As the Valentine’s Day approaches, I would like to record a true story. It all began when during my morning constitutional I met an old lady, Mrs Awasthi. I was quite impressed with her agility as she is more than eighty years old. I really hope and pray that when I reach that age I remain as active as her .
As we sat talking Mrs. Awasthi remarked that long back, when she was unmarried, her closest friends and neighbors in Shahjehanpur were one Saxena family which to my delight turned out to be that of my grandparents. She was thrilled to hear that and then started asking about my aunts, uncles and of course my mother. I told her about everyone. She recounted many anecdotes and then asked about my younger uncle by name. “Well he is fine but as you know he is eighty four and has become forgetful”. I said. “In fact the last time I met him he could not recollect my name”. She smiled, “But he would remember me”. There was so much confidence in her voice that I looked up startled. “We used to sing Talat Mehmood’s (a popular Indian singer of the time) songs together”. She explained. I knew my uncle to be a diehard fan of Talat Mahmood; so she was correct. I was very intrigued. To remember something like this almost seventy years later there must have been something special between the two. I do not know about my uncle, but for her it was a memory so special that neither time nor age had dimmed it.
Mrs. Awasthi went away to visit her children abroad. She had a fair number of grandchildren and also great grandchildren. I met her yesterday after seven or eight months. We chatted as usual and exchanged news. Just as she was leaving I told her about my uncle’s death. She looked at me, smiled softly and said, “We sang lovely songs together.” I was quite shaken by the depth and intensity of that simple sentence. She had got married, had children, lived a full and busy life and yet that memory had always been with her. Maybe, in the usual humdrum of life, the sounds of those songs had been with her. Maybe, the sweetness of those songs provided solace to her. No wonder, she hoarded the memory all through seventy years and I wonder at the confidence she had of being remembered after all these years. Maybe it is the love about which ballads are written.
