Mystified One Night — Part I
Sometimes it is silence and sometimes you can listen to a soulful music playing at a distance. I stand just at a door, waiting for my father to come. He has taken the scooter and gone to buy milk and stuff. It is almost bedtime and we are at a new place. I calculate he might take about ten more minutes to bring the necessities.
For now, I am alone. Completely by myself, with nothing much to do but wait. My books, my phone, everything is upstairs, where I will go once my father arrives.
For now, I am alone. Completely by myself.
The soulful music sounds again. I spread my ears and crane my neck to find its source. I do not see it, but get an idea that perhaps on the other side of the highway that extends along our building, there is some sort of wedding. Perhaps it is flute. Or it is keyboard. One thing is sure: it is beautiful, soul-stirring. It makes me nostalgic. It is the sort of thing that takes you so much back that everything you have seen, heard, learned, witnessed, experienced, lost, found, achieved — everything falls into one complete picture. Life is no more a shattered mirror. It is a complete photograph, and the music that is playing is the frame, for it binds the whole thing, makes it one like string does to beads.
I feel like standing here for the rest of my life. May my father take a bit more long and may I get to listen to more of this music! So soft, such a pleasure to listen to, such a blessing to hear … I wish it continues to play on for eternity. That it never should come to an end.
By this time, five minutes have passed and I painfully know this experience should come to a close. Now my father will arrive and now we will together head upstairs, now have our dinner, now recite our unique prayers and now go to sleep.
But until then, I have few more drops to enjoy of this music. As it grows slowly intense, yet retaining its inherent softness and soul-stirring-ness, I enjoy it even more. Music is like that: some points in music tickle you, and others are but orgasmic. They take you to another state, some other form of existence that only you alone can savor.
Wish I had a recorder with me!
Wish I had my mobile phone, and I could have recorded this. It would have been a miracle to be able to listen to this and achieve this state at any time I wanted.
But this is only partly true: miracles in labs are rare occurrences. By no means could I have recorded the atmosphere that is built around me. By no means whatever could I have recorded my solitude. It would have been like capturing just the audio of a cinematic movie, and listening to that sometime would have been a lot less enjoyable.
For now, I am alone and can enjoy this. My head starts dancing to the gentleness of the music and it instinctively faces up. The night is just perfect as well, I see. Clouds have surrounded the moon but are letting it sprinkle its balmy light onto the earth where music plays and I listen.
From a distance, I see some headlights, hear the sound of an engine. My father has arrived. He kills the engine once at the door, takes out the milk and stuff, and together we head upstairs. He is silent too, as if he has listened to some other music.
We all have our own music. But even then it takes us to the same realm.
