The Ubuntu

UBUNTU - The Humaneness – 2468

That was Kojagiri Paurnima night when the moon comes closer to earth and appears larger than the usual full moon. It usually was celebrated with great fun and fervour.

In his attempt to know various beaches of Maharashtra, Satish was strolling on the beach of Nivati about a hundred kilometres north of Goa. The moon was reflecting brightly on the calm sea waves. The cool soft breeze was making the environment more romantic. But there were no celebrations on this secluded beach,

And unexpectedly, a piece of Beethoven's symphony no.9 reached Satish's ears. He was surprised that the 3-4 centuries old, wonderful piece of music was being played in this remotely located area such as the Beach of Nivati. Satish started moving in the direction of the music. As he was proceeding, the intensity of the music started increasing. After a walk for 4-5 minutes, he was in front of a deserted house. He was pretty sure that the sound was coming from this house. It was past midnight. He could not see any movement or any light inside the house. Wondering who must be playing the music, Satish entered the house. And all of a sudden, the music stopped. Confused, Satish hurriedly came out of the house. No trace of playing music. He waited for some more time. But music could not be heard anymore. Disappointed, he returned to his house where he was put up.

He decided not to speak of his experience to anyone. At around 11 in the morning, Satish went on to the beach. He went to that deserted house and entered. But he did not find any signs of anyone playing orchestra of the 18th century. Satish came back to his house.

After dinner, Satish went onto the beach again. The tranquil ocean displaying the reflection of the waxing gibbous moon was mesmerizing. Satish decided not to go near the deserted house. He sat on the dry sand a little away from the abandoned house.

And slowly the symphony started. This time it was Mozart being played. After a few minutes of the melodious symphony, the music seamlessly switched to playing Indian Raag Kirwani on Sarod. Contrasts in the 16 beat based on Raag Kirwani, transitioned to a solo trumpet, slowly flowing back into Raag Megha and Raag Gaud Sarang dispensing with western harmony and rhythm. Then followed the Raag Poorvi on Rudra Veena, the King Instrument of India giving a hypnotizing experience. After 10-12 minutes, the melody switched to a clarinet leading the orchestra. Sometime later, the rhythms of the African drum, the djembe led the concert. The Indian Tabla, a pair of twin hand drums from the Indian subcontinent since the 18th century, took over from there. After a few minutes, the Japanese Koto the 190 cm long string instrument, and the Shakuhachi, the bamboo wind instrument, carried forward to the calmness and serenity of the environment playing “the soul of wind”. Balalaika, the wind instruments, Buben, the leather instrument, and the Treshchotka instrument made of oak plates on a rope from Russia made their presence felt to playing some Russian folk music. Then a classical composition by Russian Tchaikovsky came to the forefront. The Chinese pipa and Guzheng string instruments pulled Satish into the feelings of the autumn moon over calm waters. The Brazilian Pandeiro playing Samba for a wonderful steady hypnotic rhythm ended this philharmonic orchestra’s performance.

Satish realized this was not just an orchestra but was the global fusion of music the world over. But who was playing that?

Satish decided to probe further. This time instead of entering, he waited outside the bungalow. Listening to the grand music pieces representing various countries. 

Suddenly a very old person appeared on the scene, approaching Satish. Satish got an alert. A shrivelled, white-skinned person came close to him.

"I see you visiting this place many a time during the last few days. You seem to be interested in music. You must be wondering how such an international musical orchestra is heard in this remote place? Don't get confused.

I will tell you the entire story if you promise me to carry forward our mission." The person spoke in the broken Marathi dialect Malwani. Satish was baffled. The local language of this foreigner?

"Do not get perplexed. We came to this beach about 5 months ago when a shipwreck drowned a little more than 200 persons. Our undying spirits held us together and we pulled our most cherished musical instruments along with us and reached this beach. To our surprise, we found this abandoned bungalow on this very rarely visited but wonderful beach. We took shelter here.

To give you a little more background, we were a musical group "UBUNTU PHILHARMONIC" from ZINTOVA, a small country near the African peninsula. When we created the group "UBUNTU" with like-minded people to promote harmony and unity in the world through music, we decided to have a concert fusion of music from various countries. We collected various instruments typical of different countries and experts from those countries contributed a piece that would seamlessly switch the instrument coherent to the theme of harmony.

The resultant composition turned out to be spellbinding and received accolades from many countries. We organized a world tour to perform live at various places. The president of ZINTOVA was thrilled by this response. He called the leader of our group and appreciated our activity.

In the end, he said, ”We are happy over your achievement. But we want you to include one song promoting our ideology.”

To this our leader refused. He politely said, "But sir, we are promoting humanity and harmony through music. We do not wish to speak for any political opinion."

Hearing this, the chief got annoyed. “See mister, either you agree to advance our thinking throughout the world or you face a ban on your activity right away.”

"But Sir, are not you happy that our efforts are appreciated over the entire world. That will earn goodwill which will get our country recognition and eventually that will benefit our country’s trade," our leader pleaded.

“Don’t try to teach me what is good for our country. Either you include our song in your concert or face a ban on your activity right away.”

“Give us some time to think over the matter. We will come back to you the day after tomorrow,” our leader said.

On returning after the discussion, the group had a meeting. Each member vehemently opposed the order. We decided to leave the country immediately that night itself to take shelter in any country where our freedom of expression would not be curtailed.

A ship, with the capacity of 400 persons, was organized and we got ready to leave the country. The ship was anchored in the deep ocean. We decided to use small lifeboats to reach the ship. We loaded our instruments in four boats. The expert musicians got on to separate boats. In complete darkness, without making any noise, we reached our ship. We loaded all our musical instruments onto the ship quietly. All the group members boarded the ship. Since it was no moon night, the entire movement was invisible. After all the members confirmed their respective instruments were in proper condition, we sailed out in the darkness.

Without making any sound, we were out in the ocean. We spent ten days sailing in the ocean. Then we were relieved that finally we were out of the clutches of the idiot of the country and we were happy that then we were not under the pressure of anybody's stupid ideas. We were on the way to enjoying the freedom of expression. To celebrate our liberation, we decided to perform on the ship itself, the program that we were going to present all over the world. Each one of us was jubilant. The program, lasting three hours ended.

Our leader had a meeting with all of us. He said he had talked to the captain of the ship to check the country where we were heading.

The captain had announced that we were close to two democratic countries. India and Sri Lanka. We would have to decide which country we would like to surrender to. We were only two days away from both these countries. Then we had to settle where to head.”

Our leader finished his address. Just then he received a phone call from the president of our country. “ So today, more than 10 days have passed since you left our country. You must be happy that you could leave our country without any problem. Now you must be dreaming about the new place.

 You tried to dodge my idea. But friend, I know how to protect our country from the traitors like you. We came to know your plans and acted in the interest of our country. We have loaded time bombs on your ship. And they will explode at the press of a button. I am giving you one more chance. If you agree to my idea, you turn around and come back. You will be honoured with the highest awards in our country. You will be rewarded monetarily too. That will take care of your next two generations. All I want you to do is to tell the whole world that our country has the best ruling government. Every soul is happy here and frees to do anything they want to do. "

When we heard these words, we remembered how the present President had steered a coup against the previous democratically elected Government and there was a forceful change of Government. How the protests for the change were suppressed with a heavy hand. Many youngsters had laid down their lives protesting against this undemocratic move.

After a pause, the President said, "After twelve days of sailing you are now in the middle of the big Indian ocean. You must be far away from the land of most countries. Now, I am giving you a final chance. I will count 10 and before the limit gets over, I must hear the words, 'We agree to your suggestion.' If I don't hear anything from you, I will order to press the button. That will explode all the bombs put at the strategic points of the ship. Your ship will be blown into pieces. You all will be thrown into the cold waters of the Indian Ocean. You will be so far away from the land anywhere, that none of you will be able to swim to the shore. We will get rid of traitors who had posed a threat to our country. Goodbye."

The leader told all the members of the group to pray to God to save us to enable us to protect the innocents of this world.

But before we could start our prayers, there were explosions one after another. And our entire ship was broken into pieces. We were thrown into the cold seawater. Our musical instruments were scattered on the sea waves. Instead of our own lives, we tried to save our gizmos. Luckily some parts of the ship drifted our way and we took those as rafts. We held onto our gadgets. Most of us were afloat on the raft. For two days, we were without food and even a drop of water, We were drifting wherever the waves took us. When we saw the sun rising, we had some hopes of survival. No land was in sight. Only water was seen in all directions. The sight of the partial fins of the shark speedily moving around was giving us goosebumps. Sometimes whales' shining backs were reminding us that we were still far away from the shores. Many different types of fish swimming swiftly, were seen nearby. Keeping track of group members, who were drifting sometimes away from us, kept us worrying constantly. Above, at a very high altitude, whenever we spotted a flock of birds trying to cross the oceans, we got jealous of them. How they were free to change their location at their will. The sunset, which we used to admire otherwise, set us to worry about the incoming night. The start of a cold breeze in the night used to dampen our hopes. But the rising sun would infuse new hopes. Thus our dreams were riding the waves of hopes - one moment rising high and the next moment down the trough.

Such seven days passed.

And that night, we touched this beach. Many of us, around a hundred, were alive clinging on to our hopes. We were glad that we got our instruments with us. Except for the loss of the piano, which could not be salvaged due to its weight, we were happy that we were emancipated from the clutches of the tyrant of our country.

Luckily, we got this abandoned bungalow. We checked and arranged our instruments. Somehow, we got what we wanted. We used all the rooms available in such a way that no outsider would know our presence. We could hide our instruments in a time of a split second. We used all our ideas to conceal our presence in this bungalow.

 No one came here to disturb us. We continued our practice. The person of Indian origin from our group mingled with the locals. The supply of essentials was ensured.  

Now we are looking for some person who would join our group and bring us to light. We are ready for all the legal formalities as being refugees in India."

Satish got convinced of their refugee status.

After completing all the formalities, this group of over a hundred people was accepted as refugees. A concert was organized in Ratnagiri first and then in Goa. The tremendous response from the public made the group extremely elated.

Slowly they had programs all over India. The seamless switchover between instruments of different countries was highly appreciated.

The unity of the world through music took over the minds of the common man.

Very soon, many a country invited the group irrespective of their political affinity. The funds collected for humanitarian causes such as floods, droughts, earthquakes, etc. had a deep impact. The effect of the fusion of musical expressions of various countries was profound. The word "my" was getting replaced by "our." The entire world was getting tenderly empathetic.

The President of Zintova came to know about the success of the UBUNTU group. He tried his best to deport the entire UBUNTU group to take back to his country. But now this group was riding high on the free atmosphere of India. The Indian government even felicitated them with the Padma, the most valued civil award.

Further, the group won the epitome of the award "THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR PEACE."