It takes a
while for me to hear the faint vocals of a female opera singer over the
enchanting notes of the piano. The speedy French babble on the streets has now
faded into mere white noise. It’s just me and the music floating out from the
open window across the street. I've used all my voyeuristic faculties to try
and spot the pianist before I realize that it’s probably just an old video.
Perhaps an old lady is revisiting her past through a performance from back when
she was young. The scooters buzzing past barely distract me as I continue to
allow the gentle notes to encase me in a cocoon of serenity. I leave my earthly
body, smoking at the open window, and rise above the rooftops of Rue des Boulangers,
the softly tinkering piano as my only guide.
There’s
another window open, two doors across, where I spot subtle movement. Maybe
someone else is hearing the music too. Fading into the depths of the couch,
glass of Sauvignon in hand, going over the events of the day. Perhaps they’re
rising with me. Perhaps they’re looking at me. Perhaps I’ll be the subject of
their journal. One that they’ll take back with them to a distant part of the
world where nobody would know of even the possibility of my existence, but for
the description in that journal. A frilly giggle draws me to the door of the
very same building, from wherein the beguiling music swells, and I see a man
kissing his girlfriend. It’s about eleven fifteen at night and back home it
would still be frowned upon. India isn’t the kind of place where men and women
can kiss under streetlights. Someone would stare, raise an eyebrow. Another
would letch. An old aunty would make a disgruntled noise. Someone might shout
something vulgar from the passing car. There’s no privacy back home. Every
moment is lived under the watchful public eye. How can I breathe in that
constant surveillance when I crave for these precious moments of privacy,
tucked away in the little side streets? I imagine what would happen if somebody
reprimanded him…
“But it’s the music monsieur! I can’t help
it!” he’d say. Shrugging in the way teenage boys do when they get caught.
Further
down the street I spot the source of the conversation I had earlier drowned
out. A man dressed in a suit is taking to his friend who seems ready to leave
on his bicycle. The man in the suit doesn’t want him to leave by the looks of
it. Maybe he’s lonely back home and wants company just for a while. Can they
hear the music too? Perhaps it holds no value for them, this piece of music
that has so efficiently disarmed me.
But even in
this sublime moment, I feel lost. I can’t help but ask myself what this feeling
is. What is missing inside that this music fills me with?
I sit by
the window and light up another cigarette. The tip of my tongue kisses the
filtered end as I think it over. And there’s the answer. It’s the moment
itself, pure and perfect in its simplicity. The music makes me feel homesick to
the point where I begin to cave into myself, no longer floating upon its wings.
It makes me long for something that I’ve never had and never will have.
