
Today is the last day of the year, and as the year comes to an end I look around and see my bamboo flute stretched out on the grand piano in my sitting room.
I pick it up and place my mouth tenderly against the unpolished bamboo hole, and then from the bamboo shoot pours out my soul. My tune initially is sad for the dying year but suddenly my thoughts linger on the days gone, my face lights up and sad melodies are replaced by happier tunes, sadness by joy and fingers flit on the bamboo in gay abandon.
Ah! How my flute reflects my feelings!
It is childhood again.
I walk along the streets of the city, tired, looking for something I could buy to churn out the music building inside me. The flute seller with his wares does not look my way. From my shabby clothes and sweaty body, I am an unlikely customer, he thinks. And then I stop and listen mesmerized as he with ease suddenly blows breath into a bamboo hole and brings out a sweet sounding refrain.
"How much?" I ask breathlessly.
"A rupee," he says, not bothering to look at me.
I would have paid him more, twice as much, maybe ten times more for the symphony he produced, though alas I soon found the same bamboo produced sounds most un-symphonic.
"The dogs are howling," my brother grunts.
"Sounds like cats fighting outside," my mother cries, but I push the stubborn bamboo into an equally reluctant mouth and work sounds that would have made a banshee wail sound like harmonious chords.
And then one day, my father hums with me.
"You're whistling my tune," I tell him.
"What tune?" asks dad.
"What I'm playing on the flute,"
He grins, but there is a grudging respect now, in his eyes for my persistence, and slowly for some melodious sounds that are rare and far apart rhapsodies.
I meet the same flute seller, "How long?" I ask him, bewildered.
He grins and winks. "Just play and play and play! It'll come!"
And so I did.
I played and played and bamboo reed slowly, grudgingly like a wild stallion stilled by a determined cowboy, slowly letting my boyish lips and clasping fingers master her.
And through the years, my flute with soft soothing sounds, composed most often in moments of sadness and joy, happiness and grief, has constantly mirrored my life's ups and downs.
But today, my fingers spin a song of joy and mesmerist flute twirls melodiously with a happy tune my soul plays out. I raise my head, look up and with one loud burst of song that my slender flute exclaims, give thanks to Him for a joyous year gone by..!
Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and author. He blogs at www.bobsbanter.com and can be reached at bobsbanter@gmail.com