Music for me is sometimes, a bit too all-consuming. It floods me with emotions, and I surrender to it. It soothes me, it angers me, it saddens me, it makes me long for my partner, it makes me miss my childhood and sister, it makes me miss home and when it wants to, brightens my day.
My life events have core memory associations with certain music tracks. I am transported in time to those moments when I hear some of these songs. When I was 10, the summer of 69 was my anthem. Bryan Adams and my Keyboard lessons are inseparable. Avril Lavigne’s Sk8er Boi and Backstreet Boys’ Everybody reminds me of Limewire and downloading music over P2P platforms. I hear Patakha Guddi in my head through the voice of a dear friend as she sang it in her powerful tone in the corridors of our undergraduate college hostel.
Khoj by When Chai Met Toast makes me cry every time for I first heard it in February 2020, and played it on repeat over that summer of pandemic isolation. That summer took a lot away from me, I lost my dad, I lost my carefree attitude, and I lost a little bit of my will to live. Khoj embodies all those strong, sad emotions in its melody.
My partner and I discovered each other on a different continent to the tune of Wake me up by Avicii. We broke up for a brief period and this song continues to haunt me even though we ended up getting married.
That leads me to Prateek Kuhad. I don’t remember when I first heard his song but it was definitely because my partner wanted me to listen to him. This was before he became a mainstream artist, adored by thousands of fans in India and globally (an episode of Ted Lasso features his song in an intense cliffhanger, and Barack Obama included him in his annual list of favorite music).
Back then, I would consider Hindi music beneath my level and look down upon Indie artists. Prateek Kuhad, was somewhat of a forced, for love, love. He grew on me.
In some of his initial songs, I found it odd that Prateek Kuhad would take minute pauses between every word in his song. Lyrics didn’t flow smoothly, they were a string of words uttered one after the other rather than the harmonic transition between words that was the norm. However, my partner who is a trained pianist sings it in a similar fashion and it sounded wonderful in his voice. I was hooked.
His song, Tum Jab Pass, with a video of two teenage lovers, separated by continents was very relatable. Tum Jab Pass was the music to my years of a long-distance relationship. Prateek Kuhad and his sweet yet sexy voice singing about love kept our love alive. I just had to close my eyes and I would hear my partner singing Prateek Kuhad in my ears and I would be fantasizing about us living under the same roof and waking up to Prateek Kuhad’s music. It was a world of feel-good lyrics keeping me hopeful, warm and fuzzy. “Babe, Did you take my heart?” my partner would ask, and I would fervently agree.
When we finally moved in together, Prateek Kuhad continues to be intertwined with our love and day-to-day activities. Every other morning, Alexa wakes us up to his music. We love asking each other, “Do you have a 100 words for me?
‘Cause I have only three”.
Given this, we were overjoyed to learn that he was performing in our city. We had attempted to watch him live twice in the past, where I even wrote a long-winding mail to his manager begging for tickets to his sold-out concert. The pandemic turned out to be a party pooper in those instances.
I wanted this concert to be just our thing. Prateek Kuhad was unfortunately way too popular among friends to be an exclusive outing of just the two of us. For a brief time though, it was just me, my partner and Prateek Kuhad singing Tum Jab Pass, for us. I felt joyful and emotional and it reminded me of how much I had to sacrifice for this moment to happen.
Prateek Kuhad’s personality is reflected in his music. He was shy, awkward, introverted, and didn’t prefer to speak and let his music do all the talking. He wouldn’t look up when the audience screamed for his attention and would shyly smile at the floor at the adulation. The venue was filled with slow-dancing couples being serenaded by Prateek Kuhad and he seemed secretly happy for being able to wield his voice to create some magic and love in the air.
Post-concert, we waited by the band’s tour bus to take a photo with him. He obliged, still shy, still awkward, but still glad to be meeting us for he understood, without a lot of words being conveyed that he had touched our lives.