Slanting rays of sunset crawl
Slowly across the carpet on
Which they sit facing each other
Master and student, both weary
As the lesson wears on
After a silence the old man
Picks up his veena and gently
Strumming adjusts the tuning.
Then his fingers, tough, veined,
Tremulously probing, coax out a
Single note allowing it to unfold
And lead him on
And the room fills with richly
Crimson light as the veena
Comes majestically alive and
A visitor enters, settling quietly
On the carpet beside them
The ustad plays on amid the
Lengthening shadows, lost
In dialogue with his enigmatic guest
While the student, all tiredness
Forgotten, sits transfixed before them
Then suddenly the maestro breaks off
And lays down his veena smiling
At the wonder in his pupil’s eyes, leaving
The two of them alone once more
In the throbbing darkness
“That, dear child, was raaga Marwa
Didn’t you recognize him
When he came ? This is his time...”
Shivshankar Menon was born in 1962. He received a doctorate in medieval Indian history from Delhi University in 1991, and was in the History Department of St Stephen’s College, Delhi, from 1987 to 2014. Subsequently, he decided to concentrate on language studies – in Russian, Sanskrit, Malayalam and Greek. He divides his time between Delhi and his ancestral home in Kerala.