ivory bridges.

Hemen died yesterday. And with him died a generation, an institution and a kind of life that I can never relive again. Hemen was important in ways that most of the people today do not even know. In his little shop in Deshapriyo Park, he quietly practiced a craft that was perhaps destined to die.

It was his suggestion that made me include an extra string on my instruments for better resonance. He carried with him the aura of the lost world of sage musicians and winter evenings.

His ear for music was a famous one, yes. The first time I went to his shop was when I threw a fit for a Sarod. I wanted to play the instrument when I was three years old (that was when I started going to my Guruji’s place). I was too young to even hold a Sarod, so Hemen made me a little one. It is probably lying in some corner of a house. Instruments need regular playing to mature. I know it has lost its voice by now. I played that one for five or six years, until it became too small for me. Still, my toy sarod, which did not even have ivory bridges, I remember its characteristic sound. It was what I will now call ‘chapa’. I smile when I remember the mock serious tone of that instrument. Not being a full sized one, it did not have the characteristic ‘gambhirjyo’ of a Sarod. But it was my first instrument. With whose touch I learnt sa re ga ma pa.

And now, old Hemen is no more. And that world is no more.

The only world to which I feel I belong. That old world where people play Sarod for hours. Where music and whiskey flow with the ease of a maestro's meend. Where life is a celebration of sorrow. Where music is instilled within the nerves of people and bricks of houses. Where the sun rises only to the strains of Bhairav. That world where we do not run. Where people understand, from within, the true meaning of ‘thehrav’. Where mindless speed is considered to be as immature as the anxious expenditure of the nouveau riche. My obscene, elitist, decadent world. My delicate, inebriated, exquisite world.

I languish in this unreal space instead. Marveling at my mediocrity. I split into two.

But Hemen is dead. Ali Akbar is dead. That world is dead. My past is dead.

And I have a lute of wood at a corner of my room that sings no more.