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I’ll start with the confession: I do not know if it was a double bass or a bass or a cello. But at what has become a banquet hall at the Taj, my parents took us for tea once a month and we listened to old jazz standards live. The one that is stuck in my head went, ‘Blue, blue my heart is true’ and I do not know if that is the name or the chorus or some random words or anything.

Blue remains my favourite colour, though at 6 I did not get the other meanings the colour acquired in the world of music, and my heart has remained true to jazz and the blues ever since. My parents’ connection to jazz was limited to interpretations of Bach by some famous person I do not know but probably should, so I was on my own here. My parents did not take me to afternoon jam sessions at Churchgate’s Astoria Hotel, just my luck. Perhaps children of 6 were not welcome.

By the time I was back in Bombay and in my early 20s, jazz was ultimate cool. All right, I was unfaithful with frequent forays into rock but never for too long and I never strayed very far. It was all at Rang Bhavan, where you heard everyone from Sadao Watanabe to Illinois Jacquet and Tania Maria, smelt the weed, watched the long hairs, ate awful samosas, looked superior and pretended you weren’t headbanging at the India’s Top Rock Band Doing Covers concert at the same place a week ago. Hey, most of the jazz audience had been there anyway, so it was indiscretion with mutual consent.

One of the worst things about growing old…er is the discovery that you must have looked really stupid when you were young. Someone in their 30s said how lucky I was to be born in the ‘60s — the cool era. I was 8 when the ‘60s ended, so cool was still something to do with stormy weather.

Now, the Yatra’s gone replaced by an Utsav, the cool cats of old are droopy, the wannabes are as annoying as we must have been at that age, the organisers tell you that they’re giving you not jazz greats but great jazz but… Should I cry me a river, take five, do a moondance, wade in the water or just take the A train to Bandra and shake my tailfeather? The last one, I think. I might still have it in me.