So when the guitar chords of the opening song from the original ‘Aashiqui’ fell into my ears, i was transported to a Delhi evening in August 1990. Ragging had just been declared over (fachcha night) and the freshers in Aravali hostel had been reimbursed with their human rights. Some 20 of them were now cycling down Africa Avenue on borrowed bicycles. Destination: Sangam cinema. Movie: Aashiqui. It had rained earlier in the evening and a cool breeze blew. Okay, perhaps it didn’t. But nothing wrong with creating a bit of atmosphere. Isn’t storytelling supposed to be about bringing order to imagination, as said Tom Hanks in ‘Saving Mr.Banks’? Yet breeze or no breeze, one thing is certain. The ambiance was positively electric (pun intended) with the energy and enthu(E&E) of the bike riders. So electric in fact that it took involuntary yells of arbitrary zeal to discharge those copious quantities of excess energy.
So what was it that lay behind all this E&E? The newfound freedom from ragging? Or – broadening the picture – the freedom of being by oneself in a big city. It also could have been the euphoria of having made it to a premier institution. Then again, more simply, the culprit could have been youth, along with all the beliefs and vanity that accompany it. The belief that all your life lay ahead of you and that everything is possible. The vanity that you possess the capacity to bring about that everything. And though all of those 20 guys have done well for themselves (with some of them actually exceeding their expectations), i’m not too sure that the E&E of that allegedly breezy evening has been replicated too often. The real culprit, then, is pointed out to us by Winnie the pooh. “i love honey’ says the pooh-bear, ‘but what i love even more is that moment just before i eat it.” And to think that mere guitar chords of a song could take me to that moment!
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September 2020
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