What difference does the author note between the flute seller and the other hawkers?
<answer> The author finds a difference in selling the articles. The flute seller does not shout out his wares. He makes a sale in a curiously off handed way as if this was incidental to his enterprise. <context> 1. I GET a cheap room in the centre of town and sleep
for hours. The next morning, with Mr Shah’s son
and nephew, I visit the two temples in Kathmandu
that are most sacred to Hindus and Buddhists.
2. At Pashupatinath (outside which a sign
proclaims ‘Entrance for the Hindus only’) there is
an atmosphere of ‘febrile confusion’. Priests,
hawkers, devotees, tourists, cows, monkeys, pigeons
and dogs roam through the grounds. We offer a few
flowers. There are so many worshippers that some
people trying to get the priest’s attention are elbowed
aside by others pushing their way to the front. A
princess of the Nepalese royal house appears;
everyone bows and makes way. By the main gate, a
party of saffron-clad Westerners struggle for
permission to enter. The policeman is not convinced
that they are ‘the Hindus’ (only Hindus are allowed
to enter the temple). A fight breaks out between
two monkeys. One chases the other, who jumps
onto a shivalinga, then runs screaming around the
temples and down to the river, the holy Bagmati,
that flows below. A corpse is being cremated on its
banks; washerwomen are at their work and children
bathe. From a balcony a basket of flowers and
leaves, old offerings now wilted, is dropped into the
river. A small shrine half protrudes from the stone
platform on the river bank. When it emerges fully,
the goddess inside will escape, and the evil period
of the Kaliyug will end on earth.
3. At the Baudhnath stupa, the Buddhist shrine of
Kathmandu, there is, in contrast, a sense of
stillness. Its immense white dome is ringed by a
road. Small shops stand on its outer edge: many of
these are owned by Tibetan immigrants; felt bags,
Tibetan prints and silver jewellery can be bought
here. There are no crowds: this is a haven of
quietness in the busy streets around.
4. Kathmandu is vivid, mercenary, religious, with
small shrines to flower-adorned deities along the
narrowest and busiest streets; with fruit sellers,
flute sellers, hawkers of postcards; shops selling
Western cosmetics, film rolls and chocolate; or
copper utensils and Nepalese antiques. Film songs
blare out from the radios, car horns sound, bicycle
bells ring, stray cows low questioningly at
motorcycles, vendors shout out their wares. I indulge
myself mindlessly: buy a bar of marzipan, a cornon-
the-cob roasted in a charcoal brazier on the
pavement (rubbed with salt, chilli powder and
lemon); a couple of love story comics, and even a
Reader’s Digest. All this I wash down with Coca Cola
and a nauseating orange drink, and feel much the
better for it.
5. I consider what route I should take back home. If I
were propelled by enthusiasm for travel per se,
I would go by bus and train to Patna, then sail up
the Ganges past Benaras to Allahabad, then up the
Yamuna, past Agra to Delhi. But I am too exhausted
and homesick; today is the last day of August. Go
home, I tell myself: move directly towards home. I
enter a Nepal Airlines office and buy a ticket for
tomorrow’s flight.
6. I look at the flute seller standing in a corner of the
square near the hotel. In his hand is a pole with
an attachment at the top from which fifty or sixty
bansuris protrude in all directions, like the quills
of a porcupine. They are of bamboo: there are crossflutes
and recorders. From time to time he stands
the pole on the ground, selects a flute and plays
for a few minutes. The sound rises clearly above
the noise of the traffic and the hawkers’ cries. He
plays slowly, meditatively, without excessive
display. He does not shout out his wares.
Occasionally he makes a sale, but in a curiously
offhanded way as if this were incidental to his
enterprise. Sometimes he breaks off playing to talk
to the fruit seller. I imagine that this has been the
pattern of his life for years.
7. I find it difficult to tear myself away from the square.
Flute music always does this to me: it is at once
the most universal and most particular of sounds.
There is no culture that does not have its flute—
the reed neh, the recorder, the Japanese shakuhachi,
the deep bansuri of Hindustani classical music,
the clear or breathy flutes of South America,
the high-pitched Chinese flutes. Each has its
specific fingering and compass. It weaves its own
associations. Yet to hear any flute is, it seems to
me, to be drawn into the commonality of all
mankind, to be moved by music closest in its
phrases and sentences to the human voice. Its
motive force too is living breath: it too needs to
pause and breathe before it can go on.
8. That I can be so affected by a few familiar phrases
on the bansuri, surprises me at first, for on the
previous occasions that I have returned home after
a long absence abroad, I have hardly noticed such
details, and certainly have not invested them with
the significance I now do.