Three years
ago, in Bombay. Café Ideal, five in the evening of a balmy day, sitting by the
window listening to the waves and watching the traffic go by. Put ten bucks in
the jukebox and then another ten and then another and then another till there
is half an hour’s worth of Kishore-RD magic lined up. Order a beer. The place
is still half empty and so you can play RD comfortably. In another hour or so,
it will move to Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison, and in another hour, devolve to
Kumar Sanu. Sit by the window, watch the waves splash, watch the easy traffic
flow.
I was just
out of college, a young English literature graduate head full to bursting with
the Great Indian Novel I was destined to write in the coming years; meanwhile
earning my beer by taking on freelance reporting jobs with whichever newspaper
would commission one or whichever newspaper Professor Gupta could get to give
me one. Jeans, khaadi kurtas, long hair parted in the center, beard. I was so
entranced with myself that I was not merely creating characters, I was living
one. As the great comedian once said, I did not just brood, I brooded at the
world. The melancholy of Kishore and RD (aided a lot by Gulzar) was a perfect
fit. And so I would come to Ideal around 5 in the evening, get a beer, play
Kishore, read some and listen to the waves splash. And then I would just drink
as the café slowly drifted into Morrison and then Sanu territory. Except, this
evening it doesn’t. Not till six, not till seven, not till seven thirty. RD
plays, Kishore sings, the jukebox keeps going. And so I call the waiter, and
ask. And he says that she is the one playing. And as I turn to look at her, she
stands up from her table and turns and all I see is a mop of shoulder-length,
wavy black hair. She leaves.
How clichéd.
***
Sunday
through Thursday I wait there everyday and listen to Dylan and Morrison and
nothing happens. And then, Friday evening, just as I am about to take the first
sip on my beer, she slips onto the bench in front of me.
‘Waiting
for someone?’
I just
stare. I don’t know that she is her at this point, but I am already captivated.
‘He told me’,
she says, pointing to the waiter who has answered my question every evening
with a polite ‘No, Sir’, ‘What are you drinking?’
‘Budweiser.’
‘That is
donkey piss’, she says and orders a Kingfisher for me. She has taken charge of
the evening.
She speaks
to me, I imagine we speak of music and writing and our shared love of RD and
Kishore and the Mangeshkar sisters. I say I imagine we spoke of them because
she agreed to meet me again, and then again and again, and those things, I
imagine, do not work out because you have stared at her for three and a half
hours straight, evening after evening, too enthralled by her smile, her eyes,
the curl of her lips as she twisted them ironically in response to some stupid
comment I might or might not have made, her laughter…ohh her laughter! Her
laughter, like they said in the clichés, like the gurgling of brooks, like the
chimes of the wind chime you put in your doorway, like that magical, melodious
sound you hear so often in literature but never in movies; because no human
person in front of a camera can ever pretend to having that kind of laughter;
she just laughed with me that night and a hundred more nights and we listened
to Kishore and Lata and Asha and RD and Gulzar and we created a world in a place
aptly called Café Ideal with the waves listening to us and us listening to the
waves and we both believed the world was, and would be beautiful…
