The Other One

Around 8 years of age. You have been brought to the hairdresser in the nearby chowk. The hairdresser asks, “Do you want a hero’s haircut?” “Yes, like Amitabh,” you reply, not caring what it turns out to be like. It’s his way to engage. To take your mind away from the frequent glances toward the person who has brought you to the shop. ‘What if they leave you forever in the shop itself?’

The radio plays a song. It is rather a teasing dialogue in which they’re asking Maria her reaction when Johnny had proposed to her. The intermediate laughter of both the singers lightens you up instantly.

Around the same age, you spend almost your entire time watching and playing cricket. The next day you read news reports of matches. Frequently, you are taken to an ice-cream shop. You spot the poster of Sachin Tendulkar. It mentions his favourites. You tell yourself – one day, you will visit the Sydney Cricket Ground. You note his favourite musicians too. Someone called Dire Straits? Sounds English, so obviously beyond your reach. You note the old Hindi singers. Maybe listening to them is the source of his superpower?

Summer holidays before you reach the serious business of middle school. You watch every movie played by the cable waala. Shah Rukh Khan is mesmerizing in every role. One day, he is romancing on snowy mountains, on another, he is a violent killer. Everybody in the apartment has the audio cassette of his new movie. You stand in the queue for an evening show. The song shows the heroine dancing in the rain expressing her desires. Do Indians in Europe really live so freely?

You watch Rangeela with an elder cousin. He cries at the end of the movie. You feel nothing much but since he’s your favourite cousin, you question your emotions. Your brain is still captured by that one song that features Bournvita and Horlicks.

You are taken to a homeopathy doctor for having frequent colds and skin rashes. But the main part is listening to Daud songs in the car. You play them on repeat, like taking those questionable sugary pills. Soon, the elder in the family gives up on the treatment. The cold and the rashes persist, like the love for the songs.

Music albums have become a rage. Their videos are swoon-worthy. You loop through the audio cassettes again. Dil Kahi… Hosh Kahi and Kabhi to Nazar Milao promise you a love that will make you lose yourself.

The lifechanging class ten exams and tuitions lurk. You spend more time with friends than at home. There are stayovers at friends’ places. They feature cricket, dance, food – the three cultural bookmarks of your small town. Ram Gopal Verma’s Satya acknowledges the gaalis you’ve learned. But that one wedding song. You dance on it in a loop, as if a cult, thanks to downloaded MP3s and Winamp.

Class twelve. You have learned all the songs of this historical fiction cricket movie. You do crazy things like changing your voice when there is a female part in a song. Meanwhile, they have started giving a myriad of adjectives to love in Hindi movies. Kambakht Ishq is the one that stays with you.

Engineering. You watch this new mafia movie. Again by Ram Gopal Verma. The song that stays with you is the one that promises destruction at the hands of love.

College event. You are obviously not a participant. You have turned into somebody who simply criticizes everybody. A boy and a girl sing a song on the stage. It is from the movie Jawaani Deewani, they say. You search for it and play it on repeat.

The thrill of watching a movie in an aeroplane. Ijaazat. The movie is quite high on the sensitivity scale – soul stirring and all that. Plot aside, you are awestruck by how someone can write something as Mera Kuchh Saamaan.

Obsession with competitive exams. You lose touch with films. In fact, you are hardly in touch with reality. Socially challenged, they say. Alarmingly lonely, you know. You are not even sure what you are sad about. You turn to old songs. Gone is the urge to be with bouncy songs. You sway towards patient words.

Jahan mein aisa kaun hai,

Jisko gham mila nahi?

You nod.

Mujhe tum aazmaao toh,

Zara nazar milao toh.

She is singing as if to acknowledge the inner you. That consistent nuance that will be lost without her voice. You feel like this person gets you, not caring she might be half a century older. Her stature far beyond you can ever be.

Ye pal jo dekho to… Sadiyo pe bhaari hai,

Jinewaale, soch le… Yahi waqt hai kar le puri aarzoo.

She is training you to live in the present. Your overthinking brain tries to get over the past. Or not think about the future. Some day it will happen.

It is Dev Anand’s birth centenary. You watch Jewel Thief in a theatre. The promise of Lata and Rafi together after they’ve had a tiff. The song that catches you instead is Raat Akeli Hai.

With your limited understanding of music, all you can gather is that this voice had to be the other one. A rebel.

You change music apps. Stats appear. Year after year, the same name appears at the top. You cannot have enough of that voice.

Social media. The algorithm knows you pause when you listen to her voice. It shows you snippets of her interviews. In one of them, she says she wants to be on her way while singing.

It is the day after. You have read all the articles in the newspapers. The way she ran away from her home as a kid. Then made a mark being the other one. The newspapers are getting soaked. It feels excessive for someone so emotionally aloof. Let’s blame the soothing in the scary saloon, the promise of the power, and the empathy in emptiness. Someone so far away in stature and being was somehow always close.