The Great Indian Marriage!

There is something inherently wrong with the idea of uprooting a young woman and relocating her to another household after marriage. It makes no sense at any level except that it panders to our so called Indian family values. Let us say you are getting married. As a bride, what is the most important thing on your mind?  Most people would say, to look ravishing and appealing. I will submit that you should only be thinking of how you will be able to adjust in a new household full of members you know next to nothing about. The honeymoon period with your husband may last forever but with your in-laws, it almost ends as soon as it starts! There is way too much collective intelligence to corroborate this.

First, I say to the daughters-in-law, how do you expect that your mother –in- law who has been running the household thus far, to relinquish her domain to an outsider? Even in the animal kingdom capitulation happens after bloodshed! She has her own unique way of running her household, of ordering her groceries or of cooking dal in a particular way. Now, you enter with your own particular way of doing things, a way that has been developed in your parents’ house with elements of their cultural upbringing and your own individualism. I cannot even start counting the number of times I’ve heard friends say how their mothers-in-law scoff at their tadka’s or size of chappatis or bed making style! It is so foolish that it is ridiculous! From my own experience I can share that I know of occasions where a mother-in-law kept redoing dining table arrangement for a whole week (because god forbid, heavens would have fallen if the newly entered daughter-in-law’s table arrangements would have been allowed to contaminate the house) till her daughter-in-law got the hint. So first things first, it is not your house ladies, it is your mother-in-law’s. No matter how many times she tells you it is yours and now you are the new queen in the making, do not believe it. It’s a lie because psychologically, it cannot ever happen.  It is like winning the jackpot on KBC, it happens, but rarely and that too after tears of blood have been shed. So , ladies, please understand that yours is a position that is lower on the pecking order and if you live with your in-laws, it will remain so till one of you departs (not from the world necessarily)! So if you’ve chosen to be a part of the great modern Indian joint family of the 21^st century, please understand that you will need to accept that you cannot function in the same way and be the same person as you were in your mother’s house. Learn to adjust, be large hearted and take the higher road – always.  Learn the art of compromise. Please also learn that your dream of having a cozy little heaven on earth with your husband will not exist till you run your own household. Frankly, it is also a bit absurd to try and take over from your mother-in-law. Why should you? It’s her life and it is her house. You should learn to coexist. It is a delicate dance. As long as you understand that ownership of your husband and the household is shared, you will definitely be able to devise a formula for happiness.

Now, to mothers –in-law, I want to say, that don’t be scared of telling your son to move out of the house when he gets married. His blood will not turn to water and he will still carry your DNA when he lives in another house with another woman!  Please don’t care about what the world says. If they want to crap all over your face because of this and gossip about you, it’s ok. They will not have to live through hell when you and your daughter-in-law stake your respective claims on the household and your son! Besides, for how long do you propose to pander to his every whim and fancy? Walk the talk. If you say ‘ab tumhari wife aa kar tumhara khyal rakhegi”, please mean it. Let them run their lives, in another house, as they want.  Don’t be bothered about whether he’s getting chappatis fresh off the tawa. If he eats re-heated chappatis made by his wife earlier, it should be none of your bloody business! Let them be. Don’t be saying “tu toh patla ho gaya hai” or “shaadi ke bad to tuney fruit khana hi band kar diya” or “tu shaadi key baad bahut peeney laga hai”!   You need to give your son and his new wife a fighting chance to succeed in their marriage. You don’t want to jeopardize it for them by bitching to your son every evening when he returns from home that you’ve been insulted by his wife. Most of these so called insults are usually a feature of a loss in translation. The others are pure imagination! If you must stay in the same house and pretend to be from a Rajshri productions family, then please try and make your daughter-in-law feel at home. After all, she left a safe and known environment to come to your house, you did not! You will get her undying and everlasting appreciation and loyalty if you let her do some things the way she wants and zip your mouth in the process even if you are itching to tell her she sucks!  Try and see reason in her argument when your son is wrong. Do try and tell your son off in front of her so that she knows that you are wise and a go-to person and won’t be territorial and churlish. But if you have any common sense at all, you will circumvent this minefield by asking your son and daughter-in-law to start an independent home right after they get married. Visit often if you wish and stay peaceful because you’re not in each other’s face.

To all daughters-in-law I say, your husbands should not become a bone of contention. After all, he was her son before he became your husband and unless he is a completely empty and vacuous vessel, he will definitely have emotions for his mother. Maybe he will even be dysfunctional as many Indian men are because something in their upbringing forces them to suffer from tremendous guilt when it comes to their mothers.  Many older couples of my parent’s generation lived hellish lives. They were married off to people they didn’t know and in some cases, hadn’t even met. Because those times were different, gentler and less competitive, these marriages survived.  However, children of those marriages unwittingly became pawns in this roll of dice. Since mother and father did not have a relationship and mother was an all giving woman who had devoted every living moment of her life to her son, it became his life’s obsession to do good by his mother. Along comes a wife and that attention now needs to be divided and so starts the drama. So, please understand that when your mother-in-law is waiting to exhale, it is not because of what you’ve done necessarily, but, because you are now a competitor. It is never about you but always about your husband. So tell him that when he gets a saree for you, he should first get one for her. When he comes home (and for some reason you’re still living with his mother), he should first go and meet her and then come to you.

And, finally, to mothers-in-law. Your son is not your husband. If you have a lousy relationship with your husband and you’ve been pinning the burden of all your hopes on your son, you’ve done yourself, him and his partner a big disservice. Your son cannot and should not be expected to fill the gap for your husband. When you open the door of his car and sit in the front seat while his wife is forced to sit at the back, you’re not showing any wisdom. When you spar with his wife to clean his cupboard and arrange his clothes, you have no idea how silly and tactless you seem. When you call him up 10 times in an hour during his date with his wife, you’re behaving like a spurned lover. It’s not you against her. It can never be. He sleeps with her every night. He will have children with her. And so, it only behoves you to rise above this challenge and realize that your son cannot fill the place of your husband.

All these battles happen on the psychological level. These are all mind games that sometimes we do not even know we are competing in. But one thing is for sure. There is no reason for two adults to live with one set of parents. Everyone needs space and privacy. In fact, it is my opinion that older people need more space and privacy in their homes as compared to young couples. This is because they have lived all their lives in a house. It is no wonder that they become territorial.  It’s best to respect their privacy and let them live happily while you start your own little home like they must have several decades earlier. Live next door to them but live separately. Meet for dinner every night or breakfast before going to work but live separately. Do not destroy your happiness, peace of mind, hopes and ultimately your marriage by pretending to be in a rose colored family bubble- It does not exist. If it does, God’s obviously living in your house and is personally watching your back!!

WHY IS BIG BAD?

Reading Indian newspapers can be quite stressful for me.  It’s not just because of the general ongoing gloom regarding corruption and the economy that’s tearing this country apart but If you live in India and read your preferred newspaper every morning, the pathetically shocking quality of writing and reporting will kill whatever hope you’re holding out for the next page and the next. It has always amazed me how reports on accidents involving two vehicles are so one sided in India. The job of journalists or reporters is to report an incident and not have an opinion. But I am shocked at the level of unprofessional reporting in this country. In no other country that I have visited or lived in have I ever read a piece of news about vehicular accidents where the larger vehicle is pronounced culprit even without factual determination of how the accident occurred or who could have been responsible. I have almost never read the use of the word “allegedly” while referring to the larger vehicle involved in an accident.  Journalists are influencers, opinion makers who can direct public curiosity towards any direction they want, whether it is anger or disdain or unrest. Incendiary reporting in our times has led to communal flare ups, riots and even fatwas. How is it, that while reporting an accident, anyone can decide who the culprit is? If you see a motorcycle or a two wheeler under the wheels of a car, should you deduce automatically or be led to deduce that the car driver is at fault? If you find the same car and driver under the wheels of a truck, would you then automatically deduce that the truck driver is at fault? The answer should be No. Ascertaining the cause of a road accident is a mature science of deduction that is put into practice by many traffic authorities and insurers across the world.  You will never find a news piece about an accident in the US that will read ‘Truck driver mows down 5” (unless the powers that be have determined beyond a doubt that the driver was drunk or purposely wanted to cause harm). You are more likely to read, “Fatal accident – 5 dead”. The article will then tell you where the accident took place, what the bystanders saw and what seems to be the likely cause of the accident. The journalist will not attempt to be judge and jury on such a news item because there is a critical mass of understanding that pronouncing someone guilty before they have been investigated by experts could destroy the livelihood, the credibility and the family of a wrongfully accused person.

In India, we have no such problem. If you’ve ever been in an accident with a vehicle smaller than yours, you would have had to face immediate hostility from onlookers. People will pour in from all corners leaving their work to see a fight or a bloodied scene. Motorists will stop to observe and opine, thereby blocking traffic and creating a traffic jam. Police will be the last to arrive on the scene.  If you are the smaller vehicle owner, you will almost immediately sense that the mood is in your favor and against the owner of the larger vehicle and, may I add, also against the police. This is likely to give you a sense of confidence and a fighting ability to claim damages, accuse your co-sufferer and vehemently deny any wrong doing, even if you clearly know that you were at fault. If you happen to be the owner of the larger vehicle, you will immediately sense preferential treatment by the police as they try and bargain with you for letting you off quietly. You could spend the rest of your life shouting yourself hoarse that in-fact, it was clearly the fault of the smaller vehicle driver as he swerved at 90 kmph from a feeder lane onto the ring road when what he should have done is to slow down in the face of merging traffic! No one will give a damn about your logic. In-fact, logic will be damned and so will you!  

Driving irresponsibly is not confined to the rich or to those who appear richer on that particular day of the accident.  In a country of 1.2 billion people, would it be possible to conclude that everyone who has a two wheeler or a bicycle or even pedestrians  are highly responsible drivers and people in general,  who follow traffic rules completely? Then why is it that only the owners of the bigger vehicle on the day get pilloried? Do bigger vehicles have the potential of causing bigger damage? The answer is Yes.  Is every driver of the bigger vehicle on that day a culprit? The answer is No. What prevents pedestrians from taking foot over bridges and instead crossing a busy road by jumping over medians and doing a death of dance?  I have seen people, families with little children, trying to cross MG Road around the MG Road station when the foot over bridge of the Metro station is staring them in the face. Most urban Indians are unhealthy and a good climb up a flight of stairs could constitute wonderful cardiovascular exercise.  It is shocking that they are unwilling to take the flight of stairs or in this case an automatically operating escalator to go up the bridge! All they have to do is climb down manually from the other side and the road is crossed. Instead, they do a dance in the face of oncoming and aggressive traffic with husbands, wives and infants in tow!  On days when I observe this behavior, I think we are truly a nation of the lazy! So if I try to cross the road in the face of speeding cars by waving my hand and urging motorists to stop suddenly and should I get hurt in the process, should I really be blaming the motorist?

I have read news reports of children being mowed down by speeding cars.  Having a child suffer any bodily harm, to me, is the most base and gut wrenching thing in the world. Children expect us to protect them from harm. But how many times have you seen a parent or a guardian walk their ward on the traffic side of the road while themselves walking on the kerbside? I have never understood this phenomenon.  If there is a road where traffic is moving along and there is a kerbside where people are expected to walk, would you put a vulnerable child on the traffic side or the kerbside? This is not a trick question and neither is it rocket science!  The answer is that if possible, both the parent and child should walk on a footpath and when that is not possible, the child should be placed kerbside while the parent takes the traffic side. A normal adult has a better chance at surviving a collision with a vehicle while walking traffic side than a child. What part of this requires special processing by an adult brain? Children are unpredictable. They could be walking quietly one minute and the next they could want to run and hop or chase. Imagine if you are driving along, going on your way, minding your own business and suddenly a child decides to break free from the hands of their parents to make a run for the road, what chance do you have of saving the child from a collision with your car? And if you do somehow manage, imagine what else you could be hitting against or what other vehicle could hit into you due to a sudden swerving action that you’ve been forced to take in order to protect the child. Under these circumstances, if you happen to be in the biggest vehicle in that scenario, you would get beaten up, threatened or heckled or all three. You could cry till the end of your days that the culprit, in fact was the child or more importantly the parent of the child but you would never get a fair hearing from anyone. If you somehow manage to prove in a court of law that you are in fact the aggrieved party and not the aggressor, it would be assumed instantly that you being rich (or richer by comparison) is the real cause of your being let off. Not only are we a nation of the lazy, we are also a nation of the biased and presumptuous!

The one piece of reporting that really makes me want to claw my eyes out is that of railway accidents. While large scale rail accidents are common in India and we have somehow started living with them without holding anyone accountable, it is the smaller accidents that get reported which make me wonder about the intelligence of our reporters. When you read things like speeding train crushes car on unmanned railway crossing, you have got to ask yourself what that car was doing on that crossing. It is not as if trains, which we all know run on predetermined tracks, are able to speed willfully along the country side mowing down people. Why do people risk crossing railway tracks not knowing when trains will cross or worse seeing an approaching train and still making a dash for it? Why is there no fear or caution? Why is life so cheap and chances so many?  When such accidents happen, why then do newspapers carry reports suggesting that the train was somehow responsible for such accidents?  The train has got to be the biggest vehicle of that accident scene and so, is automatically held responsible for causing the accident and any ensuing death and destruction.  I have myself seen two wheeler drivers duck under railway crossing barricades, with families in tow, making a dash across the railway tracks just to save a few minutes. The big question is, how will this sense of urgency help them if they are dead? More importantly, if they survive, which they usually do and hence get used to taking such chances, what will their children learn? They will learn that it is OK to stick a finger in the eye of common sense and the bigger guy is always responsible for their accidents even if they themselves were the cause of it. 

Most importantly, reporting that is potentially malevolent, egregious and imbalanced should come under the purview of a culpable punishment. It is not right to cast aspersions but it is even worse to declare someone an offender when clearly, there is no way to ascertain that fact.  Justice Markandeya Katju, the chairperson of the Press Club of India was on to something when he lashed out against Indian journalists. In his words -”The way much of the media has been behaving is often irresponsible, reckless and callous. Yellow journalism, cheap sensationalism, highlighting frivolous issues (like lives of film stars and cricketers) and superstitions and damaging people and reputations, while neglecting or underplaying serious socio-economic issues like massive poverty, unemployment, malnourishment, farmers' suicides, health care, education, dowry deaths, female foeticide, etc., are hallmarks of much of the media today”. We need to educate people that irresponsible behavior is not prevalent only in the rich. It is a nation- wide malaise that can be uprooted by continuous practice of responsible behavior that can surely be augmented by responsible reporting and factual representation of incidents and issues.

Commodity Trading

So, here is the sordid tale that’s being played out in the national media over the last month or so. There was a woman called Fijan Khatoon who we now know as Munni. She was married to a guy called Shah Hussain. They had three children, a boy and two girls. Shah Hussain decided to abandon Munni . If Munni’s parents are to be believed, Shah Hussain sold Munni and their three children to flesh traders. Munni, not very old and with no real skills or education, was left to fend for herself. It is unclear whether she fell prey to flesh traders by chance while trying to fend for herself or this path was thrust upon her by the pimps her husband sold her to. Enter a few other devious characters. They want to sell Munni off as a “bride”. However, in order to marry her off and pocket a few lakh rupees, Munni would have to be pitched as a childless virgin. So, what then would they do with her three children? Munni is promised that her children would be taken care of. What really happened was that her hapless children were scattered all over India. The son found his way to Delhi. The second child, a daughter found her way to Muzaffarpur and the youngest, a two year old girl that we now have come to know as Falak, found her way to the ICU at AIIMS. She came in with both her arms broken, her little skull bashed in, her plump cheeks bitten and branded. She is put on life support apparatus immediately. Soon a band of over 20 doctors and over 50 support staff and nurses swings in to save this child.


At some point, someone realizes that all this trauma could not have been caused by the child simply slipping in the bathroom. A search is mounted for the person who brought her to the hospital and leads to a 14 year old girl. Everyone concludes that the girl must either have been raped or must have delivered an unwanted child that she was now disposing off. The tale gets more sordid. The 14 year old turns out not to be the mother after all. She was handed the baby by one Rajkumar who by now is being called the 14 year old’s ‘live in boyfriend”. Rajkumar in turn, is known to have got the baby from one Laxmi who is in fact the woman who is supposed to have helped the child’s mother get married in the first place! It seems Rajkumar wanted to keep the baby but his wife wouldn’t let him. So he decided to hand her over to the 14 year old minor who he was sexually exploiting! The 14 year old girl turns out to be an abandoned child herself who was physically abused by her father and step mother after her own mother passed. She spent some time in an orphanage where it turns out sexual aggravation was rampant. It seems that on one fine day, for a period of about five hours, she tortured the little baby girl as she just could not deal with being a care giver anymore. In the meantime, Munni is traced to Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan where she is living the life of a married woman with her new husband Harpal who has no inkling that his paid for bride is from another community, previously married and a mother to three children! He bought himself a wife because most likely, in his village, girls are killed in the womb or right after being born and they are also killed if they dare to marry outside their community. As a result, villages and districts and entire states like Rajasthan and Haryana have a gender ratio so skewed that there are no longer women left for men to marry!. Brides are being bought from all parts of the country because, mother of all surprises - you can kill an unborn girl child but you still need a woman to produce sons!

In the meantime, little Falak, the helpless two year old has been on a ventilator for several weeks. The doctors keep draining out the fluid from her brain and lungs to ensure that she lives. They’ve spoken of how she may never be able to lead a normal life due to her injuries, provided, she survives in the first place. The entire nation is glued to her news. People are praying for her to get better. Prospective adopters keep growing in number by the day. Donations are being made regularly for the child’s treatment. People who would normally ask for perpetrators of such crimes to be hanged or killed or stoned, are unable to say so unequivocally in this case as everyone seems to be a victim. So what really happened here? This is a case of systemic rot and apathy that has gripped our society. There is no doubt that poverty lies at the heart of this cruel and sad turn of events. A family probably so poor that it couldn’t hold itself together. A mother made so helpless by her circumstances that she is forced to give up her children and start a new and ostensibly happy married life with a new husband, albeit built on a lie. A young girl so out of touch with hope and possibilities at such a young age that she pulverizes a two year old child but still brings her into the hospital perhaps because she knows she has done wrong or perhaps because she identifies with the victim as only a victim could. Maybe she was battered, raped and thrown away to fend for herself and no one came out to help her. Maybe she didn’t want the little girl to not have anyone to come out to help. In some twisted way, this was the 14 year olds subconscious way of redeeming herself.

So here is what happens. You kill girls in the womb because you consider them a disposable commodity on which you exercise entitlement. You let them be born and give them less to eat than your boys, send them to till your fields and never give them an education because they are a disposable commodity. When you get them married you are doing kanya dan or giving them as alms to a husband, because they are a commodity. When their in-laws burn them for not bringing enough dowry or being unable to bear a male child, they can do so because they are a disposable commodity. When you rape them you can do so because just like a commodity, it is your belief they can be used for your consumption. Being that rape is not so much about the sex but more about proving your hold via sex with a person who is vulnerable and cannot oppose you, you are in one shot making them marginal and using them as you would a consumable. When you run an orphanage and sexually exploit children as young as four and five, you are confirming that you are superior in the pecking order and that children carry no real value. When you pluck little babies from their mothers and scatter them along the way to whoever will take them, you are saying that their lives and emotional needs carry no real significance and their mother is so stupid that you can trick her into abandoning her children without ever holding anyone accountable. What is it that makes men and society in general so insensitive towards females and children? Should we all start subscribing to the theory that we are after all an animal species and when left untutored and free are capable of inflicting the worse kind of cruelty upon others? If we don’t subscribe to that view then what sort of society is this where there are no laws to safeguard our children who are the most vulnerable amongst us? We hit them and punish them and make them feel small in schools. When they go missing, our records show how abysmal the rate of recovery is. When women go missing, the first snide comment to you will likely hear from the police is that she must have run away with a man. Why such scant respect for women and children? All I can think of is that somewhere along the way men have become a species unto themselves. Women and children, it seems are relegated to being subsumed within this species. Society has also become male centric but if families and an integrated system of social cohabitation is to work effectively, our children and women must be protected at all costs.

Village upon village in Rajasthan and Haryana can be found with men in their forties who have not married because there are no women left to marry! Casting away women and children like commodities is an act of entitlement. Crimes against men are often violent, devious and testosterone driven. Crime against women and children is all of these and is also wanton. This rampant and sick idea that you can get away with doing almost anything when it comes to women and children can only be defeated if punishment for such excesses is in excess of any punishment meted out thus far. Someone needs to be made an example out of and very soon.

The magical Hindi film song!

One evening, at a dinner party in my house in New York, an Indian friend declared that nothing could capture human emotions like the lyrics of Hindi film songs. I scoffed then. I find cliché’s very disquieting. I did not want to believe or accept easily that lyrics of Hindi film songs were the only delivery mechanism for human emotions. What about Shakespearean sonnets or the wordsmithery of Wordsworth or even U2’s “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for? Surely, the ability to emotionally overwhelm with words was not confined to Hindi film songs only. We’ve also had to bear my adorable Govinda’s “meri pant bhi sexy”. Then, in December last year, the indefatigable Dev Anand passed on. TV channels carried tribute upon tribute and I became fixated. He was gorgeous, stylish and dare I say, a tad unhinged in the latter part of his career. But I went under an aesthetic and emotional tsunami when I saw the songs that were picturized on him. And then, the words of my friend from New York began to ring in my ears. Hindi film songs, especially from the decades of the 50’s and 60’s convey human emotions in nuances and avalanches like few other mediums and sometimes do so in the same 4 minute song! I started scavenging You Tube immediately and found treasure!


The innocent loving complaint of Sandhya from V Shantaram’s Do Anken Barah Haath “Saiyyan Jhooton ka bada sartaj nikla” where she calls the lover a King of liars and a cheat but still longingly laments that he doesn’t talk to her. The same film gave us ‘Ay Malik tere bande hum”, a song whose simple lyrics are set to a soulful mourning lilt that cuts through like an honest knife and surprisingly, is still sung in school assemblies across India! Guru Dutt singing “Chaudhvin ka chand ho ya aaftab ho” in the film Chaudhvin ka Chand describes his lover in possibly every manner known to the hindi lyricist. Her hair is dark clouds, her eyes are glasses of alcohol (though “maiy ke pyaale bhare hue” sounds infinitely superior!) and then she herself is described as a form of alcohol that has the excitement of love! There is no way in hell that I can translate this song into English that would convey the razor sharp emotional quiver or the fleshiness of feelings. The same film gave us the fabulous all female qawwali “Sharma key ye kyun sab pardanashin aanchal ko sawara karte hain”, a teasing, competitive gender joust. You hear - ” Ye Shokh Nazar Ke Khanjar Bhi Seene Mein Utaara Karte Hain “ or “Ye Husn Ki Izzat Rakhane Ko Har Zulm Gavaara Karte Hain´. The qawwalis as a genre have such power. They cut across demographics and hierarchies. While this genre has a rich history in the Indian subcontinent, Hindi films need to be applauded for bringing them to the common, every man. Cut to the lovely qawwalis of the film Barsat. One, “Nigah-e-naaz ke maaron ka haal kya hoga” is set in a contest between men and women. The women folk - coquettish, confident of the power of their beauty, pitying the men and their helplessness in the face of it sing -‘hamarey husn ki bijli chamakney vali hai – na jaaney aaj hazaaron ko haal kya hoga” The men reply with an emotional appeal ‘hamin na hon to nazaron ka haal kya hoga” that love outlives beauty, essentially, they challenge the women to bring it on! The same film gave us “Na to caravan ki talaash hai”, a qawwali whose lyrics are full of graciousness, sacrifice and the power of love that can destroy one and uplift another – “yeh ishq ishq hai ishq ishq / tera ishq hai meri aarzoo, tera ishq hai meri aabroo” making love both a matter of desire and honor at the same time! Then comes the all powerful invocation to that naughty god of flirtation – Lord Krishna! It does not stop here. Radha, Mirabai, Sita, Buddha, the prophet Mohammed are all invoked in this gem of a qawwali. I’m no expert but I’m pretty sure this weave of lyrics is rarely possible in any tapestry in the world of lyrics!

Every human emotion is rarefied like gold in lyrics of Hindi films. Raju rues the loss of love in Guide’s “Din Dhal Jaye hai, raat na jaye, tu to na aaye teri yaad sataye”. I’m pretty sure many a metrosexual Indian male has heard this song while sighing over an actual or perceived loss of love with a stout of black label! The same film gave us “Aaj phir jeeney ki tamanna hai”, a playful yet fragile thrust towards life by Rosy, an anthem of freedom if you will. Compare this to Gloria Gaynor’s “I will survive”, another anthem of the sisterhood or most recently, Beyonce’s “Who run the world…..girls” and I’m pretty certain that “kal ke andheron se nikal ke, dekhaa hain aankhe malate malate , Phool hee phool zindagee bahaar hai, tay kar liyaa” speaks to a higher something within us, more gentle than visceral and yet equally strong. In Mughal-e-Azam’s qawwali “Teri mehfil me kismet azma kar ham bhi dekhenge” , two women compete for the affections of the prince. One competes like she’s in a competition while the other pleads a surrender -“Teri mehfil me kismat aazamaa kar ham bhi dekhege - Gam-E-Dil se zaraa daaman bachaakar ham bhi dekhege” versus “Tere kadamo pe sar apanaa jhukaa kar ham bhi dekhege”. In both cases, the women display strength directly through the lyrics, one is modern and in your face while the other is confident that the loveliness of suffering will refine and guarantee her love. And then there is the whole gamut of songs on unrequited love, star amongst which is Pyaasa’s “Bichhad Gayaa Har Saathi Dekar Pal Do Pal Ka Saath,Kisko Phursat Hai Jo Thaame Deewane Ka Haath, Humko Apna Saaya Tak Aqsar Bezaar Mila - Jane voh kaise log they jinkey pyar ko pyar mila". These lyrics have a precision of a surgical tool. They hit you in the heart, mind and soul as an if invasive surgery is being performed.

My favorites though, are all those beautiful songs that have a playful, teasing sensuality where the lyrics are so simple yet so effective that the instant happiness they bring upon hearing carries a lifetime guarantee. “Mana Janab ne pukara nahin, kya mera saath bhi gavara nahin?” or “Khoya Khoya Chand” or “Abhi na jao chod kar ke dil abhi bhara nahin” or “Zindagi bhar nahin bhulegi voh barsat ki rat”. Then there is a movie from 1973 called Hanste Zalkhm. If there ever was a collection of songs with a boiling pot of feelings, rendered in a highly modern, experimental way with fantastic use of orchestra, this film must get a special mention. ‘Yeh mana meri jaan mohabbat saza hai, maza isme itma magar kis liye hai”,a qawwali that epitomizes a man’s surrender to his lover, rendered especially poignant since she is a prostitute. They both find solace in each other from a world that’s bound and gagged by mores and sing ‘Tum jo mil gaye ho to yeh lagta hai ke jahaan mil gaya”. This is a song that has an amazing undulation of singing tone and volume and the great Rafi and Lata oblige beautifully. There is also “Betab dil ki tamanna yahi hai” or “Aaj socha to aansoo bhar aaye, muddate ho gayi muskuraye”. I can only sigh in wondrous rapture.

I end with RashtraKavi, Kavi Pradeep, the man who gave us “Aey Mere Vatan ke logon”, “De di hamen azaadi bina khadag bina dhal” and “Ao bachon tumhey dikhaen jhanki Hindustan ki”. He wrote a song in the film Nastik in the year 1954. It goes as under.

Dekh tere sansar ki haalat kya ho gayi bhagwaan
kitnaa badal gayaa insaan…

aayaa samay badaa bedhangaa
aaj aadmi banaa lafangaa
kahin pe jhagdaa kahin pe dangaa
naach rahaa nar ho kar nangaa
chhal aur kapat ke haathon apnaa
bech rahaa imaan,

kitna badal gaya insaan…

raam ke bhakt rahim ke bande
rachte aaj fareb ke phande…
kitne ye makkar ye andhe
dekh liye inke bhi dhandhe
inhin ki kaali kartooton se
huya ye mulk mashaan,

kitna badal gaya insaan…


Ladies and Gentlemen, let me be honest. If I had not mentioned the year the film Nastik was released and if some of you hadn’t already heard this song at some point in your life, would not all of us have believed that these lyrics were written recently? Such is the power of the hindi film song, it transcends, uplifts, provokes, seduces, saddens and most of all makes us thankful that the hindi film exists!