For drinking alone

Gham is not the same thing as sadness, and the difference is the whole point of this room. Sadness arrives and leaves. Gham is something you sit with, at a table, with a glass and a plate of chakhna nobody is touching. It has a dignity to it that the English word does not carry, which is why nobody translates it. The lights here go to their lowest setting and stay there. Nothing in this set turns hopeful in the last thirty seconds and nothing has a beat you could clap to.

The ghazals are the oldest part of it, and the two biggest were somebody else's before they belonged to the voice you know. Ranjish Hi Sahi was written by Ahmed Faraz and recorded first by Iqbal Bano, and it is Mehdi Hassan everyone means when they name it. Aaj Jaane Ki Zid Na Karo was Fayyaz Hashmi's poem set by Sohail Rana, sung for a Pakistani film in 1973 by Habib Wali Mohammad years before Farida Khanum made it the last song of every night. Sudarshan Faakir wrote Woh Kagaz Ki Kashti for Jagjit Singh, and half the people who ask for Ye Daulat Bhi Le Lo do not realise they are asking for the same record - that is its first line.

The film side is Kishore and Mukesh and Rafi doing the same job for a wider room. Kahin Door Jab Din Dhal Jaye is Salil Chowdhury's tune and Mukesh's voice, sung in Anand by a man who knows he is dying, and it is still the most requested thing in this list after eleven. Kya Hua Tera Wada, Chingari Koi Bhadke, Mere Naina Sawan Bhado - the 70s built an entire commercial category out of loss and never apologised for it.

Then there is the modern lot, which is where mood off comes in. A twenty-five-year-old with a phone and a beer does not queue Mehdi Hassan; he queues Channa Mereya, Bekhayali, Pachtaoge, Filhall. Same job, different decade, and it would be snobbery to keep them out. If you want the crying rather than the sitting, that is a different room - try rone wale gane. If it is specifically one person who left, breakup songs is the page. This one is for the general condition.