The last few days, I’ve been stumped by the number of years that have passed since certain events. The fact that some of my closest friends and I met 15 years ago. That Dil Chahta Hai released 25 years ago. That precious Europe trip with my bff, days before I left Singapore, which was 15 years ago. That my nephew was born 18 years ago. What numbers are we talking about?! How do double-digit numbers like this feature in my life?
And oh my god, I’m turning forty this year?
Although I’ve made peace with turning 40 for a while now—my response to the age, as a number in itself, is a shrug—what I am struggling with is the length of time passing since some of the events I mentioned earlier.
And a bittersweet, pleasant surprise at the emotions they evoke to this day.
The four base notes that start off the song Dil Chahta Hai. I was a school-going teenager when it released, and my sister had brought the music cassette with her when she was visiting home from her internship in Pune. When I finally watched the movie, I remember being struck by just how cool it was. The wealth that the three men had was so different from anything I’d seen in Indian movies—these people were rich but not loud. Parents were chill; they spoke with their sons in English, indulged them. The guys had a coupe car. They went to Goa. Aaj Puja, kal koi dooja.
Every song still reminds me of the nerdy middle school teenager in Chennai getting a glimpse into something churning in her life and her world; of the bedroom which had the desktop computer, under which was the stereo in which we played the cassette and drunk in the songs. The songs held their sway for years—following me into high school, when we sang Koi kahe kehta rahe for our seniors’ farewell, into college first year when I was the only one watching a music quiz in college who knew that Srinivas had sung Kaisi hai yeh rut, into post-grad life when I finally went to Goa with friends and had my own DCH moment.
What do you mean “it released 25 years ago”?
There’s another song that instantly transports me to July 2004. Hey, goodbye nanba. Hey khuda hafiz, if you know the Hindi version. On the cusp of starting university, the song evoked a brilliant, thrilling explosion of all I thought college would be: freedom, song, beach, exploration, and (but of course) a boy to enjoy all this with. The song had a vibe so different from most of Tamil cinema of the time. Trisha studied in Chennai but partied at night (where were these places in Chennai? Why did I have no clue?!) She was about to be engaged to someone but still hung out with Siddharth. He was about to go to the US but he wanted to hang out with her (and kiss, and she didn’t object too much). They were just…. They went to the beach. There was a physical intimacy that was filled with tension and possibility, even if they didn’t place much importance on it, not naming it anything. They went on long bus journeys, chatting for hours, collecting strip after multicoloured strip of those Chennai public bus tickets. It was the ultimate “cool” in my eyes, and would be, even through college, even as other (international) references like the Sunrise/Sunset series entered my life.
Twenty two years.
Of course, if I’m nearing forty, these things have to have happened decades (gulp!) ago now. My most powerful references are old now. There are two generations that have come after me, for whom these mean nothing. I can’t process the fact that this is how I must have felt if my parents had gone on about, say, Bollywood or MS Viswanathan songs from the 70s. “That’s your time,” I would have thought (and likely said). Now there are content creators, children, and wow, even colleagues, who might say the same to me. I suppose that’s what is difficult to swallow.
Luckily, there are scores of social media content creators keeping the millennial spirit alive. In their own little corner that is made up of 40-something-year-olds who are aghast at how rapidly the world has been spinning more years into their lives.