by David Miller
The woman turned her face away to hide her gratitude, whispering, “Please, sahib, I have a last request. See my brother follows the practices of Islam.”
The next morning Master Mohan went to the corner of the avenue to consult the paanwallah.
“You did what, Master? Do you know what your wife and children will do to that poor boy?”
“They would not harm a defenceless child!”
“Your wife will never permit you to keep the boy. Make some excuse to the sister. Get out of it somehow.”
As they argued Mohammed-sahib joined them.
“I couldn’t help myself.” Master Mohan pleaded. “The girl was crying. If she loses her job how will she feed herself and a blind brother? This is no city for a young woman alone.”
Mohammed-sahib pulled at his moustache. “You have done a very fine thing, my friend. Prohibit your wife from interfering in your affairs. It is you who feed and clothe your family and put a roof over their heads. Your decision as to who shall share that roof is final and irreversible.” He slapped Master Mohan on the back and turned towards the tram stop.
The paanwallah shook his head. “That fellow is as puffed up as a peacock. It is easy for him to give advice when it costs him nothing. Don’t go back for the child, Master.”
But Master Mohan could not betray the young woman’s trust, even when he returned to the tent that night and saw the sobbing boy clinging to his sister’s legs. Master Mohan lifted the weeping child in his arms as the sister consoled her brother. “I’ll write often. Study hard with your kind teacher until I send for you. You’ll hardly notice the time until we are together again.”
The child was asleep by the time Master Mohan reached his silent household. He crept up the stone stairs to the terrace and laid Imrat on the cloth mattress, pleased when the child rolled over onto his torn shawl and continued sleeping.
Well, you can imagine how his wife shrieked the next morning when she discovered what Master Mohan had done. As the days passed her rage did not diminish. In fact, it got worse. Each day Master Mohan returned from giving his music lessons in the city to find his wife waiting on the doorstep with fresh accusations about the blind boy’s insolence, his clumsiness, his greed. She carried her attack into the kitchen when Master Mohan was trying to cook food for himself and Imrat, chasing behind him up the narrow stairwell so that everyone could hear her abuse raging over the rooftops.
When Master Mohan continued to refuse her demand that Imrat be thrown out into the street, Dolly and Babloo triumphantly joined in their mother’s battle, complaining they no longer got enough to eat with another mouth sharing their food. In the evenings they placed their gramophone on the very top step of the stone staircase just outside the terrace, so the child could not hear the fragile drone of Master Mohan’s tanpura strings giving the key for Imrat’s music lesson. They teased Imrat by withholding his sister’s letters, sometimes even tearing them up before Master Mohan had returned to the house and was able to read them to the waiting child.
Somehow Master Mohan discovered a strength in himself equal to his family’s cruelty to Imrat. He arranged for the child’s letters to be left with the paanwallah and on the rare occasions when he entered the house and found his family gone to visit friends he gently encouraged Imrat to stop cowering against the walls and become a child again. He would cook some special dish, letting the boy join in the preparations, encouraging him to eat his fill. Then he would take the child onto the roof terrace. Allowing his fingers to play over the strings of his tanpura until he found the note best suited to the boy’s range Master Mohan would ask Imrat to sing.
Hearing the clear notes pierce the night, Master Mohan knew he had been made guardian of something rare, as if his own life until now had only been a purification to ready him for the task of tending this voice for the world.
Then one day the music teacher returned late from giving a music lesson and found his daughter holding Imrat down while his son tried to force pork into the child’s mouth. The child’s sightless eyes were wide open, tears streaming down his cheeks. For the first time in his life Master Mohan struck his children. “He’s only nine years old. How can you torture a child so much younger than yourselves! Get out of this house until you learn civilised behaviour!”
With those words war was declared in Master Mohan’s household. His wife accused Master Mohan of striking his own children out of preference for a blind beggar, unleashing such furious threats at the child that Master Mohan was worried Imrat would run away.
Mohammed-sahib would not agree to let Imrat live in his house, despite the music teacher’s eloquent pleading. As he listened to Mohammed-sahib’s elaborate excuses Master Mohan realised his friend wished to avoid the unpleasantness of dealing with his wife.
“I warned you, Master,” the paanwallah said with satisfaction when he heard of Mohammed-sahib’s response. “That man is just good for free advice. Now there is only one thing to do. Go to the park in the early mornings. Only goats and shepherds will disturb you there. Don’t give up, Master. After all, there is a whole world in which to practise, away from the distractions of your house.”
So the music teacher woke his young charge before dawn and they boarded the first tram of the morning to reach the great park that is the centre of Calcutta City.
When they arrived at the park Master Mohan led Imrat by the hand between the homeless men and women wrapped in tattered cloths asleep under the great English oaks turning red each time the neon signs flashed, past the goatherds gossiping by their aluminium canisters until it was time to milk the goats grazing on the grass, towards the white balustrades that enclosed the marble mausoleum of the Victoria Memorial.
The music teacher lowered his cane mat and his tanpura over the side of the balustrade before gently lifting Imrat onto the wall. Climbing over himself, he lifted the child down, both so silent in the dark the guard asleep in his sentry box was left undisturbed.
With a swishing sound Master Mohan unrolled his cane mat, still smelling of green fields, and seated Imrat sat next to him.
Then he played the first notes of the morning raga on his tanpura. To his delight Imrat repeated the scale faultlessly.
Master Mohan explained the significance of the raga, initiating Imrat into the mystery of the world’s rebirth, when light disperses darkness and Vishnu rises from his slumbers to re-dream the universe.
Again Imrat sang the scale, but there was a new resonance in his voice. He could not see the faint blur of the picket fences ringing the race course in the distance, or the summit of Ochterlony’s Needle breaking through the smoke from the illegal fires built by the street hawkers around the base of the obelisk. He could not even see the guard looking through his sentry box, his hand half-raised to expel them from the gardens, frozen in that gesture by the boy’s voice. He only saw the power of the morning raga and dreaming visions of light he pushed his voice towards them, believing sight was only a half-tone away.
Afraid the raga would strain the child’s voice Master Mohan asked Imrat to sing a devotional song. The boy obediently turned his head towards the warmth of the sun’s first rays and sang,
“The heat of Your presence
Blinds my eyes.
Blisters my skin.
Shrivels my flesh.
“Do not turn in loathing from me.
O Beloved, can You not see
Only Love disfigures me?”
Master Mohan patted Imrat’s head. “That is a beautiful prayer. Where did you learn such a song?”
Tears clouded the clouded eyes. “It is a poem by Amir Rumi. My father said that one day he and I would sing it at Amir Rumi’s tomb together.”
The music teacher took the child in his arms. “You will still sing at Amir Rumi’s tomb, I promise you. And your father will hear your voice from heaven. Come, sing it once more so I can listen properly.”
The child blew his nose and again shocked the music teacher with the power of his voice.
&
nbsp; “Do not turn in loathing from me.
O Beloved, can You not see
Only Love disfigures me?”
At that moment a sudden belief took root in Master Mohan’s mind. He was convinced God was giving him a second voice, greater than he had ever heard, greater than his own could ever have been. He was certain such a voice must only be used to praise God, lest fate exact a second revenge by robbing him of it.
Sure of his purpose as a teacher at last Master Mohan asked the boy, “Did your father ever teach you the prayers of Kabir? Do you know this hymn?”
He played some notes on his tanpura and Imrat responded with excitement, opening his throat full to contain the mystic’s joy.
“O servant, where do you seek Me?
You will not find Me in temple or mosque,
In Kaaba or in Kailash,
In yoga or renunciation.
“Sings Kabir, ‘O seeker, find God
In the breath of all breathing.’”
And now a most extraordinary thing happened. Someone threw a coin over the wall and it fell on the grass in front of Master Mohan. The music teacher stood up. On the other side of the balustrades, just visible in the first light of dawn, he saw a group of goatherds leaning on the wall.
By the next morning people were already waiting for them and the guard waved Master Mohan and Imrat benevolently through the gate. Word had spread in the park that a blind boy with the voice of an angel was singing in the gardens of the Victoria Memorial. In the darkness goat-herds, street hawkers, refugees with children huddled to their bodies, waited patiently for Imrat to practise the scales of the morning raga before Master Mohan permitted him to sing the devotional songs which would give them the endurance to confront the indignities of their lives for another day.
Morning after morning they listened to the music teacher instruct Imrat in the songs of Kabir and Mirabai, of Khusrau and Tulsidas, of Chisti and Chandidas, the wandering poets and mystics who had made India’s soul visible to herself. Sometimes they even asked the boy to repeat a song and Master Mohan could see them responding to the purity of the lyrics translated with such innocence by Imrat’s voice.
To show their gratitude they began to leave small offerings on the wall above the balustrade; fruit, coins, a few crumpled rupees. And when the morning lesson ended, the street vendors crowded around Master Mohan and Imrat to offer a glass of steaming sweet tea or a hot samosa straight off a scalding iron pan.
Within a week Imrat’s audience had expanded. Wealthy people on their morning walks stopped at the balustrades, drawn by the beauty of Imrat singing,
“Some seek God in Mecca,
Some seek God in Benares.
Each finds his own path and the focus of his worship.
“Some worship Him in Mecca.
Some in Benares.
But I centre my worship on the eyebrow of my Beloved.”
Over the weeks more and more people made the balustrade part of their morning routines, until Master Mohan was able to recognise many faces at the wall, and every day he smiled at a young woman who folded a ten rupee note, placing it in a crevice in the parapet.
When they dismounted from the tram, the paanwallah shouted his congratulations to fortify them against the raging wife waiting at the music teacher’s house.
“Well, little Master Imrat. Your fame is spreading throughout Calcutta. Soon you will be rich. How much money did you make today?”
“Thirteen rupees.” Imrat pulled the music teacher towards the sound of the paanwallah’s voice. “How much have we got now?”
“Still a long way to go, Master Imrat. But here is another letter from your sister.”
The paanwallah kept Imrat’s money so Master Mohan’s wife would not take it. It was Imrat’s dream to earn enough money by his singing to live with his sister again and each time she wrote he sang with renewed force.
Perhaps it was the fervour in Imrat’s voice the morning after he had received another letter from his sister that made the miracle happen.
As Imrat was ending his song a man in a blazer shouted, “Come on, come on, my good fellow. I haven’t got all morning. Do you read English?”
The music teacher put down his tanpura and walked to the balustrade. The man handed him a paper without even looking at him, turning to the woman at his side. “Does the boy have a name or not? Can’t sign a recording contract without a name.”
Master Mohan pulled himself to his full height in defence of the child’s dignity although the man in the blazer had his back to him. “He is blind and cannot read or write. But I am his guardian. I can sign for him.”
“Jolly good. Turn up at the studio this afternoon so the engineers can do a preliminary test. That’s what you want isn’t it, Neena?”
His companion lifted her face and Master Mohan saw she was the woman who left ten rupees on the wall every day.
She smiled at Master Mohan’s recognition. “Is this gifted child your son?”
Master Mohan shyly told her the story of Imrat, suppressing anything that might reflect well on himself, only praising the boy’s talent. He could see the interest in her eyes but the man was pulling at her elbow. “Fascinating, fascinating. Well, be sure to be at the studio at four o’clock. The address in on the contract.”
Master Mohan studied the paper. “It says nothing here about payment.”
“Payment?” For the first time the man in the blazer looked at him. “Singing for coppers in the park and you dare ask for payment?”
“We are not beggars.” Master Mohan could not believe his own temerity. “I am a music teacher. I give the boy his lessons here so as not to disturb our household.”
The woman laid her hand on the man’s arm. “Don’t be such a bully, Ranjit. Offer him a thousand rupees. You’ll see it is a good investment.”
The man laughed indulgently. “You are the most demanding sister a man ever had. Here, give me that paper.” He pulled a pen from his blazer and scribbled down the sum, signing his name after it.
Master Mohan folded the paper and put it carefully in his pocket. When he looked up he saw two men watching him from the other side of the wall. Their oiled hair and stained teeth frightened him, bringing back memories of the musicians who had waited outside the great houses where he had sung as a child, until the menfolk sent for the dancing girls who often did not even dance before musicians such as these led them to the bedrooms.
On their way home Imrat lifted his blind eyes to his teacher and whispered, “But how much money is a thousand rupees? Enough to find somewhere to live with you and my sister?”
The music teacher hugged the child. “If the record is a success you can be together with your sister. Now try and rest. This afternoon you must not be tired.”
As they dismounted from the tram the paanwallah shouted, “Last night two musicians were asking about about you, Master. Did they come to hear Imrat today?”
Imrat interrupted the paanwallah. “We are going to make a record and get lots of money.”
“A record, Master Imrat! Be sure you sing well. Then I will buy a gramophone to listen to you.”
It was no surprise to Master Mohan that Imrat sang as he did that afternoon. The child could not see the microphone dangling from the wire covered with flies or the bored faces watching him behind the glass panel. He only saw himself in his sister’s embrace and when the recording engineer ordered him to sing the studio reverberated with his joy.
“The boy has recording genius,” an engineer admitted reluctantly as Imrat ended his song. “His timing is so exact we can print these as they are.”
“Ranjit-sahib will be very pleased. I’ll call him.”
A few minutes later the man in the blazer strode into the office followed by his engineers. “Well done, young man. Now my sister will give me some peace at last. She has done nothing but talk about you since she first heard you sing.”
He patted Imrat’s head. “Come back in ten days. If the engineers are right and we
do not have to make another recording I will give you a thousand rupees. What will a little chap like you do with so much money?”
But he was gone before Imrat could reply.
Master Mohan dared not hope for anything until the record was made. To prevent the child from believing too fervently that he would soon be reunited with his sister, the music teacher continued Imrat’s lessons in the park, trying not to feel alarm when he saw the same two men always at the balustrade, smiling at him, nodding their heads in appreciation of Imrat’s phrasing.
One day the men followed Master Mohan and Imrat to the tram, waiting until they were alone before approaching the music teacher with their offer.
“A great sahib wants to hear the boy sing.”
“No, no. We are too busy.” Master Mohan pushed Imrat before him. “The boy is making his first record. He must practise.”
“Don’t be a fool, brother. The sahib will pay handsomely to listen to his voice.”
“Five thousand rupees, brother. Think of it.”
“But your sahib can hear the child free every morning in the park.”
They laughed and Master Mohan felt the old fear when he saw their betel-stained teeth. “Great men do not stand in a crowd, snatching their pleasure from the breeze, brother. They indulge their pleasures in the privacy of palaces.”
“He must finish his recording first.”
“Naturally. But after that …”
“We will be here every morning, Master.”
“You will not escape us.”
To Master Mohan’s dismay the men waited each day at the park, leaning against the parapet until Imrat’s small crowd of admirers had dispersed before edging up to the blind boy.
“Please, little Master Imrat, take pity on a man who worships music.”
“The sahib’s responsibilities prevented him from following his own calling as a singer.”
“He could have been a great singer like you, Master Imrat, if he had not been forced to take care of his family business.”