I have always been a hopeless romantic. It’s something I am too embarrassed to admit to myself, but also a truth that becomes painfully obvious to ignore when I listen to 2000s Bollywood songs. All it takes is the percussive opening of ‘Pehli Nazar Mein’ (Race), the first few synth notes of Khuda Jaane (Bachna Ae Haseeno) or the breathy flute at the start of Hosanna (Ekk Deewana Tha), and I melt into a puddle in the ground. In an instant, however, I am reassembled by the voices of KK and Atif Aslam, and transported into the body of my 10-year-old self sitting on a couch in the living room watching 9XM, eyes glued to the television as if in a trance.
Getting dressed for school every morning followed a familiar ritual in most Indian households: before the school bus arrived, we would be dragged around the house by our mothers, hair being pulled into braids while hurrying to replace the books in our backpack from the previous day’s timetable. All of this happened at 8am while 9XM shuffled the most heartaching love songs one minute and electric party songs the next, with alien blobs Bade and Chote dutifully pitching in with their banter, and Bheegi Billi, a down-on-his-luck cat, strumming his guitar and singing plaintively.
Today, even though Spotify has us musically figured out through its sophisticated algorithms and YouTube Music occasionally sends an underrated banger our way, nothing comes close to the ineffable magic of 9XM playing a song just when we needed it. It’s probably why there’s a whole genre of playlists on YouTube titled “POV: It’s a 9XM morning” with millions of views keeping that nostalgia alive. As an only child with working parents, I remember spending most of my weekday evenings after school in front of the television without adult supervision, switching to 9XM during ad breaks on Sony Max or Disney and becoming so engrossed with the music videos that I would forget to switch back to my episode of Doraemon. Writer Srijan D believes 9XM was so popular because instead of defining itself by what it was, it defined itself by what it wasn’t: no reality TV, no audio or video sketches, no serious talk, no themed variety shows—just a workhorse jukebox that served and served. “When MTV became what it was and Channel V couldn’t decide what part of the globe it came from, there was a sudden vacuum of music video channels in India,” he says. “Hindi music fans who had evolved from Chitrahaar to Gaaney Anjaaney deserved a moment and 9XM delivered it, right in time as music videos began serving the youth and indie music was on the uptick. 9XM stuck to the wildly radical formula of… playing music.” For Srijan, 9XM was revolutionary in its recipe of ‘music, some patter, then more music.’ “You could switch it on and go about your day. Indeed, many households I knew had it on all day,” he recalls. “There was always music playing in the house and it wasn’t tragic if you missed Bade-Chote’s most recent disagreement on something silly.”
