<\/div>\n\n\n\n
I <\/strong>have often wondered why certain evenings remain with us long after the details disappear. I cannot recall what we ordered that night. I do not remember the name of the singer, nor the sequence of the songs. Yet I remember the amber light. I remember rain gathering beyond the terrace. I remember a room full of strangers becoming irrelevant because one person had my complete attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPerhaps that is what music does. Not entertainment, but narrowing. A good song removes the unnecessary until only the essential remains. The Sufi singers called it longing. Not merely romantic longing, but the human condition itself: the ache for union, understanding, recognition. We spend our lives moving through crowded rooms hoping to be seen completely, if only for a moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That evening, the music seemed to understand this before we did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The harmonium rose and fell. The tabla marked time with patient certainty. Around us, people ate, laughed, and drifted through their own stories. Yet the songs carried a strange intimacy, as though they were addressed to each listener individually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sufi poetry often speaks of the beloved, but it leaves the beloved unnamed. The ambiguity is deliberate. The beloved may be a person, God, memory, youth, a lost version of oneself, or a future one still waiting to emerge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps that is why those songs endure. They allow us to place our own absences inside them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Years later, what survives is rarely the event itself. Memory is selective. It preserves atmosphere more faithfully than fact. A scent. A note held impossibly long. Rain beginning beyond an open window. The feeling of being entirely present for an hour in a world that constantly pulls us elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The songs ended eventually. They always do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet some evenings continue long after the musicians leave the stage. They become part of us, returning unexpectedly years later, not as memories of what happened, but as reminders of who we were when the music played.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
About<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr Anish Kumar Gupta<\/strong> is a practicing Urologist in India and a passionate writer, published in various haiku anthologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2190 Previous<\/a>\u2003|\u2003Back to Issue<\/a>\u2003|\u2003Next \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Dr Anish Kumar Gupta After the Song Ends I have often wondered why certain evenings remain with us long after the details disappear. I cannot recall what we ordered that night. I do not remember the name of the singer, nor the sequence of the songs. Yet I remember the amber light. I remember […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-02","post-preview"],"yoast_head":"\n
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