doublethink

From East Germany

2012-02-02T08:24:00.000-08:00

Light, Dark & In-between: Through photographs & impressions

2011-08-21T14:41:00.000-07:00

Here is the selection of some old and a few new photographs under the series titled Light, Dark & In-between.

Dresden Impressions

2011-08-01T06:14:00.001-07:00

Tu aa jaa

2011-07-15T01:07:00.000-07:00

Hi, this is my latest original composition. Lyrics are of my friend, Sadia Raval. I hope you guys will enjoy it.

End to an era of skin-barter?

2010-04-25T04:12:00.000-07:00

The thought of this piece came to my mind while reading a passage in Alice Albinia’s brilliant book Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River in which in her uncanny style she seamlessly stitches the history of habshishs (Africans) in Sindh and their negative perceptions in the ‘morbidly skin colour conscious’ north Indian society in which Fair & Lovely is to be found in such scarcely stocked tea shacks in the remostest areas where busses even find hard to ply.

Sitting at the Heathrow airport and surrounded by swarms of ‘white faces’ around, I pondered over the skin fascination in Bollywood songs, which Albinia also mentions in passing. The mass production of ‘fair ladies’ is enrapturing – from the advertisements of the fairness creams that sometimes go back to the Vedas to discover the ‘herbal’ (and civilisational?) remedies to probably present-day commercial (racial?) pollution, to that of Bollywod songs that hardly miss to shower praise on ‘gora rang’ (fair skin) of ‘gora badan’ (fair body) – the gora badan has been a conspicuous object of desire. One could only wonder at this stage when did ‘gori’ (fem. fair) or ‘goriya’ (fem. fair) become synonymous with ‘ladki’ (girl). While on the one hand in numerous songs the female characters displayed pride (and arrogance) in their possession of fair skin, the heroes who usually felt the pinch of skin-discrimination (is this the Krishna tradition that influences to keep our heroes relatively dark skinned?) on the other often reminded them: Gore rang par na itna gumaan kar, gora rang do din mein dhal jayega , from the movie Roti (1974) which almost reprimanded the goriya not to boast her fairness because its ephemeral, because its going to fade away, sooner rather than latter. However, the gora rang and the gori baahein have often remained the prime and first of the many (if any!) instigators that propel our heroes to fall in love. Gori Gori Gori Gori baahein teri hain, jo chori chori chori chori dekhun inhein main toh (Your arms are fair, which I gaze upon secretly, movie Fight Club (2006) is just one of the thousand and many more instances that can be plucked from our illustrious archives of Fair-wood music industry. No wonder, the heroes often pleaded the girls to give their gora rang to them (Zulfein Yeh Kaali Gaalon Ki Laali, Yeh Gora Rang De De
Maheke Gulaab Jaisa Shabaab, Pehli Bahaar De De, the blackness of your hair and the rosyness of your cheeks give me your fairness, your (physical) beauty is like a rose, give me the first spring (of my life), movie: Ek Rishta (2001) – which allegorically could mean two things: one, the physical bonding and second the emotional surrender. Whatever the case be, it was the body and its colour that preceded the individualism of the girl. This demand and the primacy of colour was/is well understood by the girls. Therefore, in moments of romantic despair when loyalty needed to assured, the girls offered to barter away their skin – mera gora ang lei ley, mohe shaam rang dei dey, (Take my fair body and give me your dark skin) movie: Bandini (1973). The Krishna cult in India somehow justified the presence of male dark skin, and apparently emboldened our Bollywood heroes to put their claims on goriya’s gora badan.

This age-old tradition of colour bartering is however seemingly coming to an end. Krishna is dead and Shahrukh Khan is the new God. He claims to be NOT ONLY A KHAN but also a handsome who uses Men Fair & Lovely. The cream of course has been ‘scientifically tailored for men’s skin’ which works on men’s skin in contrast to women’s skin in three different ways; it is designed to address three areas of men’s skin: toughness, roughness and harshness. We can raise our toast for the final arrival of democratic principles!

Now with the mass production of ‘fair hunks’ there couldn’t be any irony in one of the intimate scenes of the hard-hitting reality movie (Fashion), (which its director Madhur Bhandarkar claims to make) where the moral and ‘fair’ awakening of Priyanka Chopra’s character is immanently dependent on a ‘black’ encounter. Now with the use of Men F & L, it would be difficult for our directors to find suitable replacements where the morals could be discovered. In another ironical twist it could also symbolise the death of moral, for which we will raise another toast. But for the moment, we can just lament on the death of soulful err… skinful melodies of Bollywood.

Half dark half lit

2010-04-06T11:50:00.001-07:00

More seek than hide: the simple riddles of Vihir

2010-02-17T02:49:00.001-08:00

The guy in green played: Nachiket
The guy in white played: Samya
The small girl played: Soni
The man in black: Umesh Kulkarni (director)
The man in white churidaar: Girish Kulkarni (producer and co-script writer).

More seek than hide: the simple riddles of Vihir

Writing a review or even a critical note on Vihir is a daunting task for two reasons: one, the film has such a rich polyphonic repertoire that it is almost impossible for an untrained reviewer like me to do any justice to the film, and second, it has already been brilliantly written about by Shekhar Deshpande on http://dearcinema.com/. The Berlinale 2010 screening has also been reported there . Therefore, rather than a standard review that recounts the basic storyline, this note tries to raise certain issues related to the thematics of the film.

In teh post-screening interaction, the first question thrown at Umesh Kulkarni, the director of the movie, was about the fate of Nachiket. The film I guess left a section of audience puzzled: did he really die or not? Kulkarni’s answer was simple; the intention, he said, was to leave the question vague, which means that although death is a form of finality, the understanding of it need not be certain. In fact it is hardly ever so. However, some do get caught up in chasing not only ‘life’ but also ‘death’, and Samya was one such character. Out of his immense affection, bonding, love and respect for his Nachchada, Samya couldn’t bear the loss of Nachiket. And here, from the point of view of Samya, I would insist on maintaining the difference between ‘death’ and ‘loss’ which at the emotional level could mean the same but at the level on which Samya was struggling to find Nachiket meant differently. Nachiket’s disappearance was preceded by a long preface: he very intimately shared his thoughts with Samya and came to the resolution that he will run away, most probably by a train. And this angered and peeved Samya who was expecting him to come to Pune for his college studies. Given his skill of putting high philosophy in the most effusive and simple manner Nachiket in his own mind might have meant something completely different (perhaps signifying to freedom and liberation through the allegory of 'running away'), but for Samya, very probably, it appeared as a worldly act of an adolescent. Thus the trope of ‘death’ and ‘loss’ worked on two different registers, at least until the time when Samya himself undertook the journey to discover Nachiket. In this regard, Kulkarni couldn’t be more correct when he said that the film is about how Samya finds Nachiket.

Nachiket’s restlessness with the world started at the spatial site of domesticity. Although in Shekhar Deshpande’s opinion the director's brilliance lies in what he has done with time (this is used just for reflecting back on the film and ought not to be construed as criticism), I think it’s the portrayal of space that marks Kulkarni's excellence. Broadly, the film revolves around four spaces: the village home, the Pune flat, the swimming pool, and the open space (both in Nachiket’s village and also during Samya’s journey). The first three in paradoxically varying ways are sites of disassociation: the closed interiors, argued Kulkarni, were deliberately used to create an effect of claustrophobic space. The camera moved between the interior dark corners of these spaces producing a synchrony with the interiorisation of the self – first of Nachiket and later of Samya. While Nachiket took recourse to open fields, haystacks and riversides, Samya’s movement, unfortunately, was restricted between two claustrophobic spaces: his home where the leaking water from the roof accumulating in a tin bowl symbolised his growing restlessness, and the swimming pool, where the water reminded him of the well (Vihir) which supposedly had the dead body of Nachiket. It is no surprise then that the director chose to liberate Samya on the day when Ganesh idols were being immersed in the water.

Samya in his diary entries often pleaded Nachiket to at least once come to him and narrate what happened to him, to tell him his present whereabouts. But as Nachiket did not come, the only recourse was that Samya seeks him out. And this is the last part of the movie which portrays an aimless journey of a lost soul in a train, lorry, and bus and so on until he meets a wise shepherd (whose character reminded me of Herman Hesse’s Sidhartha). For the first time after his flight from home, Samya in the company of the old man appeared at peace with himself and it became inevitable that he will soon find Nachiket. That moment of realisation, as was expected, has also been left vague in the movie. Amidst the melody of the Dhangar folksongs (and not providing the subtitles was a deliberate choice of the director) Samya sleeps into the lap of the old man, only to awaken with the realisation that he has found Nachiket. Sounds and not words became crucial. He went to the well and jumped into the water to feel that he is swimming with Nachiket. Conventionally, the film should have ended there, but as Kulkarni later explained, he wanted to end the movie not at this note but at the onward journey. The last frame showed the bus leaving the village. Samya’s earlier movement between the spaces now became transcendental as he was now able to carry Nachiket with him.

In this depiction, what struck me was the technique of story-telling, with which I would like to end this brief note. Nachiket’s persistent effort to attain invisibility in the realm of visible was marvellously captured by the game of hide and seek, which means that he did not defy adolescence but re-created itself for his own experimental quest. The second technique was the use of riddles that Soni (Samya’s sister) kept throwing at everyone. At every crucial junction, the narrative moved ahead with the use of the riddle but it was pleasing to see the post-screening interaction ending with a riddle thrown at the audience. She asked: There is an elephant and there are lots of sweets and bananas in front of him but he is not touching them, why? And she explained that there could be three answers: one, it’s a plastic elephant; second, the sweets and bananas are made of plastic; and third, the elephant is diabetic.

A truly pleasing note to end watching a lovely film!

Road Movie: Enlivening cinema, critiquing modernity

2010-02-16T12:28:00.000-08:00

Road Movie: Enlivening cinema, critiquing modernity

I was a bit disappointed when I realised that there wouldn’t be any post-screening discussion on the movie. It was so because this brilliant film made me hungry to listen to the words coming from the horse’s mouth. And partly because I also wanted to stick up my neck for asking certain questions that, more or less, are still the first-impressions (yes, its still not more than a few hours that I saw the movie).

As the name suggests, quite literally, the film is about two things: road and movie(s). The storyline is simple and elegant: Vishnu (Abhay Deol) is unhappy to support and take over his father’s business of producing and selling Atma hair oil. He got a chance to ‘do a favour to his friend’ (as he kept saying throughout the movie) to drive a truck to Samudrapur) – I guess an imaginative place situated by the sea. The journey then becomes the central focus of the film, as different events and plots unfold in the course. He is stopped at a dhabha by a kid, and then that kid becomes part of Vishnu’s onward journey. The reason was that the kid wanted to change his job. On seeing the kid mocking at the speed of the truck, Vishnu accelerates and the truck breaks down in the middle of nowhere. The kid smarts off with a guy seated on a donkey who bypassed them, only to return back with a mechanic (Satish Kaushik). The kid had made a deal with the mechanic that the latter would be dropped at a mela, and now much to the dislike of Vishnu, the journey proceeds with three people on the truck.

The actual happenings, so to say, start with the cops stopping the truck and asking for its papers. The immediate context was the presence of waterlords in the region, who smuggled water. Obviously, neither Vishnu had the right licence nor had the papers. This led to the truck’s search, and it was then realised by the travellers including Vishnu that this was a cinema truck of 1942 model (the age of the truck was known before but not its function). The cop demanded an entertaining screening as a bribe to set the three off. The film depicts humorously (and sensitively) how they prepared the screening, for instance, by illegal power-theft (which the cops also did) and by pouring a bottle of Atma hair oil to lubricate the machine.

The next turning point comes when Vishnu asks a banjarin for water. She was one of the many who were wandering around in the desert for the search of water. Apparently smitten by her beauty (Kaushik was able to see ‘passion’ in Vishnu’s eyes), and against the initial reservations of the other two, Vishnu made banjarin the part of the journey, which was now headed towards the mela (and not Samudrapur). Perched by thirst, Vishnu goes to a protected well and tried abortively to fetch some water, which the waterlord came to know later.

The recounting must take a break here to reflect on some of the larger issues portrayed through this journey. At the allegorical level, road signifies life. On the journey, an individual meets new people, exchange both pleasure and bitterness, and not least, both betrays and forms bonding with each other (and together). Contrary emotions overlap and exist mutually. This is one obvious register on which the narrative unfolds.

The second register is of depicting the crisis and critique of modernity and consumerism. It does that, however, in a subtle and not dismissive way: very early on, the film showed Vishnu accompanying his father to the 7th Annual Hair Oil Competition. The ad-line for his hair oil was unwillingly memorised by every member of the family as it was part of the dinner talk. Thus, the film is sensitive towards showing the ‘reach’ (and perhaps aspirations) created in small-town middle class families. However, intrinsic to this spread is the limitation of that consumerism which comes out brilliantly in the interstices of the encounters that take place between a city-boy (Vishnu) and his co-travellers. The kid’s mock at the speed was thus couched in terms of Vishnu not driving a ‘Toyota’. Before that, the disgust on Vishnu’s face that came up after having a sip of the tea at the dhabha was rebuked by the kid by reminding him that he was not sitting at Starbucks. The very tangible example was Vishnu’s inability to use his mobile: the terrain denied connectivity.

Kaushik reached his mela-place which turned out to be a barren rickety area. Everyone was baffled but the narrative takes recourse to the ‘magic’ of cinema as an alchemy to hold the story together. Kaushik insists that a screening will bring the crowd, and ‘create’ a mela. Obviously, the director’s agenda comes out clearly here: twice in the movie (earlier during the encounter with the police) ‘movie’ came to the rescue: both, to the actors, as screening did lead to mela and huge earning (Rs 45,000), but also to the narrative that pushed the story forward. By recounting the ‘past’ as an assemblage of footage ranging from Deewar to Charlie Chaplin, the film also made a strong statement for and in (of) the ‘present’. The smile the screening brought on the faces of the desert people affirms the entertaining value of this medium even for us.

The trickiest part came in the last. The narrative reaches its crisis once again when the waterlord seizes the truck and also insists on making the banjarin his own. However, before that there is once again a fuzziness created between the boundaries that define our modernity and civilisation in opposition to barbarity and criminality. The waterlord insists that he is fairer in his dealings than many of the corporate houses who package and give fancy brand names to the water bottles. Since he stands outside the realm of the codes of capitalism that somehow works on the basis of ‘mutual loot’, it does not make him more criminal than big corporate players.

As one would have expected that the charm of ‘cinema’ will be invoked again to fuse this crisis, the director betrays all expectations by choosing to encounter the waterlord on the terrain of market itself. Vishnu comes forward with his memorised ad-lines of his father’s oil venture to assure the waterlord that the use of oil will transform him into a 'man'. After a champi and combing, when the waterlord looks at his reflection in the bowl of water, he is indeed convinced of his transformation. At the face of it, the resolution is funny and exalts director’s maverick. At the deeper level, when Vishnu insists that the oil doesn’t come for free, and thus he strikes a deal with the waterlord to get some litres of water in exchange and also his truck back, we are reminded of the power of branding and marketing.

Now it’s the ‘cinema’ that follows the resolution. A final screening to remind of the happiness of the journey takes place with the villagers, which saw Kaushik dying with a smiling face. That serves also as a reminder to bring the narrative to a close, which takes place by parting the ways. The city-boy had to return to the city, reminded the banjarin. Their love had to end that once again symbolised the allegorical meaning of the road and the journey. It does however leave an open question: were the two worlds, of city and desert, mutually exclusive? Are transgressions only momentary and sporadic? Does the return of Vishnu symbolises the return of market, and perhaps, of 'humane' consumerism?

The ethics of Idiocy

2010-01-27T03:15:00.000-08:00

It was quite refreshing to see how ‘excellence’ was given priority over ‘success’ in 3 Idiots. Until now we have been seeing a good number of movies about morality and success, of which the most recent example was Rocket Singh. In the period of recovery from economic recession, the film adds a necessary caveat on how to do business. The film moved beyond the dichotomy of good businessmen and bad businessmen by shifting the focus from the actors to the systems. It brought ethics into the core of economics in a powerful way.

However going back to the issue of excellence and success, and without challenging the core idea that excellence should precede success, I was wondering what would have happened if we could change the order of the ‘idiots’. Put Aamir Khan’s character in Sharman Joshi’s shoes without changing their class background. In other words, what is the role of material contexts in defining what success and excellence could mean? What would be the ways to achieve them? Moreover, where would the morality and ethics of success figure in the discourses of class backgrounds and how?

And this is where I feel like making a preposterous statement that although I loved watching 3 Idiots for its great entertainment value and for a meaningful message for discarding not only rote learning but also for chasing up genuine interests, I am not sure if the movie depicted poverty in its varied aspects. I am not arguing for political correctness in the depiction; I am arguing for the sensitivity towards it. Why was it necessary to depict the scenes of Aamir and Madhavan’s visit to Joshi’s house in black n white background in the backdrop of laughter-evoking musical piece? The whole scene of that encounter – between a superfluous rich-background – (Aamir) and a middle class – guy (Madhavan) on the one hand and Joshi’s gloomy house with plasters peeling off the walls evoked laughter than anything else. It represented the mimicry of poverty. Not even the irony was left, if at all poverty has any irony!

There would be many movies one could possibly think of to juxtapose this sort of representation, but I am here reminded of a Sai Paranjape’s movie called Disha. Made in the 1980s (most probably 1984) the movie has multiple thematic repertoire. While one could read urban-rural connectivity in that others could possibly turn to women issues. The thing which I liked the most in that movie was the variegated trajectories of poverty, which do not burden the viewers with their acuteness but neither caricature the differential response generation. Om Puri is the madman of the village who out of frustration of being poor (and lack of water in the village) had been digging a well for almost sixteen years. His sense of impoverishment made him enterprising because at last he succeeded in getting water. The characters of Raghubir Yadav and Nana Patekar deal with their worlds by migrating to Bombay. However they again followed different trajectories – while Yadav who was keen to migrate chose to come back once water arrived in the village (his heart lay in the rurality?) Patekar, who was coerced by his immediate needs to migrate, decided to stay there, because his wife, again because of poverty, was forced to work in the local bidi factory where she ended up having liaisons with the manager. Every character was, so to say, poor; they shared the same material conditions, but every character showed distinct traits in dealing with their immediate conditions.

This is the turf where 3 Idiots failed to score a point – the universalisation of the message of excellence over success was too monochromatic. To be fair, the narrative did try to complicate this by making Aamir’s childhood a surrogate to richness – a domestic help in a rich family. Also, he left the college empty handed without that affluence and without the worldly tag of being the topper of a prestigious college. Yet, in no way it convinces, at least me, why a character like Joshi’s should not aspire to just succeed. More importantly, and ironically the social constrictions and differential economic backgrounds were almost flattened. The chest-hair ridden belan of Joshi’s mother will at best be remembered as a good joke in the movie in the same way as the other guy will be who always put a price-tag to objects that also represented human emotions.

Benares Impressions

2009-12-25T05:54:00.000-08:00

Some pictures from my Benares visit.

Maharashtra Impressions

2009-12-02T06:05:00.000-08:00

These are some of the pictures taken during my recent visit to Maharashtra, India.

Rome Impressions

2009-09-21T07:09:00.000-07:00

Make Poverty History

2009-09-18T13:39:00.000-07:00

Few weeks back while travelling in a train in the UK, I found myself sitting in front of a seemingly learned white gentleman who was deeply engrossed in reading through a folder that might have contained essays by his students (assuming that he is in teaching profession). The nature of those papers did not intrigue me; what did intrigue me was a band on his wrist: Make Poverty History. No, it was not for the first time that I had seen this band. I was aware of its existence as much as of the poverty itself. The global call to wear the white band, if I am not wrong, was in 2005 when millions in the UK alone displayed the band-istic solidarity. And I must admit that for the first few seconds or may be for a minute or two, I was completely mesmerized, in fact, I was in awe of this gentleman, whose impeccable deep-in-thought reading posture meticulously matched by his golden rim glasses transposed the meaning of the words scribbled on the band to a completely different level: to a philosophical nexus of capitalism and corporatism of our modern world that not only produces but also makes poverty somehow acceptable. And simultaneously it also reinforced the idea that some people feel and believe that it can be eradicated. These thoughts empowered me. I felt that I am part of his world, the world that conveys deep meanings through simplest of the simple mediums. I felt that I do want to march ahead, with hands in hands, and wrists in wrists, to bulldoze the ramparts of ‘business of high politics’ and ‘politics of high business’ where poverty is both produced and caricatured. Well, if you’re now awe-struck at the twist of this phrase, I will let you know a little secret: these are not mine; I borrowed them from Gregory David Roberts’s Shantaram, a book which also talks about poverty and philosophy – a philosophy wherein every object or idea is in transition to achieve a higher plane of resolution and the poverty which is not shameful of its existence. It is the poverty which is aware of its limitation and resilient of its strength, which both performs and mimics itself at the margins of the society and yet provides crucial linkages to the mechanisms of the society that is pretty much mainstream. It is the poverty which is residing within the web of the poorers and yet which is tied to the strings of power and prestige, money and charity that influences or rather constitutes it from outside. While in the train I was not encountered by these thoughts although I had read the Shantaram months ago. What also kept me preoccupied in my banal devilish thinking was not the belief in emancipation (that was momentary, as emancipation, very akin to desire, itself is. Echoes of limitations of Buddhism?) But the idea fiddling in my mind was that if Poverty becomes History then we all will be rich. If this sounds like a mistaken generalization, then, I further qualified my thought: may be not rich but richer. Still this relativism, I argued in my mind, would mean that we need another band: Make Lesser Rich More Richer, or, Less is More and many more, some interesting and some uninteresting one-liners, kept swimming in my head until I naively realized that the few hundreds amongst those millions on the streets of the UK must have bought their shirts or trousers from the Primark whose in-house and off-shore manufacturing must have involved a few hundred of Bangladeshi children working 16 hours a day and wishing to get richer.

Prague Impressions

2009-08-30T12:30:00.001-07:00

Berlin Impressions - II

2009-08-24T10:10:00.000-07:00

Berlin Impressions - I

2009-06-13T14:17:00.000-07:00

List of people who ought to be killed

2009-04-08T15:19:00.000-07:00

Sounds ghastly, isin't? Well I was skimming through my old notebook which I was carrying with me the last year while travelling. In a corner I had noted 'people who ought to be killed'. As I recall, it was written while waiting for my flight at the Heathrow airport, and of course, I always utilise such opportunities to 'observe' people around me. Surely, you guys also do it :). So, here is the list of the people who ought to be killed:

1. Parents, particularly Indians, who at public places like airports, railway stations and cafes, think that their kids are the smartest, of course along with the kids, should be killed.

2. Parents, again mostly Indians, who smile either shamefully or shamelessly at co-passengers or ones sitting near them, to cover-up their child's embarrassing deeds.

3. Those who think travel means stuffing their kids up till their necks. (Kids who incessantly cry and nag for choclates, chips and cola should be killed first.)

4. In the same vain, people who try to 'force' conversation on you while travelling, by showing utter disrespect to gauge your mood should be killed.

5. Parents, and here non-Indians are warmly included, who don't force their kids to ride cycles, at least until the age of fifteen.

Ok, before human rights activists declare me a mentally deranged 'terrorist' I should stop.

Ameen.

English please!

2009-03-13T06:01:00.000-07:00

The other day I was at a friend’s place. I was asked to entertain myself on my own for some time as my friend was on a call. And the germ of this post was sown inadverntently at that very moment. No, it did not happen because ‘empty mind thought intelligently’ but because of observation that in spite of my friend’s impeccable English I did not hear a single English word in her conversation with her brother.

And on extending this exciting revealation as a flashback to my more than an year stay now in Germany, I was thrilled to recount many instances when I did not hear any English word being used by my German friends in their conversation, unless they felt guilty of letting me feel left out. And, then I was at a newer understanding of ‘being Indians’. Indian is a generalised category and here I speak only of ‘we typical’ English educated middle-class. I also must confess here that my understanding here is limited to northerners and easterners, but blinded by flashing success of the IT hoopla in which southerners have taken a lead, I am almost sure this applies on them as well. So here is this observation: we Indians feel ashamed of speaking in our mother tongue for more than three minutes or at best five sentences. (The remarkable exceptions are Bengalis.) To gloss over our deficiency, we came up with one more proof of our stupidity: Hinglish. One stray example is: “You know it’s so diffuclt to gootho aata (you know it is so difficult to knead flour).” The examples could be multiplied. The fact is that we don’t even make a try and the reason is simple: we don’t want to try. Speaking English and in English amongst ourselves massages our complexes of superiority, and structurally in the same logic help us look down upon those who can’t manage to do so. I am completely leaving aside here the even funnier ego-boost-exercise at picking up on regional accents. The language in itself is bread and butter of that mentality which we inherited from British colonial rule and are happily promoting and sustaining it. No Brits, I am not blaming you. On contrary, I am congratulating you on knowing us so well. We love to be showy, and you gave us the most important tool to show off.

Frankfurt Impressions

2009-03-02T13:26:00.000-08:00

Hi,
These are a few of the pictures which I took in my recent visit to Frankfurt. The 'skillfull' eyes would find many of them naive and erroneous, but well... what the heck !!

Broth of thoughts

2009-02-03T07:54:00.000-08:00

Thoughts are something like boiled red kidney beans – if overcooked they crumble down; pieces and fragments float in the curry which perhaps is on its way to become a broth. Well, there could be another perspective: since they are crumbled, they mix-up well with whatever you add to them. Dissolved and assimilated, they take a new shape and get re-shaped in turn.

I remember reading recently a comment made in the aftermath of attack on girls in a Bangalore pub: “A republic without pub is a relic.” Funny, witty and thought-provoking. A pub, a café, a bar – history has shown us – have always remained the sites of thought-formation in the West (French cafes in particular where wine, cubism and talks about mistresses flowed seamlessly over the rim of the goblets); in fact quite very much akin to what an adda or paada is in Bengal and mehfil, gosthi and majlis are in other cultural zones spreading from Iran to Indonesia. You drink and you think, sometimes you also think that why does one drink, and you drink more to think more over it. Not necessarily it happens in this sequence, but well sometimes it does. And then you realise that perhaps you’re making an ugly broth of your even uglier thoughts – just like crushing those tender beans with a harsh stroke of banal imagination – that needs none of your intrusions. May be the protectors of our collective Indian morality, whatever the source of that morality is, be it the Kamasutra or the Bhagvad Geeta, need to drink more to realise that they are as ugly as their thoughts are.

Ek arsey se

2008-11-21T09:35:00.000-08:00

This is "our" first output of collaboration. Yep, this time it's not me alone. Th beautiful lyrics are written by my friend, Sadia, who also with Tanveer have made this beautiful video.

Hope you guys will like it.

Haseen Chaand

2008-07-11T00:45:00.000-07:00

A double treat for my readers - since I was inactive for long, I thought of putting up two pieces at the same time. Heavy dose for you guys?? :P

Phool khilte hain baharon mein gar jo aate ho tum
Jo na bhi aawo toh mitte rahe ye gul phir bhi,

Saansein meri ruk-ruk ke chalti hain jo na ho tum
Aur jo ho bhi tum to rukti nahi kambhakt phir bhi,

Zinda hua raat ki chaa gaya taaron ka jaal
Saba ki yaad mein rota hai ye dil phir bhi,

Aayi hai maut bankar abki saba ki khusboo
Na bhoolega dil sab me uge haseen chaand ko phir bhi.

Chand umeedein chand fasaane

2008-07-11T00:27:00.001-07:00

Avid readers of Urdu poetry would definitely find shades of Firakh Gorakhpuri in this piece (specially in the last couplet). The title is borrowed from Mehndi Hassan's famous ghazal - bhooli beesri chand umeedein, chand fasaane yaad aaye.

Bewafa jo hue tum to koi shikwa bhi nahi
Mit gayi ho ranjishein saari kuch aisa bhi nahi,

Dard to hai dil mein ki tum chodh gaye mujhko
Rok loon tere qadmon ko, dard itna bhi nahi,

Ab tammanna bhi nahi, na koi khwaeish hi rahi
Shab-e-firaaq magar shaam-e-besahar ho, aisa bhi nahi,

Chand umeedein, chand fasaane, sab adhoore hi rahe
Niyat-e-mohabbat to paak thi, aadmi wo magar achcha bhi nahi.

Azal ki pukaar

2008-04-10T10:47:00.000-07:00

Azal ki pukaar

Raat ke akelepan mein
Bayaaz-e-paak kafan odhe
Ye kiski rooh chali aati hai
Aahistaa se paas mere,

Benazeer si aankhein jiski
Ghoorti hai mujhe sargoshi se
Aur poochti hai kuch dilsoz sawal
masoom sile labon se,

Uske saath mein,
Khudh ko aur bhi tanha pata hoon
Ye aaghaaz hai aakhir-e-shab ki
Ya azal ki pukaar,

Shikast-e-saaz ke phailey iss shor mein
Uske ankahi lafzon ke samandar mein,
Khudh ko utarta paata hoon.

Again, to help my readers, I am doing an English "version" and not translation.

Mysterious Night

Shrouded in mystery, in this lonely night
Someone walks up to me,
And sits beside,

With myriad expressions in her eyes
She stares me,
With her lips still unmoved
She asks thousand questions to me,

In her company
I get more saddened,
I wonder if this is the beginning of the last night,
Or the call of the destiny,

The uproar of the silence overwhelmes me,
And, I find myself drowning
in the ocean of her unspoken words.

Tum Bin

2008-03-31T10:19:00.000-07:00

This is my fifth composition. If you think I have become prolific, then blame it on my talent :P (pun intended!!)

But this track has a history: this was inspired by a music track called "fizzer" composed by a fellow artist of the www.kompoz.com. He wanted someone to write lyrics and add vocals to his music track.

So here are the lyrics:

Tum bin jeeya jaaye na,
Jeeya jaaye na, jeeya jaaye na,

Saanson ki dhadkan mein
Tum ho mere base,

Waqt ye kahin, phir gir ke
Lamhon ke paav, yun chun ke
Bone lage, khwaab naye,
Aarzoo hai ye, phir dil ki
Saath ho hum, yun phir se
Katti nahi, ye ghadi,

Saanson ki dhadkan mein
Tum ho mere base,

Jaano na ye dil ki lagan,
Mere mann ki agan
Nahi bujhti hai tere bina,
Mausam yun badle ki,
Pal mein ye sadiyaan
Bikhar ke, kho gayi kahan

Tum bin jeeya jaaye na,
Jeeya jaaye na, jeeya jaaye na.

You can listen to it by clicking on the right hand video box, or by clicking the link given below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfESOiT75nU

Mora Sajna

2008-03-24T03:30:00.000-07:00

This is my fourth composition. As usual the audio quality is not great; actually had a very hard time recording this one (because of software bugs). Also it has something to do with my audio-visual "management skills" (someone would get the pun, I am sure :D). I am giving the lyrics here:

Dekho aaye na, mora sajna
Tarsat ankhiyaan, beetaaye raina..

Nit chedh jaaye, jaaye sakhiyaan
Raakh si kaali, kaali ratiyaan,
Birha ki aag lagaye re,
Dekho aaye na, mora sajna...

Jaagi si aankhon mein chaand jaage,
Soyi si palkon ko kaun jagaye,
Kaise bhool jaawun piya ki wo batiyaan
Yaad mohe sataye re,

Dekho aaye na, mora sajna.

Click on the link below, or on the first video bar on the top right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHQ7IefFyP4

Yakeen

2008-02-24T07:36:00.000-08:00

Ajeeb hai dard-e-dil ki taseer goya,
Dard mein jeena hi ise raas aaya,
Badhne de Firaaq ki ghadiyaan kuch aur pal,
Syaah-e-sab mein hi ise mehtaab nazar aaya.

Kahe the wo ki humsafar honge,
Kahe the wo ki ba-wafa honge,
Khoobsoorti itni ki dil-e-nadaan ko,
Unki har baat par yakeen aaya.

Tum nahi ho kaheen - with music

2008-01-26T11:04:00.000-08:00

This is very crude at present, but you can have a listen. This is my earlier song, Tum nahi ho kaheen, with music-tracks.

Bekhudi kab talak

2008-01-20T02:02:00.000-08:00

Phir saamna ho aaj ka
Ki baad muddat ho gayi,
Ghumshuda palon ka katra
Behta rahoon kab talak,

Kis makaam par pahunchaan hoon main
Ki ashq bhi sookh gaye,
Laut lein us hujoom mein
Ye bekhudi kab talak.

e - Exhibition

2007-10-28T21:36:00.000-07:00

While cleaning my old stuff, I surprisingly found my once-lost sketch book, which is almost 12-13 years old. The moths have started preying on the book. The pages are torn too from the sideways. I thought it better to take the pictures of my "childhood skill" (pun intended) and put it here and share them with you guys. If you find that I was inclined to sketch female faces more than anything else, blame it on my "growing-up" phase. :D

Enjoy:

Exploring Music

2007-10-01T03:39:00.001-07:00

These days when I haven't got anything serious to do, I browse a lot. While doing so, I chanced upon a site a few days ago which although is for rock n roll music, but caters to a wider variety of music from different regions across the world.

The blog also runs a monthly carnival in which the owner of the site calls for contributions. The theme of each issue is pre-given. I sent one of my pieces from my site, which was accepted for the carnival issue. Do have a look at not only the different interesting contributions but also feel free to explore the site. You wouldn't feel disappointed.

The site's URL is http://www.soulofrocknroll.com/

The current carnival issue's URL is http://www.soulofrocknroll.com/?p=206

Tum Nahi Ho Kaheen

2007-09-02T09:45:00.000-07:00

This is my third composition. And it took me ages to come out with it, however that doesn't promise it to be good, but do have a listen and leave your suggestions.

Bear with the audio quality. It took me three hours to actually put it on the youtube and the version which I finally managed to put up was not the one which I thought was best. Nonetheless, couldn't be bothered about changing the recording. My bare IT skills discourage me to do so.

The link is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYE80NRpcCI

Random camera work - New Castle visit

2007-08-19T13:54:00.000-07:00

The many meanings of smoking

2007-07-31T14:42:00.000-07:00

The many meanings of smoking

“Smoking kills” – this is not only a compulsory statutory warning flashed on all cigarette packs but also a fact. And people go ahead buying those packs (by turning blind to that message) is also a fact. Smoking is an act, a habit, and for a lot of people an addiction. On a simpler level, it appears, and in some way it is, a personal and individual habit, of course with damaging repercussions for those who have to keep company with the smokers by choice or by default. I assume this is the logic behind recent spate of bans on smoking in public places, so that the non-smokers don’t have to suffer. But, smoking has also come to acquire a social meaning. It is an act which has moved beyond the realm of individual into the social. It has been donned with certain social attributes over a period of time. The role of media in different mediums like adverts, films, and songs are crucial in this exercise.

As a kid I remember watching an advert in which a boy and a girl holding their hands together were seen enjoying the rain. The caption said: “Made for each other”. This advert however was not for a perfect couple, but for a perfect cigarette – the Navy Cut Filter Wills. Filter and tobacco were “perfectly matched” which produced a taste that “truly satisfied – time after time”. A couple endorsing the practice of smoking actually elevated it from an individual practice to a social conjugal space, that space which needed not to go “smokefree”. In 1969, in fact the ITC (Indian Tobacco Company) introduced the “Wills Made For Each Other Contest” to find a perfectly matched couple. The brand was then changed to Wills Navy Cut from Wills Filter, and the blending of right tobacco with right filter was described as a “marriage”, of course with an image of a couple in the advert.

There are many such adverts promoted by the tobacco companies that legitimised smoking as a social practice and through them put across certain cultural attributes. For instance, the advert of Wills Classic showed men playing polo with a caption: “Discover a passion. For those who value taste.” One could be slightly amused at this forged relationship between masculinity, sportsmanship and smoking. (I can’t even run fifty meters and I think part of it is because of smoking). And then of course, there was the image of “The Man with a Smooth Edge”, who drove the car while a girl gasped at his manliness. This was the advert of Four Square brand.

Nonetheless this world of media representation is changed or changing. Now we have adverts from the Health Ministry and the World Health Organisation (WHO) warning against the dangers of smoking. And they are equally innovative, like this one: “Cancer Cures Smoking”. The Health and Family Welfare Ministry together with the WHO took up the campaign against passive smoking by putting up the images of a child, a pregnant woman, and an old man affected by smoke; the pregnant woman one being really catchy: “Between the two of them, they smoke fifteen cigarettes a day”. This awareness drive is crucial for any ban or prohibition to work.

If adverts are fast changing or striving to change the social meaning of smoking, so is our Bollywood. Later this year we will see a film called No Smoking, in which John Abraham plays a chain smoker and Raj Kumar Santoshi, a doctor who helps him quit smoking. In their personal lives, actors like John, Saif and Aamir have given up smoking. But the social struggle is going to be more prolonged. In June 2005, the Health Ministry put a ban on use of images of tobacco from all Indian movies and television shows. Amidst the criticism from libertarian artists who championed for the cause of “artistic freedom”, the deadline was extended to January 2006. But seemingly, that is still ineffective; we have seen smoking scenes in recent movies like Don.

The yesteryears songs and movies made smoking fashionable, doable, and cool. The casual, indifferent attitude towards life in one of the most famous songs of Md. Rafi from the movie Hum Dono (1961): Main zindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya, har fikr ko dhuwe mein udata chala gaya (I puffed out all my worries in smoke and now take each day as it comes by) became a trend-setter. The song picturised on Dev Anand, who puffed cigarette throughout the song, typified an image of the youth who cared for nothing. And this youthful adventurism and smoking remained inseparable since then. Be it Prem of Maine Pyar Kiya, who had returned home after finishing his studies, stealing cigarette from his Dad’s packs or Haider Ali’s Purani Jeans – a song that became the anthem of college goers in the decades of nineties – which brilliantly captured the youthful activities that amongst other included smoking in hiding from parents. And how could one miss to mention the most stylist actor of Indian cinema – Rajnikant’s inimitable style of flipping the cigarette and tossing it into his mouth: a skill par excellence which many tried to imitate in their real lives, although unsuccessfully.

If smoking became voguish among youth, the off-beat films as they are called now, or what was earlier known as “parallel cinema” in the decades of seventies and eighties associated smoking with a “thinking” intelligentsia. The seriousness, depth and intensity of the character relied on the number of cigarettes or at best on the fact that they smoked. Quite remarkable is the gender configuration around smoking. A “bad girl” or a “vamp” can only smoke in our movies; for men it was an OK or rather preferable thing to do.

The mediums of mass contact like films and adverts thus have imputed a meaning to this act. Good or bad, that depends on the perspective, but one thing is sure: smoking is not just a medical/health issue; it has deeper social connotations.

Linking the nation: Bollywood ways

2007-07-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

Linking the nation: Bollywood ways

In my last post I talked in some length about how newer means of technology, especially trains, have always found a prominent place in the cinematic portrayal in Hindi cinema. The range of emotions that are depicted through trains are wide, varied, and least to say, interesting. From a close camera-shot of tracks and a speeding train signifying escape, displacement, migration, and not the least death to those of scenes of crowded railway compartments in which the lovers’ eyes still managed to meet (for instance Amol Palekar and Tina Munim starrer Baaton Baaton Mein (1979), railways have remained integral to the ways in which individual sensibilities of a character in Hindi cinema has been depicted.

But they signify more than that, at least in Bollywood. They signify a link, a connectivity that joins territories and groups. They signify a medium through which a nation is conceptualised. They signify a continuum through which that perceived or real (whatever it is) bonding is constantly promoted, reproduced, and maintained. In other words, trains have not only served in the portrayal of intense individual feelings or in showcasing the exotic natural beauty; they have helped linking the nation.

Bollywood has a long history of patriotic films and songs. Even in present times we get such films from time to time, nonetheless sometimes with a hawkish jingoist temper as was the case with Ghadar. We also saw a trend towards making epics on individuals: five films on Bhagat Singh in a row and one on Subash Chandra Bose in recent years. The context of such films has shifted over a period of time. So for instance, if Roja and Sarfarosh were made in the backdrop of cross-border terrorism, recent films like Rang De Basanti have turned the gaze towards internal political corruption prevailing in the country and the need to reform the system.

If we go a bit further back in time, we see a different context. The 1960s and 70s saw some war-films that fed patriotic feelings in their own ways. Haqeeqat (1964), arguably one of the finest war-films ever made in Hindi cinema history, was set in the context of 1962 Indo-China war and Rajkumar starrer Hindustan Ki Kasam (1973) was based on the recently concluded 1971 Indo-Pak war. And in between came two popular gems in this genre of films and songs: one the Manoj Kumar starrer Shaheed (1965), and the second, a song penned by Kavi Pradeep, composed by C. Ramachandra and sung by legendary Lata Mangeshkar: Aye mere watan ke logon. The song was about remembering those who lost their lives in the 1962 war; a song which although officially was not a national anthem but one with which most of us struggled to sing on the Independence Day in our schooldays.

And very briefly, if we go further back to the period of 1940s and 50s, we encounter a different context in which patriotic songs and films were produced. This was the context of freedom struggle and the incipient nation-state that was coming to terms with a new independent life. If films like Shaheed (1948) and Jhansi Ki Rani (1953) on the one hand depicted a romanticised past of struggle against the colonial rule with a moralist perspective, Railway Platform (the debut film of late Sunil Dutt, 1955) and Phir Subah Hogi (1958), on the other, tried to raise a new debate about nationalism. It was in this period when “unity amidst diversity” had become the doctrine of new independent India that trains also figured in Bollywood songs to build that imagined unity.

Travel by the railways became a part of seeing the nation or rather discovering the nation, specifically its past. The glimpses captured while gazing out of the window of a railway carriage were actually the snapshots through which the history of India was constructed and reified. Abhi Bhattacharya, who acted as a school teacher in the film Jagruti (1954) took a bunch of students on this “nation-seeing” trip, while he sang the famous song: “aao bachchon tumhe dikhayein jhaanki Hindustan ki”. The train passed through different territories and each of the stanzas depicted (or rather mythically constructed) the historical significance of that territory. For instance, Maharasthra was defined as a territory of patriotic Shivaji who had fought the Mughals, while crossing through Rajputana (modern day Rajasthan) the bravery of Rana Pratap (and yes, also of “thousand Padminis" who had apparently committed suicide to save their “grace”) was extolled, and the horrors of Jallianwala Bagh massacre was reminded to those school kids who took their lessons in Indian history while on train. The travel not only forged physical linkage over the vast distance of north India it also stitched together the dispersed historical facts and myths in one thread to promote the unity which a new nation-state required.

The carriage with people from different regions became a “melting pot” of different cultures. At least so was this for an otherwise funny song, “rail mein jeeya mora” from the movie Aankhen (1950), which also signified that this vehicle had become a medium to pull people out from far flung areas, like Madras and Bengal together into a common and shared mode of travelling. The regional variations persisted; Bengalis while travelling stuck to their “rasgullas” and the Punjabis to “loud chit-chat”, but they all travelled together, thus bridging the tyranny of physical and social distance.

This forging of national space was however accompanied by partition, when millions got displaced and thousands lost their lives. The linkages of a new nation were premised on the division of an erstwhile-shared space. No wonder, trains had become historically and symbolically a representative of that division as well; the dead bodies dumped in the trains running along the borders of the Punjab during the Partition in the later years invoked memories of those horrible journeys (seen in films like Pinjar). Trains thus not only depict a harmonious building of a new nation, its wheels and speed also reminds of tracks soaked in blood.

Bollywood Express

2007-06-22T13:55:00.000-07:00

More than ten years before, when I think I was still a kid, I heard this song from the movie Hindustani (Kamal Hasan starrer): “Telephone dhun mein hasne wali, Melbourne machli machalne wali…”(The woman who laughs like a ringtone, the woman who gyrates like a Melbourne fish). I don’t know if Melbourne fishes have some special skills to imitate Bollywood jhatkas and matkas but anyways coming back to the song, it further says “Sona sona, cellular phone tum ho na, computer ko lekar bramhaand rachaya kya”, which would translate something like this: Oh Dear you are like a cellular phone, have you created this world with your computer?

Funny, isn’t? I simply call it banal. But err, actually it’s imaginative too. Think about this: we have a fairly long and quite monotonous tradition in Bollywood of comparing our heroines with chaand, i.e. moon. Remember the unforgettable “Chaudvi ka chaand ho…” or “Ye chaand sa raushan chehra” from 1960s and 70s? But now, we have something interesting to compare our actresses with. We have cell phones and ring tones.

Technology has always sparked the imagination of our lyricists and moviemakers. And this is nothing new. The classic case is the song from the movie Patanga (1949): “Mere piya gaye Rangoon, wahan se kiya hai telephoon, ki teri yaad satati hai”. (My hubby has gone to Rangoon and from there he calls me on telephone, saying that he misses me). The “tyranny of distance” and missing one’s beloved (as is the case with Patanga song, in which the husband has gone to Burma and therefore he misses his wife who is in Dehradun) is always bridged by a technological aid. Though sometimes nostalgia also grips our directors, and they think of revisiting the past by using Kabootars (pigeons) as messengers between lovers. (The stupid song from Maine Pyar Kiya: “Kabtoor jaa jaa jaa”). Apparently Bhahadur Shah Zafar had many pigeon-messengers in his royal household. But this is quite cheesy in modern times. Isn’t?

However, far more comprehensive than any other mediums of technology in its usage, portrayal and depiction in Bollywood movies and songs are trains. For romance, dance, songs, action, thrill, depicting a host of emotions ranging from separation to re-meeting, trains and railway platforms have provided not only a suitable locale and background for such picturizations but have also acted as a symbol and a metaphor to help plot the narrative of the movie.

A recent movie (Emran Hasmi and Sayali Bhagat starrer) is called The Train. Though I haven’t seen the movie but it is told that Emran’s character Vishal, gets a new twist in his life while travelling in a train, and hence the name of the movie being so. Before that in 1970 a movie came out with the similar name. Or remember the classic of yesteryears, The Burning Train (1980), which turned out to be the greatest thriller of its time. The examples could be multiplied. The famous train sequences and scenes are too numerous to count: the train dacoity scene from the biggest Bollywood buster Sholay, a similar scene from Dhoom 2, the thrilling race scene in Aamir Khan’s starrer Ghulam in which apparently he got alarmingly too close to the train to send a frenzy in the shooting camp and so on.

And then we have quite a few memorable songs picturised on/around trains. The all time hit “Mere sapnon ki raani kab aayegi tu” from the movie Aradhna shows Rajesh Khanna singing this song for his lover (portrayed by Sharmila Tagore) who is sitting by the window in a railway carriage. Or think of one of the best “item songs” of the recent years, “Chaiyaa Chaiyaa” from the movie Dil Se, in which Shahrukh and Malaika shake their legs on the top of the train. The exquisite locale through which the train passes makes the song a visual delight to watch.

If on the one hand the cinematic appeal of the railways has attracted the moviemakers from a long time, that appeal has also, on the other hand, been creatively situated in the narrative to provide a more nuanced meaning to the movie. It has been used as a metaphor to depict desire, escape, change of life, a beginning, fulfilment of dreams and so on. Those who have seen the movie Pakeezah would recall the whistle of the passing train, which unsettles the character of Meena Kumari. I think, apart from anything else, what provided a real momentous and pushed the narrative of the film further was this passing train, which both unnerved and rekindled a hope in Meena’s character. She was then reminded of the past (the opening scene of the movie) in which while travelling on the train she was complimented for her beautiful feet. That memory, which the passing train always revived, was central to any of her hopes to get out of her present situation (a change in her world).

Trains have also been used as carriers of dreams. Raju from the movie Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (played by SRK) aspires to become successful in his life, and he boards a train to Mumbai. The typical characterisation of Mumbai as a “dream city” in Bollywood is strengthened by this connectivity, which a train provides to a million of aspiring youth to make it big. in their lives. Exodus from small towns, as was the case in a recent movie, Bunty and Bubbly, relies on trains, and then we get some more songs either about trains (“Dhadak dhadak dhuwan udaye rail”) or songs picturised on trains.

The nexus between trains and Bollywood is thus too entrenched. Lovers meet for the first time either on trains or on railway platforms (like in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le jaayenge) or a new life starts with the symbolic departure of train (like in internationally acclaimed movie Water, in which the small girl, Chuhiya, is taken afar by John Abraham into a world of new life, away from her miserable abode in a widow home, (which surreptitiously ran prostitution).

In this context, the Melbourne machlis are not odd ones out. But still I feel that song is more of a sort of jumble-mumble of lyricist’s imagination, quite a wild imagination, to say the least.

New trends in Bollymusic

2007-06-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back a friend of mine suggested me to listen to a song sung by Soham Chakrabarty in a recent movie Life in a Metro. A well-known musician, Pritam Chakravorty, has composed this song. The track is called "In Dinon Dil Mera". On hearing it first, I thought it was awesome, and in many ways I still think so. The voice is new and refreshing, the tune is catchy, and the lyrics are simple and elegant.

But it is not path breaking. And in no way it looses its charm for not being so. Sometimes I feel it actually odd to even raise the question of ‘authenticity’ in this milieu of technologically-aided rapid transmission of tunes and genres and in light of evolution of ‘fusion’ music which itself is a hash of so many genres. For instance, a friend of mine recently reminded me that another song, "Bheegi Bheegi" composed by the same musician for the movie Gangster, released in 2006, was an adaptation of a very popular Bangla song which was known for its strong political message.

But this issue of authenticity should not bug us; at least it does not bother me much. Of course matters related to creativity and copyrights are crucial, especially for those who get their bread-and-butter from this trade, but currently there is something more happening in Bolly-music, which needs to be identified. Over the last few years the face of Hindi music in general and the Bolly-music in particular has changed tremendously. The decade of nineties witnessed two new things in music industry. One was the remix culture, churning old numbers in new musical arrangements, with increased use of electronic-metallic sound effects. Although they provided good hip-shaking numbers for desi clubs but I should nonetheless be excused for saying that those remixes became more popular for their visual delectations rather than for their quality of audio re-mixing. The infamous "Kaanta Laga" girl became the face of page three in all tabloids and newspapers. And for what? For apparently showing her g-string, which sent the whole nation into debating if that was actually shown. In a country of a billion plus population like India with an equal number of pair of eyes, such things can’t go unnoticed.

The second was, what I would prefer to call, the Bhangra-isation of Hindi popular music. The music industry, the music shops, the bazaar plazas, the buses, taxis, autos and rickshaws and not the least the TV sets and many living rooms through numerous music channels were flooded (could invaded be the right word here?) with Punjabi tunes and songs. The Bhangra music and its popularity definitely goes back to 80s, when Malkit Singh and his group the Golden Star became a hit in the UK and artists like Gurudas Mann became a household name in India. But a new trend of cutting private albums in the nineties gave this music a more secured place and soon it came to dominate popular tunes and lyrics. I don’t hate them, but the doses given to we listeners were too much to handle. The cars zapped around playing loud the one-after-another hits of Daler Mehndi. He was not alone; Hans Raj Hans, Mika (yes, the one who made a kissa with his kiss) and the whole bandwagon came to symbolise the power of heavy drums and fast beats. Sometimes I wonder at such happy coincidences. When the whole India was apparently shining and moving fast on its fourth gear to become a developed nation (err, we still cherish that goal, don’t we?) the music cut out to match that speed was equally paced.

However, there was one more parallel development happening in the same period that bloomed in the late 90s. And it still remains so but has actually changed its form. It is this form which currently dominates the digits of bolly-music: the ‘Indi-pop’ music. This brand of music, when it emerged, was a generic term applied to non-filmi album tracks based more on guitar tunes than on synthesisers and drums. Again, as in the case of Bhangra, the genre itself was not new in the nineties; Alisha Chinoy who is referred to as “Queen of Indi-pop” together with singers like Sharon Prabhakar, and Suneeta “Pari Hoon Main” Rao were already popular. But a major spurt came in early nineties with bands replacing the individual singers. Junoon, a Pakistani band became a living legend with their Sayyoni followed by Indian bands like Euphoria, Aryans, Silkroute, Strings, all churning out numerous memorable melodious tracks. The lyrics were kept simple, mainly the lovey dovey types, and the tunes were simple too, which a common man could hum along without much effort. The music was soothing because of its guitar base.

This is where the recent song "In Dinon" fits in. And for sure this has become the trend in last few years. This brand of music – the Indi-pop has got assimilated into the mainstream bolly-music. We can think of throat-twisting emotional twirls (I am not mean, not all can do this) of Kunal Ganjawala’s songs, we can think of Shaan’s both filmi and his non-filmi numbers, and not the least we can think of Atif Aslam, a Pakistani singer, whose revengeful-youthful voice has left many of us mesmerised with his songs in a recent movie “Bas Ek Pal”, and recently with his album “Doorie”. How far this will go, only time will tell. But let me conclude by pointing out one thing. Just count the number of times words like “pal”, “doorie”, “lamha”, kashish”, “khwaab” and so on and so forth figure in these songs. I think it is an alarming bell for our lyricists who need to keep up with this changing nature of music otherwise the very freshness, which this music promised, would become stale, sooner rather than later.

The doomed diva

2007-06-01T15:12:00.000-07:00

The doomed diva

Har ek mod pe bas do hi naam milte hain
Maut keh lo – jo muhabbat na kehne paao

(There are only two names on each pathways (of life)
Call it death, if you can’t call it love)

I am sorry for even trying my hands at translating these beautiful verses portraying intense suffering, tragedy and clamour of an individual. Are there any guesses who penned these lines? I am sure very few of us would rightfully identify this poetess-in-oblivion who wrote many such verses and couplets as a personal way of registering, recording and dealing with her grief-stricken short life of forty odd years.

She was born on 1st August 1932 in Mumbai to Ali Baksh and Iqbal Begum (renamed from Prabhawati Devi). Her father was an actor in Parsi theatre and also dabbled in Urdu poetry and occasionally gave music direction in Hindi movies. This girl, Mahjabeen Bano, was the youngest of her siblings and in the family mired in financial hardships she was literally forced to work in films. Her career started as a child artist at the age of six from a movie called Farzand-e-Watan or Leatherface, directed by Vijay Bhatt in 1939. For the movie she was re-named as Baby Meena.

All of us, or most of us, who are Bollywood buffs definitely know about Meena Kumari, nick named the “tragedy queen” of the film industry. Both in real and in reel life she lived up to that tag. Yes, we are talking about Meena Kumari who graduated from Baby Meena to become one of the living legends of the film industry. Much has been written about her acting prowess and the intensity with which she portrayed her characters. The unforgettable “choti bahu” of Sahib Bibi and Ghulam (released in 1962) and the acute sensitivity depicted in Pakeezah (released in 1972) that went on to become the cult movie of the Bollywood in all times to come is to mention a few. It is often remarked that it was Meena Kumari’s death (she died on March 31 1972), just almost a month after the release of the movie, that made Pakeezah what it turned out to be. But I remember Pakeezah for one more reason. In one of the shots, her character is humming a ghazal written by Mir and sung by Mehdi Hassan: Dekh to dil ki jaan se uthta hai, ye dhuwan sa kahan se uthta hai (Look, where this fume rises from, is it from the heart or from the soul). I frantically searched for the name of the singer who is humming this song in the movie, but I failed. Later, when I incidentally discovered the poetry of Meena Kumari and to my utter surprise when I came to know that she had an album released, consisting of her poetry sung and recited in her voice, I was almost sure that it was she who did the vocals for that ghazal. (I ought to be corrected if I am wrong.)(I have been corrected on this by an annonymous comment; the singer is Naseem Bano. See the comments section.) Thanks Anon.

Very few of us know that she was a fine Urdu poetess. Her works are mainly about love (unsatiated of course), grief, and pain; in other words, morbid curiosities influenced her vision and her writings. The couplet in the beginning is one of the typical in which she depicts the inevitability of love in life and yet her personal failure to find one. In one of the ghazals she says:

Gham hi dushman hai mera gham hi ko dil doondhta hai
Ek lamhe ki bhi judaai agar hoti hai

(Pain is my biggest enemy and yet my heart aches if I am separated from it even for a moment).

She was happily married (at least this is what it appears and have been told) to film director Kamal Amrohi (who made Pakeezah) for twelve years (1952-64) but the divorce swept her into heavy drinking. Apparently, this was the time when she took recluse in poetry, probably finding some solace by giving words to her feelings.

But her poetry was not completely pessimistic (at least this is what I infer from them). She had resigned to fate but had not become fatalistic:

Yeh na socho kal kya ho
Kaun kahe is pal kya ho,

Rowo mat, na rone do
Aisi bhi jal-thal kya ho.

(Don’t think about the future
Who knows what will happen today,

Don’t cry, nor let anyone cry,
Why to panic and feel so dismayed)

The album, I Write I Recite, was brought out most probably in 1971 (by HMV), an year before her death. She had got ten poems/ghazals in the album, five of which are recitals and the other five tuned and sung in the ghazal format. Veteran music director, Khayyam, composed the music. The music is true to the mood of the ghazals; no percussion instrument (for example tabla) has been used. The music background is provided with instruments like Sarangi and Santoor, which add to the melody of the lyrics. For any music lover, and especially those who love ghazals, this is a must-to-have album. It is fairly difficult to get a copy of this album but interested listeners could try online shopping sites or could be watchful when HMV re-produces the old releases.

Meena Kumari passed on her diary to lyricist Gulzar, who fondly called her “Meena didi”. After her death, Gulzar compiled and published her collection of Urdu poems called Tanha Chand (Lonely Moon).

These two things (her album and her collection) are a treasure to remember that diva that though is well known for her acting but hardly commended for her soul-touching poetry and her exquisite singing.

Tribute to Nandigram Protest

2007-05-18T12:59:00.000-07:00

Most of the readers of my blog, I am sure, are aware of the gruesome killings of protesting peasants and farmers by the West Bengal state in India that happened almost a month before. It has got considerable media coverage and some good in-depth analyses are readily available on net. As a mark of respect (I hate to 'sympathise' with a good cause) I wrote few words:

Pukaar

Aur, is aasmaan ke saaye mein
Ye zameen jo door talak dikhti hai,
Lahoo ke rang mein zinda hokar
Khoye kadmon ke nishaan doondhti hai,

Lab jo sil gaye the bebasi mein
Ek "Pukaar" jo sulagti thi khamoshi mein,
Sathon (surface) ko chirkar jo nikla wo
Wo maut hi tha jo zindagi mein utra wo,

Kuch mitt gaye, kuch mita gaye
Ek aag dilon mein laga gaye,
Takht-e-siyaasat to na palat sake, par
Takht-e-umraan wo hila gaye.

This time to "aid" my readers, I have also done an English version (and NOT a translation). I think I am seriously incapable to do a translation of the above; so the following is just an impression:

A Call

Beyond the line
Till the horizon
Where the grief impales our vision,
The traces of life in which are fading
That world, seemingly is changing,

For years, we remained mute,
Alive but not astute
Nonetheless, we nurtured a speechless agony
One that haunted our lives incessantly,

We hoped, we tried
We perished in our cry,
No, we didn't succeed,
Or did we? let the future decide.

Fughaan

2007-05-05T15:21:00.000-07:00

Fughaan

Zindagi yunhi basar hone do
Gham badi der se firaaq hone do,

Shabnami auns ko phir se batoroon main kyun kar
pighalne do inhein yunhi beh jaane do,
Us kinaare se aayengeen phir sadayein kuch
aur, is kinaare shikasht-e-zaam behne do,

Dil mein sauda, zigar mein raqt nahi
palon ko thaam ke ye waqt girte hain,
Simti ye ghadiyaan, inhein aur simat jaane do
is kashish ko "Fugaan" ho jaane do.

This is yet another try at writing and composing something. Click on the link below or on Fughaan Sound Track.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxZXKHsK3mY

Teri Yaad

2007-03-21T13:43:00.000-07:00

Teri Yaad:

Teri yaad aati hai
Un lamhon ki khushboo se
Jo humne churayee thi

Sulgi hui saanson se
Un behki hui baaton ko
Jo humne sunayee thi

Dheeme si dhadkanon ko, Palkon pe yun sajakar
Aankhon se jo tumne kaha tha
Baarish ki narm boondein, Pehluwon mein lapete
Tumne jo mujhko chuwa tha
Ye dil bhool na paaye
Wo baatein, wo raatein...

Saanson ka tum pagalpan ye dekho ki thamte nahi
Dekho na, dekho na,
Lafzon mein jo sil gaye hain, aankhon mein jo khul gaye hain
Un khwabon ko doondho zara
doondho na, doondho na,
Dil ki ye kashish
tum jaga ke so gaye

Teri yaad..

Here it goes:

Something which was keepin me busy from last few weeks. Nothing great, but who knows..;)This wouldn't have become possible without the help of my sweet friend, Suga, better known as Sugri:)

Click on the link below or on the Teri Yaad Video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gaa5kPTwB9s

Inquilaab

2007-02-24T21:22:00.000-08:00

The journey with the pics would continue and would halt at a place where the echoes of history, the sounds of despair and the trumpets of victory, all jostled at a one place and at a same time. For some it was a world possessed, for many it marked a doom, a doom which has left indelible marks on many of the generations that followed the heroes who sacrificed their lives. Sacrificed for what? Well, don't be impatient, the story would unfurl at its own pace. But the lives of the unheard heroes with unseen faces need to be remembered. The marginal yet pivotal, the unsung yet haunting, for those masked faces a little tribute:

Inquilaab:

Simat kar baitha hai jo, rooh ko daboche
be-aab aankhein aur num si palkein,
ek aas hai phir bhi baaki abhi, aur
ek Inquilaab jo kabhi kaha hi nahi.

Kya juroori hai dard ko ek naam dena
aur har sukhan mein lafz ko sajana,
rehne do bebas usse kuch aur pal abhi
zinda raha toh thaam lega zindagi.

Raakh ki dher mein hain chingaariyaan abhi
ragon mein leti jawani siskiyaan abhi,
dadhak kar bujh raha hai jism toh kya hua
marne ke pehle jee lene ki hai chahat abhi.

Jo sun sako tum kabhi awaaz uski
chup reh kar keh gaya, wo baat uski,
usi ki duniya hui ein dinon bezaar, magar
usi ke dam se hai ye duniya aabaad phir bhi.

Perhaps one day, I will do an English translation of this, perhaps one day...

Continuing with Amateurish clicks, pictures taken during Southampton visit last August:

2007-02-22T18:35:00.000-08:00

Amateur clicks

2007-02-21T22:45:00.000-08:00