Stop fidgeting and come sit close, it’s getting cold.

You know how some nights the moon is so full it makes you restless, makes you want to walk out of the house for no reason at all? That is the kind of night I am going to tell you about.

In Vrindavan, the gopis — the cowherd women — would finish their evening work. Milking done, pots washed, children fed and asleep. And then, some nights, from somewhere across the forest, a sound would come.

Krishna’s flute.

Not loud. You wouldn’t hear it over a barking dog or a crying baby. But somehow, on certain nights, every woman in that village heard it at the exact same moment, no matter what she was doing.

One woman, Radha tells it, was kneading dough when she heard it. Her hands stopped moving on their own. The dough sat there, half-shaped, going slightly stiff, and she didn’t even notice.

Another was nursing her child. She heard the flute, and without deciding to, without even meaning to, she got up, left the baby sleeping safely on the cot, and walked out the door.

Husbands called after their wives. “Where are you going at this hour?”

Nobody answered properly. What could they say? “I don’t know, I just have to go”?

They walked through the dark, past the cattle sheds, past the well, into the forest where the sound was coming from, some of them barefoot, some still wearing the kohl they’d put on that morning, not even bothering to fix their hair.

When they reached the riverbank, Krishna was standing there, flute still at his lips, moonlight falling on the water like something poured rather than shone.

He didn’t say, “Why did you come.”
He didn’t say, “I have been waiting.”

He just kept playing, and one by one they sat down near him, and for that one night, nobody was anybody’s wife or mother or daughter. They were just people who had heard something calling them and had not been able to stay away.

By morning, they were home again. Dough kneaded. Children fed. Husbands not asking too many questions, somehow already knowing not to.

But some nights, even now, an old woman will be doing some ordinary thing — folding clothes, stirring dal — and she’ll stop completely still for one second, for no reason she could explain to you.

That’s the flute, beta. Still calling. Some of us just stopped being able to hear it.