You Really Got Me

“You Really Got Me” is the old Kinks song Lin sings during a drunken performance in an unlicensed bar outside town. The choice gives a communal drinking ordeal a sudden pop-song refrain: Lin sings, Prabaker learns the chorus, and the two carry it back onto the dark road. The song’s buoyant repetition briefly binds them in a shared joke, making its continuation immediately before a roadside attack an especially sharp contrast between exuberant performance and physical danger.

Appearance and Setting

The song enters after Lin and Prabaker have joined workers, farmers, and lawbreakers in a sly grog shop roughly an hour’s walk beyond the last bus stop. The drinkers endure foul, homemade over-proof alcohol in a cramped room; the drinking is not presented as easy pleasure but as a test of stamina. Prabaker lingers over his fifth glass before finally forcing it down. Then one man stands in the middle of the room and sings, and the rest cheer him. That response confirms that the company is drunk enough to turn the ordeal into a singing session.

The performance develops collectively. Men take turns singing the Indian national anthem, religious devotionals, Hindi love songs, and gazals. The two burly waiters recognize the group’s intoxication and stop carrying drinks; seated beside the entrance, they cradle thick wooden clubs while the customers clap and cheer. The scene’s music therefore unfolds under a visible sign of the bar’s roughness. The songs create a temporary occasion for common participation, but the clubs remain close at hand, an unromantic detail that keeps the revelry grounded in its precarious surroundings.

Lin’s Choice and Prabaker’s Chorus

When Lin’s turn comes, he sings “You Really Got Me,” without knowing why he has chosen it. The narrative does not supply a deliberate explanation or present the selection as part of a larger musical pattern. Its significance lies instead in the moment: amid devotional songs, national feeling, and Hindi popular music, Lin brings in an old Kinks song, and the room accepts it with the same applause given to the other performances.

The words Lin sings begin with an address to a girl and a declaration of being set in motion: “Girl, you really got me goin’ / You got me so I can’t sleep at night …” The excerpt’s direct, repetitive phrasing is suited to a chorus that can be picked up in a noisy, drunken room. Lin is drunk enough to coach Prabaker, while Prabaker is drunk enough to learn. The song thus becomes more than a solo selection: its words pass between the friends through instruction and imitation, changing the performance from one man’s turn into something they can sing together.

Prabaker’s contribution carries the scene’s comic looseness. After learning the chorus, he sings, “Oh, yes, by God, you are a girl!” followed by “And you really, really got me, isn’t it going?” The added emphasis and the stumbling question turn the refrain into an improvised exchange rather than a polished rendition. The text does not establish these words as the song’s original lyrics; it presents them as what the drunken friends sing in that moment. The pleasure comes from their shared, imperfect participation, not from a performance of musical precision.

From Barroom Refrain to Roadside Attack

The song does not end at the bar. Lin and Prabaker remain singing as they walk along a dark, deserted stretch of road toward town. Their continued chorus carries the camaraderie of the room into a more exposed setting, where there are no cheering drinkers around them. A white Ambassador car passes slowly, turns, passes again, and finally blocks their path on the shoulder. The singing continues through these movements, placing the men’s absorbed performance beside the car’s repeated approach without suggesting that the song causes what follows.

Four men get out; one remains at the wheel. The tallest grabs Lin’s shirt and barks a command in Marathi. Lin slurs a response, and another man strikes him, followed by punches to the mouth and nose. As Lin falls, Prabaker rushes at the attackers with his arms spread, trying to hold them back. Lin gets up enough to charge, and the friends are beaten amid kicks and punches. The transition is stark: the song’s repeated claim of being unable to sleep gives way to the immediate vulnerability of two intoxicated men caught on a deserted road. Its buoyant energy does not protect them or soften the assault.

Narrative Function

The song’s importance is confined to this scene, but its placement gives it a clear narrative function. Inside the bar, a difficult drinking ritual becomes a sequence of public performances; Lin’s choice makes room for an exchange with Prabaker; outside, their singing persists as the pair leave the crowd behind. The progression makes fellowship audible before the attack tests it through action, especially when Prabaker throws himself toward the four men to shield Lin.

The song also sharpens the contrast between the friends’ playful control of a chorus and their loss of control over the encounter. They can repeat and adapt its words together, but they cannot govern the men who stop them. The refrain is not a clue to the attackers’ motives, a prediction, or a solution to the violence. It is a brief expression of shared exhilaration whose abrupt surroundings expose how fragile that exhilaration is. What remains is the movement from group singing, to a private two-person chorus, to an interrupted walk—and the memory of the song immediately adjacent to a fight.