The other day, I watched a video where a young woman had installed a sound console in an auto rickshaw and was driving around DJing in it (no prizes for guessing it was a jugni song). These stock items of hipster slumming are the opposite of exuberance. You pretend you have created something new just because a person of your class or gender is doing it for the first time—while other people have been doing it casually all along. Add a little fancy English to the description, and it will be in an arts biennale before you can say, bhaiya Malad jaoge?

Every 1990s autorickshaw was already its own disco station. Stacked speakers with flashing lights turned interiors a radioactive green or incandescent candy pink. We hunted for these autos to take us through the slick night streets and crowded day traffic as they drove by with a quick audio flash of the dhinka chika typifying their chosen playlist—songs remixed with jhankar beats. It was an era that began with Raja Hindustani—Pardesi pardesi jana nahin--and Prabhudeva hits—Take it easy Urvashi--and peaked with Himesh Reshammiya. His Himmness was made for auto-rickshaws and that 15-minute party we inhabited in the midst of our urban busy-ness. We stepped out of those autos grinning.