Orange County is the happiest sad song Gorillaz have made, with a Damon Albarn vocal that sounds like it's coming from another room.

Six years of the same Maharashtrian thali at Shabri on Ganesh Chaturthi, and the year they capped the modak at one.

Taal, A.R. Rahman and a white Ambassador on a family holiday to Hyderabad, winter 1999. The last cassette I remember, and it wasn't even ours.

A forced holiday turned into 160 kilometres through Saswad and Panvadi Ghat on the Royal Enfield Interceptor 650, and an answer to a question I'd been asking for years.

A drunken McDonald's purchase in Dalian, a ninja who turned out to be Red-Haired Shanks, and nine years of him riding in my backpack.

A personal look at ghazals, Jagjit Singh, Ghulam Ali and Urdu poetry, and how songs like Koi Fariyaad and Yeh Dil Yeh Pagal Dil made the timeless beauty of ghazals part of my life.