I know Rudra through Champagne and he did a session for Season 3.  He came with DeCoy Gallerina.  I’ve seen a lot of big heart moments in tinyboatsession, but on that particular day it was raining cats and dogs.   I called them up saying it was ok to cancel.  They did not and performed in the rain.  Rudra stood up in the boat and sang a song he learned from the watermen who would ferry him across the water to school in Bengal to a chorus of raindrops.  The fact that they would show up for my project in tinyboats moved me deeply.

Rudra is a theater practitioner and theater artist from San Francisco Bay.   He has been in the States for ten years.  For Season 6 he brought his Shruti box.  I’d never seen this instrument before, but it is the instrument that provides the drone for a lot of music on the Indian Subcontinent.   Rudra wanted to tell stories in multiple languages and share spontaneous thoughts and melodies from Turkish, Persian, Pakistani, Indian, and Bangladeshi origins as well as some Sufi inspirations.

Having Rudra play in the boat was like experiencing a river that had grown from a dozen tributaries and was now its own unique thing.  It was windy that day in Berkeley and we stayed close to the shore.  At the end of his performance, he finished with some spontaneous words: “Life on water can be with lots of trouble and difficulties and challenges but eternal love will win.  We can fight with truth and love and we will win.”

I think life is a lot like water, and truth and love might be a good compass and sextant to navigate it.