-Which is your favorite Beatles’ song?
-Nowhere Man.
-Unusual choice it is, I must say.
-Which one’s yours?
-Hey Jude.
When you join a music theory class, the first thing they teach is how two eighth notes are equivalent to one quarter note. They also teach you to play Bass clef by the left hand and Treble by the right. I out rightly reject these two propositions. I am an absurdist so I want to play the piano cross handed – Bass on the right and Treble on the left. Also, I believe humans are prone to error when it comes to calculating time while passing through it. Therefore, two eighths can never be equivalent to one quarter. My grandfather had once told me a story about Music.
—
Once upon a time, the King called his two sons in the court.
-I do not believe in passing my throne to the eldest son. I do not believe that the eldest is the wisest and most able. Therefore, you two will embark on a journey. A journey to find Music. Whoever catches Music and brings her to the court will inherit the wealth and the responsibilities attached to the throne.
So the sons left the palace. Elder Son went East because that is where the morning birds sang their songs and Younger Son went West because Boatmen sang their downstream melodies in the West. They spent days and nights in the jungles of the kingdom. They fought bears and tigresses and escaped tribals. Elder Son learnt to play Flute from a tramp who called himself Nowhere Man. He didn’t have any house. He was going nowhere and coming from nowhere with nothing in his mind. He was the happiest creature that ever walked on this Earth. Younger Son learnt to row boats from a boatman named Jude. Jude had a set of 88 rows of varying thickness and size and created tunes my splashing them in water. So Younger Son learnt the same. After 4 months, they came back empty handed.
-We climbed the mountains and crossed the rivers. We killed crocodiles and fed vultures. But we couldn’t find Music. Nobody knows where she is hiding.
-Did you learn anything?
-We learnt to hunt bears and gazelles.
-What else?
-We learnt to play Flute and make tunes out of rowing boats.
-From whom?
-Nowhere Man and Jude, respectively.
-When I went out to catch Music in my youth, I learnt to play Tambourine from Mr. Tambourine Man on the dark side of the wall. Did anyone of you cross The Wall?
-We did not see any Wall. But did you?
-Did I what?
-Did you catch Music?
-I did not catch Music. No one can. She does not hide anywhere. She is omnipresent.
-Then why did you send us to chase her?
-So that I can learn to play Bass with my right hand and Treble with my left without having to see my sons getting embarrassed of their own Father. People called me lunatic. I am not.
-And did you succeed?
-Yes.
-Who, now, will inherit the throne?
-Time will tell.
-Time never tells. People tell, when they pass through time.
-Consider me one of those people .
-How long do we have to wait?
-One of you, play an eighth note twice and the other a quarter note, starting at the same time. Take the reciprocal of the difference between the end times of both the notes. Those many months.
-Father, the difference is zero. We will have to wait forever, till infinity.
-Trust your father. The difference isn’t zero.
—
My grandfather had ended the story there. I recall this story sitting beside her. She, who likes Nowhere Man.
–Hey Jude? That’s mundane.
-You are mundane.
I knew I had called for trouble when I had uttered those words because what followed were a couple of slaps on my face and a punch in my chest. Every touch of her plucked a string in my heart, in quick successions, resulting in a chord of unprecedented melody. The sun was drowning in the sea and the shack owner changed the song to Nitin Sawhney’s Homelands. A drowning orange sun, the most beautiful girl beside me, two Beatles followed by Homelands and Goa. Bliss was showering upon me when I told her,
-You remind me of a very special song – a song quite close to my heart.
-Which song?
–Girl by The Beatles.
The punches followed, and a laughter in the ambiance.
—
Year 200 AD.
I knew I would never be the King. Nor did I deserve to be. I was happy to join Nowhere Man and play Flute all the way. I know rats will follow us. I know I will die of hunger. Or maybe thirst. I wish you were here, my brother. I am sitting by the river roasting a rabbit. Nowhere Man is jumping up and down in the water. I hate his beard and his stinky robe but I love the way he lives. I miss you because there is a boat stranded on the shore and there are woods in the forest. I wish you were here so I could hear you cut the wood. I wish could hear you make rows out of them and I wish I could hear the music from the splashes of water.
I know you will send your sons and daughters to catch Music when you have aged. Then I will teach them to play Flute. Till then
Let me soak the summer warmth,
And the smell of the damp sand all around.
Let me listen to the words of the birds,
And the sound of the breeze that blows earth bound.
Let me catch the Music, the eternal aphrodisiac
For in her heart lies the beautiful truth.
—-
References:
1. The story of the King is based on a fictional story that my Maternal Grandfather – Mr. Harishchandra Choudhary – told me once. There will never be a storyteller as brilliant as him.
2. Video on what Eighth and Quarter Notes are.
3. Video on what Bass Clef and Treble Clef are.
Shishir Chaudhary 
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