The train singer

Armed with a thick file of full of certificates for an MBA interview, I boarded the ‘DHEERI’ local from Andheri. Being mid day, the crowd was sparse and I could actually move myself around inside the train. I settled at my favorite place-near the entrance. The route, Andheri to CST, was a personal favorite of mine.

The crawl of the train makes it possible to soak in the sights and sounds of the city. For the uninitiated, there are a lot of steep climbs. A sudden additional hum, possibly that of an additional motor kicking in, fills your ear as the train moves up in slow thrusts. The grade is so high that the stomach actually readies itself for a steep drop and the concomitant
‘sinking feeling’ as the brain conveys a wrong warning sign that says “Double loop roller coaster ahead!” in bright red. Once at the top, the train sails over the hundreds of shanty towns or over other trains racing beneath. It was when I was staring at one of the countless Bollywood posters that the tune of ‘Baazigar-O-Baazigar’ came wafting in. That was one of the very few Hindi songs that I adored when I was young. The young voice blended smoothly with the tunes of a harmonium. The crowd was thick enough to hide the singer though my gaze vainly tried piercing through the human mass wanting to see her. After a minute I gave up and started gazing into the distance, the wind rushing past me, holding my hair stiffly backwards, thinking of the times when I used to turn on the volume full blast to listen to the song on the radio and sing the song with almost completely different lyrics, most of the words not even in the Hindi dictionary (As u would have realized by now, I don’t know Hindi much).

She seemed pretty proficient in playing the harmonium, possibly from years of practice. Her voice was so in tune with the harmonium that it was actually difficult to separate it from the tunes. There were occasional pauses in the music even though the song went on uninterrupted and this puzzled me. Maybe it was the crowd. Slowly the voice started coming nearer until I saw a middle aged, slight, dark complexioned woman, in a sari, emanate out of the pool of humanity. Disheveled hair and big sad eyes portrayed immense sorrow, which was quite ironical when one onsidered the romantic song that she was singing. Being one of the schmaltzy types, her sadness gripped me promptly as I watched her fingers run left and right over the weary black and white keys, with some admiration. She noticed this and immediately came over. I didn’t hesitate to give her a rupee. She continued singing but extended her hand to accept it and drop it amongst a tiny number of (lesser denomination) coins scattered on top of the wooden armonium. “So this was where the momentary pauses in music came from”, I figured out with pride. The youth with the cargo pants had a stylish gadget over his ears, which I assumed to be a headphone, because of the noise leaking out of it, had better things to listen to and, in all likelihood, he didn’t even notice her till she touched him and hung her hands out with the palm facing upward – a classic pose that said ‘Give me something”. He simple turned the other way – a classic way to say either “I don’t have change” or “Get out of my hair”. The big fat man in blue shook his head vigorously and spat thick red fluid on the adjacent track. It was only when I turned my gaze away from her that I realized how many people were actually watching her with mesmerized eyes, enjoying the song. The 38 year old contractor in a white shirt and a dark trouser was probably thinking of the time he took his wife to the movie, their first after marriage, of how she, coming from one of the many ‘remote villages’ in India was enthralled by the glamour in the movie and its cast, and of how she nagged him for a whole month to buy a TV so that she could relive the moments in chitrahaar over and over again. At this point a smile escaped his lips…. so maybe what I was thinking of was true.
Mr. Iyer, Krishnamoorthy Iyer, ensconced comfortably near a window, was probably still wondering what it was in this song that made Paarvathi (“Paaru” as he ‘sweetly’ called his wife) go gaa gaa over Sharukh (she never accepted it though) and make him hire a VCD and a VCD player as well, to see the movie…Thrice! At the age of 43! “The children like the movie” is the reason she gave. At this point, Mr. Walkman decided to check out what was
happening, pulled off his headphone, wondered of the genesis of the song, gave up and resumed his ‘Pretty fly for a white guy’.

I looked out to find the train pulling to a stop. As people stormed in, the frail lady somehow managed to struggle her way out of the train and onto the platform. It was only then that I saw the small kid who had also jumped out of the train trailing her. He was wearing a torn shirt and ‘Reebok’ shorts. Most of the other features – disheveled hair, dark skin, cuts and bruises puncturing the skin, and the same sadness in countenance, mirrored his mother’s (?). She turned and looked at him questioningly and he raised his tiny hand to her to reveal some coins. She took them, made a quick approximation and glared at the kid. He shrank and his face hung limply as he took a backward step. As the train started moving, she too did, albeit in the opposite direction. The boy followed her meekly, cautiously.

For quite a while the music hung in the otherwise smelly, dank, air inside the train. But eventually the ‘sights and the sounds’ of the city chased it away and people were snapping back to reality. After all there were bridges to be built, businesses to be taken care of, ‘yagnas’ to be performed and…for me,India's fiscal deficit to be explained!