Kishore Singh: Me and my guitar...

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I don't know about you but when I was young (which doesn't seem an awfully long while back) we listened to ABBA even though purist rockers said it was too populist, and knew the Beatles' lyrics by heart, and sang Suzanne whenever we were in a maudlin mood. Boney M's Rivers of Babylon was a teen anthem (don't ask me why), and the nasally Bee Gees gave you a high only the Rolling Stones could match.

And then somewhere between growing up and finding a job and coming to noisy Delhi, all that music faded away. Lobo and Paul McCartney were stashed away in the loft, the player broke down and newer technologies meant it would never be repaired. India's debuting TV shows allowed glimpses of a leggy Tina Turner belting it out to live audiences, David Bowie won a Grammy, Boy George dressed weirdly and sang something with Asha Bhonsle, and Michael Jackson became a phenomenon with his disjointed dancing.

But we got most of this second-hand because the worst, most awful thing was now happening. The country had discovered a musical confidence that was unknown to us in our growing years and for the first time ever, Hindi music began to be played at discos. And Punjabi music and very likely Tamil music, too. Malaika Arora danced atop a running train, and millions of Indians tapped Chaiyya, chaiyya with their feet on assorted, underlit glass floors. Bhangra arrived with a sense of bourgeois bonhomie that was distressing to watch.

And because the children were now growing up, they downloaded and stored music on the computer that no decent parent could hear for fear of embarrassment, so casually were forbidden "F" words flung around in the guise of lyrics. My daughter refused to talk to her schoolfriends because they weren't cool, they still listened to last year's singers. Music had become a fashion accessory, to be chosen not for the mood but because of how well it suited the clothes you were wearing.

And we stopped going to nightclubs for fear we wouldn't know how to behave there any more. Close to home was Elevate, apparently India's most happening club where they played trance music "" only we didn't know what trance was, and I wasn't paying a hefty cover charge to go sleep, or meditate, or whatever it is that you do if you aren't on an Ecstasy-induced musical trip. Other clubs apparently played hip-hop, which sounds like something bunnies should be doing when they aren't doing what bunnies are usually doing.

"Did you," asked my daughter last week, "have music in your days?" I must have looked shocked, so she said, "I mean the kind you could sing, or dance to?" "We had the best music of all," I assured her, "much better than anything now," which is what my own parents had once said to me, even though the high point of their kind of music was probably Jim Reeves when they went to the club, and Saigal on the 80 rpm.

"And did you go to clubs?" she insisted on knowing. "We went to discs," I explained to her, sharing what it was like to wear our trousers in bell-bottoms and our hair long to do the boogie-boogie-boogie. "That doesn't sound like a lot of fun," said my daughter who is an authority on the subject. "Oh well, we did what we did," I sighed in memory of Devil woman. "How about," she said, "I take you out for the time of your life?" Which is why, this evening, I shall find myself at a rain dance where, I'm assured on her authority, I can dance to the fusion version of Right here, right now. Oh well, if you can't win them, join them.