One must be somewhat mad to leave home at half-past four in the morning, but such are the demands of a working life in the corporate world. After reaching my office, I was scheduled to move to Pune on dreary official business and catch the Vande Bharat Express from Mumbai CST around 4.30 pm.
I reached the nearest railway station. The platform at that hour, just before the sun bothers to show its face, is a theatre of muted exhaustion. I stood yawning until my jaw ached, a deep, cavernous ache of the unslept, looking for a local train to reach the office. The chai-wallahs, bless their entrepreneurial spirit, saw my distress and converged, chanting their mantra of “Garam chai, garam chai!” around me. I thought to myself, poor fellows, they don’t understand. In my present state, just a little cup of hot tea wouldn’t suffice to banish the sleep; one would have to pour it over one’s head.
Upon reaching the office in those early hours, I noticed no staff were available. None to blame, after all; the company’s motto says the very first essential quality is ‘have a sense of ownership’. I started gathering the things, made a few phone calls, received some irritated responses, and finally arranged the required papers.
I continued my journey in a cab to reach Mumbai CST on time, rather than aiming to get there early, given the BP-shooting, well-sensitive traffic jam in Mumbai. However, I reached the destination and found a suitable place to perch and wait for my train.
Usually, these early starts guarantee a splendid, uninterrupted sleep throughout the journey, a brief, blessed oblivion. Not this time, however. My immediate neighbour was a gentleman I’d not known before, but whom I now knew rather well, by the name ‘Rohan’.
Rohan had a particular affliction: he did not merely answer the telephone. No. When his phone rang, or when he dialled out, Rohan would clutch the receiver between his shoulder and ear, even as he wrestled his bag onto the luggage rack, and proclaim with an inexplicable air of authority, “Aah, Mi Rohan Bolat Aahe ” (Aah, it’s Rohan speaking).
And so the symphony began:
“ Mi Rohan Bolat Aahe.”
“Arré, it’s Rohan speaking, Rohan… Can’t you hear me?”
We are all aware, of course, that in our country, the cellular signal is inversely proportional to the speed of the train. The moment the Vande Bharat Express gathered momentum, the entire cavalcade of Jio, Vodafone, and Airtel started their vanishing acts, singing their wistful, disconnecting tune. This meant every conversation began with a good thirty seconds of Rohan asserting his identity in three varying tones, simply waiting for a line to hold.
The first call, just as the day was breaking, was to his wife. Poor woman, she was clearly still asleep. My initial thought, seeing Rohan’s agitated manner, was that he must have left behind some vital document or was dealing with a genuine emergency.
“Mi, Rohan Bolat Aahe,” he started. And then he issued his command. “I’ve put the rubber sandals in a white plastic bag. The empty red plastic bag is lying outside the door. Pick it up, or someone will pilfer it.” And with that, he hung up. I contemplated the poor wife and the sheer virtue one must possess to earn such a concerned husband.
The Catalogue of Complaints
No sooner was his wife dismissed than Rohan dialled Ghanesh-bhai. Again, the obligatory triple-declaration: “Mi, Rohan Bolat Aahe.” This ‘Ghanesh-bhai’, I gathered, was presumably the local carpenter.
Ghanesh-bhai was then subjected to a fierce, six o’clock in the morning tirade because he had fixed the outside latch on the main door too low. A cow, Rohan bellowed, had been able to nudge the latch open yesterday afternoon and had wandered in to devour his precious marigold plants. Ghanesh-bhai, after enduring a string of sleepy curses, wisely disconnected.
It was now perfectly clear. Rohan was not a man who could bear silence or inactivity. His favourite pastime was ringing people up and causing them low-level distress. One after the other, the calls went out: to Shyamal, to Joggu, to Naran. Shyamal had not returned his table fan. Joggu had promised papayas from his garden and had failed to deliver. Naran, well, Naran had done something that I couldn’t make out.
My chances of sleep were now comprehensively ruined. I sat wide-eyed, a mere lump of uncomprehending flesh. When the tea vendor arrived, Rohan finally put his phone on charge.
“Oh peace at last”, I thought.
But life, as one learns early, is rarely so simple.
The Case of the Missing Key
At nine o’clock, the incoming calls began. Rohan’s ringtone, which was quite loud, was a popular Bollywood song tune: “Saajan Ji Ghar Aaye”.
The first caller was Pankaj, who worked at Rohan’s shoe shop in Kurla. Pankaj needed the shop key. Rohan cast a furtive, side-long glance at me, a man sitting peaceably with his tea and his shattered sleep, then leaned in and began to whisper into his hand: “The key is in the spectacle case, on top of the fridge, on the right side.”
I am aware that I may not cut a dashing figure. That is a private sorrow. But I confess my spirits sank when I realised that this simple act of discretion suggested I was being treated as a potential shoe thief. The very possibility that I might jump off the train, burgle Rohan’s house, steal the key, open the shop, and make off with the footwear was clearly not being ruled out by a man who knew the ways of the world.
The Family Business
For the next hour, Rohan’s phone rang every five to seven minutes. His uncle, his wife, his sister-in-law, his eldest brother-in-law, the entire family, it seemed, shared the same favourite pastime: ‘phoning Rohan’.
Every single time, the same ritual ensued: a brief, tinkling run of music, then the first half of the ringtone, “Saajan Ji Ghar,” and precisely at that moment, Rohan would snatch up the phone to deliver his line: “Rohan Bolat Aahe.” Twenty-five calls came, and not once did I hear the tune complete its second line: “ Saajan Ji Ghar...”
There was a moment when I was tempted to grab his head, knock it against the window, and demand, “Will you let me hear Saajan Ji Ghar just once, or will you not?”
From the torrent of conversation, I gleaned a great deal of confidential family information. Rohan’s sister, or maybe a cousin, or perhaps a distant relative, ‘Malati’, was in labour. The mother-in-law was a ‘kind of mule’, the father-in-law a ‘kind of sheep’, the uncle’s bicycle had been stolen, and the water tank at home leaked.
We all now knew that ‘Malati’ had three sons already, and the whole family was desperately praying for a girl this time. Rohan’s mother had even gone back to the temple where she’d prayed before Rohan was born.
It’s incredible indeed. I couldn’t believe my ears. ‘Progress’, I mused.
In a past generation, people prayed for a boy; now they pray for a girl. Though I felt for Malati, perhaps if the mother had prayed for a daughter after the first child, Malati wouldn’t be enduring this ordeal now.
The Final Revelation
The calls continued in an unbroken chain: “ Saajan Ji — Rohan Bolat Aahe.” This was the new lyric to the old song now, permanently etched into my memory.
Then, amidst the tension, Pankaj called back with urgent news from the shoe shop: a customer, through some misadventure, had stepped in excrement outside and tracked it all over the shop floor. A violent squabble over who should clean it up lasted five minutes, ending with Rohan swearing he’d install CCTV the moment he returned.
I began watching the clock, praying for the train to reach Pune. We passed Kalyan Junction right on time at 16:55. An intuitive two hours to reach Pune station. My heart was pounding. I knew I wouldn’t sleep that night if I got off the train without knowing: was it a nephew or a niece?
Every ring of the phone made me cock my ear. At one point, when the man next to me dared to answer his own phone, I snapped at him, “Kindly speak softly, man! I can’t hear a thing!” The fellow was so taken aback that he simply turned and whispered into the partition.
As the train finally, mercifully, slid into the Pune platform, I could not wait. I hauled my luggage down, turned to Rohan, and blurted out, “Well, mister Rohan! Was it a nephew or a niece?”
Rohan beamed a broad, triumphant, toothy grin. “Oh, that was about ‘Malati’, our cow,” he declared. “She’s dropped another bull calf. Not really good news for me.”
I stood scratching my head for a moment, absorbing the monumental confusion of the last three hours. I collected my bags and stepped onto the platform.
Just as I did, my own phone rang.
I pulled it out, took a deep breath, and answered with the confidence of a seasoned traveller: “Mi Rohan Bolat Aahe…”
