Any good poet should be able to touch your heart – but Shiv Kumar Batalvi had the ability to rip it out of your chest, and then place it back there gently.

The first time I met Amrita Pritam, she told me that a smoke is one of the few pleasures of life. I knew then that Amrita Pritam was the writer – and the woman – I wanted to be.

Seventy years after Independence, some choose to rewrite history. We chose to rewrite the alphabet. Presenting a brand-new, updated A to Z for India at 70

The ultimate DISS is here. Doordarshan Vs Netflix | Rap Battle ft. Chote Miyan & Deeptanshu Mokashi. Drop your comments on who is winning the Rap Battle!

If there were to be a physical manifestation of what “being timeless” looks like, Mohammed Rafi would be it. “Tribute to Mohammed Rafi” is a permanent fixture in most taxis in Mumbai and you’ll find his famous classics on the playlist of a backpacking hipster in Himachal.

Sheetal Sathe and Sachin Mali were declared Naxalites in 2011 for giving voice to the Dalit community. They’ve paid a heavy price, but they continue to sing their songs of resistance.

Taylor Swift is the modern queen of yearning, offering up a folk fantasy for a new generation in “evermore”. Who better to come forward as the voice of 2020, a year that we have all lived in the subjunctive tense, thinking of what might have been?

Sahir Ludhianvi and Amrita Pritam’s tale encompassed euphoria, misery, and everything in between. Yet, when the vagaries of life drew them apart, they chose to craft an alternative reality with another – a love that is liberating. When I first fell in love with a girl, a love that I knew would go nowhere, it was Sahir’s words that I turned to.

Lata Mangeshkar’s voice defined my grandmother’s youth. I belong to a generation that often rejects new Hindi film chartbusters in favour of indie and international music. Yet, after the last shot is downed and the last EDM track played, it is Tai’s tender “Lag Jaa Gale” that can still make a millennial emotional at four in the morning.

In a Tamil Brahmin household, mornings aren’t complete without the holy trinity of filter coffee, The Hindu, and MS Subbulakshmi’s “Suprabhatam”.

Dushyant Kumar’s poetry freed me from the cage of square cubicles and straight lives that the Gulzar School of poetry, dripping with flowery dew and the warmth of unreality, never could. My struggles were personal, and so it turned out was the language of my resistance, learned through his poetry, so irregular and unlike anything you’d have come across.

Singer-songwriter Aarya to play some original music, and a special cover decided by you.

I began my first job as a presenter for Yuva Bharati, the AIR’s “youthful” section, in the late ’90s. The studios were nothing like the zany spaces of Tumhari Sullu but more like retro bunkers from a sci-fi movie set. And there were massive BBC books that guided us on how to pronounce Beethoven and Tchaikovsky.

I grew up on my mother’s radio-ordained playlist of Lata Mangeshkar and Mohd Rafi. But as a teenager, when every girl in school fawned over the Jonas Brothers and Taylor Swift, I, too embarrassed to ask my classmates the names of the songs they were singing, turned to Google. It eventually dawned on me: I didn’t care about fitting in.

No matter what your mood, there’s a Bappi Da composition to go with it. Our desi disco legend is absolutely irreplaceable. Today is his birthday and I don’t know about you, but I’ll be dancing – unironically – to “Koi yahan aha nache nache”.

In every Indian gathering of intoxicated people, someone has to play “Summer of ’69”. I’ll bet you my Aadhaar number that there’ll come a point when everyone is triumphantly screaming, “Those were the BEST DAYS of my life!” That's the magic of #BryanAdams.

Listen to the original soundtrack of Jai Bhim: The Beats of Dalit Resistance, a musical-documentary on singers Sheetal Sathe and Sachin Mali, who were declared Naxalites in 2011 for giving voice to the Dalit community.

There is a tribe of parents that subjects their guests to the talent of their kids, even when said guests have no desire to be subjected. My parents were the leaders of that tribe.