Of Crosswords and Rafi

Even now the gentle voice of Mohd. Rafi has the most soothing effect on my nerves, such is my association with him.

My grandmother had a cassette player or rather a “deck”. It looked like the one in the picture below.

This sat, along with an old gooseneck lamp with a green shade, on a stool by her bed. On a gigantic desk close by sat her collection of Mohd. Rafi tapes alongside a massive thesaurus. Every day she would select a cassette, pop it into the deck, and while Rafi crooned on, tap her feet in time, eat chocolate and do the crossword in the newspaper. If memory serves me right this happened twice in a day. Once either after breakfast or lunch, and the other at bedtime. I believe these were breaks she eagerly looked forward to.

I had a baby’s cot adjacent to her single bed. Many babies had slept there before me and I think a few did after me too. I know my son also used it briefly. But I used it all the way until I was past 10 years old and couldn’t fit myself into it anymore. I loved that cot. The fourth side would swing down to open it and back up to be fastened and secure – just like cribs these days that have a side that usually slides down a bit. It was made of rosewood and was so solid. I just loved lying in it, all penned in, listening to Rafi’s voice and wondering what these songs were about.

Sometimes, when my grandmother was in a funny mood, she would play her favorite song, raise her eyebrows comically at me and shout out with Rafi, “Ayaya sooku sooku!” No prizes for guessing that she was a big Shammi Kapoor fan too! But that was mostly because Rafi sang playback for most of Shammi Kapoor’s movies.

Sometimes, in a mellow mood, she would play “Chaudvin ka chand,” and sing along. It was such a poignant and romantic number. I wonder now if she ever missed romance in her life and lived vicariously through these songs for the length of a melody. Of course, I had no clue what these lyrics meant; for me it was more the mood and associations. Lying in my little cot, gazing at my grandmother propped up with a couple of pillows on her bed, bathed in the yellow light from her green gooseneck lamp, staring fixedly at the newspaper folded in her hand as she tapped her feet and thought of words to fill into the empty boxes, I only felt warmth and security and would drift off to sleep like that.