Today, in a taxi, I heard a song on the radio that I had first heard while in a car many years ago. It was 1999; we were going to the Howrah station; it was morning; it was summer; and I liked the song from the moment it started. It was from a movie called Mann. It (I had later seen) had Rani Mukherjee and Aamir Khan dancing (when he still did dance in movies instead of wearing a permanent frown). Today, I still knew all the words.

There's something about moments created by songs while travelling in a car. Moments in which there's just me, the world moving past my window, and the song. I don't consciously form these moments; they form themselves. And they stay on inside me somewhere, only to surface months, maybe years, maybe decades later.

My first such moment was a late winter night in the December of 1990; a long drive to the airport in an Ambassador (what else?!); the window up, against the chilling wind; the moon up, speeding along with the car, bouncing over the tops of trees; my head resting against the window, me looking up and following the moon. Chaandi raat hai, tu mere saath hai was playing on the car deck. I knew it was Baaghi, with Salman Khan and a rather scandalously dressed Nagma. I didn't know what Baaghi meant, what most of the words of the song meant, what the movie was about. What I did know was I loved that moment. I don't have a clue what happened before or after it.

There have been a few more of these moments over the years. Not many though. For although all the components have been there--a song, a car, travel--it's probably me who was somewhere else; not quite there.