Tauji's Time Machine

Daadi-waale Tauji was one of those people in my life that amongst other things you always remember by the way they smelt when they hugged you. His was a mixture of saada-paan and Old Spice aftershave. Every time we came to Lucknow for holidays , he would come to the station to receive us...always with a box of motichoor laddoos (typical North-Indian sweet) from Chanakya Misthan Bhandar (his ultimate sweet shop). He was simple man with very simple needs, like the saada-paan that he always kept a 'next 3 hours' supply of.

Many years ago when we were having breakfast at his house during one of our Lucknow trips, he suddenly announced in his ever so matter-of-fact tone that he has invented a time machine. Most of us at the table were too busy devouring the samosas and did not even look up to acknowledge the statement but I with my "Back to the future" context of the whole concept couldn't help but ask him to elaborate a bit more. Maybe there was something that at least came close to what the Professor achieved in the movie?!?! Time travel...the idea itself was enough to get me on the edge of my seat.

"It's quite simple", he said... Just take a blank audio cassette and record one song from each phase of your life. E.g. pick the number that you remember from the time you had your first crush, the song that you sang to yourself to keep going when you knew there were 5 chapters still left for the test tomorrow and so on.

It was probably the biggest anti-climax of my life!

After more than 14 years of my uncle's declaration at the breakfast table I now know how right he was. Listening yesterday to "Better Man" by Robbie Williams on the radio I suddenly remembered how many times I had asked Arjun (my college roomie) to rewind and play the song again and again...it felt as if I was in that little hostel room, sharing a bottle of "smuggled" beer with salami sandwiches with the song playing over and over again. There are these songs that mean so much to us not because of any great secret shared in the lyrics but just because of the times we were going though when they came along or maybe because of the people we shared these songs with.

Strange as it may sound...the fact that we are so plugged-in to our lives...insulated from everything else going around us...and at times so detached from the life(s) we once lived can at times be conveyed by something as seemingly trivial as a song.

Tauji was right...he did figure out a way to travel through time.