It’s been a couple of years (or perhaps longer), but the Singer has remained in my thoughts. I see glimpses of his ochre robes while driving down the congested roads of my city, and at times, I hear his voice floating out to me as if from the ether.

I should explain myself.

The event in question occurred at a fast food outlet. I don’t recall the antecedent circumstances that had placed the bucket of fried chicken in front of me, but I can only venture that I was not in the greatest mood. I had been in a perennial cycle of gaining and losing the same five kilograms, and would have undoubtedly been questioning my choices even as my salivary glands were actuated by the sight of the crispy veneer of the fried chicken.

Perhaps out of a sense of innate shame, I had chosen a table at the far end of the restaurant, equidistant from both the fry station and the door—here, it felt as remote as the furthermost point at the Earth’s poles. It was late in the afternoon, the luncheon crowd having long departed and too early for the evening crowd; as such, the outlet was sparsely populated. Apart from a few people at the opposite end of the rectangular room (who’d conveniently chosen seats right next to the billing counter), there were no prying eyes to judge me as I manipulated my grease-rubbed fingers into deconstructing the piece of chicken already deconstructed and abstracted from any real notion of an actual animal.

I must have been halfway through my meal when I looked up.

I am not sure which of my senses perceived him first. Did my eyes first take note of some motion at my vision’s periphery, or did I hear him first? Did his sheer presence blanket the room and demand attention, at however subliminal a level? As I reconstruct my thoughts now, I am given to consider that I must have noticed his painted face first.

His lips were a deep shade of red, and his jowls silvery-white. The circles around his eyes had been painted charcoal-black, and his pupils themselves seemed to jut out from the dark contrast pinning his eyes to his face. His hair was long enough to be braided into a top bun, with the remainder falling over his shoulders—this was his most luxuriant feature. Despite the theatrics, he carried the tell-tale signs of a life lived hard: the face paint had dried and cracked in several spots; you could even see the dust and soot from the road having caked itself into his complexion. His ochre clothes were frayed, and his hands were occupied holding a staff and a bowl for alms.

He was a wandering mendicant, dressed and adorned in the style of our beloved Hanuman—deity of the wind, companion to Rama himself.

The restaurant had hinged glass doors, the type where the resistance pushes the door shut unless the door is pushed all the way to the magnetic doorstopper at the end. He had pushed forward one of the doors, although not fully, and was standing midway between the patio and the foyer, holding the resistance of the door at bay with his shoulder. It was as if he knew that to enter would be to come into a world that was foreign, where he was not welcome.

The roads are democratic and egalitarian, almost without exception; you can share the road with anyone else irrespective of any gulf in strata. But this equilibrium changes when doors get involved. Straddling this divide, he stood neither fully in nor out of the outlet.

I am not sure if I had any strong thoughts at this juncture. After all, there is no shortage of poor people, people who ask for alms, and people who pray—any commingling of these categories did not by itself make for an interesting diversion. Besides, I had my meal to contemplate; it would taste barely palatable within a few minutes as it got colder and the grease hardened to a powdery, sharp residue on my fingers. As such, I forgot the man and returned to my meal.

While entering rooms, one usually has an agenda, even if unspoken. Perhaps you seek an answer and make the most direct route to the person you think is placed to attend to your question. Other times, you may want to scurry into a corner and not disturb the equilibrium of the room that existed before your entrance. Or you may want to puff your chest out and bend the room to your will, as if the room had no existence prior to your presence.

It’s unlikely that the man entertained any of these thoughts; yet, I now wonder—standing at the periphery of the room and our attention—did he always have a step-wise plan to arrest our attention? Did he anticipate that no one would pay his faded magnificence a second look, and only then decide to sing?

But sing he did.

I had bowed my head and returned to my meal when a crystal-clear voice pierced through the dull and maudlin air of the room. It rang in my ears and seemingly reverberated in my head, lending my eyes a sudden clarity of vision that I did not even know I’d lacked. The voice continued down my spine and filled my chest; it suffused the air around me and I felt it in the breath I drew into my lungs.

I felt lighter, as if I was no longer seated on the featureless plastic cut-out that passed for a chair. A tingle passed through my entire body and I found myself floating in the ether. It was like being dunked in ice-cold water—every sense thrown to a maximum—only what was meant to freeze was substituted with a warm embrace.

I looked at the Singer in raptures, his voice bellowing throughout the room. In an instant, he had elevated the environs of a room like any other to that of a durbar of old and anointed me king.

I sat transfixed as he moved through his bhajan. I did not know the words and had only a passing grasp of the language, but the sentiment could not have been clearer. It was a call of piety, an exclamation of wonder, a declaration of surrender. It sounded desperate, as if the Singer was stretching at his very seams to express the sentiment of devotion that occupied every cell in his body.

I do not know how long he sang; it could have been a minute or an eternity.

But it came to pass, and his voice no longer rang. He remained standing at the door for what must have been an additional minute, though it felt much longer to he who had bared himself as a call to our action. He waited, and no one came to him.

He left.

I remained at my seat.

I had no money—or, to be more precise, no money for him. My well-trained instinct had taken over even as his song wound up: I wish I could’ve helped him, but what was I to do? I had my phone, my credit cards, and my debit cards, but no hard cash. Perhaps I even had money, but it must have been large tender. We’re taught that money is fungible and one note is as good as the other, but human psychology behaves differently. We attach value to a piece of paper and then we attach identity: a five-hundred-rupee note is indubitably owned; a fifty-rupee note could be of some other provenance—like that of charity.

I do not remember if I finished my meal or how much time it took for me to leave the outlet.

A vague sense of desperation had now set in, and I had a notion of following him—finding him and letting him know that he was heard; that his voice had carved canyons in the canals of my ear all the way to my very soul. I’d get to know him; surely he had a story, one of need. He’d tell me his travails and I’d lend a patient ear.

I’d find some avenue to help, failing which I’d at least drag him to an ATM and offer him money, shoving the crumpled note—or even notes—into his hand. Perhaps he’d be embarrassed, but that’s not a luxury he was afforded. He’d take the money and his voice would not falter. I would return to my humdrum, knowing I’d helped preserve something pure.

I stood at the door where he’d stood not too long ago and looked around for some hint of his presence—his voice having carved out a path in the crowd that I might follow.

But I saw only vehicles, people, a bus stop, and more vehicles and people. It was as if he’d never existed. The world around had bent to accommodate his presence, and then rebounded to remove all trace.

I wiped the grease from my hands with a tissue and looked for a dustbin.