I was just back from school after an exam. Due to Covid-related restrictions, school these days calls students less frequently to school, and even if there are any exams, even when mine is the highest class in the school – you cannot expect going to school for anywhere more than six or seven days in a whole month – that’s the peak.

      In other words, I have to go to school very sporadically. Since my school is about 5 kilometers from where we live, I have to take some means of transport other than my own legs. I have made one little rule for the sake of simplicity and to save myself the effort of deciding which means to take every time I’ve to go: if it’s cool weather, or if there’s no direct sunshine, I will take the bicycle; if otherwise, I’ll hire an Uber bike. Sometimes I go by public transport when there is no bike to hire nearby, but both cost nearly the same – give or take a few rupees – and so I prefer the former. Since I am eighteen now, I tend to urge my parents to let me go by the scooter we have, but they simply shake their heads – I do not yet have a driving license. Too busy or lazy, whichever you think I am, I never find the time to go and get one made. Now with these Covid-related restrictions, it has got further delayed.

      Coming back to the story.

      That day, I had gone to school by Uber bike, because a sweltering day it was. I got free from school by 12.30 pm and came out from the back gate of the school (these days, the front gate is closed due to some public construction work going on the road facing it). The back gate of my school looks at a public park – I’ve never been there, but from outside, it looks beautiful. The road is usually clean because it is a high-income group area. On the right is some sort of contraption, I don’t know what it’s called but I can describe it: it has a metallic roof, a space that should have chairs to sit, and a space for a massive hoarding. It’s mostly shiny grey. It looks pretty much like a bus stop, but I know it isn’t. There is a railway line that passes nearby, but no route for buses. You get the idea.

      Coming back to the story.

      As I came into its shade to take out the mobile phone from my bag to book an Uber bike taxi back home, I spotted a dog.

      Black fur, ruffian look, short height, a little timid – take the fiercest dog you’ve ever seen and blend it with the most cowardly one, and you have the creature that was there. He looked at me, I at him, and then both of us ignored each other. I got lost into the phone, trying to find a ride nearby. He, the dog, was just lazy, he wanted a place to lie down at and rest. He was the most broken-from-the-world, indifferent-to-everything being I had seen in a long time.

      A car appeared out of nowhere and almost crushed him – most drivers have now known that these dog-folks have figured out when to get out of the way, just as this one did. He gave a little irritated bark, trucked away and after circling me (I gulped – it was a stupid little dog, but it looked fierce), it went back to its original position. Then a motorbike came and the same scene was replayed.

      Just like that dog, I was annoyed – for my own reasons. Within some time of having taken post there, my ride had been booked, but since last ten minutes, the bike on the map – representing the driver’s location – was not moving anywhere, it was still as if pegged to that spot, like a lazy little moth.

      When I cancelled the ride, the cab company imposed on me a cancellation charge. I was double-annoyed.

      Then I had tried booking a second one. The second driver was similar too: stationary and unmoving. If I canceled this one, my cancellation charge would exceed the amount within which I would have otherwise reached home.

      At this point, the dog looked at me, I at him, and we ignored each other again. This time both of us were annoyed.

     A black cat brings bad luck, they say, I wondered, does a black dog too?

      Finally, my call got connected to the driver being badly awaited by me, and he assured me he was coming in five minutes. Immediately, the moth-like bike representing him on the map began to slide and in no time, he was physically, really, visibly on the real road that extended in front of me.

      He stopped in front of me, I checked the number plate, then hopped on to the back seat.

      As the bike started to drive away, I looked back to see if the dog was still there. I saw him getting up, walking to the place I had been standing at, and sat down there like a mop. I wondered if I had been standing, all the time, without knowing it, at the poor creature’s sleeping place.

      For a long time I held the belief that one’s life should be “free”. By free I meant that there should be no bounds, no boundaries, no deadlines, no concrete structures, no complex to-do lists, time-tables, calendars etc.

     That is, until I started learning music.

     I learned music at different times in my little life from three different teachers: the first was at an institute called Bhai Daya Singh Gurmat Sangeet Academy, where there was a madam who introduced me first time to ragas and tals. I learned that there was a method to madness: That didn’t simply put your fingers on the black and white keys of a harmonium and start pressing any keys in any order so that wonderful music took birth. Music had rules, there were often sort of “molds” – eight, sixteen and sometimes six blocks into which you arranged some particular sounds and notes, and also the lyrics from what you had to sing. This system was so well designed that you could perform it with any instrument that could give a beat, like a tabla.

     The second time I started learning music was years later, from a tablavadak (a tablavadak is a person who plays tabla). This time I learned tabla along with harmonium. It was a prized experience: I learned how both were tuned with each other to play wonderful music, and how one’s beats fitted with the other’s. The third too was an excellent teacher, my personal favorite, also a very wise and learned and spiritual soul, who strengthened this understanding further: he made me understand how this understanding originated, how a well-formed rule can work sometimes better than a freehand creation.

     Hence, music taught me my lesson with order: how important a beat and rhythm was. Sure, even in a monotonous beat in music, you could add wonderful variations, little pieces of charm, but that too never broke the rules.

     I used to believe that one should be “free” so as to have a more meaningful life, but this lesson overturned this view: order could be as beautiful. The seemingly random patterns of nature also follow order: there’s the Fibonacci numbers, there’s the Golden Ratio and there is pi. There are laws of physics, laws of chemistry, laws of biology, laws of math, and no piece, trees, art, heart, creation, elation, flower, shower, space, place in nature is out of order.

     I reached the conclusion that even if you designed your life so as to have seemingly repetitive things every day, doing similar things day after day, it didn’t spoil life: you just have to learn to enjoy music.

     Our life is like music, I discovered. You can compose a song in free verse and sing it, and you can compose a song in a well-formed order-following rhyme and rhythm system, and sing it as well: no system or way is better than the other.

     What you do every day is the beat, it gives life music: you provide the song and a beautiful symphony is complete!

           Urghh… something on my wall again! The last time I was perplexed to this level, it was a lizard. I wrote about that creepy experience in a blogspot on this website last year, a link of which I’ll give at the end of this post.

           So this time, it was not a lizard. It was a duo. It was worse.

           These days, I’m bit of a night owl and after dinner, walk into my room for study. On my right is a wall which has the tubelight, which is a spot of attraction for everything that loves light. The curtains are sometimes not good watchmen and one thing or other finds its way into the room, haunting me out of my wits.

           The first one was a wasp.

           You don’t usually see these wasp things buzzing about here and there in the night, but this one wasp somehow found entry into my room during the daytime. The thing with lesser intelligent life forms is that they know their way in but never their way out. The same is the trouble with an eager-to-go-home fly which keeps banging itself into a glass window, some butterfly, some moth etc. Speaking of moth, that is our second character, but first let’s return to the wasp.

           The wasp thought the tubelight was heaven, and so it went to crash into it. But it couldn’t enter into the white, foggy realm that the tubelight was, and so it kept buzzing about, as if in a trance. Fifteen minutes later, it was tired and landed beneath the light and then hid behind it in a small crack. Thankfully, there was no hungry lizard around like last year.

           Enter the second character Mr Moth.

           The moth came out of nowhere without warning – the being of God must have been wandering outside among the trees, trying to reach the night’s biggest source of light: the moon; but upon failing when it must have decided to return to its wife empty handed, it must have got a glimpse of something white and glowing from outside my window. And lo and behold! it was inside to join the wasp’s party.

           The thing about moths is that they are less scary than a wasp when they are on rest, sitting, but when they are flying, their engines makes noise like an angry truck, and you are fooled that wasp is more innocent that the moth. Where the wasp is scary, the wasp is disgusting. The wasp has a class; the moth is a wanderer of the street.

           Anyway, when the moth arrived, I thought it would be friends with the wasp, but I was falsified. For some time, it seemed there had erupted a little fight between the two. The wasp was buzzing, the moth was buzzing, and then both were buzzing together, as if abusing each other. A minute later, as if they had come to an agreement, the wasp retracted to its previous place, the crack, and the moth settled near the tubelight.

           Every now and then, one of them would rise and hover about the light and then settle at a different place. Distracted I was, now and then, but it was fine.

           On other days when I had no visitors, I would remain awake till 12 or 1 and then would find my eyes yearning to be closed. Thanks to my guests and the fear they kept burning in me, I remained working till 2.30 in the morning. When I realized a minute more should be too late and would make it difficult to wake up the next day, I shut my books and turned off the fan. For a while, I was confused whether to switch off the light or not, but then I ended up whispering “Nox”.

           The next day, before I had woken up, the moth entered the other room and figured its way out from some open window. The wasp decided to stay some more days. It would vanish during the day and would suddenly appear from somewhere at night. Gradually, I got used to it and then it never hovered from one place to other with the intention of frightening me: I befriended it, sort of. One day, I couldn’t find it anywhere. It must have either figured its way out, just like the moth, or it must have died of hunger and made food for some lizard.

           I realized some fear is good, and though it brings down productivity a little, it increases our alertness and we are then ready to work some more.

           But … uh … now I’ll try to check all windows are closed and all curtains are drawn before turning on the tubelight … enough of wasps and moths…

           Read my Lessons from a Lizard here.

At the random old man, randomly I gawk,
As in the mellow, twilight street I walk -
Slow pace,
Seasoned face,
But - apace, apace.

"O poor soul," sigh, escapes from my breast.
"He'll take a long time, to reach his nest."
Poor man,
Not he can
Get some car or van?

Nod I and hurry until, a minute later I stop;
Then enter for the groceries, the intended shop.
Make my purchase,
In night's glaze,
When outside I gaze:

Cover my eyes from headlights, of a passing car;
When I look, spot the old man, who has come so far.
Slow still pace,
Seasoned face,
Still - apace, apace.

He looks at me, stops, then is in dark consumed.
I look at him, smile, then journey is resumed.
Knows he best,
In this quest,
He will reach his nest.