What we loved was not meant to be loved. It was the stuff of secondhand embarrassment, a kind of culture that’s all cringe and cliché. We would watch B grade Hindi films in our parents’ absence, glued to late-night radio listening to all shades of romantic, sleazy Hindi movie songs, devouring books that would never be called literature. Growing up in a small city, there were no grand cultural spaces, no spotlights to be found. In a way I had to make my own culture, to find my own niche, to love the things, I would later realize I was supposed to be ashamed of.

Parents gave no pocket money, hence whenever I found some, or was gifted any, I’d run to the closest cassette store to buy the recent music album or buy the most pink-ishly decorative looking scholastic book from the school fair. It almost always felt that one was outside of culture. Trying to grasp at something in the dark.