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Sometimes, it is all she can do. Stare at the ceiling, at the concentric circles that fill up the white space with one corner bleeding in coffee brown. A stain shaped like a heart and if she looks long enough she can even make out wings. It always makes her think the same thought: how did the coffee-heart reach there? She imagines the previous tenant to be so tall and so drunk that one night he threw the coffee to the ceiling and it reacted to this violence with love. But then it must have had its revenge too and fallen back on his head. She knew that much about gravity but little else about physics. Her father trying to explain an inclined plane to her one evening so many years ago. And all her mind could muster up was the inclined  entrance to her house and the kennel that stood beside. Poor Ruby. Was it any wonder that he refused to stay in that kennel? All her imaginations of prison emanated from that kennel.

She has to get up. There is work to be done but the bed has shaped itself lovingly against the contours of her lumps and love handles. It feels like love. And the silence. It is the hush after a song ends. She wills the laptop to sing again. Only the sea gull obliges and lets out a half-hearted cry. She imagines herself as thin and svelte, being able to spring from bed... isn't that what thinner people do? Her head settles back into the thin, prickly pillow and eyes go to the ceiling. No, she has never sprung from a bed ever. Her eyes stray to the fraying ends of her white once-fluffy towel. It reminds her of the holes in her pyjamas. That makes her look down at her once pink but now an indeterminate murky coloured socks. And a dread settles in the stomach. Everything, everything has a time to go, she tells herself. Even she will be leaving soon. She wants to leave a tea stain too for the next tenant to wonder about. But that dread returns, catches her criss-cross thoughts and sits on them.  It is always what she doesn't want to think about that she thinks about. Today it is her shoes. Her faithful, loyal, hardworking shoes. She has hidden them for now. She cannot bear to look at them. Not yet.

Suddenly she remembers a story a friend told of a hypnotherapist being able to make you recall your past. Her mind is too swift for her thoughts. It immediately picks up the shoes and deposits them on a black curved coach with an academic-looking woman in a green Georgette saree looking down in pity. No wait, that is her Psychology teacher standing there. How wanting is the imagination and how shallow the mind. She sees her teacher-turned-hypnotherapist for the afternoon pick up her shoes, turn them over, sniff disgustedly and lay them back on the coach. And how will she gain access inside the examination chamber? She sees herself explaining to the nurse outside that she is the only relative left and she has to be let in. And she enters and her shoes turn and look at her plaintively. She averts her eyes. She can't look. Not yet.

What would they reveal to the hypnotherapist, those shoes? Will they narrate about that magical day when they walked for four hours without stopping and were still ready to jump for happiness late in the evening, just like that? Will they tell her how proud they felt when she wore them to parties when all her friends were wearing black, heeled monstrosities? Or will they go back even further and laughingly narrate how she was so afraid that they would turn out to be as evil as the others when she first bought them? She hoped not. Too embarrassing. She sighed. How wrong she was that day. How beautiful they turned out to be. How comforting in their wide ugliness. They were originally even called 'widths' but she had christened them simply' blue' because of their patches of colour -- once electric blue now electric minus.

She suddenly flings her bedcovers and springs, yes springs from the bed, kneels down, opens the lower drawer and takes them out. Glue! Super glue must work. It will work magic and sew together life and limb again. She looks down at them for confirmation. But they were bleeding brown, dirty tears. They knew and she knew too. Ventilator support. That's what glue was.

Sometimes, even love isn't enough. But she knows it isn't stupid to believe in miracles.

This piece was also uploaded on Unboxed Writers. Find it here: http://unboxedwriters.com/2011/05/just-shoes/

Sometimes, just sometimes, I want to hear you say that even if you don't earn a single penny in your life, I will hold your hand.

Just hear it you know, not hold. Just hear.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I want to hear you say that no matter what it costs, I will buy you all your little and big dreams.

Just hear it you know, not buy. Just hear.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I want to hear you say that you are my princess and I will treat you like one.

Just hear it you know, not treat. Just hear.

Sometimes, just sometimes, all that a girl's heart aches for, is words.
Always, all that a girl's heart strains to hear but never does, is words.

His was a rude beauty. Yesterday, we saw him rise out of the sea with the kind of sheer arrogance that he displays rarely, if ever. Yesterday, he knew he would make those pitiful human hearts skip a beat, if only their heads looked up at the right time, in the right direction. Yesterday, if he had a voice he would have exulted. And if you listened closely, you would have heard him. Yesterday, he was the star. Actually, he was the moon.

I stood there and looked at the kind of setting that's been so flogged to death by art that its very telling brings exhaustion. The sea, normally placid, but tonight more excited than usual, little frothy waves lapping the shore... a jagged cliff at the edge of the Mumbles Bay, with a lighthouse twinkling atop; on the other side, the million twinkling lights of the city of Swansea and a proud full moon above. And a kind of silence you are grateful for; the kind that will hold your hand when the world intrudes noisily, later.  And I yearned for the 'Song of Madhu Bamba' which is really what I want to tell you about.

It was either 1999 or 2000 and I had just started to earn. It was for me as if the world would come to an end if I didn't buy all the music I had to buy. I desperately wanted a Walkman, that beautiful invention, and I used to daydream of how good it must be to walk and listen to music at the same time. Listen to music while thinking your thoughts, while looking at the sky? Aah, the sheer joy! And so I did get a Walkman and it literally walked with me everywhere. I already had a decent collection of cassettes but the hankering within was too much to bear. So I haunted a small music store in Gandhi bazaar which was owned by a kind man  who would leave idiots who wanted to stare at shelves for long, alone. One such day, I was trying to extricate a cassette from a tall pile when Moon Magic fell into my hands. Literally. (Another matter that it was soon followed by the rest of the cassettes in the pile. Some people aren't made for finesse.)

On the cover was a moon (Surprise!) and a silhouette of a man playing a Bansuri. Below was written 'Hari Prasad Chaurasia with African Drums'. I turned it over and the songs had enchanting names: 'Caravan to Timbuktu', 'Flight of the eagle', 'Dead leaves Dancing' and others. All thoughts of what I had come to buy vanished and I picked this up.

The rest of the story is predictable. I became addicted as you would expect. Especially to the 'Song of Madhu Bamba'. It was music that told tales of desert nights. There was a deliciously happy darkness woven into it; it conjured up images of lovers escaping, walking barefoot and adventurous on wet grass, chasing shadows in distant lands...

But something prevented me from listening to it in the Walkman. Moon Magic was for the night. And I never once listened to it anywhere else but in my room, in the night. And I was reading Vikram Seth's 'Equal Music' those days.  Music, poetry and prose all fused together the result of which was I understood none completely but they all washed all over me and glowed within.

And then around two years later, the cassette coughed and spluttered. And stopped. I faithlessly tinkered, sharpened pencils and twirled. It stared back, a listless moon. There would be other joys, other music but the yearning never went away. I would play in my mind what snatches I remembered and search desperately in music stores. Forget stocking it, nobody, it seemed, had even heard of it.

One day in 2006 I think, I went to Planet M like I often did during our 5 pm office break. Now it was routine for me to every now and then ask for Moon Magic and receive blank stares. So I did my drill and to my astonishment, there was a glimmer of recognition. The man who was helping me introduced himself as Subbu and said he remembered the cassette very well. "Hari Prasad Chaurasia with a moon on the cover, wasn't it? I will try and find it for you."

I had almost begin to believe that Moon Magic was a figment of my imagination. I couldn't even find it online damn it! But here was at least another soul in this world who knew about it. Hope returned. One day, one day. Over the next two years, Subbu helped me find beautiful music many times but Moon Magic remained unspoken about. (A shout out to you Subbu and a thank you for all the music you have generously given me. )

But he was as good as his word. In 2009, I don't know from where, he got me the CD. Yes, the CD. Finally the CD. I couldn't wait to get home. Moon Magic! Shiny new CD in my hands.. I could listen to it again after nearly 5-6 years. It was worthy enough to break my own rules, sit right next to the music system and listen. It was late afternoon.

I got it with me when I came to Swansea. One chilly evening, when you could do nothing but snuggle up inside your room, something told me to share it with my Kenyan friend Judy. Now sharing music is an activity fraught with risk. The other person might hate it or might be polite and say 'it is nice' or worse, might not react at all. But we all move to a different drum and sometimes, the rhythms match. Which is why you have to keep on trying. But here, I instinctively  knew I had done the right thing. I saw in her eyes, the same inexplicable, mysterious joy that music brings if you are blessed enough. I could see invisible strands of understanding, recognition and warmth connecting us across cultures, across continents. No words were needed.

Yesterday, when we stood a few paces away from each other, both in our own worlds, it all seemed so right. I took out my phone and listened to a snatch of the 'Song of Madhu Bamba'. It felt like the end of a journey. The song had reached its destination. Yesterday, everything was in its rightful place. Yesterday, it was moon magic.

I first visited the forum as a guest, surreptitiously, secretly, embarassedly. It was October 2008 and it had just been two months since I had 'discovered' Atif. Don't ask me how I had not heard of him earlier, how I never managed to listen to his songs, even the Bollywood ones, and not get affected. Nope I don't know and I am astounded and will always be astounded for the rest of my life. What on earth was I listening to from 2006? I listened to his voice, listened for the first time with ears, heart, soul, eyes, body, toe, everything in another embarrassing-to-narrate situation.

I used to rush home after office when in Deccan Herald, immediately throw my stuff around and switch on Star Plus to see a mindlessly mushy convoluted and impossible soap called 'Raja ki Aayegi Baraat'. Yeah, yeah I know this is all getting complicated but hear me out.  Now in this serial, the hero, a Prince, sings to his Cinderella of sorts and what he sang was Pehli Nazar from Race in its entirety. Ours was no flat screen plasma TV with great acoustics but yet, the voice more than the song itself clutched at my heart. Who was this singing? Who the hell was this? I had to find out, I had to listen more. I had to keep listening.

The next day, I went online and googled, what else. And then I got a name. And then a country. And then I had to see this person. And I went to images. The first image that sprang out from the page was of a man with collars upturned, head thrown back in laughter. Caught was the complete joy on his face, a kind of genuine, delicious goodness in the eyes, springy hair and a stance that conveyed a confident acknowledging of something, adulation perhaps, while at the same time not displaying any swagger. Only later i knew I had read that picture so well and a lot of things the picture told me were true. Perhaps I have indeed missed a calling. I was meant to be sitting wheezing in a corner in a library full of oak-wood furniture and do textual and visual analysis.

So then began the journey of discovery. After Pehli Nazar, I discovered better ones, more soul-clutching ones. Some, which I cannot pass a day without listening to. Some which I listen to at least three times in a day without getting frustrated or bored. Some which just pour into me, some which surround me, some which are everything to me. Initially I took as one of my passing phases... I had gone through such phases with actors, some more, some less. The only other singer who had encompassed me very nearly like this was Mohammed Rafi. He still does, in a very special way. But Atif is not Rafi. And comparisons are odious. Atif is not your technically sound singer; his alaaps are from the heart, not from the brain. Atif did not start learning music from when he was six. If he had, what training would have made of all that his voice contains ..that's for another lifetime maybe. What his voice has is a powerful strain of grief, acceptance and strength that anchors everything he sings. It speaks to me of echoing valleys. It tells tales of waves crashing in the moonlight. It is soaked with the smell of drenched earth and it pours with the rain. It shows me glimpses of what  blinding grief  is and what resilience ought to be. It soars with happiness and lifts with courage and manages to do both sometimes at the same time. He really doesn't have to do much. He just has to sing.

Hyperbole you think? But I am a dramatic person. My soul sits well with hyperbole. I live life in technicolour and sometimes my loved ones just don't get it. My joys are full and ephemeral and my grief is overflowing and momentary. The little matters much more than the big. In that moment of little joy, I want to shout at them and say.... smile with me, laugh with me, this moment is mine.. this moment I am supremely happy. And then I know I am foolish in wanting them to do so. And then often, I  imagine in my mind, their puzzled faces or perhaps exasperated thoughts. Why the hell does she want me to see this video? Aargggh. Another song. God! this woman and her obsession!. Why does she think everybody else will find that line funny? But my soul waits and dies small deaths. But reawakens again. For that is how it lives. You see it in some things because in some places, it makes itself visible. Most often, it stays hidden. I sometimes see myself as part of one of those movies from the 1930s where the mood might be celebratory, romantic, sad, maudlin but no matter what the mood is, there is always a piano or a keyboard playing in the background.. up and down...up and down...pause on a note.. high on a another notes... come down low.. and stay there and go up again. I am that music in the background.

But we have gone far away from where I started. To return to the forum. So I used to initially visit it secretly. Meanwhile I was trying to get an interview with Atif. Yes, I was trying to understand the fascination.. I was trying to box it in legitimate, sober, sensible terms. Interview and shit. And the interview over email happened. And I wrote a story. Now of course I wanted everybody on earth to read it. So I finally managed to register in the forum as 'sunshine21' and posted my interview. Well, sunshine21 is pretty self-explanatory eh? And to my horror, somebody mysteriously called er.. 'Secret' wrote in the thread saying "This has already been posted. Locked." My embarrassment was such that I did not visit the forum for several days after.

But I kept on visiting as a guest. I discovered that the forum administrators for some reason I couldn't' fathom were called 'Blue' and 'Secret'. There were some extremely popular sections one of which caught my eye 'Teeny meeny things about aadee'. It was a thread where you wrote trivia about Atif. But it never remained just that. It was lively, it was funny, it was a peep into strangers' thoughts and lives. It was a peep into the world of a girl growing into a woman. It was a fly-on-the-wall look at yourself in the mirror 10-15 years ago.  It was a peep into the minds of teenage boys who do what they do. What do they do really? Why were they there in a forum for a popstar whom the girls fell all over? It was a question that got me curious and the answers were all there. They were there often for two reasons.. to discover what Atif was so that they could be like him (and impress girls just like him) and because the girls were already there and so they have to be too!  Of course there were the exceptions who were there for genuine reasons. Then there were the detectives and the 'reporters' who came there to give 'scoops' -- the ones who knew exactly where Atif spends his evenings. They were the ones  who could get you that recording of a song sung in a private concert.

There were subtle romances to be followed, unsubtle fights to be witnessed, ugly rumours to be quashed, delicious anticipations to mull over, excitements to exclaim over..  Above all, was this shared feeling of ownership.. we all owned Atif in our own ways.  Even the boys (or men if you prefer). They didn't own him any less. He was ours. He was mine but also yours.  Now you may get all sorts of doubts in your mind about what I mean when I say this. But don't you do that with all that is beautiful in the world? Be it a piece of music, a work of art or the ocean itself. It is yours, it is the rest of the world's too. But what is yours is not what is theirs. And vice versa.

For teenage girls, undoubtedly, he will be the source of endless, pleasurable daydreaming. As for me, I sometimes even forget that he is a normal person. Yes yes, he is good looking in that sensitive, heartwarming way which men just don't fathom. What is there in him, they wonder. And wonder. Look at his eyes and you see vulnerability as well as strength.When girls see that, they cannot stop themselves. (And this is really extreme digression and is  for another blog.) And yeah, having followed his life closely for more than two years now, I do know that he is a genuinely nice, warm, grounded person. A good man. Does it matter? Maybe in real life yes it does. I do respect him. But respect and admiration is one thing and what Atif is for me is another. For me, he is a voice suspended within my soul.

Again, to return to the forum. So I peeped and peeped and finally fell in. I began posting carefully, soberly. Sometimes, I would abandon caution and post like a teenager. Sometimes, I would laugh at jokes. Once or twice, say something stern to some silly girl for posting something stupid. The forum gives out titles depending on the number of posts and in two years I have only managed to move up one step -- from fledger to Listener. That's sober, ain't it?  It has been a journey with as many memories as there are threads in the forum now. Some stand out sharply. The day I logged into the forum for an entire day when Atif had come online to chat.. January 25, 2009. My birthday in 2009 when I somehow knew he would come online and he did. When I posted my review of the Amsterdam concert at 3 am on May 24, 2010. When Atif wrote his heartfelt beautifully ungrammatical piece on his Hajj experience and of course, when the forum was closed down in September 2009 because of abuse. The many times when sitting patiently waiting for all the photos of the concerts to download, the Coke Studio days when every day was filled with a kind of dreamy glow....  Every morning I get up, open my email and open the forum. Check 'active topics' and drink tea. It is a routine that makes my mornings. The memories will all be 'active topics' in my mind.

Now, this forum as I know it will be gone tomorrow. Poof! Just like that. There will be a revamp and that's probably how life is. It changes and moves on but you stand where you were before and  yearn for the familiar, for the loved bit -- for that thread of 535 pages of trivia about Atif. Or was that trivia about life itself? Farewell, dear forum.

A swinging gate and a blank expression on my father's face. Night. The word 'Maiya' 'Maiya' resonating in the air. And an indescribable something else which a seven-year-old perhaps can feel but not understand. And then Appa coming and telling her 'Tatha illa innu'(Tatha is no more.) Which I think she understood very well. For her first childhood memory was losing another Tatha when she was around three and impetuously, with fear in her eyes, asking her mother 'neenu yavaga saithya?" (when will you die?)
I have three memories and three only of my grandfather whom I have heard so much about and whom I have seen in my dreams, strangely enough, more often than the memories justify. That was the first precious memory -- of his death. The other two are happily, happier.
 
Once I remember my mother had taken me for haircut. I must have been four or so. When we came back home, Ajji was rather taken aback and miffed that Amma had dared to take me to a 'salon' for a haircut. I don't remember much the ensuing conversation between my mom and Ajji. All I remember is Tatha expertly defusing a potential quarrel by striding onto the scene, lifting me up and thumping me down on his lap, planting two kisses on my cheek and saying how beautiful I looked.
 
One morning I remember the radio in our little, cramped but to me, intensely beautiful room in Prabhat belting out the intrinsically sad and lilting 'olave jeevana sakshatkara'. I was perhaps five or six. I don't remember exactly but I remember the rest very well. I perked up and asked my mother, "sakshatkara andrenu'? (What does 'sakshatkara' mean?) My mother hemmed and hawed and then smartly told me to go run and ask Tatha. I ran to him and he was sitting on the floor in his room in his typical vest and panche. I will never forget the warmth in his twinkly crinkled eyes and the proud expression on his face when I went up to him and asked 'sakshatkara andrenu'. He took me in his arms, made me sit on his lap and gave me a cuddly, cuddly hug. I never understood then what exactly was 'sakshatkara'. Perhaps he never did explain.
 
I understand now though. These memories of him, for me, are my very own fiercely personal, terribly precious 'sakshatkara'  -- of his love and his legacy.