The Flute
A short story of Adivi Bapiraju
(rendered into English by K B Gopalam)
The Flute
Adivi Bapiraju
The sounds of the boy's flute filled the bunds of the
fields, crops, canals and the hills at a distance.
He had no knowledge of the ragas (musical scales) nor had he
learnt about the swaras (musical notes). His mentors were – the koel, the
carpenter bee, the mountain brook, the mooing of the cows, the gentle breeze
floating over the fields, the thunder, the beetle and the Lavangi birds.
A naturally gifted flautist, he had a great sense of music
though ignorant of musicology, its theories, principles and terminology.
Comparing notes and notes, he would tune the shruti (pitch). His breath kept
the laya (rhythm & tempo). Only three talas (beats) emerged from his rhythm
& tempo – they were Adi, Eka and Roopaka.
The melodic patterns (moorchanas) he conjured up were simply
out-of-the-world combinations.
2
He was a cattle grazer and nine years old. After eating
yesterday's remnant rice and gruel with salted fish as side dish, he put some
of the rice gruel in a small pot and a pickled piece of raw mango, covering it
with a plate. Wrapping the lunch-pot in a piece of cloth, he reached the river
bund riding a buffalo.
The shade of the neem tree was his throne; his cattle were
his subjects, and his weapon was his flute!
A tattered loin cloth and an equally torn head scarf were
his silken attires. Whenever it rained, he made a couple of buffalos stand
close together and sat down under them. When the river swelled, he crossed it
on the buffalos. Cows and buffalos were his armed guards. Equipped so, he could
stand up even to a tiger.
3
Once he reached the grazing field, he bade them go on their
own and settled himself under the tree, playing and singing.
He pulled out the flute and played on it to mesmerize the
world. The lyrics for the songs were his heart itself.
Sometimes his song jumped and pranced. It flowered and
spread gentle fragrance all around and bubbled up like the waters of a little
spring.
Sometimes his song looked at the world and wondered, paled
or shivered.
Another time his song searched for something. It gazed at
the sky keenly; pierced the depths of the earth, and counted the water drops in
the river.
At times it went into tears. It curled with some unknown
fear, sulked with hunger and took on the form of the entire gamut of human suffering
and wept.
Yet another time the song assumed the all-knowing lotus
yogic posture and offered grass flowers in supplication. Also, it probed the
depths like a fish in the water.
Kissing the flute with his lips, the boy turned into one who
lost cognizance of his own handiwork.
4
One day from an adjacent farmland, a girl worker came
looking for him following the song.
She was eight. She sat still before him listening to the
song.
She did not divide his kingdom or usurp it.
She became one with his kingdom, with his song and with him.
She would come every day by his song time and sit there
before him.
The tattered cloth on her midriff did not cover her
nakedness completely. She had a pair of bangles on her arm, and two aluminum
anklets on her legs.
If the boy's face was the image of the sun, her face was the
lotus in the side-by-pond.
5
One day when he played on the flute, the whole world
listened to it under a spell. And the girl turned into that very song.
In the meantime, some monstrous bird hovered in the sky with
an earth-shattering sound. Stunned with the sound, the boy stopped playing and
fell at once to the ground. The girl flew to his side. Shivering and wailing,
she embraced him.
The demon bird flew away. After a while the two naïve kids
got up and surveyed around with bleary eyes.
His cows and buffalos grazed as usual. Flowers were in
bloom. The neem tree stood outspread just as before. The brook flowed on
gurgling.
He mustered up courage to pick up the flute and once again
harmonized the three sacred notes into a cadence that questioned this universe.
The girl continued to cling to him.
Far away in Europe, there was a war raging. Japan let itself
loose on Pearl Harbor.
The boy came out of the impact. Matching the pitch of the
daily visitor demon birds, he played a new combination to which the girl
listened, smiling and captivated.
