearsal, and in the middle of what was already a very long week, my friend Ellie and I decided to pop into JP Licks for a restorative cone. Black raspberry for me, with chocolate chips bigger than my teeth, and some sort of vegan concoction for her, that I won’t even dignify with a description.

Oh I suppose I shouldn’t mock.. As well as being one of the most poised, compassionate, and almost offensively capable people I have ever had the pleasure to meet, Ellie also buys into such nonsense as mindful consumption, and living by the values you choose for yourself. (As another wise pal would say: ‘Who invited Buzz Killington over here?’) As such, she is a vegan, for ethical and environmental reasons, though while we were in India, she was a mere vegetarian, as she didn’t want to inconvenience our various hosts. And she isn’t even po-faced, if you can believe it. I know - I hardly can either. And yet, during our trip, she rendered me helpless with laughter on pretty much a daily basis. On the other hand (picture me doing my best Topol/Tevye impression - a milkman! Even my impressions aren’t vegan!) vegans are nerds (right? Guys?) so now I don’t know what to think..

Anyway, after a spot of gossip (I would say that we were doing some seriously cerebral chin wagging, but it’s near impossible to engage with the issues of the day when you’re busy noshing on a cone) our conversation turned to the summer ahead, miles and years away though it seemed at the time.

Ellie mentioned that she was going to explore music therapy treatments in India for just over a month. I mentioned that aside from carting my harp around, frantically trying to learn the guitar, and a music therapy work placement at a neuro-disability hospital in Putney, I was going to sit in my pyjamas, eating Pom Bears.

Somehow, this resulted in Ellie inviting me to join her on a trip half way across the world, that would hopefully result in a feasibility study for a proposed initiative to connect student music therapists in the US with music therapists and other interested parties in India.

I’ve had worse yields from an impromptu mid-afternoon ice cream break, I suppose.

In the next installment: some information about Music Therapy (big M, big T), some itinerary-based delights, and a rambling account of our first days in Delhi.