This is a very old short story that I was reminded of today, and I sat and read it again. Also did some minor editing to it.
Veenu
MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 2019
Music
Music: A short story
In her urgency to put the tape into the cassette player, she fumbled clumsily and dropped the plastic box of cassettes onto the floor. This created an unwanted problem of what must seem epic proportions at this most inopportune moment. Still flustered, she just let them lay scattered around. Randomly picking out one, she hurriedly shoved it into the deck, hitting the 'Play' button hard.
Rushing to the window, she eagerly but cautiously peeped out. Moving the thin muslin curtains ever so slightly, her neck leaning low and to the right, she checked to see if the cause of her joyful excitement was still there. He was!
Her heart beat excitedly, and an unconscious smile lit up her youthful face. She succumbed to a euphoric sense of nostalgia. The familiarity of this total stranger gave her a feeling of kinship with him, and she felt a wave of reminiscence envelop her. She did not want to take her eyes off him and continued staring out into the street at the object of her fascination while he sat unawares in his cab, oblivious to the excitement he had generated.
The notes of the music opened too softly, too slowly, for her intention. Impatiently, she turned up the volume, hoping HE could hear it. She adjusted her position behind the curtain to keep up with his movement as he shifted in the driver's seat of the taxi.
Finally, the traditional sound of the harmonium picked up pace, stirring the stillness of the small ground-floor room in their old Bombay building. "Oh please, please, please, start singing now," she begged, looking imploringly at the tape deck. As if on cue, the vocals accompanied the music, and she increased the volume some more and looked out again to see if he was still there. He was! A loud sigh of relief escaped her, and she held her glance with eyes sometimes squinting to get a better look.
He seemed oblivious to the loud music coming from the ground floor room, with its door and windows wide open. She was separated from his taxi cab, wherein he sat, by just a five-foot wide balcony and another six feet of sidewalk pavement between them. Up went the volume again until it was nearly full blast on her SONY deck, which was quite fancy for the 1980s, she noted with pride.
She so desperately wanted him to hear the music. She kept gazing at him in complete abandon, knowing by just looking at him that he would like the music.
Desperate times call for desperate action, so she surmised and boldly went out to the front balcony, shielding herself behind some tall potted plants, every sense alert to his presence. She saw his head shake a little, and he opened the door to get out of his cab. He now stood leaning against the door on the driver's side with his back towards her.
It was early morning, and the sun, still low, had not hit the pavement as yet. It was hidden behind the tall buildings on the other side of the road. She became conscious of the coming and going on the street: people headed to work, children off to their school, old women going to the temple with offerings of flowers and fruits cupped in half-folded hands, and some retired men returning from their morning meet up in Shivaji Park. Uneasily, she realized someone might stop to say hello and strike up a conversation. She did not want him to notice her, she thought almost shyly, embarrassed at her forwardness. She did not want him to associate her with the unreasonably loud music.
Abandoning the plants, she hurried in and again took up position standing behind the window, where she might get a better view yet remain hidden by the thin curtains and wide mesh of the wrought iron grill, the wide balcony, and the sidewalk maintaining a convenient distance between them.
The song had picked up pace now, and even though the loud volume created static in the room, he seemed totally unaware of its playing. Another sigh escaped her, and she resigned herself to look and keep looking. Humming along and enjoying the music, she moved in rhythm with the tune, softly clapping the fingers of her folded palms.
It was a happy start to her morning in a mundane life, where no day is the same, yet each day comes and goes, swallowing a part of her life and of herself. Life in this place, with no personal family or friends, was changing who she was, and she no longer recognized herself. (Something not uncommon amongst married women in middle-class India of the 80's and earlier.) Seeing him had brought back a sense of happy familiarity.
She saw him looking up at the tall building across the street where his passenger must have disappeared. She watched his posture change, probably with the anxiety of any waiting cabbie who must keep a tab on truant passengers.
She turned up the music some more, desperate for his reaction. He was broad-shouldered with a strong back, and she could see the slight rise of his shoulder blades beneath the full-sleeved nondescript cotton shirt as he stood with his arms probably folded in front of him, yet the shoulders upright, accentuating his strong back. He had good posture, she thought, and was probably over six feet tall, with a robustness that was the hallmark of most Sikh men. His light-colored turban gave him a relaxed, casual air.
She felt an uncommon attraction when she saw him pull up in the black and yellow Bombay cab as she was waving the kids off to school this morning. Finding an unusual comfort in his overall appearance, which she could not define because of the perfunctory glance, she had giggled briefly, wondering if he too slurped when drinking his tea or if his mustache got wet. Since then, she had been distracted and behaving very oddly, she admitted to herself, but she couldn't help herself.
She liked looking at him, or his back, because that was the most she had seen since that first brief glimpse of his endearing face. A quick warmth had suddenly passed over her. So she now remained at her station, hunching slightly and looking out the window at a Bombay taxi driver she had never seen before and probably would never see again. She had just received this gift of unexpected joy delivered to her door, and she would relish it as long as it would last.
The loud music brought her to the present moment. She wondered what he was thinking, wondered if he was worried his Fare had done a runner? Was he, therefore, blocking out all else from his mind so that he was deaf to the music? Or was all the other morning sounds on the increasingly busy street prevented him from hearing it?
She knew with certainty that the music could be heard on the street. In fact, she was sure they could hear it even inside the building across the street. She peered through the curtains again but could not detect any reaction from HIM. His demeanor gave away nothing. Perhaps, she thought, because she could not see his face, just his shoulders and upper body and the side of his ear and the back of his turbaned head, which looked up every now and then.
Suddenly he moved forward and walked a few steps towards the building across the road. She heard someone talk to him from one of the top floors of the building. He came back momentarily towards his cab, and he was smiling now, acknowledged by his passenger. He opened the door of his cab and settled back into the driver's seat, resting his elbow on the cab window. She got a better look and noted the strong nose of his profile. She liked his face and felt that warmth once again. After a long time, she felt good in this kind of way. A certain peace pervaded her senses; she felt a surge of comforting emotion, primitive yet pristine, like sanity, washing all over her.
The cabbie picked up a newspaper from somewhere inside his taxi and started to read it. Then, almost at once, he stopped, folded it, and put it slowly down as if trying to focus on something, to hear something! Her heart missed a beat, and she realized he had heard the music! She could clearly see the smile spread across his face as if mirroring her own happiness. She saw the expression on his face change as he sat back, relaxing deep into his seat; he started nodding and swaying his head to the beat of the music.
"You are my everything," the voice sang, "in you my purest joys I find…." And she sang along to the swaying of his head. For the next several seconds, she had indeed found her purest joy.
It seemed too soon when the door opened in the back of the cab, and a man got in. The taxi driver leaned forward to start the engine. She saw his flowing white beard touch the steering wheel as the cab lurched forward. She closed her eyes, the tears streaming down her face, as she relished the short blissful moments in time, when riding on the strains of Sikh devotional music, she connected with memories of her grandfather.
Veenu Banga
copyright 2003
based on an actual incident in 1983
