A Garland of Bamboo Flutes

by Subramani Mani

Image credit: Alexey Demidov on Unsplash

A large garland of bamboo flutes of various sizes strung together loosely, lying undisturbed amidst big red rocks on the beach, is a pleasant but unusual find. I used to linger beside these same rocks, listening to the sea, feeling the breeze while taking in the melodious, mellifluous, mostly faltering flute recital. It was obvious the flutist was no Hariprasad Chaurasia, T.R. Mahalingam, or N. Ramani. I would halt, sit on a nearby rock, and try to absorb the imperfect rendering of Hindustani or Carnatic ragas during my regular morning and evening sojourns on the beach. Even though I was curious, I never trespassed and looked inside the beach-rock nest of music to see who was practicing and performing inside that naturally secluded but public space.

Any flawless rendering of a raga to the accompaniment of nature’s wind acoustics or sea wave drumming, if you will, would have been fantastic. But it happened only rarely. The flutist, or a wannabe flutist might be a better description, was clearly adept at rendering many bird calls and birdsongs using the bamboo flute. It was mesmerizing, I would think, even for the birds. Normally, you would find seagulls, hawks, pigeons, bats, and crows; I was thrilled to see a kingfisher perched on a bamboo bush and a woodpecker adding its own “tuk-tuk-tuk” solo orchestra to the flute bird-music, pecking at a big hollowing branch of a giant tamarind tree beside the cliff.

The kingfisher and the woodpecker made me invade the privacy of the musician. I was curious to have a darshan of the flutist. Holding my breath, I peeked in. She was seated on a patch of white sand, a yoga mat carefully spread over it, surrounded by big red rocks all around. A backpack was carelessly lying there in a corner; an earthen pitcher filled with water was on top of a carved wooden stool with a small earthen bowl on the side. She was wearing a long, bright-colored skirt and a white top, and her eyes were closed as though she was meditating and singing at the same time. The instant I entered, her eyes opened and then closed like fish eyes, and she continued to play the flute. Bamboo flutes of different lengths and sizes were hanging from the rock wall beside her. It seemed as though she would pick any of them on a whim and start playing. I remained only for a few moments and abruptly left; my curiosity fulfilled. I felt as though I had invaded the sanctum sanctorum of a musical deity.

*

I had been walking along the beach mornings and evenings. This was a cloudy, humid evening; thick dark clouds extended up to the horizon, and there was no sun to speak of. A windy day with rough, turbulent waves kept the lifeguards, who were stationed at regular intervals on the beach, on their toes. They were waving red flags and whistling to the teens frolicking amongst the waves, to step back and keep the shallow water line. I had no anticipation of a memorable sunset, and I kept walking along the long shoreline trying to avoid my feet getting soaked by the insolent and inconsistent waves. The rough waves had spewed enormous amounts of various kinds of plastic and other waste on the beach up to the vertical cliff wall. It was as if the sea had tried to digest a big, bad buffet it had been fed overnight, and then it had puked and regurgitated much of everything it had swallowed.

Among the plastic bottles, plates, mugs, cups, buckets, toys, and whatnot, I saw the carcass of a white dog on the beach. From a distance, I had seen a throng of crows pecking at something; many of them flew away, revealing what they were feasting on. I took one glancing look at the dog’s body and tried to walk briskly. It felt as if I was suddenly face-to-face with death. I had always told myself that I would like to die in my sleep, or welcome a sudden death following a heart attack on a tennis or badminton court. Nobody gets out of this planet alive and reaches very far, we all know that. Some of us can travel to the moon or even to an exoplanet in future, but one day we have to leave everything for good. It is strange that as children we never think of death per se, not even that one day we would be quite old. We just keep busy growing up, making friends, enduring, anticipating and exploring life and the outer world in multifarious ways. Maybe that is precisely how it should be.

The first time I encountered death was when my grandma passed away. She had been telling me stories every day as far as my memory goes; she told me a story even the previous evening of her passing away. As a seven-year-old, I couldn’t comprehend what happened to Grandma, what changed that day. She was alive one day, and the next, she was no more. I had all sorts of questions. My uncle told me she had gone to the moon— to console me, to pacify me. My mom said she had gone back to the stars. I didn’t know who to believe; perhaps it didn’t matter. But the following year was man’s landing on the moon. I was closely following the news and was quite delighted when Armstrong set foot on the moon. I ran to my uncle — Armstrong is on top of the moon. Can you ask him to look for my grandma? He remained thoughtfully silent, but by that time, I was already having my own doubts about the explanations and expositions of death doled out by grown-ups.

I would have walked for another hundred meters or so before I saw the body of a black cat. Flies were swirling around it, and as I came closer, I felt the stench of death and decay. I was suddenly reminded of the words of a philosopher — Do not die like cats and dogs rotting in the street. He had then talked about the moral and ethical dimensions of life and the need to fight for justice. And my thoughts wandered to Gaza, where Palestinians were facing death and destruction at the hands of Israel in their fight for a dignified life and existence.

As a child growing up, you never think about death in general or your own death. But as you grow older and enter midlife and beyond, the thought somehow seeps in like an unpleasant smell floating in the air when you are out walking. I couldn’t contemplate ants, flies, worms, crows, and vultures making a meal of my body. But you cannot choose how or where you die unless you take your own life. People lose their lives on mountains, in the sea, on the road, during a flight — water, land, air — practically anywhere. A few writers took their own lives — Zweig, Hemingway, Plath. Death seemed mysterious, dark, and unfathomable. That very day, on the beach, a young woman was suddenly pulled in by the sea while bathing with a group of friends. None of them were swimmers. A vendor who rents out beach umbrellas and cots saw the woman struggling and jumped in. The woman was pulled out safe, and she survived — a near-death experience for her; a second life, too. Her parents created and gave her life first; the beach vendor with a big heart gave her life the second time. And I thought, a second chance at life is even more amazing than the first.

Image credit: Ananda Putra Fiksis on Unsplash

On the beach, people are never in a hurry, unlike train stations, airports, or even town plazas. Life stood still, though the sea always seemed restless, some days more, and other days less. The turbulence and restlessness of the sea strangely have a calming effect on the knotted mind and the sputtering soul. It soothes and smoothes out the wrinkles of the brain and heals the wounds of the heart like steam and mist from a hot iron on a crumpled-up shirt. The beach seemed full of life in its various forms and incarnations and revealed occasional deaths, too.

Next, it was the turn of the turtle washed ashore with its guts splayed out, and crows feasting on the dead flesh. It was painful to watch, and I quickly moved away. Then I saw babies running around in diapers and puppies suckling from their mother. Life and death in their myriad manifestations, folks going on with their daily lives and schedules, and here was the most interesting aspect of it all — men and women trying to learn new things such as swimming, surfing, sky gliding, and sea kayaking.

*

And this majestic-looking music teacher was playing a haunting Hindustani raga on his bamboo flute, and the tune seemed to drift along over the waves. He was well-built, dark-complexioned, with a strong tan, and his large forehead sported a flaming mark of sandalwood paste. His long black hair was tied into a ponytail. His broad shoulders and muscular arms led to small nimble hands holding and mellifluously traversing and navigating the reed. He was seated on a red rock, and squatting in front of him on a small wooden stool was this devoted white woman, likely a tourist turned disciple. She was holding a long flute with her gaze focused on his face, and looked mesmerized like a charmed pupil in front of a maestro.

*

I counted four long, sturdy and weather-beaten wooden planks lying together on the beach. They looked like the giant, slender limbs of a strange four-footed animal. I noticed two end pieces and two middle ones. It quickly became obvious that they could be assembled into a long, slender kayak. Soon, four sturdy fishermen appeared and dragged each piece one by one with considerable effort close to the water. They laid them carefully side by side, tied them up in three places with faded nylon ropes, and tightened the knots. With fishing nets and water bottles, and bamboo slats serving as paddles, the men hopped onto the kayak and paddled against the lashing oncoming waves into the deeper ocean, humming a folk tune.

*

He handed her a smaller-sized flute to try with. You have to practice the individual notes to perfection, then in groups, and then string and mesh them together in various ways to create tunes and ragas. You need to be patient. It’ll take long hours of practice over weeks and months.

And she responded — I can easily visualize the steps from bricks, cement, and tiles to a new building, a finished house, for example. But I am not able to create complex tunes and ragas even though I have the notes in front of me.

Music is like architecture or any art, for that matter. You need patience, he said.

When you say architecture, do you mean the Taj Mahal, an ancient and historic structure like the Great Wall of China, or fine, opulent palaces built by kings and emperors? And what art are you referring to here — masterpieces like the Mona Lisas and Last Suppers of the world?

The examples you bring up may hold up for great musical compositions, but not for playing simple or even more complex ragas and evoke different emotions, he said.

Another time, she brought up the question of writing. It was a near-perfect sunset that evening with a blue, cloudless sky in the background. I tuned and turned my ears to listen to her conversation with her music guru.

I am a writer, not a famous writer with a string of bestsellers, but a good one. You see, I can pick up words, construct sentences, tag them together, and arrange them to create stories. It is almost like creating or building beautiful objects using Lego pieces. But I am not able to render these fine ragas like you can, even when I put in so much effort every day. Some days I feel quite miserable.

Guru: You can be a writer and a musician or migrate from writing to music if that is what you want to do. But you will have to put in the requisite effort.

Disciple: I am not thinking of giving up writing to learn music; my goal is to acquire mastery and proficiency at some reasonable level. But I am finding it difficult to make any headway, some measurable and meaningful progress, let us say.

Guru: I formally trained as a scientist. After working for many years, I turned to music, became immersed in it, and totally devoted to it. It helped that I had some music lessons as a child.

Disciple: You are probably an exception. It is your talent in music that enabled you to make the transition. But you make it sound like passion and motivation.

Guru: Maybe I have some talent. But most of it is practice and hard work. Here is something I find quite interesting. Scientific discoveries are bound to happen. If Newton hadn’t discovered gravity, or Einstein the theory of relativity, another scientist would have done so. It would have taken some more years, that is all.

But art is not like that, you see. If Da Vinci had not painted it, there would be no Mona Lisa. Othello, War and Peace, and Kabuliwala would never exist if not for Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or Tagore. Music is also similar to art in that respect. The music of Bach or Beethoven, the compositions of Swathi Thirunal, or Louis Armstrong’s rendering of “What a Wonderful World?” would not exist if not for these great music legends. That’s why extermination of people, like what is happening in Palestine, is an unforgivable crime, a crime of genocide. You wouldn’t even know how much art, literature, and music humanity is losing in the process. See, it can never be recreated at all.

The woman’s voice was barely audible. It was getting dark, and I was feeling hungry. I started walking. I was thinking about a concert I had attended a while ago. Zakir Hussain had come along with his brother. Zakir Hussain mesmerized the audience with his Tabla performance. Intermittently, his brother would perform mimicry, replicating the sounds of a mouth organ, a few other musical instruments, and sounds of nature. In the introduction, Ustad Zakir said — Both of us were taught music by our dad, the Tabla maestro Allah Rakha. Dad taught and trained us the same way, and we are showcasing what we learned from him in front of you. Saying this, the Ustad laughed.

*

Image credit: Bikash Debnath on Unsplash

I never saw the flute woman or her music guru after that day.

A handwritten note of paper carefully rolled up was recovered from the longest reed of the flute garland. It said in part as follows:

I am returning to my country. I wanted to become a musician by mastering many of the Carnatic and Hindustani ragas. In spite of my best efforts, I failed to render flawlessly even the simpler ragas. But I will continue with my creative writing. Maybe words can convey thoughts, ideas, and feelings better than sounds, musical they might be.

I could relate to that, not the creative writing part, but the music. Years ago, I tried my hand, mind, and heart at music. A friend suggested the violin when I was deciding on a musical instrument, saying its sound imitates human tones the best. I started taking lessons from a violin master, and he encouraged me. I practiced for long hours but could make only limited progress. I realized that playing ragas flawlessly is quite hard. Creating music is not for every aspirant, I reluctantly concluded.

Maybe, I thought, writing is after all primarily a word game. The writer has to believe in the strength and beauty of words squeezed out through the nib of a fountain pen or etched by the graphite tip of a pencil moving slowly on the smooth surface of a blank sheet of paper. The musician needs to trust the power and sweetness of the sounds of the reed, or the strings of the heart. Words or sounds — either way, both can be beautiful and moving, I surmised.

***

Subramani Mani

Subramani started writing late because his developmental literary milestones were delayed. In the twentieth century, he tried to be a physician, and early in this century he studied Artificial Intelligence. He later started writing, feeling the urge to share the memories of certain life experiences, perspectives, gains, and losses. He believes that honest storytelling can change us, and our world for the better. His stories have been published/forthcoming in Apricity Magazine, Fiction on the Web, Marathon Literary Review, Same faces Collective, and Fairlight shorts, among others. He is a first year MFA fiction candidate at Texas State University, San Marcos.