Main phir bhi tum ko chahunga

Main phir bhi tum ko chahunga. A cousin came home. He's a lot younger. Around my daughter's age. He had work in Bangalore. He stayed with us. That's absolutely fine. Young man at home brings a certain ebullience to the environment. He used to hear one song everyday. Loudly. Attentively. Main phir bhi tum ko chahunga. At first I thought it's a song. He likes it. So be it. Then no, I had misunderstood. It was a state of life. It was his ringtone too. He nearly closed his eyes when he heard the song. I couldn't blame him. We did the same things with "Neele Neele ambar pe" back in time. So a few days passed by. There were these ads coming on TV during the ad breaks of IPL. Amazon Echo had a nice ad. A boy, a girl and a grandma. The girl and the grandma are teasing the boy and Amazon Echo lives up the moment with a song. Main phir bhi tum ko chahunga. And then Beena, the grandma smiles. Too many things happen at the same time to me. One, Beena was a heroine in the 80s and was Anil Kapoor's love interest in a film. Brilliant smile she had and still has. I am reminded of my age. I am also pleased to know that a pure bred love song from Hindi cinema still prevails among all the Clarksons and Athenas and Katys. I am very displeased to know that boys secretly love this self flagellation of a song. Main phir bhi tum ko chahunga. I still don't remember the film it's from. Google helpfully tells me that it's from Half Girlfriend. What did I expect? Illustrious men behind this miracle. Chetan Bhagat, the writer of the book. Arjun Kapoor, the actor. Then Arijit Singh. Women like him for obvious reasons and that's completely okay with me. Long sighs. Sonorous. Languid singing. Women feeling the comfort of intimacy with his ballads. All very fine. Men. How does Arijit figure in their heads. Like a typical Kishore or even Sanu enthusiast, I debunked him for a while. Naah, every song similar. That he disproved over the past couple of years. Same scales. He tried some stuff with Bhansali with different scales that I listened to the other day and he looked quite accomplished. But what's it that has clicked with men? After seeing the cousin it came to me. Lost loves. Boys become men over lost loves. We had our "Meri bheegi bheegi si" and they have "Main phir bhi tum ko chahunga". If there's a Kannada version, please relay to Yeddy. He wants to sing it to that chair. CM's chair.