Twilight Tunes

A few Fridays ago, the skies opened over Bangalore. I was in the bus, doing my usual 2 hour commute from work, when I heard the fury outside the window. I couldn’t quite believe my eyes when I realized what I was seeing wasn’t rain, but hail. I turned to the lady sharing my seat to see if she saw what I saw. My seatmate was ignoring me and was lost in swiping at her phone trying to win at an impossible game. The ladies in the seats around me were just as busy, grumbling, pulling out umbrellas, calling their husbands to warn them of the craziness that had marred their quiet Friday evening.

Alone, I marveled at the phenomenon that I hadn’t witnessed since that crazy evening in Connecticut a few years ago. I had been beside myself with worry that day, freaking out that the hail was going to ding and ruin my beautiful car. But that Friday, in the bus with a roof that leaked like a sieve, hails dinging anything was the least of my worries.

By the time it was time for me to get off the bus, rain had begun in earnest. I plugged in my ancient ipod, stuffed it in the pocket of my jeans, grabbed my umbrella and stepped out into what seemed like rivers masquerading as roads. I smiled all the way home, hidden under my umbrella, splashing in dirty puddles, scurrying away from darting cars and singing with the music in my ears. Luke Bryan was right, rain was indeed a good thing.

I was in such a great mood when I got home, that I did not mind that it was pitch dark. Winds and rain, as it often does, had played havoc with the dangling electric cables and predictably downed a couple of them, drenching my neighborhood in darkness. I lit a candle to find my way around the house, changed out of my dripping clothes, informed my husband I had no intention of making dinner in the dark, and settled down with my book, by the candle light.


My husband seemed cheered by the thought of not having to be subjected to my cooking and started to strum his guitar. He played the Beatles medley he knew I loved. He worked his way through each Beatles gem and when he was at “I wanna hold your hand”, I stopped all pretension of reading and transformed into his one-person concert crowd. I sang with him, off-key and tone deaf, until he ran through the last of the songs in his Beatles medley. Our impromptu concert was declared a success and we decided that this would be a good time to leave music alone.

For a minute there, I had almost been back to that stone gallery steps facing the football ground in my college, so many years ago. The tune that he had played for me then was long forgotten. We weren’t just friends now like we had been on that day at those stone steps. The memory, I realized, though sweet, was nothing compared to what I had right by my side today.

I shook my head in the quiet dark room at my hopeless romanticism, and imagined the merciless teasing he would subject me to, if I voiced these thoughts out loud.
He was back to his whatsapp and his EPL fixtures, and I went back to pretending to read my book.

The electricity would not be back for hours, I was sure, and I was too hungry and distracted to read anymore. Besides, once I had reached the college of my memory, a detour to my hostel was never too far away. Those were some seriously good times. Up till today, 12 years after college ended, some of my closest friends are my hostel roommates.

I can almost see the hard benches, with just enough space to squeeze through between them, which lined the study hall in Kolangat Hostel. There were shaky, creaky chairs to hold us as we held our heads in our hands, trying to make sense of or to simply commit to memory hundreds of pages of gibberish. Each of us, locked into the hostel after 6 PM, waited for that daily load shedding which gave us 30 minutes of darkness and reprieve from the books.

A couple of candles would be lit in the study hall when the power went, and all of us would emerge out of our rooms to sit cross legged on the tables, lean on the chairs and each other. One of us would make the most of the cover of darkness to belt out a song, which would lead to a chain of songs, each one louder than the one before and not necessarily better. We would go at it till Sheela chechi, our resident fire-breather and warden, would yell at us to shut the hell up.

That would be the invitation for the better singers among us to start anew. There was this fantastic ghazhal Ammayi (our lovely Rekha Balakrishnan) sang often. We never got tired of asking her to sing it and she never got tired of singing it. She usually sang it loud enough so that her then boyfriend and now husband, who was all the way in North India somewhere, could hear. No matter how loud she sang, Sheela chechi wouldn’t yell her down. Sheela chechi often joined us in the study hall, to hear Rekha sing a couple more songs. Those songs that we sang in the utter quiet of those 30 minutes, in our helplessness to do anything but bring the roof down with our voices, were often the highlight of our days.

On that Friday, in my dark Bangalore home, as I waited for my husband to start to get ready to go out for dinner, I tried singing a few lines of that ghazal. It was never going to be as good as Ammayi’s version but it would have to do. I finished singing that gazhal in the dark, forgetting some lyrics and simply making up a few of my own.

I smiled wider as I grew quiet, thanking the rain and the downed electric cables for the chance to blow the dust off a couple of memories that the 19 year old me had squirreled away.

As a bonus, my off-key singing got my husband off his phone and had him in a rush to get out the door and find us some dinner.

 

Sri mama, I remember the near-baking heat of Chennai vividly. Specially during agninakshathram, its close to unbearable. I am glad it rained providing you with a well appreciated respite.

I moved to Bangalore last year and I am totally in love with this city. The weather is unobtrusive. The heat, never too hot and the rains never too frequent. I am enjoying my newly married days in paradise.

I am so glad you enjoyed my write up and i would like to apologize for the delay in writing a response to your lovely comment. Work gets in the way sometimes and keeps me from doing what I enjoy the most

Thank you once again mama.

 

PS, very true. The beauty and fury of nature is what keeps us on our toes and makes every day a treat. I am so glad that my little snippet brought back a few memories that had been locked away for you.
Greatly appreciate your kind words!!