Choo Lo Jo Mujhe…
blazed out of the gigantic headphones that he was wearing. His frizzled head kept up with the slow swinging. It was almost as if those curls on his head were adding to the melody of the song.
Lekha stared ahead of her.
6th Floor – The voice spoke up.
She got out of the lift and walked to her door.
Opening the lock, Lekha entered and went straight to her room to connect her phone with the JBL. The Local Train filled the dark room with its presence.
Switching on the Kitchen light, she boiled water for tea. A few strands of her hairs hanged loose around the ears, playing. Taking the hot cup, she sat on the balcony mattress and switched on the lights. The balcony with its plant companions lit up all yellow.
Lekha stayed alone in a 1 BHK flat in this 24-floors building that was a part of a 7-buildings society in Pune. It was a year since she completed her masters and took up this job here, away from her home.
Her daily life consisted of simple-single-people things. Wake up, go for a walk, get ready, talk to the maid, go to office in a shared cab, work, work, more work, come home, prepare chai and listen to some music, read a book, take calls from Maa and sleep off!
There were little changes in this routine of hers. But since a few days, she was feeling not-so-alone in this city that still seemed lonely after a year. Maybe the presence of one face or rather a face hiding behind hairs moving to music made a difference and seemed to blend in her routine.
She had seen that guy quite often recently and in the same demeanour mostly. She liked to read his t-shirts that had quirky lines from films. She didn’t know where he lived. But every time they were in the lift together, the song that he was listening would end up being played on her speaker. Somedays it was Linkin Park and some other days Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Sometimes they ended up alone in the lift and those were the times that felt like a different time and space. His playlist seemed quite a place to be. She knew some songs but a majority were alien to her and it was a real struggle getting them on the internet later. It felt like the songs knew her mood.
It seemed as if they had a routine. The headphone guy with his songs and Lekha trying to catch the lyrics.
Coming out of her song-guy-reverie, she finished her tea and went into the kitchen. Keeping her cup in the sink, she picked up Tarkash and started reading.
After 30 mins or so, the door bell rang and she let Tai in. Sushma was her maid cum cook. Putting the milk packet and fruits on the platform, she asked “Khane me kya lenge aaj jiji?”
“Kuch bhi bano do tai.”
She opened her mouth to ask something but thought otherwise and continued reading. She didn’t want to put wrong ideas in Sushma’s mind by asking about the guy. Usually maids work at single-people houses in the surrounding and she thought Sushma might know him.
A sigh came out as she read the lines from बेघर
इस मकानों के जंगल में
अपना कहीं भी ठिकाना नहीं
शाम होने को है
हम कहाँ जाएँगे
Keeping off the melancholy for some other evening, she started having some food while watching Netflix. After dinner, she called Ma and talked for a while, mostly nodding and uttering hmm and thik once in a while.
The next day she hurried to get her cab. She was already running late and knew would be stuck in the traffic due to rush hours. The on-site call would have started already. Dejected, she opened the back door of her shared cab as someone sat on the front seat. She already had a clear vision of how her rest of the day would be given her equations with the manager.
Evening wasn’t kind to her and a shit day kept getting shittier.
Panting, she tried to stop the lift by putting a hand between the closing doors. That guy didn’t have the courtesy of getting out of his music world to stop the lift for her. She was furious at him. So much so that, she didn’t get which song played today. She stormed out of the lift and went straight to her door and banged it hard, unlocking. Throwing away her bag and swinging those shoes, she remembered that tai was on leave today. Her entire day sucked and to add to her miseries she forgot to get milk and there was nothing that she could make for dinner.
Taking the keys back, Lekha pulled the door and went towards the lift. The lift was all the way to the 22nd floor. She had no energy to climb down the stairs or walk to the other lift area. So she waited.
The door opened.
NOT TODAY marked on a light grey t-shirt stared at her. She was startled to see that guy again, but this time, without the headphones and a sulking head. She was still enraged for what happened a while back.
Pressing the ground floor button, she stood at the farthest end.
Suddenly with a jerk, the lift stopped short on the 4th floor and everything went dark except for their screens that they pulled out of their pockets.
DAMN! NOT TODAY. There was no energy left in her to curse anymore. And she sat on the floor, elbow on knees, palms holding head. Suddenly she felt that someone was touching her shoulder. She glanced up to see the guy holding out something. She was frightened and thought that her nightmares are coming true. Then he flashed a light and it turned out to be a Kit Kat instead of a knife as she had imagined.
She stood and took the bar from his hand reluctantly.
“I couldn’t get today’s song.”
“Sorry?”
“Which song were you listening earlier today?”
“Lost stars.”
“It’s the one from Begin Again right?”
“That’s the one.”
“I love that song.”
“Hmm.”
“Do you always listen that loud?”
“No, only when in THIS lift.”
She shrugged.
“On which floor do you live?”
“I don’t live here.”
“Ohh. You might have friends here then.”
“No.”
This was getting quite uncomfortable now. She was feeling as if there was something in the chocolate too and her fear of dark spaces made it more dramatic than it really was.
Silence filled in the space. To close in the physical distance, he spoke up in a way that seemed to be giving him a lot of hard time.
“I live in the building opposite to yours. I come here everyday at the time you return home. I keep the volume up so that you can hear the songs too.”
She opened her mouth to say something. But didn’t know what. She shut it close again. She could hardly see his face in the dark.
“I work at home most of the times. The first time I saw you was in your balcony, grooving to my favourite song. I can’t tell what it made me feel because I can never express myself that way, through hands and legs. That draw me to you. Initially, I was frightened and wondered if what I was about to do would be right. But then I thought you probably won’t notice my existence. So I started coming to this wing everyday.
I am bad at words and giving you songs became my way of expressing what seeing you made me feel. I know this is stalking and you are right in your place to despise this.
Today, I knew somehow that you weren’t feeling alright. But you seemed too distant to listen to the song that I played for you.”
Light and a slight shock replaced the words spoken like wind whispers.
The floor jerked and the lift began its descent. It seemed ages ago that she had entered into this confined space.
Lekha didn’t know what to say. Silence spread again only to be broken by the lift voice announcing Ground Floor.
She left without facing him.
The minutes that followed were filled with soft balcony lights, air surrounding her breathe while she hummed Lost Stars accompanied by steaming tea, smiling at the darkness that reflected from the opposite side of her building.
FlakySpirits 