PEOPLE IN THE BOOK

Listening to Surat Nath, the folk musician play the Murli, under an evening sky.

“A few words passed between us, but seemed redundant, as musicians brought out their murlis, sent a few notes out into the evening air, allowing them to weave a spontaneous dance among themselves, and then sat waiting for the master to begin… he did, sonorously at first. His notes rolled and drawled and sloped and climbed and dived and then began opening up as the others joined them, twirling, circling…notes lifting other notes, tossing them into the air, catching them again, boisterously chasing each other…building around us a hypnotic flow of notes…and the sun disappeared and the evening sky, washed with faded blue and yellows and oranges, let dark seep out through its pores.”

Meeting the potters Bhilal Ibrahim and his wife Saraben in the border town of Khavda.

“… Bhilal Ibrahim Kumbhar came out to meet us…members of his family joining him. The spontaneous friendliness was disarming and we sat on the raised open veranda outside the house, sharing their warmth. I couldn’t remember how long we sat there, chatting and what happened next but snatches of images came back to me… the master potter at the wheel, fingers guiding newborn shapes into being, Saraben his wife down on her haunches moulding clay into plates, setting them out to dry, delicately painting patterns of black and white on surfaces of others, Abdullah their first born rolling in on a donkey cart with hard dry clay, the two daughters in law preparing the kiln and everywhere the rippling laughter of the grand children… ‘Here,’ the master potter said, ‘this is for you,’ and he placed in my palm a small ball of clay then shut my fingers over it. ‘My father always did that when he made a friend.’ “