The Music Room

NOTE: What follows below is a story. It's very unusual of me to post creative write-ups of mine up on my blog, because I'm very much afraid of plagiarism, but occasionally I do post stuff that I don't intend to publish ever. I've posted one poem before; now it's time for some fiction. I hope you like it. Please do comment after you've read it.


Komal knew something was wrong the moment the building of the Premrang Music School came into sight as she walked down the road towards it that Sunday morning. A small crowd was gathered around on the veranda, at the entrance to the music room- the students of the school standing about distraught, confused. “No class today,” the caretaker of the school called out to Komal as he caught sight of her when she drew near. Tanvi, Komal's friend, came running down the three small steps and caught her hand. “Guruji is dead,” she said breathlessly, her eyes wide with dismay. “I don't believe it! I mean- how can he? All of a sudden?”

Komal and Tanvi were Guruji's oldest students, both of them on the wrong side of twenty. Most people in that school had taken up music as a pastime in their childhood or teens, and they never continued with it once the pressure of their higher studies got too much, but Komal and Tanvi knew they wanted to make a career out of music, and they were diligent students. They were to appear for their final exam in music the next year, and passing it would give them the title of Sangeet Praveen, a real achievement. Guruji was proud of them. But now...

How could he be dead? “What happened to him?”, Komal asked Tanvi.
“Heart attack, I told you so many times already,” the caretaker cried exasperatedly, answering someone who had asked him the same question.
“I asked him for the details,” Tanvi whispered, her voice trembling slightly. “He said Guruji's son called up to say that his father had had a heart attack last night, and he was declared dead by the doctor when they took him to the hospital. That's all he could say.”
Komal was silent. She thought of Guruji- an elderly man, going bald at the temples, with a round face and a podgy build, and a very charming personality. She thought of his lovable grandfather image, his loud laugh that came very frequently on account of his jolly nature, and his voice- sonorous and so melodious, the heavenly sound when he sang the phrases of some khayal, to the strumming of the tanpura and the steady beat of the tabla...Tansen must have sounded like her Guruji, Komal had often thought.

She had known Guruji for a long time. She was about six or seven when her father first brought her to him- a week ago the young father had discovered his daughter's penchant for music when he walked in upon her trying to strum his tanpura.
She was in the music room, standing by the tanpura, testing the first string with her finger, when he had walked in suddenly.
Later that evening, he had asked her, “Do you want to learn music, Komal?”, drawing his darling daughter close to himself and seating her on his lap.
She had nodded shyly, and he had laughed, remembering how she would listen with hungry eyes whenever he was practising.

Her father was a close friend of Shivam Patel. They had learned music in the same school together, and Shivam had been a few years senior to her father. So when Komal expressed her desire to learn music, her father knew instinctively that Shivam Patel, the person he adored so much, would be just the right person to train his daughter. Moreover, Shivam had recently opened his music school, named after their Guruji, and in the eyes of Komal's father, there was no better place to learn music than in Shivam's school.

She still remembered the day her father first took her to the school and told her that the person she had previously known as Tauji was now to be her Guruji. It stood out very prominently in her memory, for that was the day she saw her father living and breathing for the last time. He died in an accident that day while returning home from the Music Academy, and after that, Guruji, the teacher who was very much her uncle, assumed the role of her father.

But now, he, too, was gone. And she, very much his daughter, felt as though the world had crashed down on her shoulders. Guruji- dead? It was impossible to think of her favourite person in the world as nothing but a cold corpse now, of whom soon nothing would remain but an urn full of ashes to be immersed in the Ganga a few days later. Tears rose in her eyes.

“Tanvi,” she told her friend, her eyes shining, “I want to go to his home, I want to see him.” It is my duty to be there, even if I cannot perform his last rites, she thought. Tanvi would probably refuse- what remained to be seen?- but she answered immediately, “Yes, let's go.”



Entering Guruji's home reminded her very strongly of the only time she had been in a house of mourning. Everyone was in white, the women had tear-streaked faces and attempted to hide them behind veils made of the end of their saris, while the men maintained a stance of composure. Everywhere, silence ruled. People spoke in whispers. Over all, it was a sepulchral atmosphere.

“Where is he?”, Komal whispered when they met Guruji's wife. She still called her Taiji, although technically the aging lady was her Guruma.
“Still at the hospital,” Taiji answered. She had a withered look, an expression of exhaustion mixed with despair. “Everything happened so suddenly...my sons are still at the hospital...there is some trouble with the body...”

Suddenly Komal felt sick. She did not want to hear any more. She wished she hadn't come...but Taiji was still speaking, and Komal heard her say, “I am glad you came, Komal. You were always like a daughter to us, to him- he would have wanted you to be present when we bade him goodbye for the last time...And you too, Tanvi. You two were his favourite students.”
Beside her, Tanvi wiped away the tears rolling down her cheeks. Komal felt strange, unable to cry herself, unable to feel any particular emotion except a sense of emptiness.
“Can I go see his room?”, she asked.

Minutes later, she stood outside Guruji's room. The bed was made- as though any moment he would come in and lay down on the bed. She watched his pillow, wondering when his head had rested on it last- perhaps during the afternoon of the previous day; he always had a habit of taking a short nap after lunch.

She walked in and stood by the bed for a while, staring down at it. She extended a hand and felt the sheets- he had lain there less than twenty-four hours ago.

Maybe that was how it happened. One moment a person could be eating, breathing, sleeping, talking, thinking, singing...and the next moment, nothing remained. Void. Darkness. That was Death. Death that had the power to shock, but also to awe. How ephemeral a life was!

She walked out slowly and went into the next room- the music room, where Guruji practised music regularly. Her eyes wandered over to the tanpura in the corner...

“Komal, what on earth are you doing?”
The little girl standing beside the tanpura looked up suddenly and an expression of guilt came over her face. “Nothing,” she muttered.
The tall man with the curly dark hair had a look of incredulity on his face. “Were you going to play the tanpura?”
The girl shook her head vehemently, and the man burst out laughing. “Of course you were. Malati-”, he called out to his wife, the girl's mother, “Malati, our Komal was going to play the tanpura!”...

“Guruji, will you teach me to play the tanpura?”, the child looked up at her teacher with shining eyes.
“Of course I will,” the teacher gave her a benign smile. “How can you ever learn music without learning to play the tanpura?”...

They had given her music. They had taught her how to strum that instrument- the first string with the middle finger, the other three with the index finger.
“The first string is most often set to the sound of Pa,” Guruji had told her. “The others are set to the sound of Sa.”

Komal walked over to the tanpura now. When had her Guruji last touched it? She lifted a hand, put her finger to the first string, and pulled at it gently. Ga . It was not Pa. He had last sung a song that did not make use of the fifth note of the octave. What could the raag have been? Hindol ? It was the first name that came to her mind. With a start she realised that that was the song they had sung the last Sunday. The last raag they ever sang together.

She pulled at the other strings gently. Hummed to herself the opening lines of Hindol.

The music room was transformed. A heavenly, golden light filled it, and the air was suffused with joy while the tanpura strings sang and imaginary fingers danced on the tabla and Guruji's voice resonated in her ear. He was not dead.