A very boringly, unadventurously slow car driver that I am, I tend to measure out the distance I travel with

the number of the old film songs I listen to. For me my College is, depending upon the traffic conditions on the road and taking average duration of each song to be roughly three minutes, about four to six songs away from my place, and Chandigarh is about thirty to forty songs away. On many an occasion, enraptured by the sweetness of a particular song, I listen to it repeatedly. On such occasions I wish the journey would just go on and on and I could sing with Faiz: Faiz thi raah sar-basar manzil Hum jahan pahunche kamyab aaye (Faiz the entire journey was the destination Wherever I reached I came victorious.) The song with which I began my drive to Chandigarh one fine evening to attend a Punjabi wedding there was a duet from an old film Phir Subah Hogi. The silken voice of ageless Asha Bhonsle and the rich baritone of Mukesh, Sahir Ludhianvis lyrics and Khayyams music what more could an incurably romantic music buff like me ask for? This magical mix was enough to transport me to the seventh heaven. It conjured up the old-world charm of that bygone era whose innocence seems to have been lost to us. I was simply mesmerized by the sheer poetry, the exquisite choice of words and flawless rendering by Mukesh and Asha. The song was: Male Voice: Phir na keeje meri gustaakh nigahi ka gila Dekhiye aap ne phir pyar se dekha mujhko Female Voice: Main kahan tak na nigahon ko palatne deti Aap ke dilne kayee baar pukara mujhko A rough-hewn translation would be: (Dont blame me now for staring at you See, youve once again glanced amorously at me. How long would I not allow my eyes from veering towards you? Many a time did your heart call me out!) One stanza which particularly enchanted me is: Male Voice: Har nazar aap ki jazbaat ko uksati hai Main agar haath pakad loon to khafa mat hona Female Voice: Meri duniya-e-mohabbat hai tumhare dum se Meri duniya-e-mohabbat se juda mat hona (Each glance of yours so inflames my passions Dont take offence if I hold your hand. My world of love is all because of you Dont abandon my world of love.)

Such resonances did this soulful number find somewhere deep inside me that I heard it repeatedly, strung along indulgently, relishing its sweetness coursing in my blood. The time stood still as my whole being became this song. But alas! All journeys have to end. I did not even realize when I reached my destination, a wedding palace in Chandigarh. The moment I stepped out of my car, my delectable reveries were broken when the ear-piercing noise dished out as music at most Punjabi weddings these days struck me like thunder and I was instantaneously and very rudely flung back on the earth. The high decibel sound, buffeting and pummeling with its sheer physicality, causing my heart to pound and my temples to throb with dull thudding ache was a far cry from the gentle, soothing and dreamy song which had filled my journey with serene joy. Many people were pirouetting on the dance floor unmindful of the cacophonous din, and equally unmindful, I believe, of the words of the songs they were dancing to; the hammering and pounding beat was all that mattered. The DJ seemed to be adept at presenting a medley of Punjabi folk, remixes, Salsa, Rap, Indi-pop and Punjabi rock. The rapidly changing cadences and staccato quality of the deafeningly loud medley drowned the lyrics, making it difficult to understand what the singer was singing. One particular song, however, was being played again and again on the express request of the whirling dervishes on the dance floor. It was a Punjabi number and after straining very hard, I was able to make out what the male singer was saying: Hoya ki je nachdi di baanh pharh layee Daaka taan ni mareya (So what if Ive grabbed your arm O dancing belle It is no robbery that Ive committed!) Sitting quietly like an alien in one corner of the pandaal begani shadi mein Abdulla dewana I started thinking of another journey, another time zone and another cultural landscape. The cartographies were once again musical, provided we allow that our popular songs act as cultural markers and if we grant that the alternate worlds opened up by the songs are not merely fictions but revelations. The journey these two songs chart is from Each glance of yours so inflames my passions/Dont take offence if I hold your hand to So what if Ive grabbed your arm O dancing belle /It is no robbery that Ive committed. We have surely come a long way. From a world of gentle, almost apologetic, understated love expressed in a language redolent with poetic sensibility, we have travelled afar to a world of brazen, adrenalin-fuelled aggression. In the old song, the male lover is a diffident supplicant who declares that he cannot control his impulse to hold his beloveds hand, and yet he seeks, as it were, her permission to do so if he ever actually does it. In the second instance, the brash macho lover grasps the dancing girls arm and then has the cheek to say that he has not committed a robbery in doing so! Many questions came to my mind as I sat there brooding over this time travel: Was I being hopelessly nostalgic in pining for an imaginary world existing only in Urdu poetry, a world which is essentially feudal and patriarchal, a world which places great premium on a certain idea of feminine mystique and on notions such as that of shame and tehzeeb etiquette? In preferring the old to the new, was I not rejecting the robust folk culture which is

more honest and truthful than the old culture of graceful but effete romance? Was the rejection of culture in favour of nature by the English romantic poets, whom I admire the most, not prescient in the sense that what we celebrate today is precisely that very folk culture they were advocating and which is closer to nature than the sophisticated culture symbolized by Sahir and his ilk which requires us to maintain certain decorum (read artificiality) in human relations? And should I, a teacher of English literature, for the sake of political correctness go against my grain and endorse the pop culture since it is academically fashionable to valorize any cultural product which may appear even remotely subversive of well-entrenched elitist canons of taste? And if I rejected the present in favour of the past, would my anachronistic conservatism have any justification whatever? Was I, a relic from the past, really out of joint with the present? I was still wrestling with these questions when my mind was distracted once again by the noise system which was now belting out: Main baarish kardun paise di je toon ho jaayen meri (I will shower you with money if you be mine) I, who had been brought up in the old school of thought and had grown up thinking that money could not buy love even as the dreaming lovers were always ready to offer the moon and the stars to their beloveds, was taken aback by this contemporary lover promising unabashedly to his beloved, from the roof tops as it were, that he would rain money on her if she accepted him. I started thinking about how the entire concept of love has undergone a sea change in this age of novel sociality and equally novel ways of relating. All this amused me no end and it also made me realize how the old timers like me are likely to find everything they cherished melting away as if nothing were substantial. May be, for people like me the writing was on the wall; the time had arrived to make way for the new. I may not approve of the new, but then I have no right even to disparage it. It was already late night and time for me to leave for home. As I got up to leave, Ibne-Inshas poem sung by Ghulam Ali started knocking on the doors of my consciousness: Insha ji uttho ab kooch karo Is shehr mein ji ka lagana kya (Bestir Insha ji: its time to set forth Why give your heart to this city?) I could not have given my heart to the raucous glitter. I made my way to my car and once on the driving wheel, slowly but surely, I went back to my world of gentle romance my abode, my shelter, my address since long. Outside, the night had enveloped everything under its gray blanket. The journey back home would have been lonely but for Sahir, Kaifi Azmi, Faiz and Gulzar giving me company, enticing me to spend some more time with them. Despite very sparse traffic on the road, my return journey lasted more than fifty songs, about ten more than it had ever taken me to drive back from Chandigarh to Patiala.