From KL Saigal to The Breakup Song: The aftermath of Valentine’s Day

You did not think you’d ever learn the lyrics, but now you do, and you don’t look around. Everyone is sitting with their own little demons. Perhaps this is why people always leave a stool next to you empty.

Then I realise it’s not 1946 anymore and I need to ‘get with it’. Of course, Bollywood is there to help. Google throws up a whole lot of songs helpfully when I type in keywords like ‘sad love songs’ and I realise that none of them make any sense to me because they all sound like the same song.

Arijit Singh has a wonderful voice and I remember having bawled in the darkness of a ridiculous film because the heartbreak song there was so brilliant:

But I refuse to think my un-valentine, my miserable self singing about lost love is going to be anything like mister unibrow who kills the girl who got married when he was in jail. As Alexa suggests this song to me and I gag, the cook yells from the kitchen and asks me to not stop the song because, ‘Didi, yeh mera wala song hai!’

I don’t want to know my cook’s story, my pathetic story of a love lost is burden enough I think. I remember a movie Pyaar Ke Side Effects with Rahul Bose and Mallika Sherawat where Rahul Bose listens to the same miserable song so often his roomie threatens to break the music system/his head or something.

I wonder what song of heartbreak I’m going to adopt as my mantra and wander about like Raanjha with Heer gone away. Suddenly I hear Steven Tyler giving me valuable advice that falling is love means knees will be hurt.

I begin to hate myself. Will I be just as annoying to everyone who knows me? Falling in love was bad enough, research says that you lose two friends each time you fall in love. So what happens when you have no valentine, no one who loves you back? Does that turn you into a bigger pain than a moony-eyed lovesick puppy? What is it that I can do to not behave like someone dejected in love?

The devil on my shoulder suggests I try a flash mob outside his office, dancing to all the terrible Bollywood love songs of the lonely.

Or I could stand frozen like Salman Khan hand pointing to the sky (I would point towards his office), from Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam while the flash mob would dance to Tadap tadap ke is dil se aah nikaltee rahi.  

Maybe I could brood away with a bicycle like Vinod Khanna from Mere Apne and sing, ‘Koi hota jisko apna, hum apna keh lete yaaron’, one of my all-time favourite Kishore Kumar songs.

Friends said that I just didn’t look Majnu like enough. I was still eating cheesecake and the lad who dumped me might think my singing, ‘Nothing compares to you’ like Sinead O’Connor was more about cheesecake than him.

Damn this lonely Valentine! It was easier to sing, ‘Koi kehde zamane se jaake ke hum ghabarake mohobbat kar baithe...’ And now I’m stuck trying to find a great breakup song. And no, not even the gorgeous Madhavan looks good when he sings, ‘Sach keh raha hai deewana dil,‘ (Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein), and I don’t like to sound like Kumar Sanu (Ab tere bin jee lenge hum), nor do I want to hear Bappi da’s, ‘Yaar bina chain kahan re…’

My niece calls me up and asks me if I have found the ultimate anti-Valentine song that is not a black and white song, and suggests:

Phone to my ear, I’m deciding whether to power off Google Home as well as Alexa, when both suggest an eternal favourite, a song I never really considered. Perhaps, an old song is really the perfect one.