Everything at once

Talli means what it sounds like. Four drinks in, comfortably gone, still upright. It is the default setting here because it is the honest one: a real theka does not run a themed evening, it runs whatever the shop has, in whatever order, and the mixture is the character of the place. Everything from the other five rooms feeds into this one, plus about twenty-five records that belong nowhere else.

The orphans are the good part. My Name Is Anthony Gonsalves is named after a real man - Anthony Gonsalves was one of the busiest arrangers in Bombay and the violin teacher of Pyarelal, half of Laxmikant-Pyarelal, who wrote the song as a tribute and had Amitabh Bachchan speak the nonsense while Kishore Kumar sang around it. Kaanta Laga arrives twice over: an R. D. Burman tune sung by Lata Mangeshkar for Samadhi in 1972, rebuilt as a remix in 2002 that became the most argued-about music video in the country. Aati Kya Khandala is sung by Aamir Khan, who is not a singer and did not need to be.

Then the ones that are only funny after midnight. Chaar Botal Vodka is a song with no other subject. Party All Night is the one people mean when they say aunty police bulayegi, which is a line inside it and not a song of its own, whatever your friend insists. Jalebi Baby, Kar Gayi Chull, Ek Chumma, Lungi Dance. Sober, most of these are indefensible. That is the qualification.

The shuffle is weighted so the wild cards surface roughly one in five. Any denser and the novelty stops being a surprise and becomes the format, which is the failure mode of every drunk playlist ever made. So Piya Tu Ab To Aaja can land next to Nashe Si Chadh Gayi next to a ghazal, and the room stays off balance without turning into a joke. If you want one clean mood instead, the other five rooms are one click away and the lights change with them.