A True Story

//Barso re megha megha/barso re megha megha/barso re megha barso// rang the voice in his ear. And how sweet the voice sounded! Well, it couldn’t have sounded any less sweet considering that it was the actual singer crooning in his ear due to the gift that was modern technology. The high quality $100 earphones in his ears made even average music seem like God playing the harmonica (basic assumption being that whatever God plays is, well, godly). This made the walk back from school to his home so much more pleasant. In fact, at that moment in time, he really could not understand why anyone would ever want to remove such music in exchange for any other sounds on earth!

He was in such a great mood walking in pleasant weather and listening to great music (at least great sounding music) that he did not realize when the walk turned into a canter and led him straight into an obstacle that was rather soft for being born for the explicit purpose of being an obstacle. It is only on looking up that he realized the folly of such thought; for what he had bumped into was more of a human being and less of an obstacle. And, unfortunately for him, a human being of the exact type that he disliked the most. This type, of which there were rather many, is the kind of human being whose face seems so familiar that you are sure it belongs to someone you should know and yet the mind cannot associate a name or relationship with the face. Fortunately though, since he had been in this exact situation more times than he would have liked to, holding a conversation with this species without having to go into any kind of specifics was an art that he was the foremost expert on.

This time though, he decided to take the art one step further and challenged himself to clearing the obstacle (literally and metaphorically) without taking the earphones off. What he had not accounted for, however, was the obstinacy of the obstacle in ensuring that the challenge goes unsuccessful. As it turned out, the face belonged to a body that resided in a building whose gates lay only a few steps further from the spot where the collision occurred and to a mind (or maybe heart) that was more effusive in its joy at the event having actually occurred.

“Aha, you must definitely have tea with us”

“I must get going. There is someplace I need to be soon.” This sentence, he felt, was sure to be appropriate irrespective of what uncle would have said. //Sunta hai mera khuda/Dil-o-jaan se chahu/tujhko yaara dilrubaa// Wow, he had not heard this song since a really long time now.

“It will not take long. You must meet my wife”

Both lip reading and the gentle push by the uncle convinced him that he was being asked to go with him someplace. Since he did not have anything better to do on reaching home, he decided that going along was definitely not a half bad idea. But he did acknowledge defeat in his personal challenge and took the earphones off. At first, the fact that the music still continued in his ear did not bother him as it could be easily attributed to some sort of residual effect owing to the high volume at which he was listening to the music originally. After half a minute, when it still continued, the reason his brain came up with next was that this was actually his brain still singing the song internally even though the actual source had been turned off and that this was happening as he really loved the song and knew the lyrics entirely (How the brain could do this as well as make up this logic for him was not something that struck him then).

It is only when the song changed //Ae nazini suno na/hume tumpe hak toh do na/chahe toh jaan lo na// that he became alarmed. Surely there is no way this could be happening naturally. There had to be something wrong. And he ran out of the house without bothering to say anything to his surprised hosts and stuck his fingers firmly in both ears, as if that would stop the music. Expectedly, it did not. Next, he tried to shut his ears even tightly by folding the ears into as small an entity as possible, as if THAT would stop the music. Expectedly again, it did not. Next, he started running as fast as he could with the ears thus folded, as if; funny what the brain instructs the body to do when faced with new events. Atleast the blind running had one silver lining; it brought him to the doorsteps of an ENT practitioner, only to realize that it was a Sunday evening.

By this time, the song had again changed and was now playing //Yeh haseen vadiyan/Yeh Khula aasman/aa gaye hum kahan/ ae mere sajnaa// Even though this was a song he would have loved in most other circumstances, appreciation of musical talent was not exactly top priority right now. His brain was frantically searching for possible ways to stop the music and in desperation, the only option it came up with was to shout louder than the sound of the music in the hopes of drowning it away for good. And thus instructed, his sound box, not caring for the fact that it was the middle of a busy street, braced itself and let loose a most blood-curdling shriek, the type that would have made the director of a horror movie proud. All his other organs, including his eyes, shut down momentarily to allow the sound box to have dedicated use of the body’s energy resources, and when they next opened, he found himself sweating profusely and back in the window seat of the flight he was in, where he had drifted off to sleep with the music still on through the headphones that he had plugged in to relax, and which were now lying suspended from his neck!