The Movies & Songs That Raised Me

A long, messy, loving note about growing up among movies.

Have you ever recollected a past event in life and then connected it with some nostalgic movie or song of that time? I do it. Quite frequently too. And it brings back some great memories — some good, some bitter, and some that have had a seminal effect on life.

To me, childhood was a landscape built on small joys and large emotions — and almost always accentuated by songs that kept blaring from all possible sources and movies that left a lasting impression.

I do not know if my family was particularly “movie-crazy,” but I do recollect that the passion for cinema was a constant in our early years.

Some people remember childhood in colours.

Some remember it in smells.

I remember mine in sound — the uneven, scratched, unpredictable sound of 80s and 90s India that floated through neighbourhoods and shaped the childhood of a boy from Bilaspur.

One of my earliest lasting memories has to be Tezaab.

I remember my parents sneaking off to watch it, leaving me under the charge of my elder sister who was barely two years older. And upon return, they bribed us with ice cream to placate the betrayal of being left behind.

There was an understanding with my mother — that when she returned from the movie, she would narrate the entire story to both of us. She did. Every time.

And who can forget the groovy Ek Do Teen and the not-yet-legendary Madhuri Dixit whipping up a national frenzy?

That was 1988.

That was also the year a strange new energy entered our simple world.

My earliest cinema memory, however, is not Maine Pyar Kiya.

It isn’t Chandni.

It is Gangaa Jamunaa Saraswati — my first ever theatre experience.

Amitabh Bachchan wasn’t an actor to me then.

He was a force of nature.

I didn’t understand plot.

But I understood awe.

And childhood is made of awe.

Not long after, a film that today’s younger audiences may not even recall came into my world: Chamatkar.

A ghost, a young Shah Rukh Khan, the innocence of early 90s storytelling — the sort of film you watched not for logic, but for comfort. It had that unmistakable warmth of the era, the kind that wrapped itself around you like an old blanket.

Around the same time, Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman entered our home through grainy television telecasts.

Simple. Hopeful. Earnest.

The story of a small-town boy navigating big-city dreams felt oddly close to my own world, even though I didn’t fully understand “dreams” back then. I just knew those songs made something in my chest flutter.

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The Movies My Parents Watched Without Me

My parents were regulars at the cinemas for big films like Tezaab and Ram Lakhan.

Me and my sister stayed home — too young, too costly to take along.

But I remember the excitement on their faces when they returned.

Their laughter.

Their retelling of scenes.

The glow of cinema still lingering on them.

And sometimes, I would return the favour.

The film that made this a ritual was Karan Arjun.

I must have seen it somewhere — maybe a neighbour’s home, maybe a second-hand cassette — but once I had, I narrated the entire story to my mother.

Every fight scene.

Every dialogue.

Every over-the-top emotion.

“Mere Karan Arjun aayenge!” became my personal catchphrase at home.

And even earlier, Baazigar had shaken the country — and me — with its dark, thrilling story. I was far too young to fully understand revenge or betrayal, but I understood intensity. I understood SRK’s eyes. And I understood that cinema could be many things — sweet, funny, dark, or dangerous.

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Chandni On A Tired VHS Tape

Chandni entered our home not on the big screen, but via a VHS tape older than hope itself.

The tracking lines danced.

The sound crackled.

But none of it mattered.

Sridevi glowed through every imperfection.

Magic doesn’t need HD.

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The Walk to School — Saajan, Aashiqui, Sadak

Every house I passed on my way to school had its own soundtrack.

One blasted Saajan.

Another played Aashiqui.

From a far window, Sadak poured out like a secret.

Those songs became landmarks of my childhood mornings.

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The Bilaspur Rickshaw With Loudspeaker & Movie Posters

There was a part of our childhood no one from multiplex-era India will understand —

the advertisement rickshaw.

A cycle-rickshaw with a loudspeaker tied on top, movie posters slapped on the sides, roaming the streets shouting upcoming releases like a travelling cinema circus.

“Aaj shaam 6 baje! Naya picture! SPECIAL SHOW!”

It was primitive.

It was loud.

It was iconic.

It was ours.

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The Housefull Era of Maine Pyar Kiya

My mother, sister and I must’ve tried four or five times to watch Maine Pyar Kiya.

Every single time, the theatre greeted us with the same red sign:

HOUSEFULL.

We’d walk back home disappointed but smiling — because on that walk, every lane played “Dil Deewana”.

You didn’t need a ticket.

The whole neighbourhood was the theatre.

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Mohra — When All of India Danced

Then came Mohra.

And “Tu Cheez Badi Hai Mast Mast.”

It didn’t play from a speaker.

It played from the country.

Aunties danced while folding clothes.

Barbers nodded.

Uncles tested their speakers with it.

That was 90s India.

Unselfconscious. Joyful. Loud. Beautiful.

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The DDLJ Winter — And the Last Movie With My Mother

Some memories stay folded in your heart like old letters.

For me, that memory is October 1995.

I was in 6th standard, Sainik School Korukonda, home for winter vacations.

My mother had already watched DDLJ once.

But she wanted me to watch it.

There was no hurry.

No agenda.

Just a mother wanting to share a joy with her son.

We sat in that theatre together — not knowing then that this would be the last movie we’d watch together before glaucoma dimmed her world.

When Raj appears on the screen for the first time, she nudged me.

When Simran cried, she quietly wiped her eyes.

And when the end credits rolled, she smiled in that satisfied way mothers do — the kind where the film was just an excuse, and what mattered was sitting next to her son.

We stepped outside and the sky had turned grey.

Within minutes, rain came down hard — the fierce, sudden, totally unreasonable Bilaspur rain.

We climbed into a rickshaw.

The plastic sheet barely covered anything.

We were soaked — clothes sticking to skin, hair dripping, shoes squelching.

She laughed.

I laughed.

It was the kind of laughter you remember for life.

The kind that feels like love without saying it.

If I could revisit one moment from childhood, it might be that rickshaw ride — two drenched people, no umbrellas, no money for luxury, but hearts full from a film that had entered the world like a promise.

Sometimes I think cinema didn’t give me memories.

It gave me my mother’s voice, frozen forever in that laughter.

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Sainik School Korukonda — Music, Hierarchy, Survival

Korukonda wasn’t a school.

It was a world — sealed off from home, comfort, and the soft edges of childhood.

And inside that world, two things ruled our lives with absolute authority:

Hierarchy.

And

Music.

The mess hall was the epicentre of both.

It had a large music deck placed on a high shelf, almost like a sacred relic. Only seniors — boys barely two years older but emotionally ten years ahead — were allowed to touch it. And they curated breakfast, lunch, and dinner the way All India Radio curated Sunday specials.

Breakfast might open with Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, the soft orange sun mixing with steel plates clattering.

Lunch would float on the smooth notes of Pardes — “Do Dil Mil Rahe Hain” echoing louder than anything the dining hall had ever heard.

Dinner was a toss-up between Dil Se and Mohabbatein, depending on the mood of the senior in charge.

And then came the part I dreaded.

Someone had discovered I could sing.

Not magically — I must have hummed by mistake one day, and that was enough.

In Sainik School logic, if a junior can sing, he must sing. On demand. Anytime.

“Oye chhote… gaana gaa.”

I didn’t hate singing.

I hated the smirks.

I hated twenty seniors looking at me with the kind of amusement usually reserved for circus animals.

I hated the discomfort of singing with sambhar smell in the air and cadets marching outside.

But hierarchy wasn’t something you negotiated with.

Hierarchy was swallowed.

Absorbed.

Survived.

Yet strangely, in those forced songs, something else was happening quietly — something I wouldn’t understand until years later.

I was learning resilience.

I was learning how to hold onto something I loved without letting the world ruin it.

I was learning that sometimes you do things you don’t enjoy in order to protect the thing you cherish.

And maybe that’s why music still feels personal to me — as if I earned it.

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Hostel Nights — Lucky Ali, Purani Jeans, and the Gentler Darkness

If the mess hall was hierarchy, the hostel at night was democracy.

Lights-out was at 10 p.m.

But emotions stayed awake.

Someone always had a Walkman that was permanently low on battery — you had to put your ear right on the headphone foam to hear the song properly. Someone else had smuggled a cassette of Lucky Ali’s O Sanam or Anjaani Rahon Mein. And then, once the warden’s footsteps faded away, someone far away in the dark would whisper the opening lines of Purani Jeans.

And suddenly, the tough boarding school didn’t feel as tough.

Boys who shouted commands on the parade ground were quietly wiping their eyes in their pillows.

Homesickness lived in every bed, but music made it bearable.

It wasn’t dramatic.

It wasn’t cinematic.

It was just… human.

The soft glow of a smuggled table lamp.

The slow clicking of a rewinding cassette.

The steady hum of a fan.

And in the background, voices breaking and healing at the same time.

Those nights taught me that childhood isn’t one memory — it’s a thousand tiny aches stitched together by the songs that soothed them.

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The Govinda Years — Sunburnt Walks, Spilled Sodas, and Unstoppable Laughter

Then came the Govinda era — an explosion of colour, comedy, and unapologetic madness.

I was in Class 9, Class 10.

Back home for vacations.

Bilaspur summers blazing like a furnace.

And our only mission was to somehow reach the nearest theatre — usually on foot, because rickshaw money was a luxury meant for real emergencies, not Govinda movies.

We walked through heat that made the roads look molten.

Shirts sticking to our backs.

Feet burning.

But as soon as the theatre doors opened and the smell of popcorn mixed with dust hit us, we felt alive again.

Coolie No.1.

Hero No.1.

Haseena Maan Jaayegi.

Dulhe Raja.

Govinda didn’t act.

He infected the audience with joy.

Inside those theatres, I laughed like life had no responsibilities in store for me.

And maybe it didn’t — at least not then.

Sometimes we forget that happiness can be cheap, sweaty, chaotic, and loud.

Govinda reminded us every single time.

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Films That Made Me Feel Older — Pardes, Dil To Pagal Hai, Sarfarosh, Dil Se

Somewhere between Class 10 and the slow slide into adolescence, something shifted.

The films weren’t just entertaining anymore.

They were… emotional experiences.

Pardes made me understand longing before I ever experienced it.

Even without knowing what NRI meant, I felt the distance.

Dil To Pagal Hai made destiny feel like a love language.

“Someone somewhere is made for you” — the most dangerous thing to say to a teenager.

Sarfarosh hit differently.

For the first time, patriotism wasn’t a textbook chapter — it felt personal.

And then came Dil Se.

Passion.

Pain.

Intensity.

Madness.

I didn’t fully grasp it at the time.

But I felt something shifting inside me — something raw, something restless.

Cinema wasn’t growing up.

I was.

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Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai, Lagaan, Dil Chahta Hai — The Three Pillars of Young Adulthood

By the time I reached 11th and 12th, the world had changed — and so had I.

Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai arrived like a thunderbolt.

I watched it seven times.

Seven full shows.

The theatre staff probably considered reserving a permanent seat for me.

It wasn’t just the romance.

It wasn’t just Hrithik.

It was the feeling of being young enough to believe in dramatic love stories and lucky enough to still be naïve.

Then came Lagaan — a masterclass in turning impossible odds into triumph.

We weren’t just watching a cricket match.

We were living the rebellion.

And then Dil Chahta Hai — the final awakening.

The first film that understood friendships exactly the way we felt them.

It made growing up look beautiful, painful, funny, and memorable — all at once.

These three films didn’t just entertain me.

They defined an age.

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NDA — Lakshya, Kal Ho Naa Ho & the Softness We Hid

January 2003.

NDA.

A world of boots, drills, punishments, early mornings, and late nights.

A world where emotions had to be controlled so tightly that sometimes you forgot you had them.

And yet, music always found a crack.

In the common room, Lakshya played on a small TV and instantly every cadet stood taller.

Not because we were told to.

Because the film mirrored the struggle inside us — direction, purpose, identity.

But there was another side too.

A quieter one.

Someone played Kal Ho Naa Ho late evening, and for those few minutes, all toughness dissolved.

One boy whispered,

“Mat chalao yeh gaana… parade se zyada toot jaayenge.”

No one laughed.

Everyone understood.

There’s a particular vulnerability in soldiers-in-the-making — a softness hidden so deep that only music can reach it.

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IMA — When Songs Became Breathing Spaces

IMA felt like a furnace.

You entered as iron and hoped to walk out as steel.

But even steel bends under pressure, and that’s when music became oxygen.

One evening, someone played “Tum Se Hi” from Jab We Met in the corridor.

Something shifted.

Dozens of cadets — exhausted, bruised, missing someone, missing home, missing versions of themselves they had left behind — froze and listened.

No one said a word.

No one joked.

No one mocked.

The song reminded all of us that beneath the uniforms and commands, we were still young men with dreams, fears, and fragile hearts.

That was IMA —

hard on the outside,

human on the inside.

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Early Army Life — Ilahi, Zinda & Lonely Roads That Teach You Everything

Army life is a mosaic of contradictions.

It gives you strength but demands it back.

It offers companionship but tests your solitude.

It gives pride but extracts a price.

Long drives through empty highways became my meditation.

The Gypsy’s engine humming.

Mountains rising.

Villages passing by like forgotten postcards.

On those drives, Ilahi felt like a promise.

Zinda felt like a reminder.

And Yun Hi Chala Chal felt like a mantra.

Sometimes you aren’t looking for answers.

You’re looking for something that lets you breathe again.

Music did that for me.

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Adulthood — The Films That Understood Me

As life grew more complex, cinema unexpectedly became simpler — or perhaps, more honest.

Queen taught me reinvention.

Barfi taught me innocence.

Kai Po Che taught me friendship again.

ZNMD taught me to pause, to breathe, to live deliberately.

Bareilly Ki Barfi brought small-town sweetness.

Vicky Donor brought fearless storytelling.

And then came Raanjhanaa — not as a film, but as a feeling.

It arrived like a soft wound.

The burning lanes of Benaras…

the reckless sincerity of first love…

the agony of devotion that refuses to die even when it should…

There was something disturbingly familiar in Kundan’s stubbornness — that belief that love itself was enough reason to exist. As adults, we deny it. But in some forgotten corner of our chest, that version of us still breathes.

Raanjhanaa didn’t ask for sympathy.

It demanded honesty.

It reminded me that love can be beautiful, foolish, painful, and pure — all at once.

And sometimes, the most difficult love stories aren’t the ones we lived — but the ones that hold a mirror to the versions of ourselves we outgrew.

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Baahubali — The Return of Childhood Awe

When I first watched Baahubali, I felt something strange —

a sensation I hadn’t felt since childhood.

Awe.

Pure, undiluted awe.

Like that first theatre visit with Amitabh.

Like discovering big emotions for the very first time.

It’s rare for adulthood to return you to the innocence of being small.

Baahubali did that.

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Andhadhun — Full Circle (2018)

I walked into Andhadhun expecting a good thriller.

I walked out feeling like I had seen something sharp, wicked, clever, and layered — a reminder of why I fell in love with cinema as a child.

From Maine Pyar Kiya

to Andhadhun,

the journey felt complete.

Cinema had grown with me.

And I had grown with it.

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Epilogue — What the Songs Really Did to Me

Today, when I rewind life, it doesn’t play in years.

It plays in songs.

Childhood was Saajan, Aashiqui, and Sadak leaking from neighbours’ homes.

School was Mohra and DDLJ whispered in assemblies and rain-soaked rickshaws with my mother.

Sainik School was Purani Jeans in the dorm and me singing unwillingly for seniors while hiding the fact that I loved singing.

NDA was Lakshya making our backs straighten automatically.

IMA was Tum Se Hi echoing through barracks.

The Army was Ilahi on long drives and Zinda during long nights.

Adulthood was Raanjhanaa, ZNMD, Queen, and Barfi telling me stories I didn’t know I needed.

And Andhadhun told me that cinema still has surprises left for people like us.

I didn’t grow up rich.

I didn’t grow up with privilege.

I didn’t grow up with luxury.

But I grew up with music.

And music is its own kind of wealth.

It carried me through lanes of Bilaspur.

Through punishments in Sainik School.

Through frustrations of NDA.

Through sacrifices of IMA.

Through silence of remote postings.

Through storms of adulthood.

And if I close my eyes even today —

just one old Hindi song can take me back to a version of me

who still believed life was something you watched,

not something you lived.

But life happened.

And music stayed.

Faithful.

Constant.

Unfailing.

If my life were a film,

the script may have been ordinary —

but the background score was extraordinary.

And sometimes,

that’s all a person really needs.