The Flute

It was 6 am in the morning when the cawing woke me up.

By the time I sat with the tanpura, 

the pigeons had made an audience.

My voice was croaky as usual,

And the audience had started their slow brooding.

With a final squawk I managed to croon a clear Sa

And received some encouraging flaps.

The teacher’s words came back to me.

"You are a bit sharp", was her retort.

She asked the child to sing.

His voice, a soft husky conch,

made me think of a rill amid quietness somewhere.

I remembered the old family record

That had me chirping like a young nestling.

It had you too…

Like thin curls of smoke burning out of a joss stick.

Once when I had tried to woo a cuckoo, imitating its plaintive search,

You had stopped me, saying that I was deluding the lovers.

So I had gone back to imitating yours’.

The class-teacher had liked it back then.

He let me sing in the choir.

He said it blended well with the girls’.

And just to prove him wrong,

I tried singing louder than all.

When I reached the Nishad,

I seemed to miss the pitch yet again.

I looked imploringly into your dove shaped eyes.

You stood silently holding your flute,

Your eyes cast down.

You seemed like a memory of an inanimate past...

Then suddenly I heard the cuckoo back in the balcony.

I ran for him

And fluttered into the sky.