Flowhop

Hyderabad, June 9, 2025

My trip to Rishikesh last month yields yet more fruits.

I stayed at a hostel run by a group of friends who seemed to be amateur musicians. Every evening, they played music in the common area, featuring such wind instruments as to capture the imagination and, somewhat inexplicably, evoke images of Mongol raiding camps. What stood out to me was one particular set with a flute. There is a purity of flow that is unique to this little instrument. Listening to this against the backdrop of rare Rishikesh rains brought back memories from 4(!) years ago — wow, I didn’t realize it’s been that long.

Back in early 2021, I had just moved cities to Bangalore for the first time, I was working on my first real startup in something called embedded lending, and almost exclusively listened to hip-hop. Hiphop seems like an unlikely road to the flute, but I remember being completely spellbound by some tracks that had a strong flute base:

Anyway, all of this reminiscing has led me to get my own flute recently.

This is my first instrument, and I’m really enjoying playing it. Add to this the magic that you can blow into a hollow wood pipe and it creates this deeply earthen sound which changes with the distance to the first open hole, and the flute is revealed to be doubly wondrous.