:-)

Last night’s rooftop birthday party for a gang member was great fun. There was not only recorded music, but live music as well! My friends are immensely talented. I realized that it was probably the last of my nights out with this gang before I head home. They realized it too! They got me a farewell gift!

I knew what was in the packet even before I unwrapped the square present. Meghna Gulzar’s biography of her dad. While browsing through a bookshop once, I had mentioned to one of my friends that I was tired of reading the book in snatches at various stores, and was going to get a copy. She remembered.

We sang and listened to all our favorite gang songs: “Yeh hain pyar ke pal”, “Yaaron dosti bahut hi haseen hai”, “Yeh jo des hai tera”…
I will miss these guys terribly. They are great people.

Lying on my back under the stars at two in the night, I looked at the stars and two lines from Gulzar’s “Banjar hai sab banjar hai” song in Saathiya echoed in my head:
“Taaron ki chamak yeh subah talak/ Lagti hi nahin pal bhar ko palak”

This morning, I came in to work and played this song on my PC. I like to loop one song for hours, so that I am not distracted while working.

My phone shook in earnest, informing me I have an SMS:
“What heat! Banjar hai sab banjar hai hum dhoondne jab firdaus chale”

A friend from rain-drenched Bangalore is passing through Pune enroute to his office picnic near Lonavla.

Stranger things are known to happen. Or so I hear.

And now another Gulzar song is the gang’s song of the day (we love the intranet)
Jungle jungle baat chali hai pata chala hai
Arrey chaddi pehen ke phool khila hai phool khila hai