The story is not a based on a true incident but it reflects my childhood .
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I was eight
years old. Tiny, pigtailed, frail and bony. One could totally lose me in a
crowd. The only thing that one could probably notice in me was my eyes. No,
they weren’t exceptionally beautiful or brilliantly colored. They were a normal
pair of eyes but they always had a humongous question mark in them.
People
thought I was lost and quiet but my mind was very talkative and excited. It was
always running and exploring the nooks and crannies of the small little universe
I had formed in my head. I wasn’t a curious annoying child who would keep
asking her parents 50 questions in a minute, but if my mind could talk it would
surely be annoyed by the questions I was asking. Probably, it hated me.
I had
lost my grandfather that year. My grandfather was my world at that point of
time. He used to take me for ice cream every day after school and we had a
secret pact not to let my parents know. He would teach me art and music and he
was the one who made me identify the different colors that make the world so
beautiful and the different notes that seemed so pleasing to the ear. He had a
hidden dream for me to become a musician. However merciless it sounds I felt
happy the day he died because I remembered him telling me that when somebody
dies they are free and reborn. I was happier about the fact that he was a child
again, just like me, somewhere in this world.
That day he died I went walking by the street. I live in a lane at the turning of
the market. It is serene, away from the hustle and bustle of the market and has
lush green trees. The day was beautiful and I went walking thinking about the
beautiful memories I had with my daadu, that’s what I called him. I stopped
outside a bungalow.
It was
old looking, but huge and absolutely beautiful. It reminded me of fairy tales
and it had a charm to it that made me feel like I’d find a treasure house of
jewels inside. The curious self that I was, I walked into the bungalow. It had
a huge lawn and a verandah. Suddenly I started hearing music. It sounded
beautiful to my ear. It went from the sharpest of notes to the mildest of tones
and something about it reminded me of a butterflies journey from flower to
flower, and suddenly I saw a butterfly. I went closer and saw an old man who looked
like my grandfather sitting and moving his fingers over black and white keys on
a giant brown wooden box. Yes, I didn’t know that was called a piano. I stood
behind a pillar absolutely amazed looking at him create sounds that seemed
heavenly. My tiny little fingers itched to touch one of those keys to see how
it feels. I felt happy and chirpy to hear his melodies. Suddenly, he stood up
and saw me hiding behind the pillar. He called me towards him and I got
frightened and ran away home. All day I caught myself humming the tune he was
playing. It slowly became a ritual for me to hide behind that pillar but then I
started losing my fear and he gave me a candy every time we met but we never
spoke. That is how our relationship began. Short and sweet. Everyday I saw the
yellow butterfly in his lawn, everyday I heard him play and everyday I was
given a fruit candy. Then one day I started humming and singing to his tunes
and then we had a relationship of me singing and him playing. He smiled at me
acknowledging my voice and I always sang louder and better when he did. We had
a relationship far more than the boundaries of words. We had a relationship of
music, because I started making a language out of the music he played out of
the magical wooden box. Few notes made me smile, while few alarmed me… there
were few that reminded me of colors n few that matched the evening so
perfectly…but then again there were few that were so low and so serious that
they made me sad. I hummed a melody with aah’s and ooh’s and he smiled. Nobody
knew that half an hour of my life. A year passed and the first thing he told me
in a broken, fragmented yet very clear voice was “Child, your voice has the
power of bringing emotions. When you sing no words are required”. I said “Thank
you”, took my candy treat and walked away. I never realized what the butterfly
meant but I was happy seeing it fly around every day. I felt like how I enjoyed
his music, she must be dancing to it too.
Like all
stories end, this too ended. I had my final exams for a week and I was caught
up with studies. The day it got over I rushed to his bungalow to sing to my
hearts glee. This time I saw the butterfly near the gate, as I went in I saw
people dressed in black around a casket. I knew he had reached where my grandfather
was. Suddenly a millions thoughts started swirling in my small little head. I
was wondering who would give me my daily dose of heaven. I realized it was the
end of my singing because somehow the only person I could sing my heart out was
him. Suddenly the butterfly came and started flying around me like it wants to
tell me something. It circled me twice and then started flying away towards the
verandah. It flew to the piano and rested there and that’s when I realized it
was a sign. A sign that was probably telling me something .Next to it I found a
note which said, “To the little girl who made my world so beautiful”.
That’s
when everything made perfect sense. My grandfather’s dream of me becoming a
singer, a stranger, a piano and heavenly music were all signs showing me that
music was probably the right thing for me. Since then the piano has been my
best friend and my songs have been my emotions, and I owe it all to my
stranger.
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