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100
Verghese Kurien — I Too Had A Dream
Let us listen (refer to page 93)
I You will listen to the passage about Evelyn Glennie’s journey in 
overcoming her hearing loss through music and turning a physical 
disability into a success story.
Evelyn Glennie’s loss of hearing had been gradual. By the time 
she was 11 her performance in school had deteriorated and her 
headmistress urged her parents to take her to a specialist. It was 
then discovered that her hearing was severely impaired as a 
result of gradual nerve damage. “Everything suddenly looked 
black,” says Evelyn. But Evelyn was not going to give up. She was 
determined to lead a normal life and pursue her interest in music. 
One day she noticed a girl playing a xylophone and decided that 
she wanted to play it too. Most of the teachers discouraged her 
but percussionist Ron Forbes spotted her potential. He began by 
tuning two large drums to different notes. “Don’t listen through 
your ears,” he would say, “try to sense it some other way.” Says 
Evelyn, “Suddenly I realised I could feel the higher drum from 
the waist up and the lower one from the waist down.” Forbes 
repeated the exercise, and soon Evelyn discovered that she 
could sense certain notes in different parts of her body. “I had 
learnt to open my mind and body to sounds and vibrations.” She 
explains, “It pours in through every part of my body. It tingles 
in the skin, my cheekbones and even in my hair.” The rest was 
sheer determination and hard work. She never looked back 
from that point onwards. And she got right to the top, the world’s 
most sought-after multi percussionist with a mastery of some 
thousand instruments.
Unit 2.indd   100 13-05-2025   12:08:00