When you set foot in a karaoke bar, you are assured of certain experiences. For starters, there will be boisterous and tuneless singing from all, except that one friend who is annoyingly good but will never admit they spent hours rehearsing their performance. There will be a lot of microphone grabbing. You may have requested a song with a solo gig in mind, but once the lyrics are on the screen, all bets are off. Your companions will want to get in on the action, tussling with you for the mic and spraying you with their spittle.And there will be a moment — a little after someone has shrieked through Zombie by The Cranberries and a little before someone massacres Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody — when the opening riff of Wonderwall will begin to play and the crowd will let out a roar of approval, before taking a collective deep breath and belting out the first verse.AdvertisementFor ’90s kids in India, millennials who grew up as the 20th century folded into the 21st, television offered a first real brush with the West. Enid Blyton and Tintin had given us a glimpse of a mythic land beyond our shores: One with ginger beer and bejeweled sopranos. But it was satellite TV that, quite literally, brought the world to our homes. Hollywood movies and American sitcoms came within arm’s reach. MTV and VH1 introduced us to English music. These were mind-expanding changes, no doubt, but daily programming could only supply so much. Our diet of Western culture was restricted to a drip-feed — until we became pirates.Only a fortunate few grew up in homes stocked with vinyl records and tape cassettes of English rock banks. Even with the advent of Planet M and Music World, which brought foreign artists to Indian store shelves, Western music remained too expensive a taste to indulge in through legitimate means. We would, instead, deal in pen-drives and CDs, peddling playlists that had been curated by a more learned peer with faster broadband internet. Their taste shaped our musical journey — you could say they were like the influencers of today, but without the botox and the sponsorship deals. The digital mix tapes these proto-influencers created were our starter packs, the road signs that led us to the specific rabbit holes we wished to explore. Their very design meant they featured the most popular songs of the most popular bands: Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, sharing space with Nirvana, Guns N’ Roses, and Oasis.‘Wonderwall’ was a fixture in those playlists. (It was the first Oasis song you ever heard, wasn’t it? Don’t even try to deny it.) It prompted you to scrounge for a few of their other songs, to get a feel of their music. ‘Don’t look back in anger’ did not disappoint. When you heard ‘Stop crying your heart out’, you thought they were a proper band. By the time you discovered ‘Champagne supernova’, you were at a crossroads.AdvertisementThe first path led to fandom. It meant devouring every Oasis album and picking a favourite track from the B-side that was obscure enough to burnish your credentials. It meant proclaiming Oasis to be the best Britpop band of their time — of all time, even. It also meant wincing over the bust-ups the Gallagher brothers seemed to enjoy more than making music. For most of the 2000s, sibling strife left the band teetering on the brink of implosion, while you left comments on their Facebook page volunteering to mediate their dispute. When Noel hit Liam with a cricket bat, you felt the blow in your bones. When they brawled in Barcelona, you carried the bruises for days. And finally, in 2009, when Liam held Noel’s guitar “like an axe” and brought it crashing down during a fight, your heart — and Oasis — splintered. Perhaps your sympathies lay with Noel. Or maybe you chose Liam, throwing your lot in with the “parka monkeys” who tittered when he called Noel “a potato”.most readWhatever your allegiance, you soon became one of those people who would interrupt conversations about Hamlet being the greatest tragic drama, to say, “Yes, yes, Shakespeare’s alright, but did the Prince of Denmark ever experience anything close to the pain of watching the break-up of Oasis?” Last year, when Oasis announced their reunion tour, you wept tears of joy. Liam and Noel back on stage together — it’ll be as whistle-worthy as when Shahrukh and Salman Khan shared the screen for those fleeting minutes in Pathaan.The other road, at that fork, led away from Oasis. Half-a-dozen of their songs were burrowed into your brain, but in the years that followed you cared little for the band. You dimly registered the news of the group collapsing. Apparently, the brothers were a nasty pair who hated each other. Later, when the Gallaghers became regulars at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester, you were not surprised. Fans of Manchester City FC are known to be insufferable, after all, surpassed in obnoxiousness only by fans of Manchester United FC.A few weeks ago, when someone told you Oasis are on a reunion tour this year, you expressed mild interest. “The brothers have made up, have they? Good for them,” you said. You remembered the friends who were obsessed with Oasis in their youth. They must be overjoyed now, desperate to score concert tickets. You smiled at the thought, but soon enough, you forgot all about them. The Gallaghers and Oasis drifted out of your mind, but it won’t be a long absence. They will flit into your consciousness again when you’re at a karaoke bar and someone puts on ‘Wonderwall’ prompting you, almost as a reflex, to take a deep breath before belting out the first verse.The writer is a Mumbai-based lawyer