The Man ahead of Time

“There is one single pink rose in my garden that looks desolate and has seemed to have lost its charm.” – Ishani Das

Raju Bhai heard in colours, and he also played the violin in colours. Yet, hardly anyone knew him for the grand painter he was. No one associated Raju Bhai the Violinist to the other name as a painter he went by. Yet, for him, Music was as transient as light, and colours, just as concrete and real. He loved the music that he painted, and the colours that he played on his violin. In this vibrant, colourful, musical world, Raju Bhai the colourful violinist was all alone.

For Raju Bhai, this show was a wonderful opportunity waiting, and yet, the artist’s loneliness haunted him. They called him “ahead of his time”; yet, for him, it was just a fancy way of saying “We don’t understand you yet, but you’re good!” Try as he might, he found that somehow he could never care too much for that. Once he sat down on the stage, nothing but the beautiful world that surrounded him existed. When the quivering bow touched the still, silent strings, and the vibrations reverberated beyond the air, and into his heart, and his soul, then, nothing mattered – his loneliness, the crowd that surrounded him, the daily struggle of human life, the many compromises that he had had to make through the many facets of his life. He painted what he saw in front of him – beyond the crowd, and beyond the stage, the lake stood, stoic and silent. The little ripples on the water caught the last few rays of the sun as they fell on the grateful earth, and the shadows waited patiently for their moment.

An artist freezes time, stops the world from turning, and on the canvas, trapped in those colours, the wonderful moment stays on forever. Music, like that canvas, takes you back to the time where the vibrations were bottled in those notes. Like the colours on the canvas, the notes of the song linger on with the time when they were created magically, by the simple touch of that bow to the strings, or the light touch of the brush on the empty canvas. In a moment that lasts a lifetime, that blank nothingness gets transformed into a living, breathing moment, captured perfectly for all eternity.

Beyond the stage, Raju Bhai could feel the twilight, hear the colours that surrounded him. He saw the vivid orange that the sky was, and the soot black, gnarled branches that looked as though they thrived on that warm, soft fire that fed them through the day. He watched as the setting sun set the water on fire, and the little waves on the surface of the otherwise quiet lake danced as the sun slid slowly beyond the other side, so near yet so far out of reach.

A few final notes, a few more strokes of the brush, and a few wispy stray residual rays were all that was left of the strong, life giving sun. The brush strokes came to a stop, and the quivering bow went motionless. The loneliness returned, and Raju Bhai was back in the world in which he was too ahead of his time.

He suddenly saw the crowd in front of him, in a mad frenzy, applauding him. They loved him, but he just wanted to disappear, now that the art was done, and the music had stopped. The applause was deafening, and he could see his manager coming forth on to the stage. A few brisk steps, and the grand suit-and-tie man grasped his hand and wrung his hand for a full minute in that eager handshake. He waved to the crowd, egging them on to continue with that loud, deafening applause. Now that the music was over, no one cared about the man Raju Bhai was, or his eager loneliness. They wanted to see him, especially because they termed him “ahead of his time.” Meanwhile, Raju Bhai just wanted to slip by unnoticed, never caring much about anything but the beauty that he could see and hear, which went unnoticed by most people, most of whom were too busy making the deafening noise that beat Raju Bhai’s eardrums.

“Can I go home now?” asked Raju Bhai to his suited manager, but over the cries of “Encore!” from the crowd, his little plea went unnoticed.