Everyone who left the office after 11 PM got a cab ride home. When I was in Delhi during my early journalistic career, I was often put on late-night shifts. He got up, and did something he had never done before - he hugged me. Jaane tu ya jaane na, maane tu, yaa maane naa.” When I was done, I saw his eyes moisten. So that cold January night three years ago, I looked at him and sang, “Tera mujhse hai pehle ka naata koi, yu hi nahi dil lubhaata koi. But I never got a chance to thank him for his many kindnesses.
He always made himself available and extended support whenever I needed it, even when it was difficult or inconvenient for him. Growing up, he'd nurtured me in his quiet, unassuming ways. To my right sat a distant, much older cousin brother, someone I had a reverential attachment for. When I got out, I was asked to tell how I felt about the person sitting to my right through a song. We were on the terrace sitting around a bonfire and playing pass-the-parcel. I can never forget a cousin’s pre-wedding celebration. It forms the backdrop of most of my fondest memories, friendships, and relationships. Old Bollywood music is how I communicate - it is how I laugh, cry, live, and love. I didn’t know what they meant, which movies they were from, or who acted in them, but I knew them by heart. I remember, even when I was as young as five years old, I could sing word for word several of Mangeshkar, Mohammad Rafi, Kishore Kumar, RD Burman, and Asha Bhosle songs. To date, we, as a family, are invincible at antaksharis.
#Madhubala song movie
Whether it’s raining or a family get-together or a weekend or we are traveling or killing time during a power-cut, we always invariably find ourselves turning to old Hindi movie songs. My siblings and I have grown up listening to them endlessly, thanks to our parents, who are ardent admirers.įor us children, first came the songs. Our personal taste in music differs but we all love old Bollywood songs.
Albeit in our different ways, we all seek refuge in it, get inspired from it, find answers and joy in it. The only thing that unites us all is music. We are as different as the members of any family are. The one lullaby that my mother crooned me to sleep when I was an infant was ' Mere Ghar Aayi Ek Nanhi Pari,' a song from Yash Chopra’s 1976 film Kabhi Kabhie. Years later, when I left home for college and couldn’t sleep in the strange new surroundings for the first few nights, I’d listen to the Lata Mangeshkar song on earphones and in no time, would be snoring peacefully.
#Madhubala song series
But when entertainment is concerned, is there even any guilt to what gives one pleasure? In our new series Pleasure Without Guilt, we look at pop offerings that have been dissed by the culture police but continue to endure as beacons of unadulterated pleasure. When the going gets tough, we turn to our favourite guilty pleasures.