30 years of a lovely moment in life.

1988. I am sitting on a culvert. My close friend is standing beside me. It's dusk. The magical time between the day and the night. Around 6.30 pm. A song floats in the air. Ghazab ka hai din socho Zara. We both fall silent and hear the song coming to us quite clearly through the still night. It finishes. He says "Anand Milind" and I say "Yeah". We both keep quiet. He's got to go back and rejoin his college for the fifth semester. I am done with college. My third year exams were just over the day before and I had arrived that very day from Hyderabad. Small window of opportunity that we both had and could meet each other before we both left town again the next day. Me to get a job. He to finish his education. But the mind wasn't on ourselves and our lives. It was on a young man with a red bike and a young smiling woman who had said "wow" on screen. Aamir. Juhi. It was a summer of love. So many young men and women had ceased living an ordinary life and dared to dream that love was possible and standing up to oppressive families was highly possible too. So many young men and women went off on those surreptitious rides to the countryside on a red bike. Preferably, Ind - Suzuki. Like the lovers in the film. The songs were on everyone's lips. Papa kehte Hain and the aforesaid Gazab ka hai din were ruling the charts. The parents dismissed off the film with a puny hero with limited acting skills and a hackeneyed love story as a flash in a pan. But they didn't know of the feelings it created in us. I was on a double high. The young lady with whom I had gone to see the film a week before in the middle of my exams had casually commented that I looked like the hero on screen. I spent an extraordinary five minutes more in front of a pocket sized mirror when I got back to my room that day. And as soon as I got back to the parental home, another young lady repeated the compliment that morning. Exultation was an understatement. We sat and discussed the film. Actually, it was the first time I was discussing the film rather nicely and in detail. Those hurried snatches of brief discussions in college, with mates barely interested in anything besides Marketing management (it was one of our last exams and no one seemed to have studied anything), were unfulfilling. We departed. Quietly. We knew we wouldn't be seeing each other for a long time. We didn't, but that's another story altogether. Yet we weren't sad. For there was.. Qayamat se Qayamat Tak. Today, it's exactly 30 years to the day. The long sighs and the shy smiles across the rooms are remembered. Yes people, it was the summer of love. Gazab ka hai din socho Zara. And to think that our kids might think it's a Zara ad. Sillies!! #30yearsOfQSQT