Meera felt as though Sahil had punched her in the heart – his questions sent her mind back to that cold, dull day in New York, when Abhimanyu had broken the news to her that he couldn’t bring himself to defy his father; that they couldn’t have a future together. But she’d be damned if she let Sahil see that he had affected her.

‘I am not sure what that has to do with anything,’ she said, trying to sound as firm as she could.

‘It has everything to do with this,’ argued Sahil. ‘Imagine loving someone you know is beyond your reach.’ Meera was stunned upon hearing Sahil utter those words – it was awfully similar to her own experience with Abhimanyu. Until she realized he was talking about the movie. The ghost who longed for the man in the orchard – a longing that was doomed from the start. ‘Imagine her,’ he continued, walking across the Himalayas, ‘walking across from a different world, just to catch a glimpse of the man she loved so much. But he would be busy working the fields. And even when he was with her, he didn’t speak about love, or about her journey. Where she came from, how far she had travelled or whom she defied just to be with him? Instead, he was more interested in knowing if she was real or a figment of his imagination.’

‘Shaq ke ghero ko tum bada na kijiye, Apno ko tum paraya na kijiye;

Hum aaye hai dur se, Do ghadi humein bhi sun liya kijiye.’

‘We’ve been over this,’ Meera argued. She pointed out how she had shed her classical leanings and made adjustments in her approach to suit Sahil.

‘Contrary to what you think, Malik saab, I am human, I have lived. And I can feel emotions. Emotions I have tried to infuse into your songs.’

‘That’s the issue. The song is not about human feelings. You’re a ghost. You’re ether!’

They say that Sahil Malik was a mad poet who could breathe life into the dead and make them sing. Meera was but a mortal – one Sahil was determined to break in. And he did. They went on to record the song cold, without any of the background music. It had finally dawned upon her that Sahil wasn’t creating cinema. Together with Meera, he was creating poetry – about emotions, images, dreams and visions. According to critics, the movie was a remarkable transposition of poetry on screen. Its music transported them to hidden worlds where they forgot the about hunger, war and the nagging realities of life. It was music that was ingeniously created with painstaking precision.