MURTYMUSE

  I am a woman first… By   Raja Radhika Raman Prasad Singh   The tabla -player Ustadji’s fingers started playing on the tabla but Mohini’s feet, tied with strings of tiny ringing bells, would just not move, let alone start dancing. Wiping the beads of perspiration from his forehead, the Ustadji looked at Mirza, the sarangi player, who had started playing the soft tune in the mean time. Seventy years gone, the Ustadji’s crown was already half-bald, only fringed with chalk-white hair. Ustadji’s hands, when not playing on the tabla, would always keep shaking, but once on the tabla, they would seem charged with electrical energy. Then you could hardly count his fingers there. For decades he had been playing tabla for countless wealthy zamindars and aristocrats in their mehfils , but for the last three years he had been playing tabla only for Mohini, living with her on her kotha , may be till his last breath, as he imagined.   He took a pan from the pandan w...