18.02.2026
S: In the love songs of the Hindi films, the male lover is always telling the woman lover that he will bring her the moon and the stars.
A: A lover’s conceit?
S: Of course, literally speaking, he can never bring her the moon and the stars.
A: True. And what about her? Does she ever offer to bring the male lover the moon and the stars?
S: I’ve never heard it.
A: Why talk of the moon and the stars? We are on earth?
S: What would you like him to say? This is poetry. And it has its own meaning.
A: Which is?
S: That the lover will bring his beloved heaven.
A: Absolute falsity.
S: You lack the spirit of romance. It is entirely true. He will bring her the moon and the stars.
A: In what sense.
S: He will bring her heaven upon earth. That is what love is.
A: You have too much of the spirit of romance.
S: Romance jostles with pessimism and cynicism. Love can be entirely hell and the complete opposite of heaven.
A: So why do you support the poetry in these Hindi film songs?
S: Without love, what else is there? Life is insipid and bland without love. It is love that gives life its character.
A: Says you. There are plenty around that won’t love and will never be willing to love.
S: Bland food sells in copious quantities in the supermarkets. Those with the bland tastes of the bland cannot stomach the taste or the food of life which is love.
A: It always veers off into criticism.
S: You criticise love. I criticise the lack of love and what masquerades as love when it is hate. I am Indian. I am the philosopher of love. I am the lover. I am one that lives through the storm and the fire.
A: What song would you sing? What words?
S: Forever I have sought the spark inside the ice/
Forever I have sought the freedom in the vice/
When you look at me with this desire/
Inside consumes the unquenchable fire
diary of a lone man 