Songs on themes

Kleptomania in Bollywood

Wishing the readers and their families a very Happy Holi and International Women’s Day

We are all aware of the drug problem in Bollywood, thanks to the media which went into frenzy at some NCB raids at rave parties and the homes of some celebrities. There was a lot of moralising about the decadent lifestyle of our role models. Bollywood in turn was surprised at the hullaballoo and their response was, Guys! Grow up to the new social reality. Everyone does party drugs, which have been legalised in many countries. And Hey lawmakers and enforcement agencies! Remove them from the list of banned substances.READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Romancing other miscellaneous balmas

(Note: I understand some SOY regulars are not getting email notification of new posts. You are all requested to register your email in the box at the bottom of the post. You would get a mail for confirmation from “follow.it“. This is not a spam. You would have to simply confirm, and you would start getting the notifications of new posts. However, there are technical difficulties in fixing the feature of getting notifications of new comments. – AK)

After I had written on romancing the major types of balmas, such as anadi balma, pardesi balma, ajnabi balma, bedardi balma and jaadugar balma, I was left with a lurking feeling that there were still many types of balmas which did not fall in any of the above major categories. I had posed a question: In which category would you put the Shakti Kapoor-balma in the film Chaalbaaz (1989)? I don’t have a satisfactory answer. But it suggests we need to have a post on assorted types of balmas who cannot fit in the five major categories.READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Impossible Songs

Wishing the readers a very Happy Holi

Dil le ke bhaga daga de bhagaThe regular readers of SOY are aware that on Holi, when everyone is out throwing coloured water on each other, I often reflect on some serious issues. Not on things like “What is the Ultimate Reality”, or the nature of Brahma (ब्रह्म) and Jeev (जीव) – Are they different or the same? I leave that for more learned people like Swami Venkataramanaji; I limit myself to songs and films. Some songs frankly leave me confused, these are impossible for me to visualise within the possibilities of physical senses. Now I am not talking about the basic contradiction between science, and literature, poetry and other creative fields. We all know that the moon’s surface is cratered, and, therefore, it can be a metaphor for a pock-marked face, but not for an ethereal beauty which evokes ‘Chaudahvin ka chaand ho ya aaftaab ho’.

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Romancing the Jaadugar Balma

Jadugar qatilBy now the regular readers of the SOY can easily answer if Amitabh Bachchan were to ask on KBC, बलमा के कितने प्रमुख प्रकार हैं? It is sad that this season of KBC has come to an end; if it is revived, he might some day ask this question! We have met with anaari, pardesi, ajanabi, and beimaan balmas. It is difficult to make an exhaustive list of the several types of ‘balmas’ found in our films – in which category would you put the ‘Balma’ Shakti Kapoor in Chaalbaaz (1989)?. But there is one major category, Jaadugar Balma/Baalma, which was quite ubiquitous in our films once, and quite distinct from the other forms covered on SOY. These categories are not watertight compartments. There are shades of meaning and the context which may overlap in more than one category. In my last post on the ‘Beimaan baalma’, many readers posted songs which were closer to ‘Jaadugar baalma’, and I had to be careful not to let out this planned post.

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Romancing the Rogue or Songs of Beiman Balma

Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year

Bedardi baalmaReaders would recall that one favourite of our film heroines was the Dunce, who went by various names such as anari balma, naadan balma, bhole balam etc. Raj Kapoor was the leading light of the type, followed by Bharat Bhushan. They were clueless about the girls, which was a part of their charm. The girls would patiently woo them and teach them about the birds and bees. They would sing songs which we have seen in Romancing the Dunce.

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Songs of women for the women by the women

Wishing the readers a very Happy Chhath festival

Aao ri suhagan nariMy fellow bloggers Madhu and Anu are apt to say, no sooner do you put two women together in our films than they start singing. There must be something about women and singing – female solos outnumber male solos by more than three times, and female duets outnumber male duets likewise. Therefore, if there are several women together that should instantly lit a spark for singing. And that is what happens in our culture, which has sanskars and rituals from birth till the end of life, all accompanied by women’s songs.

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Romancing through the Window and Door

Mere saamnewali khidki meinWindow opens the outside world to those inside. If a person from outside tries to look into a window, his view is very restricted. Because of this asymmetry, window creates many interesting possibilities. Since one can see on the sly, this is the best place for voyeurs. In Rear Window (1954), James Stewart, confined to a wheelchair in plaster-cast due to a broken leg, indulges himself looking out onto a courtyard and other apartments from his rear window. There is a constant smile on his lips as he watches myriad characters: a pretty dancer, a pianist, a lonely woman, a middle-aged couple and so on. As it is a Hitchcock film, you are sure his smile will soon disappear as he sees some very unusual happenings in a flat. In Witness to Murder (1954), the lady has no voyeuristic instincts; she just happens to look out of her bedroom window and sees a woman being strangulated by a man in a flat. Being a conscientious lady, she reports the matter to the police. But the man is too clever for her and with great difficulty she finally comes out of her nightmarish experience, with the killer meeting retribution in the last scene.

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The Gravitas of Sitar in Songs

SitarSitar makes a very conspicuous presence on the screen due to its size. But it conveys an entirely different image from the piano or the harmonium. If piano is aristocracy, harmonium is plebeian. And what about the sitar? It is elegant classicism; it is not about the social, but musical status. There is gravitas in the sitar on the screen – either it is a classical raga-based song, or a song full of pathos. None of the frivolity you might see with the harmonium, such as in the film Padosan. Even piano has been a venue of some romantic love-play between the lovers.

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Jogi, Bhogi or Dhongi

Wishing the readers and their families a very Happy Holi

JogiColloquial equivalents of Sanskrit terms usually retain their exact meaning, such as singaar for shringaar, barkha for varsha etc. But did you give a thought how in case of jogi, which is the Hindi equivalent of yogi, the connotation changes so drastically? As regards yogi, there is no doubt they are ascetics, detached from the world, engaged in their personal meditation and communion with the divine, in some cave in the Himalayas. “The Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramhans Yoganand, first published in 1946, is still regarded as a spiritual classic after 75 years.

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Romancing the Stranger

AjnabiFor quite some time songs like Ajnabi, tum jaane pahchaane se lagte ho, and Kuchh ajanbi se aap hain, kuchh ajanbi se hum have been buzzing like bee in my head for an inexplicable reason. Then an incredible coincidence happened. One day I decided to browse through my books collected over the years that had not been touched, many of which are likely to remain unread. When I randomly opened a page of The Collected Poems of Vikram Seth, I came across this:

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