33,251 Times - Hey Shona Song | Ta Ra Rum Pum | Saif Ali Khan, Rani Mukerji | Shaan, Sunidhi | Vishal and Shekhar

 There are songs we love because of their lyrics.

There are songs we love because of the music.

And then there are songs that become important simply because someone we loved once smiled while listening to them.

"Hey Shona" was never my favorite song.

At least, not in the beginning.

I did not search for it. I did not fall in love with its melody. I did not save it because it spoke to me.

I saved it because it spoke to her.

Somewhere, in some ordinary conversation, she said she liked this song. Maybe she played it once. Maybe she hummed a line. Maybe she sent it to me without realizing what she was leaving behind.

And that was enough.

As of 13:29 IST on 28 June 2026, I have listened to Hey Shona exactly 33,251 times.

People may call it obsession.

Some may call it madness.

But love has always looked a little unreasonable from the outside.

The strange thing is that after thousands of plays, I still do not know whether I love the song itself. What I know is that every time it starts playing, it carries pieces of someone with it.

A voice.

A memory.

A late-night conversation.

A feeling that perhaps no longer exists.

Songs are strange things. They become time machines. They preserve people long after conversations end. They remember what we try to forget.

There are days when I listen to Hey Shona because I miss her.

There are days when I listen because I miss the version of myself that existed when she was around.

And there are days when I play it simply because silence feels heavier.

Thirty-three thousand two hundred fifty-one times.

If the song is five minutes long, then I have spent thousands of hours listening to it. Days have disappeared into its music. Entire seasons of my life have passed while those same melodies played in my ears.

People often ask what my favorite song is.

The truth is, Hey Shona is not my favorite song.

It is my favorite memory.

It is proof that sometimes we borrow things from the people we love—their songs, their words, their habits, their favorite colors—and carry them long after they stop walking beside us.

Maybe one day the counter will stop.

Maybe one day I will listen to it without remembering.

Maybe one day it will become just another song.

But today, as the count reaches 33,251 plays, it remains what it has always been:

Not a song I loved.

A song I loved because she did.

— Kabir