Left Behind by Time

Published05 June 2019

Reading Time 2 mins

Author Stories of Nepal

Location Nepal

"If it was not for my wife, I would have been in Bambai playing Gumkee. She got sick and I stayed back. It was one of the biggest sacrifices I have made but she has no way of understanding it. I am probably the last one from my generation of Gumkee players. No one in my family or in the village is interested in learning the discipline. So this might be one more thing that will be forgotten over time. Thinking of it makes me sad, but I am going to play as long as my fingers don't go stiff. I get invites from the Bhajan Kirtan groups once in a while and I go play for them, not for money but to share the music that comes from the womb of my instrument. I am also a farmer, not by choice but by inheritance. Father did the same and so did grandfather. There was no way that the melodies and beats I created could help me feed the family. Somedays, I just feel like abandoning the fields to live the rest of my remaining days playing music but I cannot. First, there are mouths to feed and second, my wife will think I have lost it. The days when I get these feelings, I persuade myself to stop playing Gumkee, hang it on the wall where the children cannot reach, untie the oxen and go to the fields. I am 79 years old. I am also a potter. I skip my afternoon nap to mould clay. Pots hardly sell like in the old days. Metal was hard to find and soil was abundant. Now you can get all kind of metal utensils and they do not break like the clay pots I make. But it is good to store water you see and yoghurt too. There are some in the village who have not been able to move on, the ones like me, who still want to use the clay pots. It is a habit of the old ways of living that we cannot let go. The world, time and the people who live within it have moved ahead fast and there are many of us who have been left behind."

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