In my last post on Mukesh and his ‘dil’ songs, there was a song, Ae jaan-e-jigar dil mein samane aa ja. Urdu poetry gives the same status to jigar as to dil as a metaphor for something very vital and very dear. There are also other examples of ‘dil’ and ‘jigar’ being used together and interchangeably, such as Tumse achha kaun hai, dil-o-jigar lo jaan lo or a later one Dard-e-dil dard-e-jigar dil mein jagaya aapne. If long back Rafi sang Ek dil ke tukde hazar hue koi yahan gira koi wahan gira, a maverick politician, Mahamaya Prasad Singh came as tsunami in the mid-60’s in Bihar, riding the wave of student unrest and describing them as his Jigar ke tukde. His opening words in his public meetings, Mere jigar ke tukde, generated a hysteria Indian electoral politics had not seen before. That his short-lived rein unleashed student lawlessness and collapse of Bihar’s education system is another story. (An idea for Mr. Ashok Vaishnav’s blog – ‘Role of emotive slogans in politics: Quit India, Jigar Ke Tukde, Gharibi Hatao, Bhrashtachar Mitao, Down with Zionists’?)
A tribute to old Hindi film music. Songs of the 30s through the 60s.