(Recap: The writer and the narrator are making their way to Sesha's village to investigate an incident where a landlord's house was burnt down.)
Another song played on my faithful transistor as we were on the bus to Shesha’s village. A music teacher and her wards, on AIR Bangalore, were singing a paean to the new year.
In October.
The announcer, a humourless voice with perfect Kannada diction, didn’t seem bothered by this anachronism. I don’t remember the Kannada lyrics anymore, but I remember the main chorus (in English): the teacher and one section of her wards went “Happy, Happy, Happy New Ye-ear”; another section sang similarly, except, the “Ye-ear” landed on the harmony notes.
“A Kannada song to the Gregorian new year,
in October, with an English chorus and a harmony – sign of new India?”, I asked
the writer, who seemed to be preoccupied.
“Huh?” he said, shaken out of his reverie.
I pointed to the transistor.
“New India?”, he said, “More like the old
woman has lost her marbles … and is now trying to locate them with an electron
microscope.”
I laughed.
“Old woman? How can you tell – she could be
twenty-five, for all you know?”
“This is AIR Bangalore: you have to look a
certain type if you want a spot for you and your wards. And listen to her voice
– it’s got that MS-type quiver.”
I stared out of the window. It was an
unusually cloudy day: we were making our way through thin, winding paths that
bisected forests; the trees seemed to dance around us, the wind brought the
smell of firewood and wet earth; the hills, in the distance, stuck out like
poorly glued-paper to the grey cardboard that was the sky.
We got off to change buses at Narayana, a
prominent temple town back then, now rendered soulless by neo-pilgrims. The
writer and I drank tea and made small talk with the tea-seller. When we told
him we were going to Shadymane, Shesha’s village, a shadow crossed the
tea-seller’s face. He said, quietly: “You may get there, but will you return?”
The writer laughed: “Why do you say that?”
“Things are not so good now. They don’t
like your type.”
The hissing buses sounded oddly ominous.
