I was listening to music at work yesterday when iMusic picked one of those old songs Mazhavil Kodiyil from Aniyan Bava Chettan Bava. A song with that simple harmony in the chorus. And it made me think.

There was a time when we waited for newspapers, interested only in the cinema page. We would skim through it in detail, checking from Asianet to Surya to Doordarshan to Kairali, just to see which movie was playing on Saturday, Sunday, or on any day off. And once you spotted one, waiting for that exact time to arrive. Running to the washroom before it started, timing everything around commercial breaks, taking a pillow, spreading yourself out on the floor, and then watching it while lying there. 

Sometimes the movie itself hardly mattered. You may have watched it before, or missed the first twenty minutes, or joined halfway through. But somehow it still felt exciting. Maybe because we couldn’t choose. We received what came to us. And in that waiting there was a strange kind of happiness

Funny how an old song can bring back not just memories, but entire ways of living.