Indian Summer&nbsp;&nbsp; It was a damp Thursday morning in 1983, the kind of morning that could make even the Thames reconsider its career. A fine drizzle hung in the air, neither raining nor refraining, and Waterloo Station hummed with that particular British energy of determined inconvenience. Commuters scurried, announcements garbled, and the clock looked down with weary authority upon it all.&nbsp; It was beneath this clock, this most punctual of London landmarks, that two men of distinguished but uncertain purpose were destined to meet.&nbsp; Pandit Haripada Basu arrived first. He was a man of seventy-four, built like an upright bassoon, with the face of one who had spent a lifetime regarding both gods and railway timetables with equal suspicion. Wrapped in a long beige raincoat of indeterminate fibre and carrying a battered sitar case, he surveyed the concourse with the air of a general about to inspect enemy trenches.&nbsp; He had come from Tooting, which he considered an inconvenient suburb of the universe. The tube ride had been long, the fellow passengers loud, and the ticket inspector insistent that a “Family Day Travelcard” did not, in fact, apply to one’s musical instruments.&nbsp; Still, Basu was not easily disheartened. For forty years he had played ragas across the subcontinent and beyond, trained disciples, and survived more indifferent audiences than he cared to remember. Now, retired but restless, he had been lured to Waterloo by a letter, typed, no less, from an ambitious young tabla player named Mr. Ravi Banerjee.&nbsp; “Meet me under the clock at Waterloo, eleven o’clock sharp,” the letter had said. “I have a proposition that could change everything.”&nbsp; To Basu, “change everything” usually meant something unpleasant, like a new kettle or a different kind of tea. Nevertheless, curiosity and mild irritation had brought him here.&nbsp; Ravi Banerjee was late. Not by much, perhaps six minutes, but in the grand scheme of Indian classical music, where timing was sacred, this was practically a cosmic insult.&nbsp; He dashed through the station, tabla case swinging from his shoulder, hair in rebellion against both gravity and reason. At twenty-eight, he fancied himself something of a modernist. He wore a grey tweed jacket (purchased second-hand, but worn with conviction) and sported a small moustache that gave him the look of a poet who hadn’t yet published anything.&nbsp; When he spotted Basu under the clock, stoic, immovable, and already disapproving he quickened his pace.&nbsp; “Panditji!” he cried, breathless. “You are here! The clock strikes eleven and well, nearly.”&nbsp; Basu’s eyebrows met in solemn congress. “Six minutes,” he said. “In six minutes, an entire alap can be completed. Or ruined.”&nbsp; Ravi bowed, a movement that was half-apology, half-avoiding-eye-contact. “Trains, Panditji. They are very British.”&nbsp; Basu sniffed. “Yes. They announce delays with pride.”&nbsp; They found a small café inside the station, the kind that served tea with more enthusiasm than flavour. It had plastic chairs, a smell of warm toast, and a radio playing something unspeakable by Duran Duran.&nbsp; “Now,” said Basu, setting his sitar gently against the table, “tell me, what is this grand proposition? I hope it does not involve politics or yoghurt.”&nbsp; Ravi grinned. “Neither, Panditji! Music! Pure, glorious, trans-continental music.”&nbsp; He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “You know the festival in Hyde Park? The one sponsored by the BBC: ‘Sounds of the World’?”&nbsp; Basu frowned. “I saw it in the paper. Many people jumping on stage, shouting into microphones.”&nbsp; “Exactly!” said Ravi, eyes gleaming. “That is where we come in. They want fusion! East meets West, tradition meets modernity. Imagine it: you on sitar, me on tabla, and a band of English musicians - guitar, bass, saxophone, even drums! Together, we create something new!”&nbsp; Basu regarded him with the same expression he had once reserved for a particularly reckless student attempting to play Raga Yaman backwards.&nbsp; “Fusion,” he said slowly, as if tasting the word and finding it slightly overcooked. “I have seen what happens when people ‘fuse’. They forget where the pieces came from.”&nbsp; “But Panditji,” pleaded Ravi, “this is our chance! To show them our tradition is alive! That it can speak in new ways!”&nbsp; Basu sipped his tea, which was hot, watery, and tragically English. “My dear boy,” he said at last, “tradition does not need to shout to be alive. It breathes quietly. Like a raga at dawn.”&nbsp; Ravi sagged. “But if we never play for them, they will never hear it breathe.”&nbsp; This gave Basu pause. The young man had a point, though Basu would rather have admitted to owning a disco record than say so aloud.&nbsp; Their conversation was interrupted by a commotion near the ticket barriers, a busker being politely but firmly ejected by a station guard. The musician, a pale young man with a mop of hair and an electric guitar, protested loudly.&nbsp; “Oi! I was nearly at the chorus!”&nbsp; Ravi’s eyes lit up. “Panditji! This is a sign!”&nbsp; Basu sighed. “Everything is a sign to you people. Rain is a sign. Pigeons are a sign. Sometimes, a pigeon is just a pigeon.”&nbsp; But Ravi was already on his feet, marching toward the hapless guitarist.&nbsp; “Excuse me!” he called. “Sir! Would you like to play something… together?”&nbsp; The guard looked baffled. The guitarist looked intrigued.&nbsp; “Mate, I’ve got nowhere else to go. What’ve you got in mind?”&nbsp; Ravi grinned. “A jam session. Right here. Under the clock.”&nbsp; Before Basu could object, the young man had plugged in his guitar to a small battery amp. Ravi unpacked his tabla, and the concourse, ever hungry for spectacle, began to gather.&nbsp; Basu sat very still, silently negotiating with his ancestors. Finally, with the resignation of a man who knows resistance is futile, he opened his sitar case.&nbsp; And so it began: a sitar, a tabla, and an electric guitar in the heart of Waterloo Station.&nbsp; The guitarist started with a blues riff, tentative, searching. Ravi entered, hands dancing across the drums. The rhythms found each other cautiously at first, like strangers at a party, then began to converse.&nbsp; Basu, after a long and meaningful sigh, struck his first note. It rang through the station, bright and resonant, as if someone had opened a window to another world.&nbsp; The crowd fell silent.&nbsp; For a moment, all the noise of London, announcements, footsteps, trains, became accompaniment. The music swelled, a strange, beautiful hybrid that neither culture could claim alone.&nbsp; When it ended, there was applause. Real applause. Commuters smiled at one another, forgetting for a moment to be British about it.&nbsp; &nbsp; The guitarist, beaming, said, “That was mental! You guys are amazing! You should come play at my mate’s pub in Brixton. Sunday night, proper crowd.”&nbsp; Ravi was already nodding. “We will come!”&nbsp; Basu looked heavenward, as if asking for divine clarification.&nbsp; Three days later, they found themselves in the basement of a Brixton pub called The Crown &amp; Cushion. It was dark, smelled faintly of ambition and old beer, and contained more amplifiers than health and safety might approve.&nbsp; The band, a collection of cheerful eccentrics, greeted them warmly. There was Nigel on bass, who wore sandals unironically; Terry on saxophone, who claimed to have once played for David Bowie (no one believed him); and Sheila, the drummer, who looked as though she had been born behind a drum kit and was only tolerating the rest of the world.&nbsp; Basu took one look at them and muttered, “This is not an orchestra. This is an accident.”&nbsp; Ravi, undeterred, began to explain talas and ragas. The others nodded politely, clearly understanding none of it.&nbsp; When they started to play, it was chaos. The guitarist lost his place, the saxophonist entered in the wrong key, and Sheila’s enthusiastic drumming nearly drowned out the sitar entirely.&nbsp; Basu stopped playing, raised a hand, and said with exquisite calm, “Perhaps we should first agree on what we are playing.”&nbsp; Nigel smiled sheepishly. “We usually just… vibe, you know?”&nbsp; “I see,” said Basu. “In India, we call that anarchy.”&nbsp; Nevertheless, hour by hour, something miraculous began to happen. Amid the noise and laughter, the chaos softened. The rhythms began to align, the melodies to merge. Tradition and modernity, so often portrayed as enemies, began to flirt.&nbsp; By the end of the night, they had something that might almost, in certain light, be called music.&nbsp; &nbsp; The day of the festival dawned bright and improbable. Hyde Park was full of people—some wearing kaftans, some leather jackets, some apparently both. Flags fluttered, food stalls steamed, and from every stage came the sound of the world in all its musical confusion.&nbsp; Basu stood backstage, sitar in hand, wearing his best kurta and an expression of profound misgiving. Ravi, meanwhile, buzzed with excitement.&nbsp; “Panditji, today we make history!”&nbsp; “Yes,” said Basu. “Or we make noise. Sometimes it is the same thing.”&nbsp; They took the stage to polite applause. The sun was shining, a gentle breeze moved through the trees, and somewhere in the distance someone was selling hot dogs with alarming enthusiasm.&nbsp; Ravi began with a tabla rhythm—steady, insistent. The guitar joined, then the bass, then the sitar.&nbsp; This time, it worked.&nbsp; The music rose and shimmered, weaving ragas into riffs, tablas into beats. The crowd swayed, entranced. Even the sound engineers stopped pretending to be busy.&nbsp; Halfway through, Basu felt something unexpected, a thrill, sharp and joyous. For the first time in years, he wasn’t performing to preserve tradition. He was performing to share it.&nbsp; As the final note faded, there was a moment of stunned silence, followed by thunderous applause. People cheered, whistled, shouted for more.&nbsp; Basu smiled—an event so rare Ravi nearly dropped his tabla.&nbsp; “Panditji,” he said, breathless, “they loved it!”&nbsp; Basu nodded. “Yes. And I did not entirely hate it.”&nbsp; The performance made the evening news, tucked between a story about Margaret Thatcher and a report on a mysterious shortage of baked beans. The BBC called it “a remarkable fusion of East and West,” though Basu privately preferred “an amiable misunderstanding.”&nbsp; Invitations followed—festivals, interviews, even a brief feature in Melody Maker under the headline “Sitar Hero.”&nbsp; For Ravi, it was the beginning of everything. For Basu, it was a reminder that even the oldest melodies can find new ears if one is willing to play them loudly enough.&nbsp; A few months later, when Ravi proposed forming a permanent group: “The Waterloo Ensemble”—Basu did not say no. He simply said, “Only if we meet under the clock. It seems to bring us luck.”&nbsp; &nbsp; A year later to the day, two men once again stood beneath the clock at Waterloo. The drizzle had returned, commuters still hurried, and the station still smelled faintly of pasties and potential.&nbsp; Ravi was now a minor celebrity, perpetually late and unrepentant. Basu, meanwhile, carried himself with the quiet pride of one who has seen the future and found it tolerably in tune.&nbsp; They greeted one another with a warmth that embarrassed several passing accountants.&nbsp; “Well, Panditji,” said Ravi, “shall we go make some more noise?”&nbsp; Basu smiled faintly. “Noise, yes. But with purpose.”&nbsp; Together they walked toward the exit, two unlikely conspirators in the endless experiment that is London, carrying, between them, the sound of a bridge between worlds.&nbsp; Above them, the great clock ticked on, unmoved and magnificent, marking not just the time but the improbable rhythm of friendship, tradition, and the peculiar music of human optimis&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;

The Bells of Netley Abbey

The Sailors Secret

The Lights Went Out

The Tide Turns at Hamble

The Infinite

The Echo Machine

Neural Drift

The Whispering Sky

THe Gun House Secret

Ted the Unicorn & Maggie the Human

Maggie the Witch and the Halloween Rescue

Meet Under the Clock at Waterloo

The Traineee Spies

Pints & Friends

First Date

Between Scenes

The Last Departure

Delayed Hearts

Father & Daughter

The Farewell

Indian Summer

Day By Day

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Teds Shorts - A Series of Short Stories

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Teds Shorts - A Series of Short Stories

Tedhill

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