We've been gone a whole year! Well, we're back. I've spent the year transcribing a number of musical scores into some new software and completed a project that was on the shelf for twenty years, s well as made a few new tacks of even earlier material, to compile in CD frmat sometime later in the year I have begun composing a new work which will take most of spring and summer and will begin transcribing two other pieces to go on the cd - but for the time being this is a sample from a fiction work in progress titled "By the Waters of Oblivion"...
Prince Padmarana was riding his horse along the river trail about ten miles
south of the castle. It was spring morning, the drongo birds were chattering,
and there was a slight mist rising from the river which hid the prince from the
view of the small group of musicians playing under a grove of jacaranda trees.
They were a group of young women, five in number, two of whom played small drums (tablas and pakavaj), while the other three played flute, sarod, and vina. Padmarana stopped his horse and hid behind a mulberry bush, set back a ways from the jacaranda grove. The mist came and went, and he would get glimpses of the girls as they played, the music cutting through the fog with clear precision.
The two that played the drums lid out a hypnotic and repetitive rythmn, as the flute and sarod played a melodic counterpoint to the beat. Once in a while, one of the drummers would lead with a vocalised “takka ta diga takata ta ta” and the flute and sarod would follow, the girl with the vina seemed to float serenely above the rest, glissandos of fluid grace finding their way between all the others.
Padmarana had stumbled upon a group of apsarasi—divinely inspired and magically endowed musicians capable of enchanting the ears of a royal prince. They all came from a village just a bowshot away to the east of the river, not so far from where the young women had now gathered.
They were dressed in the local traditional tribal costume—cotton saris worn with bangles on their wrists and delicate chains of bells about their ankles. At various intervals, one or another would shake out her foot, and the bells would add an accent to the rythmn which insistently never wavered. Their hair was plaited braided into long braids they wore in loops from the back of their head back up tucked under and into the hair at the base of their necks just above the shoulder.
Padmarana found his thoughts wandering. The music entrained with his breath and pulse and somehow he could not move but only stare, transfixed. Padmarana’s trance lasted as long as the apsarasis kept playing. His horse whinnied, and rather than possibly give away his position and startling the girls, he reluctantly mounted, and rode his horse away.
But all that day and night the strange experience stayed with him. He made his way back, a little earlier in the morning of the next day, and found the same group of girls playing at the same spot.
Once again, the music drew him in.He felt like he was in a meditative state, but he couldn’t say whether or not it was or wasn’t actually a daydream. But this time, when his horse became impatient, it couldn’t be hidden from the girls.
They stopped, and the girl with the vina set down her slide and laughed, approaching him.
Her eyes danced, just as her fingers had across the vina. Prince Padmarana drew back, embarrassed to have been found out.
“Oh, don’t be shy, friend! Come and join us!:
Padmarana slowly and shyly led his horse closer, and tied it to one of the trees.
“Now that we see you like to listen, join us and give us the pleasure of playing to you more directly!:
Padmarana worried that perhaps they might guess his nobility, from his finely cut and elegant clothing and the signet ring on his left hand. But if so the girls made no mention as they took up their instruments again and played, this time a new tala.
“trikata ta ta trika TA trika TA” the new beat laid down ad set out a new raga into motion. The flute and sarod this time doubling around each other, repetitively chasing each other through an eight minute forest of garlanded srutis......)
The girl with the vina would now and then cast her eye his way and beyond the enchantment her music cast, Padmarana found himself returning her smile, and by the end of their new raga, he felt a new emotion rising from his feet to his head—a new feeling not unlike being thrown into a whirlpool of passion. (Jadugar-the wizard no doubt would chide him for such an emotion, such a thought!)
But he could not deny it. When the players stopped, this time, the girl set down her vina and walked up to him, taking his hand.
“Come, my friend! I am sure there are many other things I could teach you than to just sit her and listen to our silly games!”
The other young women took up their instruments just then and all ran off, giggling an laughing, in the direction of the village.
Padmarana remained with the girl.
“My name is Aruna. And you are—?”
Padmarana stumbled over the word.
“P—P—P—Padma—Padmarana!”
“Oh! I hear there is a Padmarana who is the prince of King Mohan who lives in the castle of Jadusagar Gadh! Can you be he?”
Now his cover completely blown, Padmarana could only hang his head abashedly and nod.
“Well then, I am blessed twice today!” She clapped her hands in glee.
“Let me show you how I caress the prince of this land! His grace is manifest, his young heart is perhaps new to the game of love...”
Love! So that was what he had been feeling? Yes! Love! He loved this strange girl and her laughing eyes and her enchanting, magical music, and the strange forward manner, so unlike how the Brahmins and courtesans of the castle treated him.
“Let me bestow a blessing upon you, my prince!”
And she leaned over into him and kissed him, first tentatively, then with more self assurance, he returned it. They fell into each other’s arms, and he tasted, tested her, brought the entire experience into his full attention, in the sweet fresh spring cress, until the dew dampened their clothing and until clothing could no longer barricade their virtue.
While Padmarana had ridden back to the castle, and threw himself into writing an amateurish and impassioned love letter to Aruna, Aruna herself had spent her afternoon in her parent’s humble cottage, cooking the meal that would be their night-time dinner, and then had been buttonholed by her three friends as she walked from the cottage to gather mangoes.
“Aruna! Is it true, he is the prince?”
“Aruna, did he make love to you at the music grove?”
Aruna, did he tell you you will be his princess?”
“Aruna, did you let him....”
“Aruna, are his kisses like the honey dew and the fresh wine?”
“Enough!” shouted Aruna. “I will answer for myself, not for him. No he did not make love to me. No his kisses are not like melons and wine! No! He is not experienced. This I can tell. As for making me his princess—I should think things have much much farther to go than to be even thinking such things, Sunila!”
“But he came back to listen...”
“And be sure, he will again! When he comes tomorrow, I want none of you to badger him or even let on what he has told me, that he is the prince of the castle! He will be our special audience. This should have been clear to you from the start, as it is, Sunila! And play well! When we see him, his thoughts should be wrapped up in the music, not on having his way with me!”
“But was he gentle...?”
“Of course! He was gentle! A man who barely knows what he is doing, he was cautious like a mongoose! Sunila you silly goose! I have much to think about. And now, I have to go and get milk for my bapu.”
Padmarana, home in his study, sheltered from the heat of the day by billowing curtains, the cool breeze calming his perspiring brow, had sat down with his pen and tried to write what he was feeling. This was a new feeling, unlike anything he could really compare, actually! Love? or was it... lust? Was the stirring of his loins something he should be ashamed or afraid of? What if she had some other lover, who would need to be his rival? Should he be like his father, and make a mess out of rivalry, plot to have his rival purged, what then?
The words did not come easy to him but at the end, he had written on two sides of a banana leaf in his most elegant script all that he knew- that he had met someone special, that her kisses inspired him “to do great things, and soar to the clouds,” and that in all the world perhaps there might be nobody else like Aruna, he would ever hope to find, and when he went to bed that night and looked up toward the stars and the galaxies, he swore upon the Mahabarhata that he would never feel just this way, for anyone else in the world, and dreams of Aruna fed his subconscious as he slumbered.
In the morning, rising earlier than was his custom, then, before the sun, actually, had blazed its way up above the line of the mountains to the East, he saddled his horse, clad this time in the simple garb of a commoner. White salwar kameez, no turban, no jewelry. He did not wish to make himself especially known to those of Aruna’s village, for he knew, somehow, that there would be more than just Aruna and her friends to listen to their morning puja-concert.
At the riverbank grove, Sunila, Eesha, Mahika, Kiya, and Aruna gathered as they customarily did. However, the four other girls were dressed in much finer materials than usual. There was no difference, however in Aruna’s. She wore just what she had the day before, and the day before that. Eesha, the tabla player, sat with a frog’s smile on her face, and Mahika, her partner, the pakavaji, loosened and tightened the straps along the drum head somewhat nervously, tapping it at intervals, testing it with short taps to the smaller tabla to tune it. Kiya, who played the flute, wove a garland from flowers growing on the riverbank her flute now ignored. And the sarod player, Sunila, and Aruna, tuned their strings and agreed on what their rasas this morning would be saying.
“Today, our music will speak of nothing impure, but only noble thought and action. We will build our alap with teental and trikita-ta, and at the jor, we will not become abandoned. At the moment of approximation, there we will break off. We will leave the prince wanting more. Do you agree?”
The other girls nodded, and they sat in the misty morning light, waiting for the sound of Padmarana’s horse, and they were not long in waiting.
Again, he tied the horse on one of the trees, and left it room to drink from the river as well as graze on the sweet grass.
“I came early— I did not wish to miss any of your performance!” he blushed.
“And I wish now to introduce you to my friends! This is Eesha, and Mahika. The two drummers pranamed a namaste gesture, and Aruna moved on. Indicating Kiya- this is Kiya, my oldest friend, who plays the flute.”
“You sound almost as good as Lord Krishna!” Padmarana blurted.
“Oh, I am not so perfect as the Lord, good sir.” Now it was Kiya who was blushing.
“And here, this is Sunila, my next oldest friend, who plays the sarod...”
“Your playing is like... Well, I can only say, the sound of all of you together had me... in raptures the last few days!”
Such a thing would not have been impossible, since not only were these “common girls” experienced music players, but they were, indeed, apsarasis, and as such, their music channeled divine energy, effortlessly, expressing the ten thousand things as all, separately and together.
And as apsarasis, they were, indeed, appreciated by others in the community. It would not be a lie to say that, because the word gets around in a small town, that the girls and Padmarana were the only eyes and ears present. For all around the edges of the grove, silently, noiselessly, a number of villagers held back from the circle, keeping their distance, but all eagerly anxious to get a glimpse of the great prince who lived in the great castle of the great king, Mohan!
Eesha lit a stick of incense and set it by her drums. Aruna looked to the drummers and together, they started the tala that would drive their morning raga, Bhairavi. Then the drummers began laying down the tala that would be the basis and frame of the raga. After a brief pause, the others started in, with Kiya and Aruna lading the way, Sunila adding drone as well as some basic large patterns beneath them.
Where Padmarana sat, the villagers who had come more to see him than listen to the music had begun to edge from their safe distance to a point much closer. Still withdrawn, however, they had begun to argue amongst themselves.
“Hush, Giddhi! We want to hear the music too!”
“Kaua, the music is not so important. These girls do this every day. How often to we get to see our prince?”
“Stupid Gaanji! If we were meant to see our prince then he would have come to the village! Keep back! Let him enjoy his music too!”
“You are impossible, Bodhiman-Ghadda! I would give the prince the carpet off my own floor if he would but honor me with a visit!”
“Shutup, Ghodesachaara! The prince would never stand such a thing. What would (the wife) feed him, if not just chapatis ghee and sweat curry?”
The group laughed together at the thought, but none of them edged back any further. They were just beyond Padmarana’s earshot, but he did notice that the crowd had edged on in closer, and so, he drew his blanket-cloak closer around him, and leaned in to hear the music better.
Kiya and Sunila were now engaged in a back-and-forth, and the drummers began playing with that, as well. Back and forth, back and forth, one would set a pattern, the next would answer, and the flute and vine each took turns answering. it was getting more involved by the second, and at this point, Padmarana closed his eyes and allowed the apsarais to weave an internal vision for him. He felt... suspended above the river, borne by the flute and the rippling slide-sounds of the vina, and the drum patterns became rock and boulders beneath his floating consciousness. It was as if he were floating on a mattress made of sound...
The villagers, however, got ever more edgy. The more Padmarana closed his eyes and edged himself into the music, the more the crowd inched closer, tugging, nudging, bumping one another, until now, they were but five feet from Padmarana’s back. Suddenly, the most irritated of the mass, the one called Ghiddi, an older man with few teeth but a wicked stick he used as a staff, began to pound it along to the rhythm.
“Aya, aya, Ghiddi! Let the enchanters be!”
There were sounds of clicking as some snapped their fingers and began in time to clap their hands along with the drums. Some of them began to make a mocking dance. But none of this was noticed by the girls who played on, drawn ever more intricately into the web they were spinning themselves. Then they picked up the tempo, twice now three times as fast. The wave broke over the crowd, and then all was still, and the slow part of the raga began again, with some variation from how it had sounded at the start, but still, recognizable in melody.
The drummers now sat tapping the drums in a much quieter mode, and the flute and vina were left to weave another sinuous line. Padmarana’s eyes were still closed. Only now, he imagined Aruna as his consort, and again, imagined her kisses, her body beside him, her mind flashing brightly along with his own. As the music picked up in tempo again for a final recapitulation and climax, the one in the crowd called Kaua stumbled, and fell forward, bumping his elbows against Padmarana.
“Travesty!” cried Bodhiman-Ghadda. “Sudras must never touch the Prince! He has been defiled!” The villagers now drew back as though, this gross breach of social distance had been, as it might have indeed been had it occurred in Mohan’s court, some error near to fatal on Kaua’s part. Bodhiman-Ghadda shoved Kaua, shoved him to the back of the little crowd, pushed him away, shooed him with a motion of his arm that was immediately understandable as “begone!”
Padmarana, though, had barely noticed the occurrence. The musicians built up their jor to conclusion, and ended. When they had, they rested, their eyes on Padmarana. had the prince been pleased, they beseeched him with only their eyes.
Padmarana stood up. Behind him, the various villagers now drew back, as if he were a rampant cobra, and hustled themselves to what was once more a safe distance.
“Thank you, my friends. That was a marvelous piece! I thank you for your skill and your inventiveness! Well, now I suppose I must be on...”
Aruna interrupted him. “No, Prince, stay! Stay here with me today. Come and see where we live, our humble village! We have never had anyone from the castle visit us like this. We would be happy to show you our wealth, our fields, our animals!”
Muttering among themselves the villagers looked askance to each other.
“What is she proposing? That the prince will come to our village! Quick, we must go and prepare!”
They broke off running, for each of them knew just the state of their humble hut, and what the prince was likely to find there. If they could but have a half hour’s time they could make arrangements so he saw them at their best...
Padmarana nodded to Aruna, and drew close to her. he took a flower from the jacaranda tree nearest him, and set it in her ear. Behind her, her friends gasped- what a royal favor! Aruna was not blind to the meaning of this gesture, and blushing, she smiled to him.
“Come to my home, prince! I will give you the best I can of a royal meal! And you may meet my poor parents...”
The other girls took their instruments and hurriedly ran off in the direction of the village as well, in the dust of the villagers who had gone before them. Laughing and giggling and talking and gossiping amongst themselves, again, they were sure to do more of it when they got Aruna to themselves again, much later in the day...
CHAPTER 3.
They were a group of young women, five in number, two of whom played small drums (tablas and pakavaj), while the other three played flute, sarod, and vina. Padmarana stopped his horse and hid behind a mulberry bush, set back a ways from the jacaranda grove. The mist came and went, and he would get glimpses of the girls as they played, the music cutting through the fog with clear precision.
The two that played the drums lid out a hypnotic and repetitive rythmn, as the flute and sarod played a melodic counterpoint to the beat. Once in a while, one of the drummers would lead with a vocalised “takka ta diga takata ta ta” and the flute and sarod would follow, the girl with the vina seemed to float serenely above the rest, glissandos of fluid grace finding their way between all the others.
Padmarana had stumbled upon a group of apsarasi—divinely inspired and magically endowed musicians capable of enchanting the ears of a royal prince. They all came from a village just a bowshot away to the east of the river, not so far from where the young women had now gathered.
They were dressed in the local traditional tribal costume—cotton saris worn with bangles on their wrists and delicate chains of bells about their ankles. At various intervals, one or another would shake out her foot, and the bells would add an accent to the rythmn which insistently never wavered. Their hair was plaited braided into long braids they wore in loops from the back of their head back up tucked under and into the hair at the base of their necks just above the shoulder.
Padmarana found his thoughts wandering. The music entrained with his breath and pulse and somehow he could not move but only stare, transfixed. Padmarana’s trance lasted as long as the apsarasis kept playing. His horse whinnied, and rather than possibly give away his position and startling the girls, he reluctantly mounted, and rode his horse away.
But all that day and night the strange experience stayed with him. He made his way back, a little earlier in the morning of the next day, and found the same group of girls playing at the same spot.
Once again, the music drew him in.He felt like he was in a meditative state, but he couldn’t say whether or not it was or wasn’t actually a daydream. But this time, when his horse became impatient, it couldn’t be hidden from the girls.
They stopped, and the girl with the vina set down her slide and laughed, approaching him.
Her eyes danced, just as her fingers had across the vina. Prince Padmarana drew back, embarrassed to have been found out.
“Oh, don’t be shy, friend! Come and join us!:
Padmarana slowly and shyly led his horse closer, and tied it to one of the trees.
“Now that we see you like to listen, join us and give us the pleasure of playing to you more directly!:
Padmarana worried that perhaps they might guess his nobility, from his finely cut and elegant clothing and the signet ring on his left hand. But if so the girls made no mention as they took up their instruments again and played, this time a new tala.
“trikata ta ta trika TA trika TA” the new beat laid down ad set out a new raga into motion. The flute and sarod this time doubling around each other, repetitively chasing each other through an eight minute forest of garlanded srutis......)
The girl with the vina would now and then cast her eye his way and beyond the enchantment her music cast, Padmarana found himself returning her smile, and by the end of their new raga, he felt a new emotion rising from his feet to his head—a new feeling not unlike being thrown into a whirlpool of passion. (Jadugar-the wizard no doubt would chide him for such an emotion, such a thought!)
But he could not deny it. When the players stopped, this time, the girl set down her vina and walked up to him, taking his hand.
“Come, my friend! I am sure there are many other things I could teach you than to just sit her and listen to our silly games!”
The other young women took up their instruments just then and all ran off, giggling an laughing, in the direction of the village.
Padmarana remained with the girl.
“My name is Aruna. And you are—?”
Padmarana stumbled over the word.
“P—P—P—Padma—Padmarana!”
“Oh! I hear there is a Padmarana who is the prince of King Mohan who lives in the castle of Jadusagar Gadh! Can you be he?”
Now his cover completely blown, Padmarana could only hang his head abashedly and nod.
“Well then, I am blessed twice today!” She clapped her hands in glee.
“Let me show you how I caress the prince of this land! His grace is manifest, his young heart is perhaps new to the game of love...”
Love! So that was what he had been feeling? Yes! Love! He loved this strange girl and her laughing eyes and her enchanting, magical music, and the strange forward manner, so unlike how the Brahmins and courtesans of the castle treated him.
“Let me bestow a blessing upon you, my prince!”
And she leaned over into him and kissed him, first tentatively, then with more self assurance, he returned it. They fell into each other’s arms, and he tasted, tested her, brought the entire experience into his full attention, in the sweet fresh spring cress, until the dew dampened their clothing and until clothing could no longer barricade their virtue.
While Padmarana had ridden back to the castle, and threw himself into writing an amateurish and impassioned love letter to Aruna, Aruna herself had spent her afternoon in her parent’s humble cottage, cooking the meal that would be their night-time dinner, and then had been buttonholed by her three friends as she walked from the cottage to gather mangoes.
“Aruna! Is it true, he is the prince?”
“Aruna, did he make love to you at the music grove?”
Aruna, did he tell you you will be his princess?”
“Aruna, did you let him....”
“Aruna, are his kisses like the honey dew and the fresh wine?”
“Enough!” shouted Aruna. “I will answer for myself, not for him. No he did not make love to me. No his kisses are not like melons and wine! No! He is not experienced. This I can tell. As for making me his princess—I should think things have much much farther to go than to be even thinking such things, Sunila!”
“But he came back to listen...”
“And be sure, he will again! When he comes tomorrow, I want none of you to badger him or even let on what he has told me, that he is the prince of the castle! He will be our special audience. This should have been clear to you from the start, as it is, Sunila! And play well! When we see him, his thoughts should be wrapped up in the music, not on having his way with me!”
“But was he gentle...?”
“Of course! He was gentle! A man who barely knows what he is doing, he was cautious like a mongoose! Sunila you silly goose! I have much to think about. And now, I have to go and get milk for my bapu.”
Padmarana, home in his study, sheltered from the heat of the day by billowing curtains, the cool breeze calming his perspiring brow, had sat down with his pen and tried to write what he was feeling. This was a new feeling, unlike anything he could really compare, actually! Love? or was it... lust? Was the stirring of his loins something he should be ashamed or afraid of? What if she had some other lover, who would need to be his rival? Should he be like his father, and make a mess out of rivalry, plot to have his rival purged, what then?
The words did not come easy to him but at the end, he had written on two sides of a banana leaf in his most elegant script all that he knew- that he had met someone special, that her kisses inspired him “to do great things, and soar to the clouds,” and that in all the world perhaps there might be nobody else like Aruna, he would ever hope to find, and when he went to bed that night and looked up toward the stars and the galaxies, he swore upon the Mahabarhata that he would never feel just this way, for anyone else in the world, and dreams of Aruna fed his subconscious as he slumbered.
In the morning, rising earlier than was his custom, then, before the sun, actually, had blazed its way up above the line of the mountains to the East, he saddled his horse, clad this time in the simple garb of a commoner. White salwar kameez, no turban, no jewelry. He did not wish to make himself especially known to those of Aruna’s village, for he knew, somehow, that there would be more than just Aruna and her friends to listen to their morning puja-concert.
At the riverbank grove, Sunila, Eesha, Mahika, Kiya, and Aruna gathered as they customarily did. However, the four other girls were dressed in much finer materials than usual. There was no difference, however in Aruna’s. She wore just what she had the day before, and the day before that. Eesha, the tabla player, sat with a frog’s smile on her face, and Mahika, her partner, the pakavaji, loosened and tightened the straps along the drum head somewhat nervously, tapping it at intervals, testing it with short taps to the smaller tabla to tune it. Kiya, who played the flute, wove a garland from flowers growing on the riverbank her flute now ignored. And the sarod player, Sunila, and Aruna, tuned their strings and agreed on what their rasas this morning would be saying.
“Today, our music will speak of nothing impure, but only noble thought and action. We will build our alap with teental and trikita-ta, and at the jor, we will not become abandoned. At the moment of approximation, there we will break off. We will leave the prince wanting more. Do you agree?”
The other girls nodded, and they sat in the misty morning light, waiting for the sound of Padmarana’s horse, and they were not long in waiting.
Again, he tied the horse on one of the trees, and left it room to drink from the river as well as graze on the sweet grass.
“I came early— I did not wish to miss any of your performance!” he blushed.
“And I wish now to introduce you to my friends! This is Eesha, and Mahika. The two drummers pranamed a namaste gesture, and Aruna moved on. Indicating Kiya- this is Kiya, my oldest friend, who plays the flute.”
“You sound almost as good as Lord Krishna!” Padmarana blurted.
“Oh, I am not so perfect as the Lord, good sir.” Now it was Kiya who was blushing.
“And here, this is Sunila, my next oldest friend, who plays the sarod...”
“Your playing is like... Well, I can only say, the sound of all of you together had me... in raptures the last few days!”
Such a thing would not have been impossible, since not only were these “common girls” experienced music players, but they were, indeed, apsarasis, and as such, their music channeled divine energy, effortlessly, expressing the ten thousand things as all, separately and together.
And as apsarasis, they were, indeed, appreciated by others in the community. It would not be a lie to say that, because the word gets around in a small town, that the girls and Padmarana were the only eyes and ears present. For all around the edges of the grove, silently, noiselessly, a number of villagers held back from the circle, keeping their distance, but all eagerly anxious to get a glimpse of the great prince who lived in the great castle of the great king, Mohan!
Eesha lit a stick of incense and set it by her drums. Aruna looked to the drummers and together, they started the tala that would drive their morning raga, Bhairavi. Then the drummers began laying down the tala that would be the basis and frame of the raga. After a brief pause, the others started in, with Kiya and Aruna lading the way, Sunila adding drone as well as some basic large patterns beneath them.
Where Padmarana sat, the villagers who had come more to see him than listen to the music had begun to edge from their safe distance to a point much closer. Still withdrawn, however, they had begun to argue amongst themselves.
“Hush, Giddhi! We want to hear the music too!”
“Kaua, the music is not so important. These girls do this every day. How often to we get to see our prince?”
“Stupid Gaanji! If we were meant to see our prince then he would have come to the village! Keep back! Let him enjoy his music too!”
“You are impossible, Bodhiman-Ghadda! I would give the prince the carpet off my own floor if he would but honor me with a visit!”
“Shutup, Ghodesachaara! The prince would never stand such a thing. What would (the wife) feed him, if not just chapatis ghee and sweat curry?”
The group laughed together at the thought, but none of them edged back any further. They were just beyond Padmarana’s earshot, but he did notice that the crowd had edged on in closer, and so, he drew his blanket-cloak closer around him, and leaned in to hear the music better.
Kiya and Sunila were now engaged in a back-and-forth, and the drummers began playing with that, as well. Back and forth, back and forth, one would set a pattern, the next would answer, and the flute and vine each took turns answering. it was getting more involved by the second, and at this point, Padmarana closed his eyes and allowed the apsarais to weave an internal vision for him. He felt... suspended above the river, borne by the flute and the rippling slide-sounds of the vina, and the drum patterns became rock and boulders beneath his floating consciousness. It was as if he were floating on a mattress made of sound...
The villagers, however, got ever more edgy. The more Padmarana closed his eyes and edged himself into the music, the more the crowd inched closer, tugging, nudging, bumping one another, until now, they were but five feet from Padmarana’s back. Suddenly, the most irritated of the mass, the one called Ghiddi, an older man with few teeth but a wicked stick he used as a staff, began to pound it along to the rhythm.
“Aya, aya, Ghiddi! Let the enchanters be!”
There were sounds of clicking as some snapped their fingers and began in time to clap their hands along with the drums. Some of them began to make a mocking dance. But none of this was noticed by the girls who played on, drawn ever more intricately into the web they were spinning themselves. Then they picked up the tempo, twice now three times as fast. The wave broke over the crowd, and then all was still, and the slow part of the raga began again, with some variation from how it had sounded at the start, but still, recognizable in melody.
The drummers now sat tapping the drums in a much quieter mode, and the flute and vina were left to weave another sinuous line. Padmarana’s eyes were still closed. Only now, he imagined Aruna as his consort, and again, imagined her kisses, her body beside him, her mind flashing brightly along with his own. As the music picked up in tempo again for a final recapitulation and climax, the one in the crowd called Kaua stumbled, and fell forward, bumping his elbows against Padmarana.
“Travesty!” cried Bodhiman-Ghadda. “Sudras must never touch the Prince! He has been defiled!” The villagers now drew back as though, this gross breach of social distance had been, as it might have indeed been had it occurred in Mohan’s court, some error near to fatal on Kaua’s part. Bodhiman-Ghadda shoved Kaua, shoved him to the back of the little crowd, pushed him away, shooed him with a motion of his arm that was immediately understandable as “begone!”
Padmarana, though, had barely noticed the occurrence. The musicians built up their jor to conclusion, and ended. When they had, they rested, their eyes on Padmarana. had the prince been pleased, they beseeched him with only their eyes.
Padmarana stood up. Behind him, the various villagers now drew back, as if he were a rampant cobra, and hustled themselves to what was once more a safe distance.
“Thank you, my friends. That was a marvelous piece! I thank you for your skill and your inventiveness! Well, now I suppose I must be on...”
Aruna interrupted him. “No, Prince, stay! Stay here with me today. Come and see where we live, our humble village! We have never had anyone from the castle visit us like this. We would be happy to show you our wealth, our fields, our animals!”
Muttering among themselves the villagers looked askance to each other.
“What is she proposing? That the prince will come to our village! Quick, we must go and prepare!”
They broke off running, for each of them knew just the state of their humble hut, and what the prince was likely to find there. If they could but have a half hour’s time they could make arrangements so he saw them at their best...
Padmarana nodded to Aruna, and drew close to her. he took a flower from the jacaranda tree nearest him, and set it in her ear. Behind her, her friends gasped- what a royal favor! Aruna was not blind to the meaning of this gesture, and blushing, she smiled to him.
“Come to my home, prince! I will give you the best I can of a royal meal! And you may meet my poor parents...”
The other girls took their instruments and hurriedly ran off in the direction of the village as well, in the dust of the villagers who had gone before them. Laughing and giggling and talking and gossiping amongst themselves, again, they were sure to do more of it when they got Aruna to themselves again, much later in the day...
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