For the last six months or so, from the twelfth-floor balcony where I sit with my morning tea and my evening sundowner, I have been the audience to someone playing a remarkably melodious flute from an indeterminate distance. At first, I dismissed it as imagination (the music was faint, though soothing), then as recorded music drifting in from someone’s open windows, leaving me the accidental recipient of tunes ranging from old Hindi film songs to Jingle Bells.
It was only when Misbahji pointed him out to me, as we passed him near our gate one day, that it struck me that this was a real human being who wandered the neighbourhood selling flutes. We were in a hurry, so I told myself I would meet him another time. And then, as these things go, weeks passed. Until I ran into him this morning while buying vegetables.
I told him I was his listener and how much I enjoyed his music. He smiled and said it was
“Kanha ki kripa”
(Kanha being an endearing name for Lord Krishna, one of Vishnu’s ten avataars, beloved for his playful, deeply human nature, and believed to be the first flautist, having fashioned a flute from a reed that had surrendered its ego to the divine).
I asked whether selling flutes was enough to support his family. He smiled again and replied,
“Sab Kanha ki kripa hai.”
I offered him a small tip. He said he could accept it only if I bought a flute. I declined, insisting that he had already given me more joy than the amount I was offering. Shyly, he accepted and pocketed the note.
I asked for a photograph, which he was happy to pose for.
As I walked away, I turned back and asked,
“Bhai, aapka naam to bataaya nahi.”
He smiled once more and said,
“Liyaqat.”
Sometimes, it takes a wandering flute, played by a man named Liyaqat who believes that Kanha breathes through him, to remind me that whatever I may accept (or reject) about Bharat Mata, her children will keep her idea alive. That all is not lost. Not yet.
