Auld Lang Syne

...

The room had warm amber lights on. The kind that gives through distant windows, an illusion of life breathing inside. From someplace close by, memorylike music slow-flowed into that room, to us. 

For a couple of years now, an invisible someone plays the violin every Saturday and Sunday evening, for two sometimes three hours at a stretch. 

I did not know they do street music in Kolkata. I had imagined an untiring learner doing his/her lessons over and over again. Told Heeya, she mentioned a professional instead, who plays in front of the lake on weekends. Imagination, my only device to deal with reality, is snuffed out often and by most. In this case though, it merely changed the course of my mind. I was curiouser.

One Saturday, we went down to meet the violinist. Across the street from our house, a guy in his mid-twenties. Playing away, absorbed, only aware of the world between musical pieces if at all. Noticeably unassuming in appearance. Not half as conspicuous as his music. The violin case lay open on the ground with notes and coins from passers-by, on the side was a card reading his group's name, and contacts. They study or work on weekdays and play music on the weekends. Also promote street music. In Kolkata and Bangalore. 

Rhea clapped after a piece and he lightly bowed with a smile. Asked if she did any music - vocals, or an instrument. Rhea nodded a yes. He smiled and played on again, eyes mostly closed. Western classics, English popular songs, Bangla Tagore numbers ... We walked back, desultorily. To our room that still had warm amber lights on.

Memories of our days, 

Will you not remember, my friend?

The eyes that met, the minds that touched

Can they be unremembered, ever again...

Purano shei diner kotha / Auld lang syne [listen here]

Surreal. 

Words, with music woven in, are a spacetime machine.

We forgot his name. Or forgot to ask his name. We wait for the violinist's music, for evenings when he plays. 

...