The Gold Watch

7:00 pm, Badrinath Road, Rishikesh, India

Bharat was struggling under the television table. The last five overs of the match left and the T.V. had decided to shut down. India was thrashing Australia, the outcome was hardly in doubt, but Bharat wanted to see the final overs anyway. Too many times had he watched despondently as India stumbled through the World Cups and the ICC Champions Trophy leagues, somehow reaching the last legs – only to be steamrolled by the Aussies. Finally, the Boys in Blue were giving some back.

No joy. The T.V. remorselessly continued to show static. Bharat bumped his head on the edge of the tabletop, cursed, and extricated himself from the mess of the wires. He looked around himself at the tiny shop with the dusty CD labels sticking out untidily from the wooden fittings on the walls. Nobody, including himself, had touched them in a while. At one point, his was the most frequented Indian classical music shop on this side of Lakshman Jhula. People would walk in at all times, sometimes to buy the latest by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, sometimes just to have a cup of tea and share gossip on recent developments at the Hare Krishna ashram nearby. Not anymore. Now they had things like Youtube and devilries like torrents to get entire albums for free. A handful of regulars still popped by to have tea, but the CDs were largely ignored – like antiquated furniture that begged not to be taken notice of. Month after month, his cash registers showed increasing digits marked in red. Month after month, electricity costs grew just a little bit higher.

Bharat checked the time on his gold Sonata watch. A flicker of dust had settled on its face, thanks to his antics under the tabletop. He took out his handkerchief and carefully wiped it clean. Of all the things he owned, the watch was by far his most precious belonging. It had a round dial, with golden hands and a well-polished metallic-golden strap. His ample forearm hair would sometimes get caught in the tiny linkages of the strap, resulting in red, irritated skin but he didn’t mind.

He found himself navigating, yet again, through the stray boxes and stools towards the calendar on the corner wall. The month of September had been highlighted. The date was 15th September. Beside it, the dates 13th and 14th September had been carefully marked. Those were important dates, the only days he clearly remembered from the past two years. The days when she had entered his life.

Quite unconsciously, he moved to the mirror beside the calendar. A balding, slightly overweight man stared back at him. The gray hair around his temple were clearly visible, belying his thirty-five years. He didn’t like what he saw. Moving back to the counter, he collapsed in the moth-eaten office chair and checked his watch again. Almost 8 pm. Fifteen minutes left to bringing down the shutters. He looked outside the glass doors to watch tourists and pilgrims returning from the Lakshman Jhula. The day was at a close.

Bharat bent down to open the bottom drawer. It was largely empty – apart from a book, a small box and some wrapping paper. He reached for the book and – how many times had he done this before – opened the first page. Above the HarperCollins crest, the title read Man, God and the Path to Advaita. He had read the book seventeen times at the last count, and could quote the saint Shankara’s lines on page 92, but most days he just took it out to re-read the little message scrawled in tiny, untidy letters on the first page.

“To Bharat, the unlikely Agnostic,

Looking forward to your thoughts on this for the next time we meet.

From Annabelle”

……………………………………………………………..

The next time we meet.

He stared intensely at the glass doors, which had opened twice in the last two years to bring Annabelle to his shop. He still remembered the first time that she had walked in – a petite, redheaded lady who stumbled inside as if by accident. The date was 13th September, 2011.

“Hi, I am looking for albums by Shiv Kumar Batalvi.’ she said.

As thrown as he was by the sight of an actual customer, he was struck more by her perfect pronunciation of the dead Punjabi poet’s name.

“Let me see…yes, I have a collection of his poems from Birha de Sultan, for which he received the…”

“The Sahitya Akademi award, yes. Has he sung any of the poems in that?”

“Hmm, no. They’re by Jagjit Singh.”

“Ah, okay.”

She looked like she was about to leave.

“Wait, I may have an old cassette of his recordings. It has him singing Ki Puch de o Haal Fakiran da in an intoxicated state at a mehfil in Allahabad.”

Her face lit up.

“Can I listen to it?” she propped herself on the stool and looked at him expectantly, with a smile that seemed to radiate the whole room.

He retrieved the old tape recorder and went outside to shout at the nearby chaiwallah for a pot of tea. They listened to all of Batalvi’s classics. Then they talked. Annabelle was from Canada, where she worked as an editor for HarperCollins. Stressed out from the rigmarole of dealing with cranky authors and meeting deadlines, she had given herself a week-long break. Her husband couldn’t get time off work, so she had come alone.

“I’ve enrolled myself in an Ayurveda course at the Ram Mandal ashram down the road. I was just on my way back to my room when I thought of Batalvi. Yours is the third shop I’ve visited. They’ll give me Aum chanting albums and Vrindavan devotional hymns. I even saw a bunch of Tamil Sangam genres in the last shop, but nobody seems to have Batalvi.”

“Unrequited love is hardly the flavor in Rishikesh,” he replied with a straight face.

She smiled. They spoke about Batalvi some more. After the fourth cup of tea, she took the Batalvi/Jagjit Singh album, paid the money and left after a polite farewell. He walked her outside to where her rented Scooty stood, and caught himself standing there long after she had turned the corner, out of sight.

In the following week, Annabelle would visit his store everyday. Most days, they would listen to one of Bharat’s many cassettes on the ancient tape recorder. Conversation roved leisurely from one topic to the next. She took him to one of the many cafes along the riverbanks. He learned that she was deeply spiritual.

“Not religious, mind you. Spiritual,” she wagged a finger at him, “It’s a little funny. A spiritual Canadian lady meets an agnostic Indian man. We might make the morning papers.”

She noticed him taking off his gold watch before having lunch and wiping it painstakingly before wearing it again. She asked him about it.

“My father gifted me this watch when I topped the school in my tenth board. It’s an Indian tradition of sorts. Every time a kid strikes a 90 plus on the report card, the daddy gifts him a watch,” he answered.

“And what if he doesn’t?” she asked.

“Most Indian parents, quite literally, follow the policy of carrots and sticks,” he joked.

Before leaving, she gifted him a book. “Advaita. It means non-duality,” she explained, “I will return next year. Try and finish it before then, will you?” And with another one of those brilliant smiles, she was gone.

Life went on. Bharat’s shop became more derelict. The number of customers kept thinning. Bharat’s days passed in boredom and inactivity, giving him plenty of time to read. He read Annabelle’s book several times. He read the message almost every day.

The next time we meet.

……………………………………………………………..

It was 14th September 2012, when the glass doors parted once more to bring Annabelle back into his life. The year seemed to have taken its toll. She looked pale and haggard; that signature smile didn’t come as naturally as before. But her greeting to Bharat was as warm as ever.

Once more, they listened to Batalvi’s classics on the recorder. Once more, they lost track of time in free-ranging conversations over endless cups of tea inside the ramshackle shop. So engrossed he was, Bharat would ignore the rare customer that happened to enter his shop while Annabelle was with him. But it didn’t matter. Annabelle was with him.

They had decided to visit every riverside café along the Lakshman Jhula. One day, while riding Annabelle’s hired Scooty, Bharat accidently went down the wrong alleyway and lost control. The Scooty grazed the narrow walls and stopped inches away from the end of the path, almost into the mighty Ganga. Together, they pushed and heaved the Scooty back up the path and onto the road. It was then that Bharat realized that his watch was missing.

They went back down the alley and searched for a long time, without luck. It had simply vanished. “Gone down the river, it seems,” Bharat groaned. Beside him, Annabelle said nothing.

They abandoned the café plan and returned to the shop. For the first time, Bharat didn’t want Annabelle around. She seemed to notice his mood and left soon after.

The day arrived for her to leave. The mood inside Bharat’s shop was subdued as he sat across Annabelle, listening to Batalvi crooning about the departure of a paramour.

“I have something for you,” he suddenly said.

He took out a scruffy package from the bottom drawer containing Annabelle’s book and handed it to her.

“These are all recordings of Batalvi, including the one we’re listening to right now. Better buy yourself a tape recorder when you reach Canada,” he said in an unconvincingly hearty manner.

She wasn’t deceived.

“I have something for you too,” she took out a small neatly-wrapped box, “Don’t open it now, I’ll be mortified.”

He went with her in the vikram to the bus stand. They shared another cup of tea at the stall, discussed the weather in desultory tones and then, yet again, she was gone.

Reaching his office, he slumped on his moth-eaten office chair and considered the package. He carefully unwrapped it, neatly folded the wrapping paper and placed it inside the bottom drawer. He took a deep breath and slowly opened the lid of the box.

It was a gold Sonata watch.

……………………………………………………………….

15th September 2013

The watch struck 8 pm. He bent down to put Annabelle’s book back inside the bottom drawer.

A gust of wind entered the shop as the glass doors opened.

Behind the desk, Bharat smiled.

(From www.wanderinggiraffe.wordpress.com)