It’d be futile to name the multinational corporation where RJ Saheb worked as an executive, or to mention the price of his company’s shares on that particular day, or the brand of shoes and clothes he wore, or the kind of whisky he preferred. It’d also be futile to detail the tricks he knew to save on income tax, or when his photo had last appeared on page three of the capital’s newspapers, or the name of his favourite restaurant where he took his family for dinners. What matters is the fact that a dark, bottomless chasm of his own making had opened between his past and present, and one day, while walking along to the tune of some songs on the radio, he ended up falling into that chasm. You must be aware that music has some inherent magic, by means of which it can transform a path from one point to another.

Whenever Ratanjot Sambharia, alias RJ Saheb, thought about his age, he felt frustrated, and this frustration soon turned into disbelief. A sincere disbelief at how quickly the last twelve years had gone by. RJ Saheb hadn’t realised that time was passing, like a child lost in play, who bursts into tears upon being told it’s time to come home because it’s getting dark and he has played enough.

He could tell you all about his many jobs over the years, the firms he had worked for, the businesses, the promotions, the household items bought, the memberships at various clubs, the important people he had met, the abortions, ailments and even the highs and lows of the share market in the past twelve years, but he wouldn’t be able to recall how he had lived through all that time. The truth was, he didn’t know. He had had no time to look inward. If anyone ever asked him about his age, he would playfully tilt his head, and with his heavy-set lips say, “Why don’t you hazard a guess?”

His wide eyes would eagerly wait for the other person to utter the magical number he wished to hear. He despised the wits of those who accurately guessed his age and then added, “No matter how much one wants to hide it, the skin always betrays the truth.” If someone offered a number smaller than his magic number, RJ Saheb would size them up, as if to ascertain why they were buttering him up; he knew that sooner or later, this person would definitely appear at his door asking for a favour. It rarely happened that someone guessed the magical number correctly, but when they did, RJ Saheb’s widened eyes fluttered with relief, and a confident smile would settle on his lips.

In his heart, he was 36 years old. He had stopped keeping count after that. This was his private, childish obstinacy, about which he had a myriad of ways to reassure himself. Like three plus six equals nine, his root number or moolank was also nine. Nine is the number of Saturn, the governing planet of practicality, wisdom and a hidden inner warmth that lingers for a long time. People with the number nine are often a bit mysterious and wear their hearts on their sleeves. American citizen Cliff Desmond, who started as a salesman and went on to become the world’s eleventh richest and most elegant man, was also born on the ninth and so on. RJ Saheb had fixed this age in his mind with the same desire and logic with which lottery players pick their numbers and believe in them.

Every day, he would find some of his hair in the bathroom drain. Every day, he would pick them up, his hands shaking with mounting terror and flush them down the toilet. His face had started to look bigger and bigger because of the hair loss. He had developed an unnatural paunch, which protruded from his navel and hung between his legs; was held in place by strapped pants. He had developed sad, dark circles under his eyes, and if he sat in a chair for even a little while, his legs would go numb. Despite going to the gym four days a week, his travel kit was full of medicines for stress, indigestion, high blood pressure, depression, cholesterol and hay fever, along with a collar for spondylitis.

On the days when he collected all his willpower and tried to give up his two and a half pegs of whisky in favour of a healthier lifestyle, sleeplessness would overwhelm him. He would sit on the white sheets in his air-conditioned room, caught in a state of insomnia, staring at the shadows formed by the lampshade, curtains, sofas, flowerpots, perfume bottles, a decorative stand and his dear dog. When he saw his daughter and wife sleeping in the dim light, he would feel even more frustrated. Just before dawn, grandiose feelings of renunciation started caressing his droopy, itchy eyes. Just for them … only because of them … fantasies started creating waves inside him, and he felt sleepier and sleepier. If not for these fantasies, he might have smashed his head against a wall or gone crazy.

On some of these days, something weird would happen that was entirely related to the radio. If a song, no matter how close or far away, drifted towards him, his eyes would begin to close. His eyebrows would lift, and he would let out an involuntary sigh, leaving behind a deep void in his chest. That’s when the colours, sounds, trees, faces, houses, roads, conversations, situations and even smells would return to him with remarkable clarity and freshness. They would surround him, exactly as they had the first time, he had heard that particular song, as if the entire world were submerged in a clear fluid. And that fragment of memory, immersed in its entirety, would silently approach him, like a ship floating on the tune of the song.

The night this happened for the first time, he was flabbergasted. He was taking a post-dinner walk on the lawn in front of his bungalow, with his daughter in his arms. He was getting frustrated at the gibberish she was spouting, and knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep that night as well, and would be forced to spend the night staring at the shadows. Just then, a song tiptoed over to him. It was an SD Burman track: Sun mere bandhu re, Sun mere sathi, Sun mere mitwa …

His eyebrows shot up. He saw his dog, Julie floating five feet above the ground on the leaves of the hibiscus plant. In that moment, he was sitting in a rickshaw, looking glum, his school bag resting on his lap. A song drifted towards him over the vine-covered boundary wall. It would occasionally get swept away in the wind, only to return again. The rickshaw puller wore a cap, and his pants were rolled up. His legs were hairy. The potholes on the road were puddles because of the rain and in them reflected the clouds in the sky. Behind the rickshaw was a portrait of Amitabh Bachchan, with one eye painted slightly smaller than the other.

Sitting in the front seat, Pappu, Ayush, Vikram and Faujiya had pulled out their leftover parathas from their tiffin boxes and were waving them in the air. In front of a newly built house nearby, there was a clay pot with a face painted on it in lime. In the sky, way above the squawking parrots, a kite with a crescent moon and star printed on it bobbed in the air, the sound of its movement audible below. Faujiya’s hair smelled lemony. She had put on so much powder that every kid in the school told her that she looked like she had just crawled out of a flour bag. Two days ago, the dog who slept with Ratanjot and was his constant companion had run away from home or was abducted by somebody who had lured her away with jaggery.

That day, while returning from school, Ratanjot had seen her inside a blue gate. Someone had applied a black dot to her forehead, too. He had jumped off the moving rickshaw to rescue Julie, but almost got crushed by a green jeep. The rickshaw puller twisted his ear hard and put him back in the rickshaw after thwacking him on the back of his head. Every day, on his way to and from school, he would glance at the gate, but he never saw Julie again. Julie didn’t eat meat, just rice with milk and sugar, because that’s what he ate.

In the last twelve years, he had never thought of Julie or the rickshaw puller, but that night, as he heard the song, they floated into his imagination.

A week later, he caught a sharp whiff of urine in his air-conditioned car. His eyes started burning from the sensation, and he could see advertisements for venereal disease doctors just two feet away from his windshield.

Somewhere, far away from the traffic, a song from the film Dharam Kanta played: “Ye gotedar lehnga niklu jab daal ke …” The first time he had heard this song was in his village, having tea with his friends on a bench near the courthouse.

Many times, he tried to play some of his old favourite songs at home on his own audio system or in his car or on the computer in his office to conjure up images from his past, but he was unsuccessful. Nothing of the sort happened. There was just the song, and around it was his same old stagnant life. Memories and smells from his past only came to him when a song played on a far-off radio he couldn’t see. These songs, floating towards him on the breeze, stirred memories from a time past, only to disappear as soon as the song ended – like a brief light shining momentarily on his otherwise murky past, hiding in the dark. For the duration of the song, he would see old friends, his mother, his brother, other relatives, unfulfilled wishes and his old life in full technicolour detail.

In the past twelve years, he had only visited his town once. His mother had been a doctor, practising alone in her old age. Thieves had broken into the house, which had been shut up for several months, and found a skeleton surrounded by medicines, pillows, newspapers and rotting food. The television was still on in front of the skeleton, with a news bulletin running.

His father had gone to stay with his elder son in Italy and settled there. He had opened a small Indian restaurant, which he named Ratanjot Rogan Josh. All his brothers were independent, well-to-do professionals. The only connection between them was the pictures of newborn babies and greeting cards for Holi and Diwali that they emailed each other. He didn’t know where all his old friends had gone; only those who couldn’t make enough money hung around. But their feelings were paralysed. They told the same old stories, which made them look like parasites to RJ Saheb. It was rare that the olden days would sparkle in someone’s eyes. His sister was a widow who lived alone and gave tuition to children in the same town, but he had only seen her once.

Sometimes a whole day with all its colours, hustle and bustle and smells would pass by silently like a ship as he listened to the songs. Before and after the song, there was the same tasteless world where, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t feel anything.

He wanted to climb out of this well of numbness, but there was no way out. He was so wrapped up in his job, financial constraints and selfish life that he had no idea what was going on around him. Whatever was useful to him reached him on its own. The rest of the useless garbage just kept piling up wherever.

Excerpted with permission from ‘RJ Saheb’s Radio’ in Courtesans Don’t Read Newspapers, Anil Yadav, translated from the Hindi by Vaibhav Sharma, Penguin India.

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