Hope makes people believe in miracles. It makes them believe that there will be a better world?one day. And there are people like Amin Hakim who come to this world as godsend agents of hope.
On a warm and grey monsoon afternoon in Mumbai, we see Amin Hakim talk about his passion in life ¨C music ¨C which he and a group of his friends use to give hope to those who have none. 26-year-old Amin suffers from multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, also called MDR-TB, and yet, plays music with his friends in Sewri Tuberculosis hospital as a band who calls itself ¡®Band Aid¡¯.
Amin used to work in the catering business and was a bartender before he was diagnosed with tuberculosis about six years ago. However, the symptoms stopped after a few months of medication.
When Amin was diagnosed again in early 2017, he was barely holding on. ¡°My friends stopped talking to me because of the stigma associated with TB. And my family just needed an excuse to abandon me and my wife, and the disease gave them one. I felt utterly abandoned at that point,¡± Amin expresses with some disappointment in his voice while recalling the past. A couple of months later, he and a bunch of other patients started a WhatsApp group to support each other through these rough times.
The band started about five months ago, with a debut performance that had about 800 patients as its audience. ¡°When we started we were less than 10 people. The friends I play with, a lot of them suffer from MDR-TB, but it has not bogged them down. Instead, all of us believe in healing others, helping them out in whatever way we can,¡± Amin tells us.
After that, there was no looking back and the band now performs every week at the hospital for a couple of hours.
¡°A friend of mine, Jituraaj Singh used to struggle a lot as a musician. One day when we met, we came up with the idea of playing for the patients. In any hospital ward, there is nothing but loneliness and pain. And I wanted to ease the pain of the patients as I too had been through the same,¡± Amin tells us while recollecting how Dr Lalit Anande, his doctor not just helped save but change his life too.
Amin, along with his friends Rahul Gupta, Swapnali Kamble, Amol Mane, Lakshmi Maru, Prashant Vandola and Jituraaj Singh asked for the doctor¡¯s permission to play. To his surprise, Dr. Anande agreed, and they played for the first time about five months ago in the hospital. Amin now has as many as 40 people helping him in this initiative. ¡°Whenever a few of us have the time, we go and play for the patients. The smile on their faces is what keeps us going,¡± Amin says. ¡®Band Aid¡¯ performs all kinds of popular music ¨C new Bollywood numbers, ghazals and retro Hindi songs ¨C as patients join them in singing and dancing each time.
Dr Lalit Anande
Treating TB that has been prolonged over years is not easy. The patients have to get an injection every day for 6 months and more than a dozen tablets to be consumed every day. The side effects of these medicines are another problem to deal with altogether. MDR-TB is even tougher to fight because the bacteria are immune to the first-line drugs. The patients have to go through a two-year treatment instead of the six-month course.
The medicines that battle MDR-TB cause rashes, vomiting, joint pain, mood swings, hearing and vision problems and flu-like symptoms.
What TB patients also struggle with is social acceptance. Amin said that his family abandoned him, ¡°But I met people in the hospital who did not have a family at all. They had lived in the hospital for years with no purpose,¡± he shares.
The loneliness sometimes drives patients to commit suicide, and have to be kept motivated by counsellors.
¡°Music has helped all of us to come out of depression. I feel more alive than I ever have, and so do all my friends. Having a purpose in life is so important for these patients. No matter what happens in the future, I never want this band to stop to performing,¡± he says.