I couldn’t make out those arpeggios. They were playing it so fast, like it was the last night of the earth. It struck to me then, this was the music of a foreign land.
It has always been like this. When I was young, my mother used to sing me a sad song from Milan.
My music teacher had learnt the Mandolin in the hills of Gangtok. He always told me to press the strings hard-
‘Like a man son. Like a man’.
He loved music more than women. But how could we?
Music always reminds me of him and the hills I never saw. Music reminds me of the mirth of little schoolboys huddling across his little room- trying to be a man in that jingling rhythm that could
melt
hearts.
Her brothers play on. I lie here on her lap thinking of home. She is sweet and beautiful, just like that urgent music. Her urgency drives me mad. Isn’t this enough- the sea, the music, her baroque legs and her vast love?
Isn’t love enough when you are young?
Why do I miss my home? I am no homesick sap. I am a sailor of the seas.
Why is it so sad to hear such a beautiful music here in this foreign land?
The music here is like the sea- it rises and falls time and again, and I feel it in my bones.
She passes me a biscuit- it tastes like the sea. Sometimes I feel she tastes like the sea too.
She is my mermaid.
Sometimes I wonder if she loves me for my foreignness. Why would she love me otherwise?
I am just a poor man shoveling around other worlds. I miss the red soil where water don’t breath. I miss the dry taste of home. The home where no one loved me. The home that pushed me far away.
Look at me, I am loved here, in a foreign land. I am someone different here.
Her brothers play on. I lie here on her lap thinking of home. She is sweet and beautiful, just like that urgent music. Her urgency drives me mad. Isn’t this enough- the sea, the music, her baroque legs and her vast love?
Isn’t love enough when you are young?
Why do I miss my home? I am no homesick sap. I am a sailor of the seas.
Why is it so sad to hear such a beautiful music here in this foreign land?
The music here is like the sea- it rises and falls time and again, and I feel it in my bones.
She passes me a biscuit- it tastes like the sea. Sometimes I feel she tastes like the sea too.
She is my mermaid.
Sometimes I wonder if she loves me for my foreignness. Why would she love me otherwise?
I am just a poor man shoveling around other worlds. I miss the red soil where water don’t breath. I miss the dry taste of home. The home where no one loved me. The home that pushed me far away.
Look at me, I am loved here, in a foreign land. I am someone different here.
Yes, I am.
I am unique. I am not a lovelorn fool here, I am loved. I am loved here for not belonging. I am loved here for telling stories of a distant land, of a place I still call home. I am loved here for just showing love. I am loved here for feeling it through my blue veins.
I am loved here perhaps for no reason at all. But I am loved, alright.
Why do I miss a home that never loved me?
She looks into my eyes and says -
‘’But it taught you how to love me. That’s why.’’
Mermaids can read your thoughts too, you know.
And boy, they can
love!
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