I dedicate this piece to Ari… For, without his insistence to go to that night event, I would not have met thee…
HOW I MET THEE
Someone like you entering into my life, one surreal scene from one poem of Hsin Ch'i-chi (辛棄疾) steps out into reality like a fairy. It was a Friday night, specifically, October 9th. I remember it well. In the courtyard of the Pasadena Asia Pacific Museum a Pakistani cultural event was taking place. There were booths, there were crowds – not too many - and trees decorated in Christmassy lights. Of course, light drinks and snacks to showcase the event were also served.
It was then that… An angelic voice wafted through the music background. To one whose singing voice is like a cow being pulled up a tree, my heart stirred, soaring my soul to the very heavens. Even with two left feet, my legs began to tinker-toe on their own, my head swayed with the autonomous body movements; harkening back to my Disco days… So, this old body still has some life left in this husk.
You
have brought my youth momentarily back even though I did not understand a
single word you sang. You are my time machine. Since I do not imbibe any alcohol – you, my
Methe of dreams. I did not wish to leave thee, until your voice faded away and
only then came Theodon and Aletheia beckoning…
No
matter, with our parting, I hid a smug smile for I had gathered enough to seek
thee out on a night with just the two of us. I want to know you and understand your words…
東風夜放花千樹，One spring night, the East Wind releases blooms of light of a thousand trees,
更吹落, Blowing in sway
星如雨. Like falling stars.
寶馬雕車香滿路, Exquisitely ornamented horses and carved carriages fill the roads in fragrance,
鳳簫聲動， So lively are the sounds from the phoenix-shaped panpipes,
玉壺光轉， So scintillating is the light as the jade jug turns,
一夜魚龍舞. All night long, fish and dragon designs dance around the lanterns.
蛾兒雪柳黃金縷，Moth-shaped danglers of wispy silver and golden threads,
笑語盈盈暗香去. Smiles and laughter fill the air and their faint fragrance disappears as they
went by,
眾裡尋他千百度, Amongst the crowds, I search for thee from a thousand-hundred angles,
驀然回首, When suddenly my head turned,
那人卻在, There — that person DO exist!
燈火闌珊處. In that corner of dimmed lantern lights…
That
fateful night finally cometh. It is now
October 14th. I had found you. It was 3am in the morning. The darkened room was quiet. With headphones in place, I clicked and you
came into my being. Your melody is as
intoxicating as when I first met you. I
could not tinker-toe as I was seated. However,
my head and shoulders responded in rhythm and yet I still could not make out
what you were singing. Nonetheless, my
soul swayed not to the heavens but back into the musty corners of my mind. Ah… How wonderful youth can be. Thanks. You gave me hope and an insatiable yearning. I had finally crossed that river of time. From your universal language of music, I could
only imagine. You have given me life
once more.
Out of our union of repeated listening, out came this work of love…
江南錦繡千秋月 Brocade-resplendent – Lands, south of the river is
a moon of a thousand autumns.
北漠飛沙萬里風 Cometh
the ten-thousand-mile wind speeding flying sands crossing the North Desert,
蠻下火烽孤淒戶 Descending
barbarians – lonely are the fire and the beacons, households of sorrow.
落花未滿淚先紅 Buds
not yet bloomed had fallen, even before tears could turn red.
The result is quite unexpected. One cannot control one’s emotion nor inspiration. My heart is still restless, your mystery words piqued me curiouser. I need to find out more and to know you better. This is what true love is. You, the mysterious maiden from far-off lands — lands I had not even dared to think of venturing out to. You - whom had my eyes opened as I watched your movements with your storytelling eyes, alluring me to the lands of magic carpets and djinns.
I found your printed words, but alas, in Hindi — all Greek to me. Wait a minute! We are not Stone Age denizens. We have the internet; we have AI tools at our fingertips. So, thanks to DeepSeek, each line's meaning magically appeared with each scroll. Your words were like a spell, enchanting me to no end. I was mesmerized by each word — displaying direct raw emotion. I was being made love to! I did not want it to end and so the repeat button was clicked…
I felt like Psyche being visited by an unseen Eros. Blame me not! A mortal born with insatiable curiosity that kills the cat. I need to know the real you. Again, with the help of today’s instantaneous access to information, I finally pinned your name down – Aha! You are Nazia Hassan! A Pakistani born Indian. Now I realize the reason my first poem is so themed, subconsciously guided by your inspiration – the conflicts between your peoples - framed in a traditional Chinese poem setting.
“Someone like you entering into my life.” You sang, giving me your best and I can do no less but to translate your words lovingly into the highest level of Chinese literary form, a Tang-era styled truncated poem. As my mind wandered off into that realm of long ago, too soon I find that it is impossible to do so - Our cultures are too disparate; a gulf too wide to span across. Your direct openness is frowned upon in my poetic form where obliqueness and inference is considered superior. To do so in the modern form is to insult thee. In the end this is my love in reciprocity not by translation but a creation from the core of your words and emotions…
1 春臨苑至梅花妙 Spring approacheth the garden - plum blossoms
exquisite,
2 得降君臨妾一生
To have my lord descend into the life of this maid…
3 非必只為顏容絕
‘Tis not only for peerless outer beauty and inner bearing,
4 鎖心一體有誰爭
But one heart locked in togetherness – who then can vie with me?
Now that I have your voice, your words — understood by proxy, my heart is more impassioned than ever, and my curiosity knew no bounds. To satiate that hunger is to pin a face for both of them. Once more I rely on modernity, and at last I have located the music video. I know that sirenic voice is yours — and that buxom seductress is definitely not. You were only the playback singer. It matters not — just a face to go by now that the uncontrolled urge is here to stand up and dance with thee.
A headphone-bearing swirling dervish I had become. In joy under the imagined moonlight, I courted thee while your arms beckoned me to your titillating curves in that tight glittering slinky gown of red and the strategically placed hibiscus in your hair. Your bewitching eyes transmitted more than your words. I am lost. Not even a gay man could avert his eyes away from your moves. You have lifted my soul from my room into the heights of the night sky. I am feverish, yet that eternal flame burns purity in my brain. From this ecstasy of non-stop playing, cometh a new phoenix born from the soon-to-be ashes of my thoughts — another poem!
孟湯對答
水流滴落山溪去 The waters runneth smoothly, yet splatters occur as
the brook floweth away,
風盡飛霜雪影愁
The winds scatter thoroughly the swirling frost, only shadows of the snow in
sorrow
瓊液樽中曾玉貴
Once the jasper elixir in the goblet was jade precious,
對杯莫說舊庭秋 Now
facing the cup, please speak not of the old courtyard’s autumn.
Dawn is breaking, the stars and the River are fading… Still, I want to clasp your hands in dance. I don’t want anything to end. But suddenly found myself in front of the video with your arms still beckoning to me, your voice never stopped, your hypnotic hips… Did you leave me or still sending the invitation? I am confused even though I know myself — I seek no solace from alcohol but from poetry creation.
窗前雨滴紛霏罩 Before the window, rain falls haphazardly in caging
mistiness,
一陣風來柳葉迎
A guest of wind and the willow leaves sway in welcome.
嗟盡凡塵壺酒冷
Having sighed my fill over the dusty mortal world, the jug of wine had gone
cold.
浮生醉夢豈分明
How could an anchorless life, a drunken dream be different?
And yet… And yet I am jealous of the knife – the handsome hero in the video. Why can't I be him? And there, perhaps an occasional peek into the video and then a snip-snip.
This is how I met her – my own private 16mm Shrine.
EPILOGUE
It is now 2:30pm Oct 17th. I had completed my rantings on paper. I have headphones on me. The irresistible urge within me had my will subdued. Once more for a peek - not into the video but the sound file I had extracted from it. It is your voice, I realized — not the face — that I yearned for.
Twenty or more years later… “Where I will be?”, “Where or how will I end?” No longer mattered. Your voice will drift into my last moments to lift my spirit into the stars and continue with our dance.
In the end, snips-snips no more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xin_Qiji
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc4oZ-l3-Q8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMTEuX46XTc&list=RDSMTEuX46XTc&start_radio=1
(Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovu5FepCzcc (Movie)
Wednesday,
October 14, 2026
Aap Jaisa Koi
The song the narrator hears that night, and later translates line by line with DeepSeek, is "Aap Jaisa Koi" ("Someone Like You"), sung by Nazia Hassan for the 1980 film Qurbani. Music by Biddu, lyrics by Indeevar. Nazia Hassan recorded it at fifteen years old, and it became her breakthrough — the song that made her the first South Asian pop star, and one of the youngest singers ever to top the Indian charts.
The
line the essay quotes "Someone like you entering into my life" is the song's opening and recurring plea. The film's context is a love song; the essay's
context is a voice entering a life.
The Lyrics
Aap jaisa koi meri zindagi mein aaye Someone like you should come into my life
To baat ban jaaye Then things
would be complete
Haan haan baat ban jaaye Yes,
yes, things would be complete
Aap
jaisa koi meri zindagi mein aaye Someone like you should
come into my life
To baat ban jaaye Then things
would be complete
Haan haan baat ban jaaye Yes,
yes, things would be wonderful
Phool
ko bahaar, bahaar ko chaman Flowers need spring,
spring needs the garden
Dil ko dil, badan ko badan Heart
needs heart, body needs body
Har kisi ko chahiye tan-man ka milan
Everyone longs for the union of body and soul
Kaash mujh par aisa dil aapka bhi aaye If only your heart, too, would turn toward me
like that
To baat ban jaaye Then things
would be complete
Haan haan baat ban jaaye Yes,
yes, things would be complete
Aap
jaisa koi meri zindagi mein aaye Someone like you should
come into my life
To baat ban jaaye — Then things would be wonderful
Haan haan baat ban jaaye — Yes, yes, things would be great.
Main
insaan hoon, farishta nahin — I am only human, not an angel
Dar hai behak na jaaun kahin — I fear I might lose my way somewhere
Tanha dil na sambhlega — A lonely heart cannot hold itself together
Pyar bina ye tadpega — Without love, it will ache
Aap sa kahan hai, dil aapko hi paaye — Where is a heart like yours? Mine will
find only you
To baat ban jaaye — Then things would be complete
Haan haan baat ban jaaye — Yes, yes, things would be complete
Aap
jaisa koi meri zindagi mein aaye — Someone like you should come into my life
To baat ban jaaye — Then things would be wonderful
Haan haan baat ban jaaye — Yes, yes, things would be great.
On the Method: Shifting Moods
The essay moves constantly between reality and fantasy, and back. It is not a piece with a dream section and a waking section; it is a piece in which the two interrupt each other from beginning to end, the way emotions do.
· Reality: a Friday night, a courtyard, booths, a cow being pulled up a tree, two left feet, the husk, 3am, a darkened room, headphones, a repeat button, a translation tool, a music video, an actress cast for her looks.
· Fantasy: the fairy, Methe, the heavens, the phoenix, magic carpets and djinns, the Milky Way, the swirling dervish, the shrine.
The
shifts are often inside a single sentence. "Autonomous body movements" is
clinical language dropped into a moment of surrender. "A headphone-bearing swirling
dervish" puts a person in a room and a mystic in the same image. "It matters not — just a face to go by
now that the uncontrolled urge is here to stand up and dance with thee"
moves from prose to thee in one breath: the register shifts as the urge
takes over, then the next sentence pulls back to the absurd.
This is the piece's emotional logic — not dream, then waking, but dream and waking at once, like the mind at 3am. The reader is never allowed to settle, because the narrator never settles.
The Three Poems
Three poems came out of one Hindi song, in the hours after it was found again. Each is a different face of the same longing.
江南錦繡千秋月 — the war poem. The darkest and most outward. The song's longing turned into invasion, exile, and the girls who never grew up. Written before the singer was identified; only later did it become clear that the conflict between her two countries had entered the poem uninvited.
春臨苑至梅花妙 — the love poem. The closest to the song's own content. An attempt to render her directness into classical Chinese, which forbids directness — and so it becomes a creation rather than a translation, carrying the core of her words into a form that will not say them plainly.
孟湯對答 — the night poem. The most atmospheric. A drunk, a spilled cup, a snapped string, a weeping wind, a dream of home, and a dawn that came too early. Almost nothing happens and everything is felt. One song, three registers: political, romantic, lyrical. Three faces of the same longing — for a world, for a person, for a night.
On the Two Dynasties
Hsin Ch'i-chi's poem is from the Sung; it is the only poem in the essay not written by the narrator, and it is used as an outside witness whose storyline matches the essay's own. The narrator's three poems are Tang-era styled — an older, stricter form the narrator reaches for and finds unequal to a Hindi song's directness. The Sung poem is evidence; the Tang poems are attempts.
On 孟湯對答 (the night poem)
The title names 孟婆 (Meng Po) — the lady of Chinese folk belief who stands at the threshold of reincarnation and serves the broth that erases memory — and 湯, that broth: the soup of oblivion.
Standalone — The waters run and splatter; the frost is scattered into shadow and sorrow; the jasper elixir that was once precious sits in the goblet; and the closing line faces the cup — please speak not of the old courtyard's autumn. Grief is never stated, only shown. The result is stated; the cause is hidden. Almost nothing happens and everything is felt.
In the Essay — This is the last of the three poems, and it is the last temptation. After the tears, after the confession that it is twenty-five years too late, the poem arrives and offers what Lady Meng always offers: the cup, the forgetting, the end of the ache. And the essay answers it in the very next line — no! The narrator is jealous of the handsome hero, wants to be him, wants to snip him out of the frame; every real avenue is closed, but the narrator keeps the jealousy, keeps the video, keeps the shrine. 孟湯對答 offers oblivion. The essay declines it.
And then the strangest reading — the title can also be taken literally, and more oddly, as a dialogue among the bowls of soup themselves: the broth conversing, oblivion talking, the vessels of forgetting speaking to one another while the person who is meant to drink them stands silent. Read that way, the poem is the essay's condition in miniature — a dialogue in which the speaking is done by objects, and the person remains silent, unable to answer, unable to leave.
The Voice Without a Body
The essay's beloved is a voice — Nazia Hassan's — and everybody the writer finds for it turns out not to be hers. The music video is a film sequence; the woman dancing in it is an actress, cast for her looks, not the singer. The writer states the production fact outright: "You were only the playback singer." And the writer accepts the borrowed body anyway: "It matters not — just a face to go by."
The word "only" carries the wound. It is the industry's own diminishment — the voice lent, the face kept by someone else — repeated by the narrator, and the reader feels the injustice of it. Nazia Hassan gave the voice; another woman got the body and the screen.
The age deepens it. She recorded the song at fifteen — a girl's voice, or a young woman's, preserved on film. She died in 2000, at thirty-five. So, the voice the narrator loves belongs to someone who was young when she sang it and who is now gone. The "twenty-five years too late" is not only the narrator's own belatedness; it is the impossibility of ever having been there at the beginning.
This is the quiet engine under the whole essay. Psyche loves an unseen god; the writer loves a bodiless voice. The body that goes with the voice can never be had, because the culture that made the video never matched one to the other. It cast a body for display and let the voice stand apart. The ache of the essay — "twenty-five years too late," the unbridgeable gulf, the shrine — sits on top of a simple production fact: the woman who was loved was never in the frame.
The Gender of the Desiring Subject
The beloved's gender is known: the voice is a woman's, and the singer is named — Nazia Hassan. The voice itself tells you. So, the essay gives you the gender of the one who is loved. What the essay withholds is the gender of the one who loves.
The narrator's gender is never stated, and no word in the text assigns one. The text uses "I," "me," "my," "this old body," "this old self." The body is named; the person is not.
Meanwhile the positions the narrator occupies shift and cross:
·
The
narrator likens the self to Psyche — a woman loved by an unseen male
god.
·
The
narrator writes the love poem in the voice of a maid awaiting a lord — a
female speaker, a male beloved.
·
The
narrator describes the self as "being made love to" — passive,
receiving.
·
The
narrator calls the self "your angel" — ungendered, shared with
the beloved.
·
The
narrator is jealous of "the handsome hero" — the jealousy
aimed at a man.
· The narrator wants to snip-snip the hero — a small imaginary violence against the man.
The
desiring subject never settles into one gender. Available readings include: a man enchanted by
an inaccessible woman; a woman for whom the Psyche and maid positions are
native; a narrator whose gender is irrelevant because what is loved is a voice;
or a narrator deliberately left unspecified so that any reader can occupy the
position. The text neither confirms nor
forecloses any of them. The asymmetry is
the point. You know who she is. You do not know who is listening.
The Mythological Figures
Methe — Greek goddess of drunkenness, a companion of Dionysus. Since the writer does not drink, the song becomes the intoxication instead: you, my Methe of dreams.
Theodon — god of reality and uncertainty. A modern mythic invention, not a classical figure, used by poetic licence. He stands for reality and the uncertainty inside it — the state the writer returns to when the dream ends.
Aletheia — Greek goddess of truth, sometimes called a daughter of Zeus. She and Theodon call the writer back from the dream: reality and truth, male and female, at the hinge of the piece.
Psyche and Eros — from the myth told by Apuleius. Psyche loves Eros but is forbidden to see him; her curiosity makes her look, and he flees. The writer felt like Psyche — visited by something unseen — but looked of one's own accord and made poems instead of losing her.
Tinker Bell — the fairy of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, best known from Disney's film, whose pixie dust enables flight. "Tinker-toe" is coined from her name: the old body's legs move lightly, as if dusted with magic. "Tinker" also means a mender of pots — the song patches the body up for a moment.
The Allusions
The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine — a 1959 Twilight Zone episode in which a faded film star retreats into her private screening room and steps into her old films. The essay's closing line alludes to it: the writer's own private shrine of a video and three poems. The abbreviation "16mm" keeps it private — a label only the writer would use.
"Curiouser" is a deliberate echo of Lewis Carroll, and a UK form, placed inside a US-spelled sentence.
The Final Line
The essay ends on a joke with a dark edge. The writer is jealous of "the knife – the handsome hero in the video," calls him a knife, then reaches for scissors: "a snip-snip." Not endless revenge — one act, a few small cuts, done once. Every real avenue is closed — the writer cannot be the hero, cannot have the woman, cannot undo twenty-five years, cannot cross the cultural gulf. The only satisfaction left is the imaginary one: cut the rival out of the frame, once, and be done. It is petty, impotent, and entirely human, and it is the smallest gesture in a piece built on grand ones.
The method is the same as everywhere else: state the result, hide the cause. The writer never says I want him gone. The writer says a snip-snip. The jealousy is admitted; the wish — and its target — are buried in a sound effect and an article. And because the line arrives at the very end, after all the poetry and all the gods, reality closes the piece in the form of a person making scissors at a music video at dawn.
On the Prologue and Epilogue
The prologue and epilogue were not part of the original essay. They came into existence only after the essay was finished — because of one more listening. Headphones on, 2:30pm on the 17th, a few days after the rantings were done, the sound file extracted from the video and played again.
That final listening produced both bookends. The prologue names Ari, without whose insistence to attend the event the meeting would never have happened. The epilogue records the return to the voice — not the video, not the face, just the sound file — and the realization that it was always the voice that was yearned for.
So, the structure is recursive. The essay creates the conditions for the epilogue; the epilogue creates the conditions for the prologue; the prologue creates the conditions for the essay. The piece is a loop, and the loop closes on the act of listening. Without that last listening, neither bookend would exist. The voice, once more, dictated what was written.
And the ending carries the arc to its close: the essay ends in jealousy and scissors (a snip-snip); the epilogue ends in acceptance (snips-snips no more). The last listening did what Lady Meng's cup offered to do — it ended the ache — but not by forgetting. By hearing the voice once more and knowing, at last, what it was that was loved.
On Word Choice
Almost every key word in the essay is chosen so that it carries a second layer. It says the thing, and it says the thing's echo. A plainer word would be shorter and flatter; the chosen word gives the reader texture, surprise, and a second meaning to catch.
· "wafted" — not came or played. Light, drifting, almost accidental, the way a scent arrives.
·
"tinker-toe" — not tap. Carries Tinker Bell — the
fairy of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, best known from Disney's film — the
mending, and the coinage at once.
· "husk" — not body or shell. What's left after the kernel is gone: age and emptiness, without stating either.
·
"this
old body… in this husk" — the same self-named twice, once as it was and once as it feels.
Age as double vision.
·
"Methe" — not intoxication. Naming the goddess turns a feeling into a
myth.
· "musty corners of my mind" — not memories. Musty adds dust, neglect, the smell of old rooms.
· "a face to go by" — not a face to have. A compass, not a possession; modest, navigational.
· "only the playback singer" — not the singer. The "only" is the culture's own dismissal, echoed by the narrator: the voice was hers; the body and the fame were someone else's. One word turns a production fact into a grievance.
· "a snip-snip" — not clipping. One act made of a few small cuts, done once. The indefinite article plus the doubled sound gives it the feel of a single procedure — brief, particular, finished. The dark joke lands without the essay ever naming the target.
· "snips-snips no more" — the epilogue's plural bookend to the essay's singular act. What was one imaginary cut becomes a whole habit, and the habit ends.
· "16mm Shrine" — not archive or collection. Shrine adds devotion, ritual, and the Twilight Zone allusion.
· "curiouser" — not more curious. Adds the Carroll echo and the UK register.
· "swirling dervish" — not dancing wildly. Adds the mystic and the ecstatic to a person alone with headphones.
· "sirenic" — not beautiful. Adds the lure, the danger, the sailors lost at sea.
· "anchorless life" — not empty life. Adds the drifting, the sea, the no-port-in-a-storm.
· "the River" — capitalized, so it means the Milky Way, not a river. The capitalization does the work.
· "There — that person DO exist!" — the caps on DO. Nonstandard, and that is the point.
Each is
a small decision, and each makes the sentence do two jobs instead of one. That is what "colorful" means here:
not decoration, but density. The word
doesn't just say the thing; it says the thing and its shadow.
Read any sentence in the essay twice. The first time for what it says; the second for what the words are quietly also saying.
On the Spelling
US and UK spellings are mixed on purpose. Christmassy, curiouser sit beside realize, immortalized, mesmerized. The voice will not resolve into one world — the same condition the essay describes: a speaker caught between a Pasadena courtyard and a Sung Dynasty poem, between a Hindi song and a Chinese form.
On the Method
One principle holds the whole piece together: state the result, hide the cause.
· The song is never announced as a song; the reader assembles it from clicked, repeat button, scroll, music video.
· The narrator's gender is never stated; the reader assembles it from the positions taken.
·
The
beloved's body is never hers; the reader learns it from that buxom
seductress is not and You were only the playback singer.
· The dark joke at the end is never spelled out; the reader who hears a snip-snip hears it twice.
