I first saw him in the rains of 2006…
It was an eventful summer that year and rains too hadn’t
brought any good. I was almost tossed up with little knowledge to where was it
all going. It might have been some rainy humid afternoon. It was a huge crowd
cramped into a confined space and all were sweating to their best, when he
added himself to it. Thankfully those were not days when everyone used their
thumbs to talk, so the place was abuzz with vocals of all pitches making a
humming effect, and I saw him.
He was blind but for sure not dependent. He was as
comfortable to the space as anyone with a set of eyes could have been. An old
man, averagely elevated, that must have seen many years come and go, some 50
odd if not more. His hairs were all snow-white and skin sun baked to dark. He
was in dhoti-kurta, moth-eaten but neat and tidy. One of his hand
equipped him with Ektara and the other was pulled out with few coins in
it. He was aged but not old by any means, he had a Hercules shoulders and owned
a personality that can’t be ignored. Almost everyone noticed him joining the
crowd and his presence was only but welcomed.
As soon as he made peace with the space, the index finger of
his left hand which wore a metal made a hit on Ektara. He was singing.
What an earthy, properly modulated voice he possessed. Almost instantly, all
the buzz that was filling the space up till now was gone as all ears up and
ready for his voice. Those were the times when I was getting introduced to Marathi
as a language, and was (still I’m) amazed by Abhangs. He was singing one
such.
He was singing “Kuthe Shodhisi Rameshwar”, a song I still
hum when alone or in need of a spiritual connect. The songs basically sums up all
my beliefs in words and it was he who was introducing me to it. I was so taken by
the lyrics that I quickly scrabbled the same, or whatever I could, in a
notebook I had (Google was not a thing for me in those days). He kept singing
artfully alongside making his way in the crowd skillfully. As he reached to me
and looked into my eyes (I knew he was not seeing me), I gathered all of me and
painstakingly acted to ignore him taking my eyes off him. And he went on,
singing soulfully. My ears followed him to as far it could, before his voice
and he himself dissolved in the crowd. Few weeks later I could managed to get
hold on to this song and it still features on my playlist oftentimes.
Today, almost after a decade after I again saw him…
It was the same place, less crowded this time and even
lesser social. Every second head was buried into their glowing gadgets. Only a
few were interested in appreciating the cool breeze and a cloudy rainy
afternoon. The moment I saw him, it all flashed back to me, sketching a big smile
on me as if meeting someone lost after ages. Flow of time had chiseled away at
his wizened face. His shoulders have dropped and he had grown shorter to was I
had seen. His voice was now shaky and breathy. He was missing words, eating up
few too, but there wasn’t an inch off from his devotion or belief to the song,
yes still the same song. Most disappointingly to me was that his Ektara was
missing.
As he approached me singing and smiling as ever, I asked him
on the top of my voice, so that I can overdo his and that of the breeze, “Kaka,
Ektara kutte gela?” (Where’s the Ektara?). His head followed my
voice and soon his body too. He was in front of me with a hand of his with few
coins, stretched out to me. He acknowledged me as someone who knows him for long
and his smile only grew bigger. He broke his song and said smiling to me “Haravla”
(I lost it). I , spellbound with his simplicity, felt so insignificant in front
of his contentedness, thinking what can I give to such a rich man, while he
made his course ahead, dissolving once more amongst heads and shoulders.
