It was a peculiar day today.
On my way to His house in the morning, my slippers broke down. I dragged myself to a mochi. Couldn't find him. So walked my protesting feet to the next one, five minutes away.
He gave me a rousing welcome. Pointing to the stool next to him, he said, "Baithiye, maddum." He then placed his large footwear underneath my feet and began working on my slippers.
Pointing to the dirty, ragged piece of old trousers on which he sat, he said, "Yeh purani cheezoka bhi kabhi na kabhi kuch to faayda hota hai. Mai inhe kabhi nai phekta."
A thought flashed across my mind, as I sat and watched him deftly working stitches into my slipper, as if he were a surgeon caught in an emergency operation.
"Hum bhi kitne hi purane ho, ya tute hue ho, Parmeshwar hume kabhi nai phek deta."
We conversed on these lines some more moments.
Hubby called. "Where are you?"
"Chappal broke down," I replied.
'Aur kuch kaam ho to aap phir ayega," he begged.
"Jaroor". I walked away swiftly toward my destination, half an hour late.
Midway through the service, this guy was called upfront. A thin, dark guy with moustache in a floral kurta.
Nudging hubby, I whispered excitedly. "Benny Prasad." I had heard him before. A musician par excellence.
We listened with rapt attention as he regaled us with his story. Bad at studies, asthmatic, arthritic, he had only 6 months to live. Given up as useless by family and school and society, he spoke so unassumingly about how at 16, he encountered Him.
And as a broken string, he surrendered himself into the hands of the almighty. Today he's traveled more than 240 countries as a musician. Totally debt free. Amazing. As he began playing his bongo fitted into his guitar and also the flute like instrument, we were as if transported into an ethereal world.
"This is what He can do with us too." he concluded. A very quiet chap, no airs about him, so humorous at times.
All for His ears, he reiterates.
He stayed back some more time later and then left as quietly as he'd come in.
My mind went back to my mochi friend. That dirty piece of cloth on which he sat, that he never discarded, that we'd surely have.
What a strange connection! A broken string and some unwanted cloth.
But both being put to good use.
The dirty cloth..on which the master mochi sat.
And a broken string, now a piece of lovely music.
In the Master's hands.
