PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

He watched the Sun rise over the low hills edging the poppy field. He had never actually seen a sunrise that he could remember, only the gradation of dark to light through the high windows in the music room. It appeared as glorious as the master had told it to be. But how could the old man have known. When he had once asked his teacher if he had ever seen a sunrise, the master recalled with a blissful smile, "Yes child, I see it everyday" and then described its grandeur in enthralling detail. Yet he had sat next to this man for all the mornings of 16 years, side by side, learning to play with devotional solemnity the complex tonalities of the raga that was said to bring on the dawn, not assimilating by verbal instruction but by hearing, by repetition, by the mysterious force moving his fingers along the keyboard.

The boy was the son of a son of a wealthy merchant who traded in exotic spices. At the age of 3, he had been tapped with the important responsibility of playing the Bhairav, day after day, from well before daybreak to mid-morning. The same droning notes on the harmonium, beginning with the soft hum coalescing countless heavenly bodies, raising the vibration that colors the sky from the deepest black of night to the golds of dawn, finally building in crescendo as the fiery orb which fosters all life on Gaia breaches the horizon commencing its east-west arc.

Never could he miss a day. He was told from the very start that to fail in his duty was to disrupt the sadbaav of this universe. When he was young and still spurred by the superstitions of those around him he was full of a fear that prompted him to wake well before the 3am bell. As he grew older he felt this warning was merely a tactic told to keep him practicing. It wasn't so bad really. After the raga's conclusion, the day's tutors came and went schooling him on the subjects a boy of his social standing should know. His evenings were free, though he was urged by his tutors to self-study and retire early. Still he felt a prisoner, daily remanded by his teacher to be seated at his instrument in the small chamber adjacent to the private temple which housed the family altar, a thousand eyes watching him from the murals depicting the entire pantheon of Hindu deities.

The time came when he arrived as precisely as he had everyday and his master was absent. Not knowing what to do, he sat down and played alone as night became day only later finding out that his teacher had died in his sleep. Did this mean that he was set free of his obligation? The next day, fraught with grief, he did not get up but lay in bed waiting with anxious anticipation. The Sun rose and set accordingly on that day. And now standing in the poppy field the Sun fully resurrected without incident he felt the folklore that had kept him bound to his assignment was completely unfounded. 

He took himself out to breakfast, a meal he had missed for all those years. Sitting at the counter that ran the length of the front window, sipping a sweet lassi while waiting for an order of syrupy gulab jamun, he watched the early morning hustle & bustle, imagining the lives of those passing by and where they might be going. A woman suddenly stopped and looked up at the darkening sky and began wailing as ice pellets filled the street. Behind him in the restaurant conversations grew alarmed and someone pointed at the TV mounted on the wall. The news anchor could barely be heard over the sound of the hail on the roof. The proprietor turned up the volume. The woman spoke in a measured tone though tinged with urgency, turning the story over to a reporter standing amidst a group of women gathered around him banging on pots with spoons and chanting fervently. His words were lost in the cacophony. The scene was replaced with a closeup of the Sun, a massive black spot obscuring its surface. A banner running across the bottom of the screen announced that scientists believed that the dark anomaly was in fact the genesis of a black hole and that they could only speculate as to what was going to happen next.