Month: September 2023

Remembering Shailendra-Part 2

(The Romantic Lover of Lovers)

Introduction

This blog is an appreciation of Shailendra based on ten selected duets of his. Nine of them are romantic songs conveying the wonder and happiness of the woman and her man. One depicts the sadness of the lovers at their situation.

Love in Shailendra’s Conception

For Shailendra, the woman and man are often a happy pair of human beings inspired by their love for each other to wish for better things in life for themselves and others. “Everybody Loves a Lover” is a hit song of Doris Day from the 1950s. Shailendra goes a step further and tells us that the whole creation – including the stars and the moon – loves lovers. He writes of the cosmic world coming together to cheer the lovers and wish them well. In their euphoria as it were, the lovers even rope in the moon or the stars as accomplices or witnesses.

We see noble altruism in the love that is expressed through the poetry of Shailendra compared to the vulgar narcissism so common in later Hindi film songs. The woman and man are equal, mature adults. They rarely tease or tug at each other or roll on the grass together. Such is the dignity of Shailendra’s verses that they uplift the whole song sequence, embellish the characters of the woman and man on the screen and enhance the appeal of the screenplay rather than act as a distraction or time pass.

With these few words, I will dive straight into my selection of duets. My apologies for having picked more of the happy songs. Actually, these songs more or less picked themselves as Shailendra is at his lyrical best in the more cheerful love situations.      

The song starts as a plea of the woman to the moon for some privacy for the tête-à-tête with her lover and ends up as a request to the moon to ask the man to come back to her after stealing her heart.

Dum bhar jo udhar munh phere, O chanda,

Main unse pyar kar loongi, Baatein hazaar kar loongi

Why does the woman need privacy? She is going out with her man for the first time, whereas the moonlight sees the moon every day. Shailendra creates a nuanced divide between the two, between chand and chanda.    

Chand ko chanda roz hi dekhe, Meri pehli raat ho meri pehli raat

After the man declares that his intention is only to steal the heart of the woman, she changes her track and seeks the help of the moon to make him understand that he needs to come back to her.

Dil ko churake kho mat jaana, Raah na jaana bhool,

In kadamo se kuchal na dena, Mere dil ka phool ho mere dil ka phool,

Yeh baat unhe samjha de, o chanda,

Main unse pyar kar loongi, Baatein hazaar kar loongi

A woman in love can be opportunistic too, Shailendra seems to suggest!

In this song, Shailendra combines the optimism of the lovers with their apprehension of the road ahead to an unknown destination.

Pyar hua ikraar hua hai, Pyar se phir kyun darta hai dil,

Kehta hai dil rasta Mushkil, Maloom nahi hai kahan manzil

The moon is again invoked but to say that if their love breaks, then the moon will never shine again. Subtly, but in simple verse, Shailendra also conveys the difference in the outlook between the man focused on the song (geet) and the woman on the singer/ partner (meet)

Kaho ki apni preet ka, Geet na badlega kabhi,

Tum bhi kaho is raah ka, Meet na badlega kabhi,

Pyar joh toota, pyar joh choota, Chand na chamkega kabhi

Though the song is beautifully picturised and set to lilting music, its iconic status among duets is due in no small measure to Shailendra’s exquisite lyrics.  

After the moon, why not rope in the stars and even the weather? Here, it is not a one-on-one with the moon but a joint reflection of the man and woman at the magic created by the night. It is joint but separate because the two sing alternate lines. The song is studded with gems of Shailendra’s poetry.

Kyun aag si laga ke, Gumsum hai chaandni,

Sone bhi nahi deta, Mausam ka ye ishaaraa

We are all familiar with oppressive weather not letting us sleep. Here, the poet suggests that with the night being wet (bheegi, bheegi), the winds joyful (mast fizayein) and moon (pyaara, pyaara) rising steadily, it is not the weather itself but what it is suggesting that is not letting the woman sleep.

Shailendra also comes up with some other beautiful imageries.

Jo din ke ujaale mein na mila, Dil doond rahe aise sapne ko

Is raat ki jagmag mein doobi, Main doond rahi hoon apne ko

He refers to two searches, one of the dream and one of the self. The search for the dream is a hark back to the following lines from Patita (1953) that I had discussed in my previous blog.

Jo khwaab raaton mein bhi na aaya, Wo mujh ko din mein dikhaa diyaa

Introspection is triggered by the quality of the night that Shailendra captures in the beautiful word jagmag that could mean shimmering, glittering, effervescent, sparkling, etc. I absolutely love his reference to the dream world coming alive rather than the dreams being fulfilled. Sapnon ka jahaan aabaad kare is such a lovely benediction! Another beautiful turn of phrase is Kaliyon pe ye behoshi ki nami. Only Shailendra can take poetic license to suggest that flower buds can be intoxicating! And get away with it.

In this duet, Shailendra changes track slightly. Instead of admiring the nature around them straightaway, the man first notices how the very onset of spring awaits the arrival of his lover.

Tu nahi to yeh bahar kya bahar hai,

Gul nahi khile ke tera intezar hai

The admiration comes soon thereafter.

Muskurate pyar ka asar hai har kahi,

Hum kahan hai dil kidhar hai kuchh khabar nahi

It is common belief that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. That is not good enough for Shailendra. He explores what creates beauty and comes up with a beautiful answer: ‘Muskurate pyar ka asar’. The operative word is ‘asar’. Moreover, it is not mere ‘pyar’ but ‘muskurate pyar’. He subtly distinguishes between ‘kahan’ and ‘kidhar’. Kahan refers to physical space where two bodies can dwell simultaneously. Kidhar is for spiritual space where two souls are entwined.

This song is an example of the romantic side of Shailendra as well as his unique ability to juxtapose opposites like dil (heart) and nazar (sight). No poet before him – and perhaps none after him – has ever wondered if the heart sees or the eyes have a heart of their own. The song begins with wonder at what is going on between the heart and the eyes. After describing different facets of this wonder for the woman and the man in the first two antaras, Shailendra turns to their common wonder.

Akash mein ho rahe hai yeh kaise ishaare,

Kya dekhkar aaj hai itne khush chand taare

Shailendra often brings in the notion of the moon and stars bearing witness to the tryst of the lovers and being delighted about it.

In this song, we have the lovers wanting to go away from the world. The ‘Kahin aur’ world of the Daag song is elaborated here with definite features. The woman says ‘Woh pyaar ka jahaan hai, har dil pe meharbaan hai’ while he points out ‘Na zulm ka nishaan hai, na gham ki daastaan hai’. Then comes the antara

Haathon mein haath daale, khud ko bina sambhalle

Nikhlenge hum jidhar se ho jaayenge ujale

Chanda kahega haskar sine pe haath rakhkar

Wo jaa rahe hain dekho do pyaar karnewale

The man and woman get de-personalised and become generic lovers – do pyaar karnewale – as far as the Moon is concerned. The simplicity and innocence of Shailendra’s imagery is so endearing!

This is lilting song enhanced by Shailendra’s playful lyrics. The lovers are so happy that they invite each other to mingle with the Spring and look into the stars eye to eye.

Dil ai dil bahaaron se mil, Sitaaron se aankhen mila

In the first antara, Shailendra picks up on the ‘dil ki nazar’ imagery from Anari and come up with

Agar dil ki nazaron se tum dekhte, khade saamane muskuraate the hum

There is also a reference to the real world but in mild defiance.

Mohabbat ka ye geet gaate hue, Hum is raah mein aaj kho jaayenge

Zamaana ye ab chaahe jo bhi kare, Liya jis ne dil us ke ho jaayenge

In this song, Shailendra has the man and the woman celebrate nature during rains, even as they affirm their love and concern for each other. He deploys onomatopoeic words like rimjhim and chikimiki to bring out music in the pitter patter of the rain and the chirping of the crickets. At the same time, he also finds simple words like geet and preet to convey the cheerful mood of the lovers.

Aaha rimjhim ke ye pyare pyare git liye,

Aai raat suhani dekho preet liye,

Mit mere suno zara hawa kahe kya aa, suno toh zara,

Jhingar bole chikimiki chikimiki

In the first antara, Shailendra uses jhume to suggest the confluence of the wet night, the procession of dreams in the eyes of the lovers and the world of their hearts swinging with the clouds.

Khoi si bheegi bheegi raat jhume, Aankho mein sapno ki barat jhume,

Dil ki yeh duniya aaj badalon ke saath jhume

In the second antara, Shailendra lets the woman turn practical and protective of her man.

Aa jao dil mein basa loon tumhe,

Aankhon ka kajara bana loon tumhe,

Zalim zamane ki nigahon se chhupalu tumhe

In the final antara, Shailendra uses the word rahe in three contexts – the lovers holding their hands together, the words that come out of their hearts and their entire lives together.

Haathon mein tere mera hath rahe, Dil se jo nikli hai woh baat rahe,

Mera tumhara saari zindagi ka saath rahe

This is one more song with the imagery of rain and its music. Whereas rimjhim was only ‘pyare pyare geet’ in the previous song, it is upgraded here to ‘tarane’ which reminds the lovers of their first meeting.

Rimjhim ke tarane le ke aayi barsaat, Yaad aye kisi se wo pehli mulaaqaat

Shailendra then develops the imagery further, much on the lines of the O Sajna from the film Parakh released a month before Kala Bazar in 1960. But he also brings in some deft touches with his play of words. He likens the woman’s mind to a peacock that dances upon listening to the intoxicated noise of the black clouds. Dances how? He creates new onomatopoeic words to describe it – Rumjhum, Ghumghum. He also plays with the words saathi and saath.    

Sapnon kaa saathi chal raha mere saath

He then has the lovers say

Mai na bolun, main na bolun, Aankhe kare ankhiyo se baat

And quickly wonder

Rah jaati hai kyon hothon tak aake dil ki baat

The path of true love is never simple and straightforward. Even when he thinks up a song for such an eventuality, Shailendra does not let go of his imagery of the stars, except that they have now become rare and do not join in the celebration.  

Lakhon taare aasman mein ek magar dhoonde na mila,

Dekh ke duniya ki Diwali dil mera chup-chap jala

Shailendra’s lovers are normally cheered on by the whole creation consisting of the stars, moon, weather, etc. Here, love is thwarted by the human factor. The poet expresses this philosophically.

Kismat ka hai naam magar hai kaam yeh duniya walon ka,

Phoonk diya hai chaman hamare khwaabon aur khayalon ka

Phoonk diya connotes violent destruction. Shailendra conveys the irrevocability of that act beautifully by referring to both khwaabon (dreams; future) and khayalon (thoughts; present) in the context of the garden of their love – the present as well as the future are destroyed.

In Conclusion…

Shailendra is no ordinary lyricist whose contribution to Hindi poetry can be captured by a listing of his hit songs. Even among duets, there was a wider choice for me. But I picked these ten only to showcase his favourite imageries, his exquisite choice of words and his summoning of the entire creation – earth, seasons, rains, moon, stars and the cosmos to reciprocate the love of the lovers!

Part 1 had been posted on 31st August 2023 and can be accessed at this link: https://kaykay46.wordpress.com/2023/08/31/remembering-shailendra-part-1/

 S. Krishna Kumar

21st September, 2023

Devanahalli,

Blog # 81

The Audacity of Audacity

Introduction

As I reflect on the just-concluded G20 Summit in New Delhi, the word that springs to my mind is audacity. There are many definitions of audacity. Among them, I like “courage or confidence of a kind that other people find shocking or rude” of the Cambridge Dictionary the best. Audacity is “intrepid boldness or arrogant disregard of normal restraints” for the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. A Yahoo search shows up audacity as “willingness to take bold risks”.

All these shades of ‘audacity’ were on display in the manner in which India handled its G20 Presidency in the last ten months culminating in the Summit last week. I explore this thought further in this blog.

Your big opportunity may be right where you are now

It is well-known that the G20 Presidency devolves by rotation and that it is not an honour bestowed on a country and particularly its current political leadership. The role of the Presidency is to steer the G20 agenda during its year-long tenure and host the Summit. India got the mantle from Indonesia and Brazil will soon follow. It is to the credit of our leadership that they saw the G20 Presidency as a big opportunity to showcase India and its ongoing achievements. As all of us can well see now, opportunity favours the prepared nation!

Don’t wait for the right opportunity; create it

Granted India did not ‘create’ the G20 Presidency. But the ‘opportunity’ India ‘created’ for itself was to make the tenure of its Presidency more comprehensive and opportunity-driven, larger than life as it were. India did not merely copy the rulebook of Indonesia and let the Presidency culminating in the New Delhi Summit to be one more Vigyan Bhawan event in the calendar of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). India seems to have written its own rulebook. Last Sunday evening, the participants and observers alike seem to have been of the unanimous view that the Summit was a success and that India’s act will be hard to follow, let alone beat!

Opportunities multiply as they are seized

It is now clear that the Indian leadership saw the G20 Presidency not as a mega opportunity that plays out as a spectacle in New Delhi. They seem to have had the idea and intent to leverage India’s continental size and diversity to take the second- and third-tier delegates from the G20 countries and multilateral institutions to the nooks and corners of India as it were. This ability to conceptualise G20 in a wider context needed to be backed by commensurate organising and execution skills. They were amply demonstrated throughout the last ten months.

G20 is operationalised into two parallel tracks. Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors lead the Finance Track while the Sherpas take care of the Sherpa Track. In each track, there are thematic Working Groups that meet throughout the term of the Presidency. The Sherpas guide the negotiations on the agenda items and provide coordination. In addition, there are Engagement Groups to bring in business, labour, youth, women, parliamentarians, researchers, etc.

The Finance Track and its Working Groups dealt with concerns on the Framework, International Financial Architecture, Infrastructure, Sustainable Finance, Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion, Joint Finance and Health Task Force, International Taxation Agenda and Financial Sector Issues.  

The Sherpa Track covered Agriculture, Anti-Corruption, Culture, Digital Economy, Disaster Risk Reduction, Development, Education, Health, Employment, Environment & Climate Sustainability, Tourism, Trade & Investment and Energy Transitions.

Besides the above there were initiatives like Research & Innovation Initiative Gathering, Space Economy Leaders Meeting, G20 Empower, G20 Chief Scientific Advisors Roundtable and a Conference on Crime and Security.

Finally, there were nine Empowered Groups with non-Government delegates from each member country to make recommendations and policy inputs to the G20 leaders.

Deliberations of the Working Groups and other forums were spread out over more than thirty host cities such as Amritsar, Siliguri and Hampi, apart from the state capitals. Among the several hundred delegates who attended the meetings, I am sure there must have been many who were visiting Rann of Kutch or Mahabalipuram for the first time and saw for themselves what the buzz about the ‘fastest growing large economy of the world’ is all about. Some of them would also have seen what they were not meant to see but that is par for the course in massive exercises of this nature.      

Opportunities are grabbed by right people coming together

Obviously, MEA was the nodal ministry for the activities and events of India’s G20 Presidency. Led by the External Affairs Minister, the entire MEA team rose to the occasion and delivered. The previous Foreign Secretary was appointed the Chief Coordinator. The former CEO of the Niti Ayog was nominated as the G20 Sherpa. With their wealth of experience of men and matters, this core team gave an outstanding performance. While these were the known persona, many women and men down the line also stepped up to shoulder their responsibilities competently.

What is Worth doing is Worth Doing Well

All said and done, the G20 Presidency and Summit was handled with great professionalism and pride. I feel that it has certainly enhanced the country’s prestige within and outside India. The opposition may cavil all they want about this having been a costly PR exercise meant to bolster the electoral prospects of the ruling party in the state elections later this year and the national elections next year. The point is that their stance, or lack thereof, seems to be at odds with the mood of the nation.      

Without getting into the politics of it, I see quite a few significant gains to India as the host of the G20 Summit and through the host, for the Global South as a collective. The first is the formal induction of the 55-member African Union (AU) as a permanent member of the G20, on par with the EU. Hitherto, G7 countries dominated the deliberations of the G20. The entry of the AU would give greater voice to the Global South within the G20. That this follows the decision at the recent BRICS summit to include Argentina, UAE, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Egypt is indicative of shifts in the power equations in trans-national groupings and the lead India is taking to make this happen.

This leadership is not merely that of being the designated spokesman during India’s Presidency. Nor is the role merely that of lobbying for debt relief, development assistance, climate financing or FDI from the Globa North on behalf of the poorer countries. Today, with all its flaws and faults, India is seen as a feasible, technology-backed governance alternative in social security, transfer payments to beneficiaries, public health delivery, digital public infrastructure, etc. The recent success of Chandrayaan-3 provided a nice backdrop. All this may have been an incremental and serendipitous development to a large extent. But it is to the credit of the present leadership that they grabbed the opportunity with both hands and made the most of it.

Dislike the Person, Don’t Disrespect the Office

I am a retired civil servant fast becoming a tired one,  disillusioned by the current political discourse in India that seems incapable of looking at any success of the country except through the prism of ‘our-regime-versus-your-regime’ or ‘we-started-it-all’. The leading opposition party seems to have lost the ability and willingness to find and field a few domain experts who can comment with credibility in a non-partisan way on matters that seem clearly to be achievements which India must be proud of. Even a few who can do so seem to be curbed by partisanship.  

Interacting with my own friends and family belonging to the next generation, not to mention teenage grandchildren of our own, I find that negativity with what is going wrong in India is not widely shared or even cared about. I am saying this, not in a judgemental, pejorative sense. Coming specifically to G20 Summit, many Indians, including the younger generation, seem to have registered it in transactional terms as a very successful event hosted by India. In any case, the youth of today are disenchanted with the conventional politics of opposing for the sake of opposing.  They lead a busy lives in hyper-competitive times and take in current events while on the move. They are smart as well and can see through any attempt to belittle a national triumph as showmanship or PR.

More and more, the leading opposition party appears to be painting itself into a corner from where even genuine criticism sounds peevish. What else can one say of the party getting excited about the G-20 expenditure outrunning the budget? If the cost of the G20 Presidency is sought to be adversely compared to the Chandrayan 3 mission, one must also not forget that the scam-ridden Commonwealth Games 2010 organised in Delhi cost $ 7.5 bn. The media advisor to the immediate past PM claims in an article that New India’s ‘multi-alignment and voice of Global South’ is merely today’s version of Old India’s ‘non-alignment and Third World Solidarity’ and that Modi is merely playing the Indira and Nehru card. Isn’t that proof of continuity amidst change in a mature democracy which needs to be appreciated rather than ridiculed? The 1955 Bandung Conference of Asian-African states was a significant milestone in the evolution of NAM. Why deny such a possibility for the G20 Presidency and Summit in the coming decades? The deliberations and records of India’s G20 Presidency will provide valuable inputs for this evolution while India’s continued espousal of the concerns of the Global South combined with a vigorous foreign policy will largely shape the trajectory of the makeover. And to top it all, the putative leader of the major opposition party being surer of absence of body than presence of mind, took off presumably on a duniya jodo yatra but used it to merely rubbish the ruling party.     

The Audacity of It All

Taking India’s G20 Presidency and the Summit on the whole, I would say that in disregard of normal restraints, India displayed the courage to take bold decisions and pull it off. It was a triumph of the audacity of a new India to dream big, create opportunities for itself and deliver on a big international stage. ‘The Audacity of Hope’ was not good enough, as Barrack Obama discovered in office. It may be the time for ‘The Audacity of Audacity’. There is no gainsaying that the New India of today needs to be more completely articulated and we still have a lot of ground to cover in terms of per capita human development. But it would be churlish to deny that global geopolitics seems to be playing out in a way that favours a more extrovert role for India rather than an inward bias towards domestic affairs alone. This is the lesson that the opposition parties seem unwilling or incapable of learning.      

Let me end with a caveat. As a former civil servant, I was privileged to have been part of a largely apolitical system set in a leisurely pace of change where frankness and independence of views were respected as virtues by themselves. This has changed, perhaps irrevocably. I also concede that not all that has changed is for the better. However, there is an increasing disconnect between those who are impatient to get things done in their own way and those who just want to enjoy the luxury of armchair criticism. If you dislike the ‘my way or the highway’ style of leadership, you must counter that politically and convince the voters, particularly the younger majority, that you have the ability to offer a vision of New India that is not merely a hark back to your old leaders and the family. Otherwise, there is a clear and present danger of making yourself so irrelevant that a ‘opposition-mukht’ becomes a reality by default. I do think that today’s young women and men are firm believers in the dictum that

‘people who say it cannot be done must not interrupt those doing it’.  

Today is the birthday of my wife Vilasini. I hope that my arguments in this blog are clear enough to convince her that the person she married fifty-one years ago is not going back on his core ideology and belief-system!

S. Krishna Kumar

15th September, 2023

Devanahalli

Blog # 80