Last August, I interviewed Goldspot frontman Siddhartha Khosla for The Aerogram. When Khosla spoke about his mother for the song “The Evergreen Cassette,” there was no mistaking the emotion in his voice. Yesterday the singer/songwriter put out a special edition of the song dedicated to moms everywhere.
Khosla had this to say about “The Evergreen Cassette”:
In the ‘70s, it was incredibly expensive to make an international phone call between India and the United States. At that time, my parents could barely put food on the table. So my mom had to find some way to communicate with me. She was without her son in a new country and just wanted to sing her baby a lullaby and tell him that she loved him.
So my mom would send me an evergreen-colored cassette tape to me in India — it was just her speaking to me — singing me songs and telling me stories. And then I would record over that same tape and we would send it back and forth over the course of two years.
My second favorite is a song called “New Haven Green.” That’s about my parents’ actual flight to the United States in the late ‘70s and those letters on paper napkins that my dad never sent.
I dare you to not cry after seeing how that sentiment carries over into this video:
Kishwer Vikaas is a co-founder of and editor at The Aerogram. Follow her on Twitter at @phillygrrl or email her at editors@theaerogram.com.
