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The sun was dipping into the lake like molten brass, its reflection rippling over the lake water in threads of gold. Beyond it the waterfall murmured — a steady, patient hiss that filled the spaces between thoughts. The air smelled of petrichor and sandalwood smoke from the evening dhunuchi lit somewhere far off. Roses braided into your hair, sent their perfume curling over your shoulder, and somewhere a koel called and forgot to finish the sentence.
You sat on the cool, worn rocks, muslin silk of your saree pooling soft and white, the red borders like a bright heartbeat along the hem. Chunky jhumkas swung against your neck, bangles clinking in a little scale with every shift.
A bansuri lay across your palms like a promise: smooth bamboo, the faint ridges of the nodes still visible. It was a six-hole bansuri — the kind that sang warm, breathy sa’s and loved a long meend — but in your hands it felt obstinate, a lover that wouldn’t answer.
Your alta-tinted fingers hovered over the bansuri, tracing the seven sur holes — sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni — but the bamboo body remained stubbornly silent. You blew once, twice, and the only thing that came out was an apologetic hiss of air. Frustration made you mutter under your breath in Bengali, more exclamation than speech.
“You’re not supposed to glare at it like that, you know.”
You turned, startled, to find Rafayel walking down the stone path, his hair tousled by the evening wind. He wore a black panjabi — the neckline embroidered in dull gold — over off-white slacks. He had worn his hair down today and not tied it in a bun as usual, and you couldn’t help but smile at that.
“Dekho toh, you look like you stepped out of some Satyajit Ray painting,” you said, the compliment spilling out in Bengali. “Tumi bhalo dekhcho.”
(Translation: You look good.)
He blinked, color lifting at his throat. For half a second he was the composed artist you knew — then something in him melted. “Tomake...” he answered, halting, his Bengali lumpy and lovely. “Tomake khub bhalo dekhte lagchhe.” He said it slowly — the accent bent like wet clay, but the warmth behind it was pure.
(Translation: You look beautiful.)
He laughed at his own sudden competence. “I’ve been practicing,” he admitted. “You said it when we met someone new yesterday. I thought… It sounded beautiful. So I asked the exhibition staff what it meant.”
It made you smile that he was picking up on your mother tongue. It filled your heart with irrational pride and a strange soft kind of possession. Even more so, you felt loved, heard.
You explained what you’d meant by the compliment — how the panjabi’s deep blacks made him look like a brushstroke against the off-white sky, how the cut of it mirrored the occasional austerity of his personality.
“I meant—” you said, fingers idly tracing the bamboo’s grain, “—it makes you look like you walked out of one of your canvases.” You laughed, embarrassed, and he watched you like a man cataloguing small, beautiful things.
He smiled then, slowly, words careful as varnish. “And you look,” he said, dusky eyes dropping to the roses in your braid and lifting again to the red tint of your lips, “shundor,” he finished in Bengali, the word wrapped around the warmth and admiration in his eyes.
(Translation: Beautiful.)
You felt the compliment land and settle in the marrow of your heart.
You looked away shyly, fiddling with the bansuri. “This is called a bansuri, by the way, another kind of flute. I’ve been trying to learn, but it refuses to cooperate.”
He crouched beside you, eyes following the instrument as though studying a painting. “Like the dizi I play,” he murmured. “But thinner walls… no membrane.”
“Exactly,” you said, pleased he understood. “This one’s all breath. You have to align your mouth just right and press the nodes perfectly. Otherwise, you get this—” You demonstrated, and another sad hiss escaped the bansuri.
He reached for the flute with the same reverence he showed his own instruments. When he lifted it to his lips the embouchure met his mouth like a key to a lock.
He played, gentling the air into one long, liquored note — the sa — then toyed the fingering into a phrase, using the menj (meend) between notes, gliding the pitch like silk. His right hand danced over the svara-holes — first hole, second, third — each placement precise.
You could have sworn the waterfall stilled to listen. The lake seemed to hold its breath. When he finished you were almost reverent with envy. “Why can you—?” you started, then let the sentence fall apart in a laugh. “Oh, come on! I’ve been struggling for days!”
He shrugged, a small, rueful look. “Similar lip placement,” he explained, tapping the embouchure. “But your problem is the air and the angle — embouchure formation. You push like you’re trying to break the sound instead of shaping it.”
You glared playfully. “Then why don’t you teach me?”
He tilted his head, amused by the title. “As you wish.”
Rafayel set the flute in your hands again and shifted his body closer. His left arm wrapped around your waist in an easy, guarding curve; the contact sent a small flare of heat through your spine. He positioned your fingers over the holes — the index covering the first svara-hole, middle the second, ring on the third. He draped his hand over yours, his thumb finding the lower placement as if mapping the fingering for you.
“Now— blow gently,” he murmured, his voice low enough that it brushed the shell of your ear.
You tried. The first note was weak; the second a wobble. He clicked his tongue and corrected you, demonstrating the controlled exhalation. When his fingers pressed down yours, guiding the order — sa, re, ga — your palms registered the dance. His hand was warm, steady; his fingers moved with yours, a choreography of small, intimate teachings.
This time you blew softer — too soft. Another ghost of a note vanished into the air. You groaned, “I’ll never get it!”
“Shh.” His breath fanned across your cheek as he laughed. “Here. Watch.”
He took the bansuri again, demonstrating the breath, long, even, drawn from the diaphragm. The sound unfurled like silk. You watched the way his lips moved around the edge, shaping the note — and completely forgot the lesson.
When he lowered the flute, he caught your gaze lingering. His voice dipped an octave lower. “Did you… get it?”
“Hmm? Oh— haan, haan,” you said far too quickly, nodding like a guilty student, but the nod was halfhearted, your attention had been hijacked by the curve of his lips.
He noticed it. Heat climbed his neck until his ears were proper, bright pink, but he said nothing, and instead guided the bansuri back into your hands. “Now try again.”
The tickle of your hair against his face was a gentle assault, the roses braided in your curls filled his senses and his hand at your waist tingled at the prolonged contact.
He let his other hand drape over yours again, fingers aligning with yours until his were the ones to guide the motion rather than merely correct it. Your breath hitched when his skin warmed yours; his touch was patient but attentive, the kind that burrows into you and rearranges the way you breathe.
Your lips pressed against the same spot his had touched. You inhaled, heartbeat drumming in your ears, and blew gently. The sound came out this time — shaky but real, a thread of melody trembling into existence.
When you finally produced a clean phrase — notes sliding, not snapping — the relief in you felt like laughter. He smiled wide, slow, and complimented you in the same gentle cadence you’d used earlier. “You learn quickly.”
He put the bansuri to his lips and played the whole phrase now, for you, and the tune rose and fell like conversation. “Now you,” he breathed. You matched him, timid at first, then with growing confidence, the music began to feel like language, shaped by memory and by the warmth of his earlier guidance. He watched, expression rapt until the final note trembled into the lake’s hush.
You lowered the flute and for a suspended second, there was nothing between you but breath and the aftermath of sound.
Impulse moved you — quick, certain. You leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his lips, quick as a punctuation but full of all the sentences you’d been saving. His lips were warm and plump and when you pulled back you found his cheeks flushed in a way that mirrored your own. His fingers brushed their way to his mouth as though confirming the touch, then came away smiling.
“I’ll be needing more lessons from you,” you said, voice small as silk. Your hand toyed with the flute, suddenly shy, suddenly enormous with possibility. You stood suddenly, the saree rustling like a soft reproach, and fled in a small, startled run, laughter caught in your throat.
Behind you, Rafayel’s footsteps fell a beat later, following you as he called out, “Wait! Let’s have the second lesson right now!”
You ran with the bansuri hugged to your chest, the taste of his breath on your lips and the new, imperfect tune lodged warm in your throat. The waterfall roared softly in approval, carrying both of your laughter across the lake like a note held too long — a perfect, impossible naad of a blossoming love.