Geetanjali Krishna: Echoes of a forgotten flute

Revisiting childhood homes is often bitter-sweet, more so when the people one associates with them are no longer there. A while ago, when I visited the unnaturally quiet house where my grandparents once lived, I heard a long-forgotten sound from my childhood. Strains from a bamboo flute being played by an itinerant vendor wafted to my ears. Instantly, the sound took me back to monsoon afternoons of yore, when siestas were routinely punctured by the mellifluous notes of the bansuri-wala's flute. He probably hoped his music would lure customers, but like a Pied Piper, he only attracted a trail of kids who followed him for a distance until they became bored. The homespun flutes he sold (when he sold them) were too cheap for him to make much of a living. That's why I was surprised to see that even in this age of swanky music shops, the bansuri-wala had still found a way to do business.

Festooned with flutes, the bansuri-wala was walking slowly, an anachronistic relic form the past. I caught up with him, curious to know how these old ways of doing business were holding up in modern times. "I sell flutes because there's no other way I know to make money," he said. His name was Bankey Lal, and he came from a family of flute makers and sellers from a village near Mathura. "We've traditionally made and sold flutes for generations. The flutes we make are offered to our village's Krishna temple on every festival!" he said proudly.

Lal walks through several South Delhi neighbourhoods to sell his wares. "It used to be different in the days when there were no air conditioners. People would leave their doors and windows open, children would be playing outside. I remember that till 20 years ago, before Janmashtami, I used to sell so many flutes! Children would gather around me and beg me to play..." he reminisced. His flutes also used to be much in demand for devotional purposes, he told me. Now, however, the old flute seller finds doors and windows sealed shut wherever he goes. "There are no courtyards anymore, where once I could see ladies of the house relaxing and children playing. There's nobody to hear my calls or my music," he said.

His flutes were priced at Rs 50, he told me, and he barely sold two to three of them in a day. How was his business viable, I asked. "It isn't really something I've pushed my sons into joining," he said gloomily. "My three sons have office jobs. But I'm old now, and selling flutes gives me something to do. I've spent my entire life making them and playing them, you see..." However, he has made a couple of changes to improve the bottom line of his business.

"Earlier, I used to make all the flutes I sold. Now, my sons just order them for me from a wholesaler to save time, energy and money," he said. Also, he prefers to walk through areas with high expat populations. "Whenever I've managed to catch the eye of a foreigner, I've sold at least a couple of my flutes."

I examined his flutes, noticing that they didn't sound as sweet as the one that he was playing. When I said as much, he told me that unlike the ones he sold, his own flute was homemade. "But the magic is as much in the flute as it is in its player!" He said with a smile. As I saw his frail figure disappear around the corner, I realised that he represented a dying generation of people who lived off their craft. Will we as a society learn to value them before they're engulfed by modernity? Somehow, I doubt it.