on music and being an old soul

on music and being an old soul 2026-05-24 · 4 min read nfak, mehdi hasan, radiohead, and why i was probably born in the wrong decade so here we are... i'm going to try and write about something i've never really put into words before. music. specifically the kind of music that most people my age look at me weird for. i think i was around 15 when it happened. nusrat fateh ali khan came on and something just shifted. i didn't fully understand it then — i just knew that whatever this was, it wasn't like anything else i had heard. it wasn't background noise. it demanded your full attention and then quietly rearranged something inside you. must qalandar does this thing where it starts and you feel like the ground is moving. piya ghar aaya is the other end of that — quieter, more aching, the kind of longing that doesn't need to be explained to be understood. these aren't songs you casually put on. they're songs that find you at a certain moment and stay with you forever. the thing about nfak is that it's spiritual in a way that doesn't require you to be religious. it's devotional music but the devotion translates — to love, to loss, to the feeling of wanting something you can't name. i've listened to must qalandar probably hundreds of times and it hits differently every single time depending on where i am in life. that's rare. that's actually rare. a lot of this came through my dad. he introduced me to jagjit singh and fareed ayaz abu muhammad — his favourites — and i think that's where a big part of my taste was quietly shaped. kis mod se shuru kare is one of those jagjit singh ghazals that just undoes you. no drama, no buildup, it just walks straight into you. har lehza by fareed ayaz is devotional in the same way nfak is — completely consuming, the kind of thing you don't put on as background. there's something about music your parents love that hits differently. you're not just hearing a song, you're inheriting a feeling. mehdi hasan is a whole other universe. the ghazal form is something i think people completely sleep on. there is more emotion packed into a single mehdi hasan ghazal than in entire albums of modern music. lata mangeshkar, asha bhosle, kishore kumar, md rafi — these are voices that were built for something. there's a craftsmanship to that era of music, the 80s and 90s, that i genuinely don't think exists in the same way anymore. kaavish too — that same thread of something deeply felt and carefully made. hangam kyu hai barpa specifically is the kind of mehdi hasan track that stops you mid-whatever-you-were-doing. the way his voice moves through that song is just unfair. the funny thing is i also love radiohead, the smiths, fred again, and tame impala. which makes me exactly the kind of person who gets strange looks from all sides. fred again and tame impala sit right next to nfak in my playlists and honestly the emotional through line is the same — music that makes you feel located somewhere, present, a little overwhelmed in the best way. i think the connection is actually pretty clear though. all of this music is sad in a productive way. it doesn't wallow, it excavates. there's something about the smiths that carries the same emotional precision as a good ghazal — morrissey and mehdi hasan would have had a lot to talk about honestly. people use the phrase "old soul" like it's a personality quirk. for me it's less about being nostalgic for an era i didn't live in and more about what that music represents — slowness, intention, the idea that a song should mean something and make you feel something real. i think we've gotten very fast. music has gotten very fast. and sometimes i just want to sit with must qalandar for seven minutes and let it do what it does. i'm grateful i found this music at 15. it's been a companion through a lot — through AMU, through late nights, through moments of confusion and moments of clarity. certain songs become part of your interior life and you can't imagine who you'd be without them. if you haven't listened to nusrat fateh ali khan, start with must qalandar. sit with it. give it time. it'll find you.