Wishing the readers a very happy Valentine’s Day with guest article by Shalan Lal
(Today on Valentine’s Day, love is in the air everywhere. Love of mushy messages; of roses and chocolates; of romance and togetherness. ‘Genre’-theorists hold that the concept of genre is not relevant for Indian films, as all our films are essentially musical romances. Thus, right from the beginning of the talkies we had love songs aplenty in our films. On Songs of Yore, I have explored some variants of love: New Theatres’ Prem’ which was deeply spiritual; the intelligent woman’s romance for the dunce etc. Its converse is the attraction women have for the ‘zulmi’ or ‘bedardi’.
The ‘bedardi balma’s in our songs are naughty and playful, but not mean or vicious. However, taking off from Subodh’s query as to why the women in our films find men with such negative qualities attractive, Shalan Lal explores the darker side of love based on domination by men over women in literature, arts and films. Her thesis may jolt you and you may find the narration discordant to the occasion, but her selection of songs is quite benign depicting love with many shades. Her research is as usual very exhaustive. I wish the readers a very happy Valentine’s Day with this befitting piece by Shalan Lal. Thank you Shalan. – AK)
The Hindi word “Pyaar” evolved out of the Sanskrit word “Prem”, so says the “Hindi Shabd Saagar”, the mammoth Hindi word dictionary in many volumes, published by the Nagari Prachaarini Sabha of Varanasi in 1933. It has had many reprints, and revised editions. AK has written a wonderful post on “Prem” and called it New Theatres’ romance with Prem. And he has interpreted the songs of love by the New Theatres’ composers, lyricists, singers and actors who presented them as he said, “The New Theatres took love to entirely unexpected heights. It was not merely a matter of semantics that pyar, mohabbat, ishq, for them was Prem or Preet. It also denoted for them something deeply spiritual, other-worldly and supremely blissful.”