I was boarding a train from Hyderabad to Bombay, travelling with my girlfriend at the time. I shouldn’t call her my girlfriend-at-the-time for precisely at that time standing on the platform I didn’t know ifshe was my girlfriend. She had come to Hyderabad some three months before me to live with her aunts and the day I arrived she told me that she had met someone else. Scooter rides at dawn, walks up the hill to the Birla mandir, Golconda sound-and-light show, motiyay ke phool in the hair had all happened without me in the picture. Now that someone else had also come to bid her farewell. The fact that she was leaving with me seemed eclipsed by the look the two exchanged on

parting.

Sitting in Non-AC Second Class did not seem an adventure anymore. I was sitting in a huff, she had on an unforgiving look and then a stereotype walked into

our compartment.

Before I go on I must backtrack and wallow some more in self-pity. I was in love with a woman who looked like Waheeda Rehman. I didn’t see it right away for when I met her my brain had stopped functioning. The one instant that it did function in those early days I saw her black hair scattered against a white pillow and that memory has forever matched the black and white of the Chaudhvein ka Chand picturisation. Her name is Kalpana, and I once told this story to a great poet as well (Agha Shahid Ali), who met her and announced to everyone in the room that she is not a figment of my imagination. Kalpana, whose

parents are from Madras and Hyderabad, hence the Waheeda Rehman genes, grew up in Nova Scotia in Canada. She couldn’t speak a word of Hindi, but

unbelievably, could sing:

dum bhar jo udhar mun pheray,

o saiyyann, main tum say pyaar karloon gi,

baatein hazaar kar loon gi.

We met in Toronto and when the first flush of our love had, well, flushed, we thought we should reignite the sparks by going to, where else, India. There we were inconsolable in our train compartment when in walked a man wearing a kurta pyjama, a little beard on his chin, a moustache that did not meet under his nose and a white boat-shaped cap. He was with a boy who was a wispier version of

him. To my Karachi trained eyes he looked a maulvi sahib and I groaned anticipating all kinds of disapproval for the 18 hours to Bombay. I thought in the eyes of these new travelling companions I was representing the worst of all worlds: we were a couple who was obviously NRIs, unmarried and yet embroiled in

a lover’s tiff.

For eternal moments I looked out the window at the unforgiving Andhra landscape. Eventually my eyes glazed over and I began to pay attention to what I was hearing. The older man was talking, the younger giggling and every once in a while I would hear the names, “Shakeel Badayuni, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Firaq

Gorakhpuri…” An especially loud titter from the boy made me pay attention to the anecdote the elder man was telling from the life of some poet.

This poet, I forget his first name and the UP qasbah last name, was fond of his drink, and known for that, was once asked what he would say to god if the divine questioned him about his drink. The poet replied, allegedly, “Aur la, aur la, aur la.” The boy clapped his hand in delight. The lightness of the story told in his bass voice made everybody within earshot smile. Except for Kalpana. We males acknowledged each other. Kalpana’s silence became her zenana. Whatever.

When I told him I was from Karachi he said he was very sorry that Parveen Shakir, a lovely young poet from my town died so young. He recited from her:

Raat ki raani ki khusbu say koi yay keh de

aaj ki shab na mere paas aay.

What followed was a lovely journey of storytelling and laughter and eating of meals together. He kept raising the stakes, using Parveen Shakir.

Socho to wo saath chal raha hai

dekho to who nazar badal raha hai…

And then:

Who kahin bhi gaya lauta to mere paas aaya

bus yehi baat hai acchi meray harjai ki…

By now his reciting a Karachi poet was wearing out its welcome.

He told me he lived in Mumbai and practiced tibbi medicine in Bhendi Bazaar. I asked him where he was from and he said, “Faizabad. Jahan faiz na raha.” Before I could be sorry that heartbreak had entered the realm of history, memory and politics he quoted his final devastating Parveen Shakir:

Ya khuda ab tu koi abr ka tukra barse

bachayan lain hain guriyoon ko jalane ke liye.