Music flowed in his system and it was the bonding with the strings that catapulted him into a world where there is only the strains of melody and harmony with nature.

 As music teacher of Agra's oldest Catholic institution 166 year old St. Peter's College, Kapil now has the onerous duty of chiseling and drilling some harmonious notes and transforming the "be-suras" into lovable voices one longs to hear. "Each day I have to train scores of boys to sing and join the chorus, discipline their voices and make them feel how important music is in life," says the boy from a traditional middle class family of Sadar Bazar. "Coming from an average business family no one in our circumstances could ever imagine I would be fascinated by Cliff Richard or Elvis and gyrate to their numbers. But I love singing and playing the guitar and it is the sheer love for music that I feel I am close to the Almighty."

 The college principal Father John Farreira has just published Kapil's unique collection of popular numbers, hymns, Christmas carols, "desh bhakti ke geet," Kapil points out to the beautiful introduction to the book by the Archbishop of Agra Rev Albert D'Souza who says "Just as a smile is an unsurpassable ornament of a personality, music can be understood as the smile of the heart."

 Father John Farreira, now an international authority on Yoga, says "the Upanishads speak of Swar Yoga which can cure most diseases besides elevating the soul to the God. Even Moksha can be attained through singing."

 Kapil says about his book: Most of the students who learn to play the keyboard and the guitar yearn to play songs of famous bands. I have included not only the hymns and carols but also numbers from the golden era of Rock n Roll and cha cha cha.

The musical chords of these numbers have been cited to enable students to follow and play music on the keyboard or the guitar. The scales of most of the songs have been chosen to meet the vocal range of an average singer."

 Talking of music Kapil says "it has always been a healer, it removes our stress, relaxes mind. The sound of foot-tapping, walking, chirping of birds, baby's cry, leaves of the trees etc, everything around us has music in it. The difference lies in how we listen to each sound. Every sound has some frequency but when we sing we speak at some standard frequency. It is not a difficult task to learn to sing or to play an instrument. All we need to have is a patient and intellectual listening. The soft touches of the piano, soothing melodies of nylon strings, rocking slides and bends of distortion guitar, touching deep bass notes, and the sustains of trumpet and saxophone have music of their own kind. They can make you tap your feet and at the same time touch your sentiments."

 Kapil says teaching and learning music has become lot easier today than it used to be in the past.

 We now have a variety of instruments and of course the internet, CDs, AV lessons and fairly good coaching facilities provided by professionals.

Kapil is grooming his rock band Rudraksha, adequately equipped with western instruments including lead, strum and bass guitars and keyboards etc. played by music maestros, teaching in different good schools of Agra. "At the same time our students also keep performing for the college band "THE RHYTHMIC TEMPEST" at various places in the city and in the college.

"Our motto is to keep the band culture alive. People had adopted the DJs and recorded music but of late the live band culture is back and continuously re-inventing itself. I can see people enjoying live bands in parties and they also like their children or sometimes themselves to prepare songs and perform in their parties with the professionals."

Two years ago Kapil introduced the Trinity and Rockschool exams in Agra. A candidate learns playing keyboard and guitar by reading the musical notations.

Kapil wants people to appreciate good music whatever the style and form and also patronize good vocalists and instrumentalists of the city.

"In our days we had the singing classes in the infirmary run by the bulky nun late Mother Mary who used to fondly call us ‘Bhains ka Bachcha’ every time some one went out of sur and taal. Singing was such fun as we prepared for the Independence Day or the college functions. For more than half a century she made boys sing and dance to her loving diktats. I am told now a youngster is coaching the boys, which is reflective of the changing times. Those days there was only the piano, and now we have a variety of instruments and computer aided programming," recalls ex-student Rajan Kishore.