Maaeri...
I had first come across Maaeri when I was seven maybe, by stumbling upon its cassette in a box full of many, which Maa was skimming through to find a Shahrukh Khan Jukebox cassette. When Maa saw it in my hand, she put it in our now very ancient Music System. She told me how this used to be a hit in her times. I couldn't understand what foreign language the song spoke in but oh, was it catchy! I remember pestering her to put it on repeat and dancing in the living room for the entire day.
Nostalgia of happier times isn’t the only reason this song is close to spirits. Once you grow up to know what the song actually means, it's so much more. It keeps a romantic, who wishes to take a time travel machine back to 90s, hopeful even in today's times. If it wasn’t for the old indie songs describing how love feels like, a cynical and pessimistic being that I am, would have given up on wishing for love for myself. But Maaeri made me decide not to give up until I fall in love deep enough at least once to write a song so beautiful for my lover or manage to be a subject of one.
It makes me want to be in love with someone so deep that they make my putting bindi on the forehead into poetry. When Palash Sen sang ‘phir se main roun, phir who gaaye’, I dreamt of a love which I would still want all over again after we’re separated. In a time full of night club culture songs, I don’t want someone to fall in love with my size-zero body; I want someone falling for every little thing I say to them, so much that it is ‘chaasni’ to them. Perhaps it is the lack of true love in today's pop culture that I strive to hide Maaeri away from the world for someone out there who eulogises it equally.
Maaeri, wo gaana mere nal gallan karda.
Maaeri, your daughter has yet again fallen for a song of your times, God save her.
