Folk Tales No. 35

The piper plays his pipe ....

Must it be always a land far away and why not a land nearby so that people can visit the land, but I guess we must learned to visit than learned to belong.

So our story began.

If you are the Mayor of this small town of population of five hundred and twelve plus one Mayor, you will be having those headache which he has daily. The town is divided into two groups; the singers and the musicians. And they both numbered six on the band, and two hundred and fifty supporters on the support fans. Then Mayor is not a fan of both nor does he sings or likes music.

Its not that bad everytime, for the town is united when the tourists come during the festives and weekends. There the two groups; singers and musicians will get together and serenade your blues away. As one tourist put in her blog on her return form this village;’ its a splendour to be with them, so loving and caring that I even come back to forgive my cat for eating the fish in the aquarium.’

But once the crowd are gone, the animosity starts between the two groups. They walked by each other with their sulking looks and grimace in imaginative pains. So the poor Mayor sat there and ponder his issue. He saw a bag left by a tourist, and it was a pipe and a ‘how to do it the other wrong way of playing the pipe.’ So the Mayor took up the book and the pipe, and looked right; looked left and finally looked up and said; ‘I am not stealing. I am just holding in trust for the owners, if they do come back.’

But this was not the item he adds to his list of ‘lost items’ or ‘lost owner items’ in his office. He was fasinated with the pipe. As said, he is no singer nor a musician so what is interesting about the pipe. Well, there are no pipers in the musicians, and he reckon the singers may need a musician to back them up on these days. So he turned to page one of the book to start his lesson. It said; ‘put your mouth to work and shut up’. Wow, that is rude by any writer’s standards, but he did as he was told. When he did that, the pipe starts to play as if he is blowing it and beautiful music came out of it, followed by the voices that sings beautiful lyrics with it. He tried to put down the pipe, but he finds himself drawn by the sound. Soon he finds his ‘uninvited guests’ showing up to listen to the sound the pipe is producing.

There was the home rats,all five of them; the termites, big pillars of them; the croaches with their queen in the paper carriage, and many others. And then the music sweeps itself across town and the other pests appeared too and all congregate at the Mayor’s house. The Mayor could see the pests’ around his house so he walked out of there. Whenever he go, he attracts pests and they followed him.

And he had a brilliant idea. He walked to the Foundry factory ( the only one they have ) and he got the foundry caretaker to open the foundry doors. He directed his music into the burining fire, and true to his expectation, the mass of pests’ marched into the fire. Its unbelievable but the Mayor cleared the town of all pesky inhabitants. The town people were happy and they rejoiced at the Mayor’s effort. But they soon turned back to their old ways. That made the Mayor very sad again. So he looked at the book again. It said on the second page; ‘there cannot be too many stars in one sky’.

And an idea came to his mind. He planned for over a week, before he raised the pipe to play again. This time he got a following of supporters who accompanied him. They joined him on the street and it was like a festive parade; as there was dancing and good luving among those people. But there was a difference; all of them loved music and the musicians was the Mayor backup piece.The Mayor marched them down the street and out of the town and into the hills and over the hills. Soon the town could see the marching musicians, and only the singers and their supporter was in town. And then they heard the loud bang sound, and the hill collapsed. When the debris and smoke cleared, the town people could only see a wide ravine where the hill used to be. They find themselves not able to cross over to the other side. So they went back to the town and tried to continue their life again. One boy who was following them came back to said he saw the Mayor leading the people into the cave and was never seen. 

One day, they saw the Mayor walking back to the town. He was alone and he has no pipe with him.

‘What did happened to the musicians? Did they all died?’

‘Nope, they are alright. We went through tunnel to the other side of the hill. They now lived across the ravine in their own town. Incidentally, I am also the Mayor there. If you want to across you need to use the bridge I build.  But I am here to secure a pledge from you all before I allowed you to cross the bridge. ‘

‘Oh, please. We agreed. We do missed the musicians and we feel we can’t live without them. Tell us what is to be done.’

‘Well for one; if I allowed all of you to live together under one town, you will revert back to your oldself soon. So I decided to create two towns so that you can live comfortably without being associated with each other. But you are all of one community, so I will allowed you to be together on those occassions when there is a need. Or on other occassions, you may go over but not stay there longer than needed.’ They all agreed and the Mayor walked back to the other town. The musicians also agreed to the pledge.

And now the tourists coming here, has a bigger place to visit; two towns to be exact and they need to cross over a bridge with a token payment of ‘one to keep on smiling when over the other side’. So the two community learned to live comfortably with each other and valued each other’s contribution.

And the Mayor managed to return the pipe and the book to its rightful owner. But that is not important. He is a proud smiling Mayor of two hundred and fifty smiling population in each town. And he has got two towns to take care. Plus remuneration packages from each town which is why he is always smiling.

They put up a sign at the bridge to recognise his effort; it said ‘Hamelin was here before Kilroy.’

( Separate to unite than to be united and then separate. )