What’s in a Song?

IT IS NOT EVERY DAY thatyoufindyourself on a yacht in Manhattan harbour, celebrating your aunt’s 80th birthday, singing a Hindustani thumri while the skyline of New York glitters in applause. But then again, it is not every day that you have an aunt like my Vinita bua.

The song was “Saavan Bito Jai Piharwa”, set in Raag Khamaj, a piece I have been learning under the guidance of my teacher, Marina Ahmed. A thumri of longing and beauty, it has lived in my bones for some time. But last night, it took flight. Because when my bua sings it, the thumri is no longer just music. It becomes a thread in a much larger fabric—woven across generations of our family, carrying memory, mischief, melody, and love.

Music has always lived in our house. My grandmother and her legendary singing, my bua’s mother who sang with All India Radio, her voice a treasure that still lingers in memory. But this song was never hers. It is my bua’s. Her voice, warm and wilful, mischievous and magnetic, has made it her own.

So there we were, crossing the harbour, singing together. Manhattan receded into mist and light, and India—noisy, tender, impossible India—was alive in the middle of the Hudson. Our family’s history sat with us at the table: the grandmother who once sang in Lucknow studios, the aunts and uncles we have lost but still invoke with laughter, the siblings and cousins scattered across continents. They all seemed present in that refrain, “Saavan bito jai piharwa, mann mera ghabraaye…”

This is the secret of music: it bends geography. The ghats of Varanasi, the wide streets of Delhi, the RSD home in Kurwaar— all of them travelled quietly with us on that boat. Bua herself has carried these places inside her. From Lucknow to Allahabad, Varanasi to Delhi, Gurugram to Washington, she has made homes wherever she has gone, filling them with the unmistakable scents and sounds, the simmer and sizzle of family.

At 80, my bua remains radiant. She sings, she dances, she cooks with a ferocity that defeats fatigue, she gardens, she welcomes, she cares. Her husband, my Guggu phupaji, a professor at St Stephen’s, worshipped her with a photographer’s eye. His lens would have caught her smile that night, but it was his devotion that taught us how to see her.

And then there is the clan—cousins, in-laws, children, grandchildren, and now even their partners, like Axel, Sanjana’s significant other, folded in with love. Families like ours are never quiet; they are robust, raucous, unruly, and radiant. They stretch across continents but gather in an instant, as if sound carries faster than flight.

Which is why this song mattered so much. When bua and I sang it together—teacher and student, aunt and nephew, India and America, past and present—it stopped being a thumri of separation. It became one of presence. Of togetherness. Of India alive in exile, shimmering on the Hudson, humming in our throats.

“Pyaar tumhe kitna karte hain, tum yeh samajh nahi paaoge…” (You’ll never quite know how much I love you). Last night, as my bua sang, as the water glistened and the city gleamed, I understood. Love cannot be measured, only lived, and in that moment it felt as if every elder, every cousin, every memory was singing with us.

This was not just her song. It was our song. A family’s inheritance. India, alive and rich, sailed with us through New York harbour. And for once, the rains of saavan did not pass us by. They blessed us instead, lavishly, luminously, like music itself.

 

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