A Debt of Gratitude to the Irish: J M Synge
A Grateful Heart: Day 15
“Come along,” he said, beckoning to me. He was Jamie, a singer, and, the bartender, too, apparently. He had finished strumming his guitar, and got into the first couple of notes of ‘Molly Malone.’ I was one of the only two Indians among the group of tourists in the pub. After driving along the mind-numbingly beautiful Ring of Kerry, visiting Killarney and the Blarney Castle and Stone, we had reached a tiny, delightfully picturesque little pub, in Dungarvan, on our way to Tramore.
I had never heard the song before, and his invitation to join in, as chorus, rather shook me up. Till then, I was moving in a happy haze through all those familiar-sounding places that I had visited, in my mind, throughout my school, college, and University. I looked back at him and shrugged mentally. If he did not know how dreadfully I sang, I thought philosophically, he would know soon enough.
But it was surprisingly easy. He made sure that I knew and remembered the words, by putting me through my paces, initially. And then we got along quite well. And if the rest of the group considered my voice and diction alien, they were too well-bred to say so.
I went around for some days after that, feeling quite uppity about being able to sing in public. Fortunately, no one had thought of recording the ‘performance’, so I was able to tell myself that I sang rather well.
For me, the visit to Ireland was more like a pilgrimage than a tour. It is the land of Goldsmith and Sheridan, Yeats and Wilde.
And the land of Synge.
I fell in love with the words of J M Synge when I was in college. There was a cadence in his words, music, a rhyme, a rhythm. I smelt the sea in it, the salt and the surf. If I closed my eyes, I could feel my face becoming wet with the surf: and it was only later that I realised that they were tears coursing down my cheeks. When I read Synge aloud, it feels like a prayer, a lament, a benediction. And in them, too, there was a song, and a keening, and the inevitability of fate. In the face of so much sublime beauty, one can only weep.
Synge didn’t write much. He didn’t need to. Every perfectly formed word drops like manna into my heart…and stays there, helping me tide over everything that fate throws my way.
©️ 2021 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.
This is a response to the thought-provoking prompt for the month of November, for Ravyne Hawke publication, ‘Promptly Written.’ Today is Day 15.
