‘Aashiqui’ in Kodaikanal

1990: I was a student of B.Com at The Cochin Arts College.  The college used to organise excursion for students every year and the destination for that year was Kodaikanal, a popular hill station in Tamil Nadu.  I was really excited as that was my first tour with classmates and my first visit to Kodaikanal.  We started the journey in a bus around 10 in the night from Kochi.  As the bus started moving, all of us started shouting, singing, dancing, and howling.  After a while the bus operator played a movie.  By the time the movie got over, most of us were fast asleep.  Early morning, we were awakened by devotional songs played in the bus.  We had reached the temple town of Palani.  We had an early morning darshan at the Palani temple.  After the breakfast, we started our journey towards Kodaikanal.

The operator started playing an audio cassette with melodious Hindi songs which caught out attention.  None of us had heard those songs before.  When we asked the operator, he said the songs were from a new movie, the music of which was released few days ago.  He showed us the cover of the cassette – it was ‘Aashiqui’.  All of us were captivated by the songs.  We told the operator to play the songs again and again.  I still remember, the bus was maneuvering hairpin bends enroute Kodaikanal, the nature was in full bloom, there was chill in the air and romance in the hearts of everyone!  We spent two days at Kodaikanal.  Whenever we were inside the bus, we made the operator play songs from Aashiqui.  By the time we got back to Kochi, all songs of Aashiqui were byheart for us.  First thing I did on the next day was to buy the audio cassette of Aashiqui. 

Aashiqui was a Mahesh Bhat movie, which represented the beginning of a new trend in Bollywood music.  It catapulted the music directors, Nadeem-Shravan and the singers, Kumar Sanu and Anuradha Paudwal to fame.  People loved the music as well as the beautiful singing style of Kumar Sanu.  This movie holds an all-time record of selling maximum number of soundtrack albums in the history of Bollywood.     

I didn’t watch the movie in theatre.  Many years later I watched it on television.  But the songs remained close to my heart.  Even today when I hear the songs like ‘Dheere Dheere Se Mere Zindagi Mein Aana’, ‘Saanson Ki Zaroorath Hai Jaise’, ‘Dil Ka Aalam’ etc., my mind immediately goes to Kodaikanal.  I am sure, we all have few such songs that kindle our memories, instantly take us to a different world and make us highly nostalgic.  Only music can do that!

(Note: At least few of you would have started reading this expecting a narration of ‘Aashiqui’ in my life. Sorry to disappoint you!)