A GREEN HILL AND A FLUTE

The hill rises from the western edge of the games field. Just six yards beyond the football goalpost starts the kingdom of the oaks. The little boys on the school campus would often crane their necks and look up at the endless expanse of green. Green of so many hues! With every subtle change in the weather, with the passage of each day, the green would change.

The school term started in spring. Those who were here just about a week earlier had seen the branches laden with fresh snow, sometimes cracking under the weight. Some hardy ones would always go walking on such days; a silence - no, a quietness - felt only after the snow; small hoof prints at the waterhole in Python Valley. Slithering down the slope back to school through a glade of tall pines, the football field was a little patch of grey in the vast spread of green hills, and the shouts of those playing were dimly heard echoes.

When the children came in, the darker green of the winter oaks would daily change towards freshness. Oh so fresh, oh so new, oh so different in the many moods of sunlight from early morning P.T. to getting shut for prep in the evening! One morning a teacher would be seen drinking-in a sunrise with a new boy. Another day a small group would be staring at the towering slope intensely and suddenly burst into excited expressions of discovery. Someone would have recognized a patch of deep red in the sea of fresh green in the morning sunlight. Like the little Kodak photography booklet so many years ago had said it would, the little patch of red would stand out in contrast to the expanse of green and the visual effect would be enhanced. The rhododendron tree was not lost among the oaks.

A strong breeze would send waves of silver over the sea of green as thousands of leaves turn over to show their other side.

Maturing like hope in the brief summer, majestic dripping wetness in the fierce monsoon rains, ghostly sentinels in the mist as the weather grew colder; that hill of green grew upon all who beheld its splendour, never to be forgotten.

One more thing that lived forever in hundreds of minds was the sounds that came from the flute that floated down the hill.

The sound came from somewhere near the base of this resplendent green hill, a little to the north-west, where families of the school workers lived. It cascaded down the hill, floated among the trees, and pierced our hearts when we were in class, or playing games, or sitting for prep in the early evening. Sometimes it would crop up at a very odd time of deep silence in the morning prayer assembly or in the middle of an English essay and send one’s thoughts into a reverie.

It started out as an almost awful screeching rasping grating whine, sometimes a low moan that did not agree at all with our senses when we were eight or nine years old. We had to bear the cacophony every day, and we gradually got used to it. It took us a few months to stop noticing it altogether.

Of course, we were not deaf, and it would penetrate our hardened senses every now and then, but we did not find it offensive any longer.

After a year or so, the tunes became softer, clearer and more likeable. Something seemed to be missing if the late afternoons did not bring the music of the flute rolling down the hill.

By the time we were twelve, the music enchanted.

In all the years that followed, our ears were never closed to the sound of the flute held to a master’s lips. The clear sweet melody floated all over the surrounding hills, one with the trees and the green and the songs of the birds and the children at play. Sometimes the teacher conducting prayers in the chapel would pause for a moment when a particularly haunting note swirled in with the breeze through the open windows.

That solitary player of the pipe of bamboo inspired music in a thousand hearts. He gave a taste of the magic of music, of lilting notes cascading down the mountain slopes, of blissful tones silencing the birds and animals in some sort of intimate devotion, of heartrending tunes that quietened down even the rowdiest of teenaged boys, of melody that made our spirits soar and roam freely with the wind and the clouds.

The years flitted by; none of us ever knew the one who held the flute to his lips; but somehow, some of the magic rubbed off on us, and the music still lives in the recesses of our inner beings.

One often wonders at the Hand that touched the musician in such a way, and one is overwhelmed.

“Zeina Glo brings you the radiant glow of inner peace, good health and attendant beauty.

Zeina Glo helps you strip off layers of inhibitions, hesitation, and cynicism, allowing your thoughts and emotions to flow freely.

Zeina Glo helps to douse the flames of insecurity and guilt, to open the windows of mind and body to the cool fresh breeze of love.

Zeina Glo encourages you to spread inner peace, good health, radiance, exuberance, warmth, joy and the glow from your inner being.

Zeina Glo brings the beauty of your own thoughts back to you!!”

For, questions, criticism or advice, please post comments here, or write to zeinaglo@rediffmail.com or zeinaglow@gmail.com