How do you write a thank you note to music?

A few weeks ago, I caught a viral infection that was going around (so far as I can see, it's always going around, and every time it comes within catching distance, I seem to dive at it), and when it went away, it left behind a sort of racking cough. I'd have these long coughing fits, and each one simply worsened the state of my throat so that the next attack was even longer and more painful. The end result, after a few days of this, was that I could barely speak without hurting. Pretty irritating, I tell you.

So I was sitting in front of the TV, desultorily clicking on the remote, when I saw some new Indipop group on one of the channels. I'd normally keep clicking on, but what they were singing made me pause. It was a cover of "Aasmaan ke paar shaayad" from the soundtrack of the movie "Rockford".

It's one of those songs that I'd sung along with a couple of friends at IIMC. Ratul would take the lead, and Shantanu and I would do the backing vocals. For some reason, we'd end up doing it towards the end of an all-night jam session, so the song is forever associated with sunrise in my mind.

Somewhere in the interlude, there's this section that goes "Hey hey hey, ho ho ho" - I know, it doesn't tell you anything about how it sounds. Three people are required to sing it - the harmony sounds quite good if it's done right.

So anyway, when this section came on, for a moment, I didn't remember that I had a sore throat, or that it hurt to talk, or that the next coughing fit was probably 15 seconds away. I just sang the harmony part I used to do when we did this song. Hey hey hey, ho ho ho...

Sure, it hurt like hell, and I couldn't stop coughing for a while. But for a moment there, somewhere in my head, it didn't matter. It was like, there was a guy who could sing, and he woke up when he heard this song, and to my surprise, he was the same as he used to be, even though he hadn't sung in a while and it wasn't the practical thing to try right then.

Yeah, I know I'm babbling. I don't know if you, whoever you are that's reading this, can see what I'm getting at. Frankly, it doesn't really matter. Anyway, what I wanted to say was:

Thank you, music. Thank you, Ratul and Shantanu. Thank you, JBS-12C. Thank you, India. Thank you, providence. Thank you, disillusionment. No wait...