Being Human

Before you read any further, let me tell you that this post is not about me defending Salman Khan and taking a stand for him, or about how justice has prevailed and finally the guilty is aptly sentenced. And no, I won't ridicule Bollywood or the Bhai fanatics for crying out loud. I also won't be amongst the rational beings who are in favor of today's sequence of events. However, it is something that got the machinery in my cranium rolling, hence the title.

"To err is Human, to forgive is divine"

As creatures with a conscience, we believe in doing good. We have our perspective about what is right and wrong. We try not to hurt anyone. The word "humanitarian" itself means concerned with or seeking the welfare of other humans. 

However, knowingly or unknowingly, we do go awry. It is the tendency of humans, to make mistakes. No matter how good you are, nobody is perfect. We all err, we all sin. Yes, the great things you do are acknowledged, but there is no escaping your wrongs. What is wrong is wrong, and what is right is right. And apologies are not always enough. Penance and amends may not all suffice.

The greatest torment than anything else is your own guilt, killing you from within. You die a little inside everyday. You are living, yet you aren't. Two wrongs don't make one right. The truth, no matter how subjective truth can be, is you pay for everything you do. Good, bad or ugly whatever you do, it all comes at a price. Everything has its consequences, which could be anything from serving time in jail, or losing a friend or self-destruction. You could be the most awesome person on the planet, but mistakes do cost.

But that doesn't mean that we start living with our mistakes. Humanly speaking, we set out to right the wrong. Sometimes, we can't do about anything that has happened, So, what do we do then? We accept our mistakes, and we try to get better. To quote Lady Violet Crawley from Downtown Abbey, "When things go wrong, you don't wish that they didn't happen. Instead, you try to minimize the damage". This of course doesn't mean that we end up driving over people on the footpath, and seek temporary residence in jail, or go on a mistake-making spree. We learn from our past errors, and do not repeat them again. We learn, we become better, we make newer and better mistakes, and most importantly, WE MOVE ON AND LIVE.

Angrezi Beat Pe

India is a country obsessed with Bollywood and its music. Most of us 90's kids grew up listening to our share of filmy music, to which we danced every year on our school annual day, with the same signature step intact. Also, there were so many solo artistes releasing their albums in those years, and unlike today, they were actually pretty popular back then. Falguni was the ultimate babe belting out choodi jo khanki, and Euphoria was the coolest band on the planet. And then came the era of remixes, where suddenly we had smoking hot babes in even hotter clothes gyrating their hips on old tracks, but with a twist greater than their thumkas. Deepal Shaw (or whatever her name was), and not Sunny Leone, was the Baby Doll dancing to Kabhi aar Kabhi Paar, and DJ Suketu and DJ Aqeel were suddenly the most-wanted people in the industry. We barely had any exposure to Western music. Our parents would never let us watch MTV, and Internet was a pure luxury. Our pure source for English music was "iTV", a cable channel, who's number we dialed every afternoon, in this mad pursuit of wanting to listen to that one English track by pressing all the buttons on our landline phone in sequence, within 60 seconds. And then we'd call up multiple times and play the same songs again and again, to make some sense out of the alien language that we were listening to, and then act all cool in front of our friends at school. And it didn't matter if the song was in English or Spanish. Gora people dancing on TV meant, the song has to be English. So, here's a list of 10 so-called English songs, that most of us grew up listening to.

1) Celine Dion - My Heart Will Go On

This could possibly be the first English number that all of us must have heard in our life and also the first English movie that we ever watched (second closest is Baby's Day Out). Anybody could identify the Titanic track, just the moment it started, thanks to the music that we all had so grown used to listening to. And, the biggest gift of this song to the world, was the evergreen Titanic pose!

2) Aqua - Barbie Girl

The most annoying song of all times, was once on the lips of every girl. Yes women, we can all shed two tears out of embarrassment now.

3) Las Ketchup - The Ketchup Song

This song took us all by storm, and suddenly we were all trying to mouth the lyrics, even though we didn't understand shit, and were famously doing the steps, like a boss. Asereje ja de je *random silly words just to sound in tune* buidipi!

4) Any Vengaboys song

We heard songs by The Vengaboys mostly during some shaadi sangeet or while attending a party. More than the original tracks, these songs were usually heard in their remixed version, clubbed along with Bolo Tara Ra or Rangeelo Mhaaro Dholna. I'm sure everyone has heard We're going to Ibiza, Boom Boom Boom, We like to Party, My heart goes sha la la la or the all-time famous BRAZIL!

5) Enrique - Bailamos

Before we all got introduced to Escape, Addicted, Be with you or Love to see you cry, Bailamos was the song most synonymous to Enrique. Spanish music with the sexiest voice, Enrique had us all crooning along with him.

6) Blue - One Love / All Rise

These are probably the only two songs that everyone ever heard by Blue. We all felt so full of swag singing One Love along with our friends, and our folks at Bollywood liked it so much that they had Shaan doing a version of it!

7) Ricky Martin - Un Dos Tres

God knows what the lyrics are, but the energy of this song doesn't fail to amaze you till date!

8) Queen - We will Rock You

Probably the only song we knew back then with such a rebellious tone, we will rock you was an anthem in itself.

9) Any Backstreet Boys Song

Needless to say, none of us could've grown up without listening to Backstreet. Each song triggers some sort of memory, and makes us go all emotional. Quit Playing Games, Everybody, Show me the meaning, As long as you love me, I want it that way, The call... Backstreet Boys weren't a band to our generation, they were a way of life.

10) Bryan Adams - Summer of 69

Yes, we'll love this song till the day we die.

"And if I had the choice,
Yeah, I'd always wanna be there
Those were the best days of my life!"