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.

Kite Flying

It took me a long time. For the first few times, I had no idea how to tie the thread to the kite. A generous help from an uncle in my apartment got that problem sorted. I remember how he had caressed my hair when he had assured me that that was the right way of tying the knot.

Even then, I was not able to fly the kite by myself. I lay it on the floor and pulled the string. I let it hang off the terrace and tugged. I rested it on a water tank and ran around. Nothing worked. Countless kites tore, threads snapped, and I lost count of how many times I cried.

One day, a boy of my age came to the terrace. While I sat staring at the torn kite, he offered to hold the kite for me, while I pulled the string. We tried a few times – I still had doubts about the string being tied improperly. But after a while, it worked. The kite flew! As I said, it took me a long time. I even offered the boy to hold the string and he seemed to enjoy it.

Every evening, the boy and I flew our kite. Then, one day, the boy’s (possibly a friend by now?) family decided to leave our apartment. I was sad then. It wasn’t just about the kite anymore. He had been a good company.

I think it must have been the practice. I could now fly the kite by myself. But the thrill had somehow vanished. It wasn’t just about the friend. There was no novelty left.

Then, I had an idea. I found my own thrill. Once the kite soared high in the air and looked like a tiny dot, I used my teeth to cut the thread. It was fun to see the kite travel far as it glided down from its pinnacle.

Once, a few relatives were at our home for a family event. In the evening, my parents brought them all to the terrace. They all cheered while my kite soared higher and higher. The kite became a dot. Impulsively, I bit into its thread and the kite became its own master.

“Why did you do that?” somebody asked.

“Isn’t it fun?” I said, staring at the kite.

“Who in his right mind gets rid of his own kite?” I heard another voice.

“This is fun too,” I replied, pointing at the kite.

I remember nobody talked to me much about this incident that night. The next day, my parents suggested that I am not supposed to fly the kite anymore – well, not if I am going to cut the string myself.

“What’s wrong in it though?” I asked.

“It’s not right,” they said.

“But it’s my kite and I can decide what I want to do with it,” I protested.

“Let’s get you to adulthood and see if you agree to it,” they said with a smile.

I couldn’t get it. What’s wrong with cutting your kite off if one is not enjoying its flight?

Generosity

 When I inherited my aunt’s library, it wasn’t a cause for a furore among my relatives. First off, the library was non-functional. It had refused to make a profit in ages, from my aunt’s enthusiastic youth right up to her old age. The books were dusty, spiders had taken over, and the lights were as dim as my aunt’s spirit in her last days. The library was the last of her estate bits that anybody would have been keen on. Being the most distant and an emotionally dead relative, it wasn’t a surprise that the library landed in my books.

All that lack of love between us bloomed in the shape of an enormous luck. A commercial complex opened in the vicinity of the library. Post their working hours, the office goers were looking for places to hang out. I got in touch with a couple of friends who knew about the ways of the world and soon we transformed the place into a book bar – nothing too fancy – just dim lights, soft music, wine, and beer. Though I didn’t discard the old books, I bought a few shiny ones to overcome the overall dread of the place. 

As the owner, it was up to me to put rules into place and I had a lot of fun doing that. If you spill anything on a book, it will be considered sold, and so on. Like each book finding its just place in a bookshelf, every variable fell into place and the spot began to do well. Yet, what marred the mood was people bickering over lost work opportunities, denied promotions, failed office flingies, and so on. These office beings loved to carry their workplace gloom wherever they went. So, I laid down just one more additional rule – no ranting around. You may banter all you want but if one of my strong men spots you with a sad face, out you bounce. Out went the tearjerking books that served as pleasure troves for sadness seekers. I welcomed in more books that promised heightened productivity, and happy conclusions. Signboards like “No tears,” “Joy forever,” were promptly put up. People loved it! The place bubbled with an unending bliss.

A few months into the business, I began hanging around Rita. I had known her as a distant cousin and nothing more. Now, I knew that she worked as some sort of a manager in some sort of a business. Though we kept our talks mostly to gossip level, I realized that she hinted at an urge to share some sadness. “It’s all meaningless, isn’t it?” she began but changed the topic immediately when I pointed at the signboards. “So will you have me thrown out too?” she asked with a smile.

“Sure. Rules are rules, even for family,” I replied avoiding her gaze.

“Yeah? But I want you to listen to me,” she said, not taking her eyes off. I could only manage a smile and gave her a half nod, and as if on cue, tears began rolling down her eyes. “All this meaningless work in this town where the only thing that seems real is that I am dead on the inside.” I felt the prick of eyes all around staring at us. A guard began walking towards us but I raised a hand and asked him to stay put.

Rita’s lament continued. She was on a wild ride. Work rants were soon replaced by talk about her lost love interest. She immediately switched to her unwell dog, and then how poorly her house garden was faring. She was on a mission to claim the throne of being the saddest person in the world. As I kept looking at her glass, the wine twirling within, inwardly preparing my speech in case she drops her wine on the book, I realized that we were not the only ones at the table anymore. A few more had joined in. With an unwritten license to console, they began unrolling their share of sadness too. What was happening to my happy place?

As the night deepened, our table had turned into a centre of a huge sadness conference. People kept going on and on about their struggles. As I felt a hand on my shoulder, egging me on to share something, all I could come up with was, “We are at the closing time.” I stood up to a collective disappointed sigh and began switching off the lights. People walked out.

The next day, Rita came in early. “I see that you’re ready today,” she said with a smile as she sat opposite to me. I began, “It’s actually all so meaningless.” Rita warned me with her eyes wandering to the wall. She had a smile on her face when she saw that the signboards had been taken down.