New Delhi, June 13 -- There are songs we hear. And then there are songs that hear us. Songs that wait patiently in the attic of memory until life finally supplies the meaning their lyrics were always carrying.

As children, we inherit them through crackling radios and Sunday cinema. Through mothers humming while folding saris. Through fathers singing softly at traffic lights. Through black-and-white films flickering in living rooms fragrant with chai and cardamom.

Of course, memory is an unreliable archivist. It preserves feeling more faithfully than fact. The mothers in our recollections are often folding laundry, stirring dal, humming songs; the fathers are often driving cars, reading newspapers, returning from work. Such images belong...