Art of Distraction
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Here is to all musicians everywhere…especially to a stranger I encountered in CP’s famous Rikhi Ram musical instruments shop who held me spell-bound while he blew negligently and silently in his flute, unperturbed by his noisy surroundings, unaware that his ‘hissing’ distracted the cacophony of the surroundings to a halt for a minute or two…and also to the old gaunt flutist you may encounter in Kamala Nagar who sells flutes crouched on the side of the road with a ‘lambi judaai' or the soundtrack of the Jackie Shroff's old movie 'Hero' to his lips.....and to Hariprasad Chaurasiya.
crumpled linen like milk stirring
so peaceful..in a stance, he looked
a feet on one knee, right hand on another
in hand a cylindrical wood
a spitting white kurta he wore
it exposed his dark brown frown
folded parallel of nature dark too
brown.....white....brown....
i came I saw, i didnt yet see
my tuning yet was due
awaiting the brown to play the brown
expectations i had but few
the window crammed with a painful street
...a frame of disharmony
a crippled beggarly voice afar
there resounded a plea for money
just round the corner, careless she sat
the sun slapped her state
little hands tucked at flat dry bare-chest
a curse there echoed at fate
just then the dark twins did part
he formed something of an 'O'
then fashioned a perfect embouchure
in the hollow he began to blow
out released from tiny holes
a spell of fairy-dust
it flew in the mellow steady breeze
and settled everywhere it must
dancing eyebrows and dancing fingers
danced the soul in his eyes
the last i checked i was awake
from what slumber did now i rise?
it carried me atop a cloud
that blew with the wind from his lips
in a trance i rocked forward and back
strange tyrant with a strange whip
the painful window sang still though
its own sad little song
what then had soothed my aching heart
the flute did not right the wrong
from my high place i looked at him
shut eyes, his fingers aced
his lips in a kiss with the aerophone
the melody still caressed my face
i looked about in my vicinity
on clouds sat not one but many
the beggar, the mother and her hungry child
it was an epiphany
the baby slept in his empty kitchen
from the music of the flute
the empty brazen cup of plea
its woes seemed shortly uproot
the Phoebus neither did let any
clouds over its merciless band
it shone brightly sweltering over
not charmed by the wooden wand
to the sweat and heat of the day
and to a doomed civilisation
he gave no ultimate relief, just
exploited the art of distraction