The balcony across the narrow lane is empty.
Priya knows this without looking. She has been sitting cross-legged on her own balcony for twenty minutes now, pretending to read, counting the seconds between her glances. The afternoon light is the particular gold of early December – slant, lazy, it leans against the whitewashed walls of the building opposite and signals the arrival of winters.
Meera’s chair is there. It is a cane chair with faded cushion the colour of old marigolds. It sits as it always sits, angled slightly toward the lane as though expecting something. But Meera is not in it.
Priya turns a page she has not read.
The radio is on inside. Her grandmother’s radio, a bulky Philips with a dial that sticks between stations if you’re not patient with it. It has lived on the kitchen shelf since before Priya was born, and her grandmother still calls it akashvani, the voice from the sky, as if it were a living thing deserving of reverence. In this era of voice control devices, this radio was like a piece of years bygone.
“Dil ka bhanwar kare pukaar,
Pyaar ka rag suno, pyaar ka rag suno re” - Md. Rafi
Priya remembered listening to this song when she was little. She would spend a lot of time with her grandmother in the kitchen where she would make new dishes for Priya almost everyday and Priya loved watching her grandmother cook.
“Tere bina zindagi se koi shikwa to nahi” - Kishore Kumar
As she grew older, she noticed that whenever this song played, her father would be transported elsewhere. He would feel the song at a level that she did not understand then.
“Meri awaz hi pehchan hai, agar yaad rahe” - Lata Mangeshkar
The radio was an integral part of their household and they all had fond memories of sitting huddled around it or listening to songs while doing their daily chores.
“Mere saamne wali khidki mein ek chand ka tukda rehta hai” - Kishore Kumar
Priya opened her eyes. She couldn’t believe that the radio was playing such an apt song for her situation.
Meera. That was the name of the “chand ka tukda” Priya had been staked out to get a glimpse of. It has been so for two years, since Meera moved into the building opposite with her mother and her tower of books and her habit of reading on that cane chair every evening between five and seven, feet tucked under her, hair loose, wholly indifferent to being observed. Two years of Priya observing. Two years of good mornings called across the lane, of borrowed umbrellas and shared elevator rides, of a friendship that is warm and true and not enough; not nearly enough.
“Aane waala pal jaane waala hai” - Kishore Kumar
Meera steps out. She is wearing a yellow kurta the exact shade of the cushion she is about to sit on. She has a book and a cup from which steam is rising like gentle mist in the mountains and she moves into her chair with the ease of someone arriving at their own country. She doesn’t look up. She never looks up first. This is one of the things Priya loves about her – the way she belongs entirely to where she is before she opens herself to anywhere else.
“Tum se hi din hota hai, surmayi shaam aati hai” - Mohit Chauhan
Priya nearly laughs. The radio, she thinks, has always known things before she did. Her grandmother, the kitchen, the amber dial, all of them conspiring across decades to get her to this exact moment on this exact balcony, heart beating with the particular urgency of a song you hear only once before it moves on.
Meera looks up. She smiles. That easy, unguarded smile and raises her cup in a small salute. Hello, you.
Priya takes a breath. She thinks of all the songs she has heard on the radio; of her father in the dark sitting room, going somewhere and coming back changed. She thinks of all the hours she has spent looking at Meera and she understands, finally, that she has been waiting not for courage but for the right frequency. And the frequency is now.
She leans forward over her balcony railing.
“Meera,” she calls, and her voice comes out steadier than she expected. “There’s a place on Hill Road. They do filter coffee and they play old film songs on vinyl.” She pauses. It feels as if the lane is holding its breath. “Would you want to go? With me. This Saturday.”
Meera lowers her book. She looks at Priya for a moment and then she smiles again. Different this time. Wider. The kind that starts in the eyes.
“I would love that,” she says.
“Aankhein teri kitni haseen
Ki inka aashiq main ban gaya hoon” - Roop Kumar Rathod
This post is a part of Mixtape Mood Blog Hop hosted by Manali Desai and Sukaina Majeed under #EveryConversationMatters blog hop series.
Leave a Reply