Anonymous, why give your blessings in secret? Why reign, and hold me prisoner to your deafening silence? I played tunes on the harmonica, and rats ran with me**. The patter of their barefeet, their scatter…. sounded like worshippers in a temple. There is no difference between the angry atheist and devout believer. Both spend as much time thinking about God.

Deserving better than clandestine, unlisted expressions of love, through music. Fingers will dance when body is not well. Fingers can give birth to flowers. Tips like orange petals. Or fly like a bird. Why don’t we set ourselves free…. I am flying already.

Nahii aaye kesariyaa balamaa hamaar.

But he did not come, my dark handsome lover

a.nganaa  baDaa sunasaan

Leaving my courtyard deserted

– Gulzar Sahab

Love,

The Humming Bird.

** This is in reference to a German story from the Middle Ages, 16th C, of Pied Piper of Hamelin, who could play his magic pipe and lure rats with his music. It was agreed that the people of Hamelin would pay him for removing the rats. However they did not pay him for his services. So he retaliated by luring all the children out of Hamelin. Thus the phrase ‘to pay the piper’, meaning to bear the consequences of your actions.

Pied Piper of Hamelin has always been casted negatively in all renditions of this fable through history.

My use of this fable is intrinsically linked to the following sentence, “patter of their barefeet sounded like worshippers at the temple“

It was to describe or situate my manipulation (luring, harmonica, music). But like God who fine-tunes behaviour through fear and promises of heavenly rewards (and yet is still devoutly loved for it), I am suggesting a resemblance and using that resemblance to pardon my manipulation (harmonica [piper], lure, music). It is expected, by virtue of my blind devotion, that I would behave like this. So pardon me. Except rats ran with me; and the fictitious man described here, that I had attempted to lure with music, remained silent. Only rats ran with me, like worshippers scuttering in and out of a temple.

My later comparison of atheists and believers I did as a way of saying that two people can be in very different  - different worldview, age, place in life, commitments, desire for love, attributions to love, expressions of love etc….But there remains a common attachment to each other, even if the love is shared or perceived differently. Also the adjectives ‘angry’ and ‘devout’ are apt.

Fingers can give birth to flowers – fingers cusping can look like a lotus flower. Tips like orange petals — my fingers tips I dyed with mehndi, are orange. I am a dancer.