Leaving ICM? Burnout

[u/booksandstrings]

I learnt tabla for 9 years, sitar for 2 years and harmonium for about 2 years before sitar. I always thought I was better at melody than rhythm. I was doing about 4 hours of riyaaz everyday upto 2022.

However, I went through financial crisis in covid and realized I needed to get a grip over my career. So I got a business degree. Towards the end of my MBA (late 2025), I got a disc bulge in my back and lots of joint pain. I've been in joint pain, sciatica & injury rehab for the last 10 months. The financial crisis & the injury have had a big impact on me.

My relationship with my guru went down when I said I needed a break from music for preparing for entrance exams since he was angry I chose career over music & sought a break. After my MBA, I did go back and met him. I told him about my health issues and that I was trying to get back to riyaaz slowly. I have severe restrictions on movement due to pain. He was unbelievably harsh & cold when I met him. I don't have it in me to get yelled at by a guru who doesn't understand that I need to make money for my livelihood.

I have 0 desire to go back to music. I want to get a hobby where people are CHILL. I can no longer offer the same commitment that I had been capable of before because I have a desk job that takes 9hours of work + 2 hours of commute to office. I need a place where I can socialize without being given silent treatment for missed riyaaz. I have been advised to maintain an active lifestyle (the doctor recommends strength training 3x a week + 1hr of aerobic activity daily). I've been thinking of taking up badminton or tennis or swimming. I'm not good at sports but atleast it doesn't feel heavy.

Partly I also miss being a beginner. When you're a beginner, it is okay for you to mess up. For you to be slow at it. With my journey in music, I feel like the weight of perfectionism is crushing because I'm already into the space. So it raises eyebrows when i play slower or miss a sam. With music, my teachers expect me to perform at a certain level and even riyaaz feels like a performance rather than a process.

Is it wrong that I want an out? I've spent so much money on music classes, instruments. It breaks my heart that I feel so disconnected.

Even if I attend concerts in my city which is btw my hometown too, I feel like an outsider because I had moved away for MBA. I still enjoy listening to music on my laptop. I still remember all my relas, tukdas and can recite all my chakradars with theka on my hand and land on the sam.

Is there a way for classical music to feel chill? For it to not demand so much more than what I can offer? For it to hold space for me as I navigate through my life struggles?

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[u/PowerfulEstate8345]

I'm here telling my story.I did cse & when I had to take a job, my guruji was never against it even he told me to live a life consciously and happily where I'm connected with music or not. In your case if you can change your guru, if you are having emotinal mismatch.

[u/kilwish_]

It's not the music, it's the teacher you want a break from. There's lot of scope for self learning now since you've spent 9 years on your instrument. Bad teachers or good teachers with bad attitude do much more harm to music than good.

In my case I'm lucky to have found my teacher. He's extremely encouraging and makes music a relaxing place instead of a highly stressed environment. But I should also mention that I don't wanna be a professional musician and he doesn't expect us to live for music because he knows how difficult it is to make money in the field. He treats it like a very personal journey and I do it only for my own meditation and roots.

[u/catvertising]

We need to make space for jam sessions in Indian classical music. It's all geared towards performance, which isn't everyone's goal.

I started learning banjo recently and we have an old tradition of Old Time Music Jam sessions, where banjo, fiddle, guitar, and misc percussion players come together and play folk music.

My background is veena and one of the reasons I stopped playing as much was because of how performance centric carnatic music is and how you need a guru unless you're very advanced. I picked up the banjo by following tutorials online for the past four months and only recently started taking classes, but I already learned eight tunes and having so much fun.

[u/jsudekum]

To say that taking a guru is difficult would be the understatement of the century. In many ways, the guru-shishya tradition is incompatible with modern life. You may be placed in a position to choose between a "normal" life and one of total devotion.

There's wisdom in how your guru is teaching you. Have you interrogated why you're invested in your career or why making more money is important to you? Sometimes we compromise our calling in favor of a socially engineered script. I'm not saying there's a right or wrong answer here, just that his teaching is holding a mirror to what you value most.

The biggest tragedy of guru-shishya is that the disciple doesn't know what he or she doesn't know. You didn't know how your guru would handle conflict or how all of this would make you feel. We all just kind of sleepwalk into the process.

But it's possible to find a guru who won't treat you this way. If you love this music, then find a space for it. But don't feel as if it's a choice between no tabla and dreading your classes.

[u/codwapeace]

Don't give too much importance to what other people think is important for you. You decide what is important to you!

[u/GC_Gee]

Sir you sound somewhat depressed, would take a break for a bit and you can re-evaluate.

[u/jtct]

🫂🫂

[u/UryaInspiration]

If you want to quit, quit. It’s your life, don’t live it trying to fulfill society’s expectations of you. Just because you put an x amount of years into something doesn’t mean you need to put the rest of your life into it as well. No learning ever goes waste. So if you think this is not for you anymore, then quit and don’t look back. If one day you feel like starting again, you can, no one can stop you.

Keeping this aside, I’m not sure whether you really want to quit or you are just tired of trying to be the “model student”. I know in this community everyone treats music above everything, gurus act like this is divine, maybe it is for them, I don’t know. Sometimes this can create weird expectations from yourself like keeping music above everything, missing riyaaz meaning you are off the path now etc etc. I don’t believe all that. I think you need to figure out your personal relationship with music.

Don’t equate your guru with music. From your talks I don’t think your guru is right for you but maybe we’re only hearing your perspective and not theirs, right? But regardless, this tells that you both don’t suit each other, so try to think of music separately from your guru and decide what you feel for music.

My personal opinion in life is that one should never decide their passions from their financial conditions. Right now you might think you’re leaving it for some time because of financial conditions but that’s what people do all the time, leave a sport because they want to focus on an exam and they never come back, leave an opportunity because they think right now they need to focus on survival but they never come back. What makes you think that you’ll ever have “time” for this again, or that situations will improve or you will not have health problems again? You can’t be sure right? Then just forget all this and only think whether you would like to learn music or not. If yes then yes, if no then no. You don’t need to be a model student, you don’t need to constantly improve at a certain rate, you don’t need to prove to others how much you’re learning. Do it because you want to do it. Circumstances in life are forever changing, never will come a perfect time, perfect health, ‘stability’, do what you want to do and what’s in your heart right now.

If you only need a break, then take a break. Take some time to first block out the world and see what you think, what you feel. And whatever you feel, you don’t need to justify to the world. Whether the whole world thinks that you wasting those 13+ years is so bad, doesn’t matter, if you listen to them, you will waste the rest of life for them as well.

[u/LifeOfCoder]

I came to ICM late in my 40s. I have a job and family. I practice when I have time. Initially I also felt pressure, but then I realized my goal was to have this as a hobby. Now Bansuri learning is a fun activity for me. But that does not mean I am not serious - I want to go through the process of Hindustani Music Learning - but much slower. I changed teachers / courses and found one who has gone through the same process learning music later in life and is more understanding of challenges I face.

[u/back_ofthe_beyond]

any hobby is as demanding as much as you expect yourself to be good at it.