I see myself becoming increasingly like my parents. I never thought I’d succumb to listening to Bollywood music voluntarily, let alone downloading it. This summer changed everything.

My internship required me to archive pictures from coffee table books and the first lot I got was all filed under Bollywood. Naturally, the interaction was inevitable. After having archived data in the span of one week, I was smarter than ever. I could distinguish Kishore Kumar from Ashok Kumar and knew the personal details from Meena Kumari’s life to Rekha’s. Something else that happened along side was the change in preference of music at work. I began with several albums- Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz to the Best of Bossa and today, the unexpected happened, I compiled a playlist for Guha and myself on 8tracks.

Don’t get me wrong, I accepted the fact that Bollywood is the norm in this country several eons ago. I can enjoy jazz at Jazz clubs or open air fancy establishments with the connoisseurs. With the rest I am compelled to dance to Favicol Se and other goodies. In the span of this internship, I’ve developed my own taste in Bollywood music. Let’s say the earworms of Bollywood. Most of them have only one composer behind this scene- R.D. Burman.

I was compiling data on Asha Bhosle when I came across R.D. Burman’s name and I knew I’d found something to fuss over for a while. I spent the weekend listening to all of Burman’s compositions with Bhosle. I’d hit gold. It didn’t end there. Out of curiosity, I mentioned this to my Bengali beach from college who seemed to share the same passion for influence of world music on Bollywood.

Last night, I sat down and compiled a list of tracks, downloaded and set them up in a public playlist for BBC and me, the little joys of working on Excel is that you’re shameless enough to blast whatever you want to listen to. This post is mostly aimless because my mother called to tell me how she’s to eat pizza for lunch at her vacation (second!) like It’s a punishment while I battle scenes of everyone consuming fungi ridden bread at home. More, later.