Free River Town Chronicles by Leighton Hazlehurst

dance to the steady beat of the drum. She was dressed in a brightly colored sari, a tight blouse and bangles piled high on both arms. She was barefoot, and around her ankles were a set of gungurus (bells) which added another beat to the sound of the drum. The band reached a fevered pitch and Kaga matched their intensity. The entire group seemed to be high on bhang (hashish) and alcohol. Suddenly the music stopped, and Kaga grasped the hand of a young girl, about fifteen years old. She was dressed in a new shalwar/kamiz and her face was hidden behind her dupatta (scarf). Kaga lifted the dupatta and a beautiful young girl looked passively at me. “This is my daughter. The one I told you about. The one getting married.” Kaga looked proud, with no hint of the doubts and concerns she had expressed to me earlier. She smiled and then pulled the dupatta over her daughter’s face.
    Bhabhi came out and greeted Kaga, then handed her a bag filled with rice and a pile of chapattis. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a fistful of rupees and placed them in Kaga’s hand. She touched her forehead and flashed a grin. Then the troupe moved on down the lane with horns blaring and drums banging and Kaga twirling wildly in their midst.

S NAKE C HARMER

    T OWARDS THE END OF WINTER , the pace of religious festivals and wedding parties slowed down. People seemed worn out by winter and anxious for the arrival of the warmer months of Spring. Pat and I often took this opportunity to walk around the edges of town in the morning to search for signs of Spring. In the afternoons, we would spend some time in the bazaar to see if any new fruits or vegetables had reached the marketplace. During one of these afternoons, I wandered off in the direction of a mesmerizing sound coming from an instrument played by a man squatting on the ground in front of a gunny sack. Something inside the sack was moving and the man was swaying back and forth while blowing into his instrument, without stopping to take a breath. Out of the sack slithered a cobra with his head gently swaying to the sound and movement of the mans arms and shoulders. The cobra lifted its head, spread its hood and hissed. A crowd of children had gathered around the snake charmer and stood motionless and speechless, with their eyes wide open. The snake charmer continued to play, while the cobra swayed back and forth in an ever widening arc. I asked one of the children about the instrument. “It’s a biin,” I was told. It was a beautiful instrument. The body of the instrument was made from a gourd decorated with tiny beads in the shape of lotus flowers. A mouthpiece made from a tube of brass was at one end, while at the other end there was a long, slender brass bell that allowed sound to exit from the instrument. Wired to the brass bell, and inserted into the gourd, were two hollow bamboo tubes with finger holes cut out of them to allow for different sounds. I later discovered that the bamboo tubes had small, reed-like slits positioned inside the gourd. The different parts of the instrument were held together with bee’s wax poured around the seams of the different parts.
    After fifteen or twenty minutes of continuous playing, the snake charmer coaxed the cobra back into the gunny sack and slung it over his shoulder. “How much?” I asked. “Whatever you want to give, Sahab.” “No, I mean how much for the biin.” The snake charmer broke out in laughter. “Do you want to become a biin bajanewala (a biin player)? Are you going to charm snakes?” he asked, thrusting the sack with the cobra in it towards my face. I told him I didn’t want to become a snake charmer. I just wanted to learn how to play the biin. The snake charmer first looked puzzled and then looked at his instrument, seeming to evaluate its worth. “The snakes really like the sound of this one, so I won’t sell it. But I will make you another one. I will make