song about love, Ibunda Guru, an agonizing love to be exact ..."
My God! We never gave prologues like that, and we never sang songs of that theme. We usually sang three types of songs: nationalistic songs, religious songs in Arabic and children's songs.
What kind of song was this sweet-faced boy going to sing? We all watched him. Sahara let go of her crossstitch. Harun woke up.
"This song tells the story of someone with a broken heart, his beloved sweetheart was stolen by his good friend ..."
He fell silent and stared out through the window, past the drifting clouds. Love is indeed cruel.
Bu Mus stared quizzically at Mahar. We were curious. Bu Mus, with a few poetic words, let him go ahead with his unusual song choice.
"The road to the field is winding Don't pass through the pine forest Sing your song Let me know your sorrow."
Mahar bit his lip, and gave a grimaced smile.
"Thank you, Ibunda Guru."
Mahar got ready. We waited in suspense and were blown away when he opened his rattan sack and pulled out an instrument: a ukulele!
The atmosphere was still. Slowly, Mahar began gingerly strumming the ukulele, an introduction that broke the silence like the rumbling of distant thunder. Mahar hugged the ukulele somberly. His eyes were shut and his face was wrought with emotion, pale from holding back feelings. Then, after a smooth prelude, he glided into the verses of the song with a slow tempo nuanced with anguish, but he sang with the loveliness of andante maestoso —words cannot describe its beauty.
" I was dancing with my darling to the Tennessee Waltz when an old friend I happened to see ...
introduced her to my loved one, and while they were dancing ... my friend stole my sweetheart from me "
We gasped in awe. The song was none other than the famous Tennessee Waltz written by Anne Murray.
The vibration of Mahar's voice was flawless, and his total comprehension of the song was incredible; he actually looked as though he were suffering terribly from the loss of his beloved sweetheart. The rhythmic ukulele made the atmosphere all the more romantic.
Verse by verse, the song crept over the old wooden walls of our school, perched on the tiny linaria leaves like thistle crescent butterflies, and then drifted away under the thin clouds to the north. Mahar's pained voice penetrated the depths of our hearts. Whatever we had been working on—or not working on—before had been stopped. We were mesmerized, enchanted by the aura emanating from this handsome young character singing not just from his mouth, but from his soul, turning the song into a grand symphony. Sleepiness, hunger and thirst vanished. Even the yellow-backed beetles and their friends, the stripe-winged prinias, stopped their chatter to hear Mahar's song.
Mahar ended the song with a fade out and a tear drop.
" I lost my little darling the night they were playing the beautiful Tennessee Waltz "
We gave him a standing ovation for at least five minutes. Bu Mus was trying hard to hide the tears welling up in her eyes. That midday, in the month of July, in the peak of the dry season, while waiting for the zuhur call to prayer, before going home from school, a great artist was born in the poor Muhammadiyah School.
Chapter 13
The Daydreamer
ONLY AFTER witnessing his performance of Anne Murray's song did we know who Mahar really was. All this time, he had been acting awkward, dressing eccentrically, talking nonsense and thinking strangely; we—unaware that all those quirks were reflections of his artistic talent—had deemed him a weird, bohemian boy. Our experience with Mahar is proof of the human tendency to focus on others' shortcomings instead of their virtues.
We now discovered that Mahar balanced out the ship of our school, which teetered to the left due to the pull of Lintang's left brain. Lintang's left brain and Mahar's overflowing right brain combined to create an artistic and intellectual set of goalposts in our classroom, and the existence
My God! We never gave prologues like that, and we never sang songs of that theme. We usually sang three types of songs: nationalistic songs, religious songs in Arabic and children's songs.
What kind of song was this sweet-faced boy going to sing? We all watched him. Sahara let go of her crossstitch. Harun woke up.
"This song tells the story of someone with a broken heart, his beloved sweetheart was stolen by his good friend ..."
He fell silent and stared out through the window, past the drifting clouds. Love is indeed cruel.
Bu Mus stared quizzically at Mahar. We were curious. Bu Mus, with a few poetic words, let him go ahead with his unusual song choice.
"The road to the field is winding Don't pass through the pine forest Sing your song Let me know your sorrow."
Mahar bit his lip, and gave a grimaced smile.
"Thank you, Ibunda Guru."
Mahar got ready. We waited in suspense and were blown away when he opened his rattan sack and pulled out an instrument: a ukulele!
The atmosphere was still. Slowly, Mahar began gingerly strumming the ukulele, an introduction that broke the silence like the rumbling of distant thunder. Mahar hugged the ukulele somberly. His eyes were shut and his face was wrought with emotion, pale from holding back feelings. Then, after a smooth prelude, he glided into the verses of the song with a slow tempo nuanced with anguish, but he sang with the loveliness of andante maestoso —words cannot describe its beauty.
" I was dancing with my darling to the Tennessee Waltz when an old friend I happened to see ...
introduced her to my loved one, and while they were dancing ... my friend stole my sweetheart from me "
We gasped in awe. The song was none other than the famous Tennessee Waltz written by Anne Murray.
The vibration of Mahar's voice was flawless, and his total comprehension of the song was incredible; he actually looked as though he were suffering terribly from the loss of his beloved sweetheart. The rhythmic ukulele made the atmosphere all the more romantic.
Verse by verse, the song crept over the old wooden walls of our school, perched on the tiny linaria leaves like thistle crescent butterflies, and then drifted away under the thin clouds to the north. Mahar's pained voice penetrated the depths of our hearts. Whatever we had been working on—or not working on—before had been stopped. We were mesmerized, enchanted by the aura emanating from this handsome young character singing not just from his mouth, but from his soul, turning the song into a grand symphony. Sleepiness, hunger and thirst vanished. Even the yellow-backed beetles and their friends, the stripe-winged prinias, stopped their chatter to hear Mahar's song.
Mahar ended the song with a fade out and a tear drop.
" I lost my little darling the night they were playing the beautiful Tennessee Waltz "
We gave him a standing ovation for at least five minutes. Bu Mus was trying hard to hide the tears welling up in her eyes. That midday, in the month of July, in the peak of the dry season, while waiting for the zuhur call to prayer, before going home from school, a great artist was born in the poor Muhammadiyah School.
Chapter 13
The Daydreamer
ONLY AFTER witnessing his performance of Anne Murray's song did we know who Mahar really was. All this time, he had been acting awkward, dressing eccentrically, talking nonsense and thinking strangely; we—unaware that all those quirks were reflections of his artistic talent—had deemed him a weird, bohemian boy. Our experience with Mahar is proof of the human tendency to focus on others' shortcomings instead of their virtues.
We now discovered that Mahar balanced out the ship of our school, which teetered to the left due to the pull of Lintang's left brain. Lintang's left brain and Mahar's overflowing right brain combined to create an artistic and intellectual set of goalposts in our classroom, and the existence
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