soloist-novella-part-1

This is the tale of a soloist and a soprano, though I title it as the soloist. The soprano was my kinsman. The soloist was my next-door-neighbour. We three grew up concomitantly. In brief, this is a narrative of chances. And also some griefs, a narrative that is the gloss of significant visits and rallies. This is my proem. You can skip the prologue

If you fancy. I am only supporting the ritual of great authors as Shakespeare to state the finish at the outset. Though their method is to show it very discreetly. I am not a fabulous artist but would like to tell you shortly that the soloist is no more. Only the soprano and me, the living people to the adventures in which the soloist also took part on whom this story is titled after. To tell the fact, repeatedly, the soloist is no more. He met with a road mishap in a Scandinavian town amidst traffic. Several people who met me in later years attested to the fact that the actual cause of death was not the traffic mishap. But the fact that the soloist was already suffering from the fluctuations of blood pressure levels, for which he had been on medication for years back. The blood pressure shot up suddenly prior to the accident and he lost control of a car and a Jack Russell Terrier suddenly crossed the road and he lost in a final attempt to save the animal and himself. The beast came from nowhere and another vehicle from a hidden direction also came meanwhile, as if to entrap him in a very special appointment. In my growing years and the later years youth, we used to dine at good inns in Delhi, places with stunning doilies and carafes and I treasured these balls. Once, when we got out of the cabins, another buddy was with us and he was cripplingly woozy and he passed a wicked word at a guest and the state of affairs turned precarious by the involvement of the other guy's two bosom aides and it was the soloist who conserved the life of my companion by his tender parleys.

On another instance, we went to a place called Chang Puri. I do not recall the exact setting now, but the soloist took me there and there were additionally two journalists with us and we had a nice evening and a sort of country drink. The host was a very loving family, and it was a kind of family business and there were many families similar to this one in that area. It was a close community with their own beliefs and customs. In brief, it was a happy evening and whenever I think about the soloist in the later years of my life, I think particularly of that evening and later our wanderings in the New Delhi platforms seeing off friends and relatives quite often in those trains bound to the south. The good money with him and he frequently paid from his pocket, for such costly dishes I could not afford those days due to my meagre teaching assignments. It happened that the soloist's brother was very dear to me once upon a time. When my father bought olive virid cycle for me his papa bought him green Raleigh cycle, the police green Raleigh cycle was slightly dearer than the other one. I don't know the motive behind it still it was so. The soloist's brother whom I would like to call Thomas, though it is nor his real name were classmates. Though he had a croaking voice, the territory of his heart was warm and he was a good company. We were together for sophomore and graduation and having studied in the small schools, our communication facility in the language was not good enough and our classmates had an upper hand in this field having come from affluent homes and famous halls. So we made it a routine in the secondary and third years of our commissioning to converse British whatever came to our intellect, voice out if there is grammar or not. But discourse anyhow. As we had to pass along the isolated demesne on our way back home, this speaking English enterprise was detected by none other than the wind which sometimes tried to swerve our bicycle wheels, but we steadily continued cycling and discoursing. But at this stage, there is no way to go back to the wind and enquire if it laughed at the English speaking challenges. The wind, I assume will only cheer with the pat on our shoulders. The upshot of this slightly weird but passionate activity was that we enriched to some extent in the language and later got better paths to grow. But the soloist who was a grim chap is was not seen in these trials of language. The soloist's brother had another weakness, as he effortlessly believed everybody and was easily influenced. He did not have any steady thought to grab and lead him to fluctuate scenes, instead, he anticipated for other's verdict in virtually all matters, whether they be slight or great.

Let us come back to the protagonist, the soloist who grew into a prominent musician of his era. I am not a great overseer in command to undertake a statue of the soloist at the from midtown within the clover leaves and not a bard like Homer to conceive a saga of his labour. So I will inscribe a small story which is within my means. Certain things apart this is also my account in connection with them, sometimes, becoming a fragment of their quests and later bust-ups and the final get together. A story from my transom. As I am not a musician and do not hold essentially what takes place in the head of great musical genii, how they imagine, how they are fashioned internally. But have curiously marked them.The soloist in his grave study, that is adorned with Botticelli paintings, and also the artwork of a Renaissance friar, keyboards and musical literature and later when he practised alone on the promenade, in moments his father would watch over the washermen that came in the evening, where his mother was away in another town for a government job that made her reach late home. His first manoeuvres were copies he made on old European masters and later solos based on Mozart and Handel- he imagined that he played the flute with a movable brass at the end and a blast in the hall. Then he came in whiskers and wearing buskin-a gentle fellow for his age, immature-looking but wise to the bottom, took regular sessions of walks and oats to keep him nimble through the night when he will slide into one of his usual sleep in the middle of the play was the good echo. The organizers had trips meanwhile. This all happened when he was the student in Edinburgh and travelled to Westminster London did some Mozart researcher hall had a -the early stay--it was a colourful Friday an evening with the mayor at the duel- she wrote diaries and tasks for each day each week and each month- the days were not achieved, but there was a good rhythm, in the beginning, a lot of enthusiasm, a feeling that life is so near, the meaning is so near, you are into the heart of the kernel of life, anything is at your beck all and call, unless you have that nasty headache

that habitually comes in a fortnight on a Thursday- father and mother calls each Sunday morning, the mess is fine, the chicken, her favourite omelette and garlic loaf, and cheese and orange juice and bread on spattered honey and the evening is cold, a walk near the Thames to see the pelicans in a park, near a marshland, that covers so many acres, -and she walked every morning, except Saturdays and Sundays. On Sundays, she had the congregation. She will recite Scripture to the select audience before the vicar of the parish arrived. And her father, an old conductor who also ran a school will make the preparatory address where he will present a bouquet of flowers to her unless she has a headache and could not be present. Nick will probably have the same routine in another style.The resolution mantras, from ethical teachers. Oh, this on was her classmate in the academy of artistes.He resorted to fairly up-to-date conduits. That way he could make two albums with May, until the exchange turned into romance and they met privately at a jazz bar in a suburb and she cut it cruelly, and he was much affected and told that he will become a churchman if she did not marry him. He said that he followed music because he thought as the ultimate reality and hoped he soon will hear the music of the universe, the music on will probably the stars rested. And love, he has not known in childhood, as her parents were separated at a very early age of his boyhood and-and it was with her that he found love and if she deserts him he will become a churchman because he can pursue music as a churchman also, and he will compose devotional chants and sing for him or his group. The love he will get, but in a better and eternal mould and not affected by seasons and human vagaries. for her music was all and he said it is for him also, the same the thing, since she did not grasp what music is don't talk about since she did not know what love is don't talk about it., better talk about things you know well, that is not the way to grow, be humble at heart, he said. he also thought that music and love are the two things noblest as far his knowledge of things are concerned. It is the song, and he is getting to know about love through hymnology and since both are moving away from his clasp, also since he is at bay to know the final end of a search, he cannot take many risks since he wants to know for sure what is worthy of lasting, he is for a time ready to believe the old seers who they say died happily. Even the passing of her mentor who was sage and a musician is a controversial thing, some say he was not happy, but nobody is sure of such things, nobody can say the sinking man is happy unless you go into his thoughts, many flutes and trumpets-her accompanist was the man of huge whiskers, an artist from the out who was also a singer at his family shrine in the a morning where his father was a priest and his mother a lady who made garlands and imported zari embroidery things for church stoles, she opened a small shop of stoles and embroidery items and it fetched market. she employed two more energetic ladies in the shop as assistants as sometimes the seasons were full and there was tourist attraction nearby and houseboats and water sports and amusement parks. Later when her business thrived she bought a big farm adjacent to the waterpark and it was convenient for her to swim, an activity she had left so many years after marriage. she, in fact, gold Edinburgh at a national meet and in consequence got admission in a sports school to continue the studies in water sports events, but her father thought that she felt married soon and found an alliance for him. This was an administrator who was also a son of an administrator and he disliked sports so much as he thought it will strain your legs and muscles unnecessarily and like simple exercises such as walking by beauty sports and he dislike exposure to the sun so much because he feared the further exposure to the sun will darken and wrinkle his skin. At the mascot hotel where they dined, she went writers and filmmakers with them and the chief discussion was about the question of widening the roads. the poet told that big interstate roads are bad for the environment and public and-and it spoils the genuineness of the landscape and the entrance into the capital of the city with a big van is potentially life-threatening. there were speakers for big roads and somebody told that big roads spoil love because almost all line takes place by small streets and alleys and bowers, bid roads are against nature of the human beings, we are and we are more becoming a commercial community and in the long run, intrinsic qualities will be forsaken. This was the good argument. but her husband was making a final summation of speeches. In fact, it was the opening ceremony of a detective fiction writer. He also did not like some people, who claimed to be her fans writing private letters to her and addressing her as 'darling'. She knew that the real reason was the last. Even in meetings where the families of dignitaries are invited, he would stealthily look into her eyes to see if her eyes wandered. You may call it chauvinistic, but not. He was too concerned about her and in a way, possessive. he disliked totally her mentioning any male figure in his presence in an admiring tone. According to him, the best and greatest male company for her was himself, te thought he liked to ruminate numerous times, in waking and in a dream. Some say, that we are all the products of our dreams, but I am not sure about that, still can very well say, that there are many things that which experience in our day to day existence, for which the causes are more mysterious than clever...Since she had already got it, she would, he expected to be better contented with it, for sober and festive events. They resided than in a house which was part of a row of houses and had no telephone, only a small post office by the side small coffee shops and the villagers had simple ambit -went to --on a tour of six and her associate was also a part of the retinue, but later left as he was more interested in his academics and wanted to be a surgeon of repute do as many transplants as possible.At 14

16. the hall for another orchestra, at another hall the composer also had a similar problem with recurring headaches and he did breathing exercises instead of tablets and narrated the story if his brother who also was the composer and a man with similar dilemmas and who took capsules often with each meal as if it was his food and aid finally in the midst id selling big albums and some watercolours for which he held a studio at the gate of the city where film people and artists of the nearby art school visited died with his two kidneys come to void., her uncle a theatre designer, and her dad a deacon.At Cambridge, she took English literature and staged Shakespeare and Ibsen and Brecht. To know more Ibsen, she went to Norway, her future mentor told her at the first interview with him he was very private man, to meet him was always his choice, not yours came at the break of her ninth performance at ---hall Scotland, that your talent is not the solo songs but your bright eyes, that I can not help, she said, was mama was standing near us all laughed, later he came to our flat in the country, and he was a businessman who supplies stoles to churches, embroidered stoles to churches and hit Europe often always alone, he travelled alone, except with a translator whenever he did not know the language of the country, on this tour, she particularly composed strain for growing babies and also to pets. That day she went on a tour at the invitation of the philharmonic orchestra and there she met her future spouse, a smiling man with a long beard, but a ribald fellow. In his most private moments and he told that it is part of 16

18. intimacy but she quoted Emerson that character is hidden power. Social behaviour is a facade and when he sent photographs to his fans and would be students, he created the clown halo, in fact, he was much better in real life than his photographed lives and did not drink liquor a whole season. Smiled without teeth shown, and he told that he got the idea from a Buddhist pamphlet and said Buddha denied showing teeth in public. He changed his notions of life quite speedily, and he told that it is growth, and in germination, you perpetrate mistakes and make a lot of experiments to get balance of the body and mind , still, we grow, and quoted a new thought author, that this life is a school for the development of good measures. He took photos with an eye for the movement of life and drew meticulous sketches of the buildings in his music book. His own uncle, he old man was an aficionado of Indian classical music and art and had taken part 17

19. in a dance tutor in a dance school, a folk school in a town by eastern ghats a place where the greenery was nice. The structure was located in sprawling paddy fields and there was also good torrid winds that the body was attuned to and there they made the body flexible and pliant by exercises and massage and she stayed there for six months studying dance and percussions and went later to Amsterdam for some other lessons in western music. Her cousin Fenella joined her but later she got a scholarship to London and then to Edinburgh and visited Arthur's seat. Most of the well-known sites are in this area. The city ’s exciting new waterfront.And the wander through the streets of the Port of Leith, take a cruise on the River Forth and traverse the rough territory of the volcanic reverberations. She made much travel in the first seas18

20. Seat.travel far from Edinburgh city centre to escape to the beautiful countryside of the Lothians. Stroll along Portobello's the pretty beach which is only a stone throw away from the city centre, head to Pentland Hills Regional Park on the outskirts of the city, or spot incredible wildlife at Polkemmet Country Park and went to sweeping landscapes and sandy beaches such as Belhaven Bay along the John Muir Way. Later went to Edinburgh and the Lothians a variety of picnic activities. Then she went to those ferns, and swamps, and reed beds that are a distinctive type of swamp comprising dense stands of common reed that can mount up as high as many meters. you see birds like birds like bearded tits and bittern and have a useful function of mopping up nutrients from the water.nullified, Lowland raised bog and the peat. The peat is formed mainly from a moss called sphagnum which has the amazing property of holding many times its dry weight of water. This ability to act like a sponge helps reduce the amount of water flooding at peak flow. She was practically ill at ease with the prodigals who are lazy at heart because when they were children, she was close to her brother, when they will eat their humble lunches and suppers together and there were great warmth and cooperation in the family and the neighbours would ask their wellbeing or even fetch a doctor if you are ill and the funerals of the village was a public grievance, and though they judged the man and his family liberally, they took part in all the proceedings and helped them in every other way. because her brother did who wasry close to her in childhood never came to see her or her for the last ten years because whenever she called he told her that he was busy. She walked among tall grasses which practically covered both and they had a good time of hiding and seek, a sort of death and life, obscurity, and face. But she loved more obscurity than fame because she was afraid of the limelight and big money and often spoke to tall grasses growing at the water's edge, Dumfries and on one ride, practically swooned or slept till her friend came and called her from the semi-state of sleep. She stayed in the highland for a month with her friend taking long walks and stayed there additionally next year when the music season was over and met a Walter Scott researcher who was of great help to her in times of need, especially, when she was sick and the scholarship was delaying. He advised her to take one entire year off from all concerns and do research in Edinburgh and develop her art and talent, but he mother was not willing to let her do that, as the family business in Milan was dwindling and her father needed her help. after two heart attacks, one changes the philosophy of life. In this case, it happened. But she left for India with a performance group, in spite of all the business and wandered on the coasts of Malabar eating fish curry and studying the more expressive art called Kathakali, or in other words, enacting the story. The narrative is of sacred or mythological content. Some of the journey her friend had a border-collie-dog. Therein Amsterdam she went to the lanes the tulip gardens and the windmills when it rained it was enthralling. The many boat rides and the Danish summertime and from there they went to Switzerland and stayed one night in a bungalow by The Alps, where a famous master had written his last journals in purple and gold and are still to be published in full. There was much laughter as drinking and play acting and love and food and music until some flibbertigibbet from an Elizabethan play makes an entrance and spoil it with a bad note. When the seasons were over, she was fairly free but, went to the book club and purchased books on music and poetry and practised the cadence. Winter came and her mama sent a wire that her father is seriously admitted and she went with her new companion because the soloist was fully steeped in music and never bothered for her and the marriage was practically nullified, though legally they were man and wife. Mother at first did not approve of this, but the father in his sick bed and intravenous tubes in the hospice, intervened because all he wanted was her joy in life. And the life he recognized is precious, even for one day. Coming back, she, attended the jazz series scheduled for Thursday. On Sunday there was a string quartet show which was by her elderly uncle who was the first son of a man who in turn was a guide as an Alpine climber and was present in the first ascent of the Westerholm in 1854. The scene those days was dominated by British climbers in a golden age of alpinism. 3 He was a musician of talents, scantily used, having been subject to addiction and finally ended in a transplant hopital.-- In his first years in the academy, he was dressed conservatively but as music went inside his soul he started to live in another grandiose region, perhaps inaccessible to us common lot, and his outer attires changed greatly and were considered outrageous and perhaps hideous or even dangerous to the young public. But because of his great music, that in a way incorporated the melody of the universe, people accommodated him and he was asked opinions in matters of import. Sometimes he had a quaint historical air as if he took recovery from a classical pool of the symphonic brains of past and whenever he visited our settlement for cosy vacations to walk around the grapevines and mount strips, the boys nevermore neglected him without remarks. The soloist carried it very casually as he was always thinking of his next notation and treatise or a superior interpretation of a major composer, he has left incomplete that season. It is my belief that the wind understands musicians and it blew in beautiful rhythms to carry away his inner aches of the season.

His was the chequered journey. Major concert wins, bigger contracts and sessions in sanatoriums for he was subject to some addictions by this time, out of some values associated with the rhythms he carried for long in his head. His beer sessions were longer than the longest I attended in life. towards the last part of the picture, he will remain with his bottles with either a cat or a hound of his company [in his walks] but no human presence to note. After the first day, a duo came from the north-west and sang and after that the chamber strain and the two parts of Schubert's swan song [1 and 2]. The academy was named after a priest who made some. improvements in the Gregorian chants and whose life exemplified the pedagogy he read day and night from the holy book and he was always a friend of poor who presided over his housemaid's wedding giving an equal share of dowry as his daughter. The tickets of varying hues and classifications. The symphony hall was full of people, veterans from diverse fields the master of the chamber music was a man of thick beard and he smoked in spite of the advice from his mentor who was a teetotaller and a non-smoker. New solos with grace and electricity-a master of chamber music-s.t.'s works stood with great pattern -and dominance with its ingenious merging of bravura dancing -virtuoso songstresses,bass,tabla,pianos,drums, a cross of jazz and music of India-accompanied by a famous bassist and joining them -by the acclaimed saxophone player and computer vocalist-a wonderful young boy from Indonesia 27

29-a gala of vocalists and sopranos-and young pianists and classic jazz album-debut was at Alexandra hall-selection of -nocturnes, mazurkas and preludes-Beethoven-piano sonata no-20[?]- Shostakovich-preludes and fugues-Wagner-solemn march to the holy grail-from Parsifal-swan song curate, chamber music party-Beethoven-no-24. Instinct told her, he was not nice, which later turned out to be more or less the fact.- After coming back to the country, she stayed near the East Coast mainline, which links Edinburgh and London King’s Cross, is the fastest intercity railway: you can travel between the cities in around 4 hours. She travelled overnight, a sleeper service runs between London Euston and Edinburgh Waverley almost all nights a week for attending classes in the morning. She wrote detailed entries in 28

30. the diary of the train schedules and checked them frequently. . The journey to Glasgow only takes 45 minutes, while York, Newcastle, Inverness or Aberdeen can be reached in about 2 hours. But, no matter whatever happened in the middle of the day, she became late or just in time for the last locomotive. She sat at George square often with a friend who was the only non-musician in the group. 4 The end was so near to the soloist after he did not listen to the experts who advised him not to attend so many shows in a year. He pooh-poohed the idea, as he made fun of the idea of taking eggs every day. He had peculiar eating habits. The first shoot of blood pressure was on a journey, ill-planned where the flight took so many hours to commence and the morning food was unsuitable for his humour.

Before he arrived the next destination, symptoms mounted on a journey that spread two and a half hours. From the hotel, he went direct to the hospital with his touring manager and they again warned that he should cut short his trips and retire temporarily to his house in Aberdeen and see the nursery in morning and evening and limit his agenda to local performances. Forty-six is not a great year to withdraw, he contented, having major goals of music and investigation ahead that included his vision to develop tunes for animals and the mentally retarded. The soprano went to see her beloved in that season. That was apparently the last appointment of the lovers, who had five years of get together in youth, first in the centenary celebrations and later after marriage in almost all European towns, Milan, Dijon, Venice to name a few. The day before his end, he attended his last concert as I told you earlier. On that destined day, after sauna, he took his car and went straight to that Scandinavian town and a Jack Russell Terrier suddenly crossed the road and he lost in a final attempt to save the animal and himself. It came from nowhere as he failed to stop the vehicle. Yesterday I was in the countryside with the soprano while relating some of these ancient tales and urging about the late shifts that have mediated her life. She was graceful and conversed mostly through gestures, as some of them I could not make out as they were mixed with meanings and a lot of emotions. …………………………………….