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Desi Thoughts

By Anil

There are moments in life that don’t seem significant at first. Like pressing play on a song. Just a simple action. No expectations. And then the music starts, and everything shifts. That’s what happened the first time I heard Desi Thoughts by A.R. Rahman.

It was years ago, during Million Dollar Arm. The scene was unfolding, but I wasn’t really watching. I was feeling. Because the music wasn’t just background—it was speaking. Without words, without force. Just slipping into the spaces inside me that I hadn’t noticed were empty.

I forgot about it for a while. Then one day, I watched Prasanna’s Berklee performance of it, and it was like the universe whispered, Remember? And suddenly, I did. That melody, those rhythms, the way the track breathes between past and future, tradition and innovation. It’s not just a song—it’s a landscape. A journey. A feeling you can’t quite name but never want to lose.

There’s something about Rahman’s music that makes time feel irrelevant. He layers sound in a way that pulls you out of where you are and places you somewhere else. Somewhere where thoughts stretch and emotions echo. Somewhere between longing and peace. 

The absence of lyrics in Desi Thoughts makes it even more intimate. There’s nothing to tell you how to feel, no prescribed meaning. Just space. Space to reflect, to imagine, to get lost. It’s the kind of song that turns a quiet evening into a moment of self-discovery, a mundane drive into a cinematic experience, a simple memory into something sacred.

Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to it. Because no matter how many times I listen, it never sounds exactly the same. Some days, it feels like nostalgia. Other days, like possibility. But always, it feels like something—something deep, something true, something that lingers long after the last note fades.

So if you ever find yourself needing to escape without leaving, to feel without explanation, to lose yourself just to find a little more of who you are—press play. Let it take you. And don’t be surprised if you come out the other side just a little different than before.

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