Sandese Aate Hain
A Journey Back to Manipal Through the Songs of Border
Yesterday, as I sat in front of my screen watching “Border” on OTT, something unexpected happened. The opening notes of the film’s soundtrack transported me not to the deserts of Longewala, but to the cramped, chaotic, beautiful corridors of my hostel at MIT Manipal. It’s funny how a 1997 film, watched in 2026, can make the years collapse like an accordion, bringing back memories so vivid that I could almost smell the mix of Old Spice and instant noodles that defined those days.
The Cassette Era
There’s a particular kind of nostalgia reserved for those who lived through the cassette era. The younger generation, born into a world of infinite streaming and perfect digital quality, will never understand the ritual of rewinding tapes with a pencil, the anxiety of a cassette getting “eaten” by the player, or the pride of owning a carefully curated collection that represented not just your music taste, but your identity.
In our hostel room at MIT Manipal, we had a battered cassette player that had seen better days. It sat on a corner shelf, surrounded by a mountain of cassettes with hand-written labels, their cases long lost to the chaos of hostel life. The Border soundtrack was one of our most played tapes, worn thin from constant rewinding and replaying, the magnetic strip probably holding together more by memory than actual physical integrity.
I remember how we’d pool our pocket money to buy the latest cassettes from the music store near the campus. Border’s soundtrack was a unanimous decision. At forty-five rupees, it was an investment, but one we made without hesitation. That tape became the soundtrack of an entire semester.
Sandese Aate Hain: More Than Just a Song
Among all the powerful songs from Border, “Sandese Aate Hain” held a special place in our hearts. Sonu Nigam’s voice, so young and full of emotion in that song, became the voice of our own yearnings. We weren’t soldiers waiting for letters from home, but we were young men away from our families, living in a different city, navigating the complexities of engineering studies and early adulthood.
(Messages arrive, they make us yearn…)
We would sing this song with an earnestness that probably bordered on the dramatic. Four or five of us, crammed into a small hostel room, one person manning the cassette player, ready to rewind if someone messed up the lyrics, the others providing what we generously called “chorus support.” Our neighbors would bang on the walls, sometimes in protest, sometimes to request an encore.
Looking back, I realize we weren’t just singing a patriotic song. We were expressing something we couldn’t quite articulate otherwise. The longing for home during exam weeks, the bittersweet feeling of independence mixed with homesickness, the bonds of friendship that were forming in real-time as we shared these moments together.
The Manipal Nights
Manipal had a way of creating its own ecosystem, separate from the rest of the world. The campus, with its red-tiled buildings and endless staircases, the canteens that served food that oscillated between barely edible and surprisingly good, the library where we’d pretend to study while actually gossiping in hushed tones. And through it all, music was our constant companion.
Those were the days before smartphones, before YouTube, before music became something you casually scrolled through. Every song was a deliberate choice. Every listening session was an event. And Border’s soundtrack was our go-to for late-night sessions, pre-exam stress relief, and post-exam celebrations alike.
I remember one particularly memorable night during the monsoons. The power had gone out across the campus, a common occurrence during heavy rains. We lit candles in our room, and someone suggested we play Border on our battery-operated cassette player. As the rain hammered against the windows and water dripped through the perpetual leak in the corner of our room, we sang “Sandese Aate Hain” like it was a prayer.
There was something magical about that moment. The flickering candlelight, the sound of rain, Sonu Nigam’s voice emanating slightly warbled from the old cassette player, and five young voices trying their best to hit notes that were definitely out of their range. We felt like we were part of something larger than ourselves, connected to every student who had ever been away from home, every person who had ever yearned for something or someone.
The Roommates and the Rituals
Each of my roommates had their relationship with the Border soundtrack. There was Rajesh, who claimed he could sing every Sonu Nigam song perfectly but was usually off-key. There was Karthik, who knew all the dialogue from the movie and would recite them dramatically at inappropriate moments. Arun, the quietest of us, would just listen with his eyes closed, perhaps transported to his own private memories.
We had this unspoken rule: whoever was feeling particularly homesick got control of the cassette player. And nine times out of ten, they’d play “Sandese Aate Hain.” It became our group therapy, our way of acknowledging that it was okay to miss home, okay to feel vulnerable, okay to not have all the answers.
We’d also have these impromptu singing competitions. Someone would start singing a line from Border, and the next person had to continue. If you messed up the lyrics, you had to make a midnight chai run for everyone. The stakes felt impossibly high at the time, though in reality, we all just wanted an excuse to have chai and Parle-G biscuits at two in the morning.
The Technology of Memory
Watching Border on OTT yesterday was a completely different experience from those hostel days. The picture was crystal clear, the sound was perfect, I could pause whenever I wanted, rewind with a click, adjust the volume precisely. It was convenient, efficient, modern.
And yet, I found myself missing the imperfections of that old cassette player. The slight hiss in the background, the way the sound would waver if someone walked too heavily near the player, the anticipation as you waited for the tape to rewind to your favorite song. Those imperfections were part of the experience, part of the memory.
There was also something about the limitation of cassettes that made music more precious. You couldn’t skip endlessly through thousands of songs. You had what you had, and you lived with it, learned to love it, discovered depths in songs you might have skipped in today’s world of infinite choice.
The Sonu Nigam Effect
For us, Sonu Nigam wasn’t just a playback singer; he was the voice of our generation. “Sandese Aate Hain” showcased his ability to convey deep emotion without oversinging, to make you feel every word without melodrama. We’d argue for hours about whether his version or someone else’s rendition of various songs was better. Sonu always won in our books.
We tried to emulate his style, his control, his emotional delivery. None of us succeeded, of course, but it didn’t matter. The trying was the point. The gathering together, the shared love of music, the communal experience of singing badly but enthusiastically. These were the moments that defined our friendships.
I remember one semester when Arun’s girlfriend broke up with him, and he was devastated. We did what any good friends would do. We sat with him, played “Sandese Aate Hain” on repeat, and let him sing his heart out. Sonu Nigam’s voice became a vehicle for his grief, and somehow, by the tenth replay, he was smiling again, albeit sadly. Music has that power.
The Distance Between Then and Now
As I watched Border yesterday, I tried to remember the last time I spontaneously broke into song with friends. I couldn’t. Life got busy, responsibilities piled up, and those impromptu moments of joy became scheduled events, if they happened at all.
The hostel is still there in Manipal, probably housing a new generation of students who have their own songs, their own memories in the making. Maybe they stream their music wirelessly to Bluetooth speakers. Maybe they create playlists instead of mixtapes. Maybe they watch movies on their laptops instead of bundling into someone’s room to watch a pirated VCD.
But I’d like to think that they too have those moments. Moments when a song isn’t just a song but a bookmark in time, a reminder of who they were and who they were becoming. Moments when friendship and music merge into something that will, decades later, make them pause and remember.
Yesterday, after finishing Border, I did something I haven’t done in years. I called up Rajesh. We talked about the old days, about the cassette player, about how we probably drove everyone on our floor crazy with our incessant singing. We laughed about how seriously we took those singing competitions, how certain we were that we sounded good.
The Eternal Return
Nostalgia is a strange thing. It makes us romanticize times that were often just as complicated and confusing as the present. Our hostel days weren’t all beautiful moments and perfect friendships. There were fights, there was loneliness, there were failures and disappointments.
But when I hear “Sandese Aate Hain,” all of that complexity distills into something pure. The memory becomes not about the individual moments, but about the feeling of possibility, of having your whole life ahead of you, of friendships that felt eternal, of believing that this group of people would always be together, always be this close.
We’re scattered now, across countries and continents, pursuing careers and building families. We have WhatsApp groups that occasionally burst into activity when someone posts a throwback photo or remembers a shared joke. But it’s not the same as being crammed into a small room, sharing a single cassette player, singing off-key but with complete conviction.
(A letter has arrived, a letter from home has arrived…)
Perhaps that’s what yesterday’s viewing of Border really was. A letter from the past, a message from my younger self, reminding me of those days when music could solve any problem, when friendship was measured in the number of times you’d rewind a tape for someone, when Manipal was home and home was a concept that expanded to include anyone who knew the words to “Sandese Aate Hain.”
A Final Note
As I write this, I have the Border soundtrack playing on Spotify. The sound quality is impeccable, far better than that old cassette player could ever produce. But I find myself yearning for that slight hiss, that imperfection that made it real, that made it ours.
To anyone reading this who has their own cassette memories, their own hostel stories, their own songs that transport them back in time: I hope you never lose that. I hope you occasionally indulge in the nostalgia, let yourself remember what it felt like to be young and away from home for the first time, surrounded by people who would become lifelong friends, united by nothing more than a shared love of music and the simple joy of singing together.
And to my old roommates, if you’re reading this: “Sandese aate hain.” The messages still come. The memories still call. And somewhere in my heart, we’re still in that hostel room in Manipal, the cassette player whirring, rain falling outside, young and hopeful and convinced that we sound just like Sonu Nigam.
Border wasn’t just a film for us. It was a timestamp, a marker of an era, a collection of songs that became the soundtrack to some of the most formative years of our lives. And “Sandese Aate Hain” wasn’t just a song about soldiers and sacrifice. It was about all of us, far from home, finding our way, creating our own kind of family, one cassette tape at a time.
Thank you, J.P. Dutta, for making Border. Thank you, Sonu Nigam, for singing “Sandese Aate Hain” with such emotion. Thank you to that battered cassette player that somehow never completely gave up on us. And thank you to MIT Manipal, for being the backdrop to memories that, even now, decades later, can make me smile, make me nostalgic, and make me grateful for those imperfect, beautiful days.
The messages still arrive. They still make us yearn. And perhaps that’s exactly as it should be.