The Speech of Angels
by Sharon Maas

Jyothi is a child of the slums and the streets, with a faint memory of past happiness: green hills at dawn, a boy’s clear and candid gaze, a high light room flooded with music. After the devastating death of her mother a charitable Western couple whisks her away from Bombay’s chaos, danger, and filth. She is given a comfortable home, a first-class education - and a precious half-violin.

But Jyothi finds herself an outsider locked up in a lonely world of her own, unable to communicate and ostracized by others. The discovery of her rare musical gift changes everything. Words may never be easy for Jyothi, but music flows from her, exquisite music, music of the soul. The world listens: and the rootless waif Jyothi becomes the international superstar, Jade.

Fame, it seems, can solve all of her problems. She can use her virtuosity to win the applause of others, stardom to feed her faltering ego, Bach to win the heart of the man she wants. Yet all this leaves her unfulfilled.

She must learn that music cannot be a servant; that she must give every bit of herself to the sheer joy and beauty of playing. She must follow music back to its roots, deep inside her.

Only then she will find the love and happiness she longs for, become the musician she was born to be: when music becomes “the Speech of Angels.”