There is a line in a book I read as a kid: “Swadharmey nidhanam shreyaha / Paradharmo bhayavahaha”. Better tread in the path of your own convictions even if it means remaining penniless than adapting yourself to what’s totally unidentifiable. Follow your own heart. Be the master-of-soul and captain-of-ship type of thing. I do love Dylan and with all my heart, but I would rather talk about what I know best: Bollywood songs. Here are three select numbers that I can identify myself with, now that a harsh winter is upon us and women don’t understand men:
“Aaj Jaane Ki Zidd Na Karo”
(“Insist Not On Leaving Today”)
-As sung by Farida Khanum
This is a ghazal, and not technically composed for any Bollywood flick, but was featured in a few films. I discovered it on one of those surreal nights before my end terms in school days. When I was sent to this little-known all-boys boarding school in the middle of a thick forest known for red sandalwood smugglers and wild elephants, and bordered by three different states with three different languages in South India, what the 6-year-old didn’t expect was a bunch of adults’ common hatred towards anything artistic: music, films and non-academic books. Since the only two adults I had known till then were my parents, I expected the whole world to be a community of liberals. My school could put some Catholic institutions to shame: no music, no movies, no novels, no electronic devices of any sort. Just text books. Naturally I resisted. I suffered for a year first. Was almost naturalized. But the taste of good music played by my father on his old tape-recorder during the annual holidays at home just wouldn’t leave my ears. I smuggled a silver color Philips pocket radio that I borrowed from a civil engineer friend of his into the school during my second year. It was duly confiscated. And the punishment was severe. Unlike here where children have rights and a helpline, we Indian kids simply accepted physical punishment as part of life. Colonial hangover. Spare the rod and spoil the child type of thing. More so in boarding schools hundreds of miles away from homes. We were asked to cut the thin branches of trees and shave the leaves off to make canes for teachers because their palms would get too tired from routine slapping. I was a hero for a week that followed with Band-Aids stuck all over my face and arms. I received more “What’s up kiddo?” notes passed from seniors in one week than I received hellos during my whole first year. Something changed in me that night. I started noticing how weak adults could be despite how strong they appeared. And how the interests of the majority usually were controlled by a powerful minority. I didn’t speak a word the whole week. Everyone fell back into the daily routine, and soon enough it was end terms and then we all went home. My third year. I walked in with three bags full of clothes, books, pickle jars, a cricket kit, and three pocket radios. One radio went to the class topper in the 10th Standard, six years my senior, who was expected to bring the school a ‘state rank’ in the state-wide common exams later that year. For safekeeping. His belongings in the common dorm were rarely checked. The second one went to the principal’s kid who got into school through staff quota, the apple of the eye of his parents, and whose loyalties were with the kids who helped him during the exams. Me and other budding liberals. The third radio remained with me, to be used only late at nights and in the lowest possible volume, after everyone went to bed. Secretly, I was raring to get caught. And I was. And it wasn’t a pleasant sight. The class topper and the principal’s kid were so shaken by what the physical education teacher did to me that they didn’t want to hold on to their radios anymore. We just dropped those two sets into the backseat of the auto-rickshaw that used to bring milk drums from the nearby hamlet at 5AM. Everyone fell back into the daily routine. End terms and holidays. Mother sent me to Bengaluru so I could spend some time with her father and learn a thing or two about engines in his hangar. The scar on my upper lip wasn’t completely healed by then. Duly he asked what happened and I told him. He was livid. He called a carpenter friend of his home the next morning. Took us both into his toolshed. Showed him the 12’x4’ black ironwood table he had inherited from his father. “I want a small bookshelf made with this for him” he said. The carpenter groped for words. He knew the table was considered a family heirloom of sort and made with one of the heaviest, toughest, and most expensive woods. “Six levels with open faces. The bottom-most shelf must have a horizontal partition in the middle with the back-half accessible only from behind and through a sliding door with a keyhole,” he orders him, “and each level should be of this much height,” as he takes down from the attic an old German radio. Grundig Satellit 650. Weighing about 10 kilograms. Absolutely nothing compared to what the six-level bookshelf of black ironwood would eventually weigh. And I understood that was the idea. A radio shelf with bookshelf façade and made with such an unimaginably heavy wood that radio’s own weight can’t be felt, and nobody would bother turning a heavy thing backwards to inspect. Painted all-black. He drove the thing and me himself when the school reopened for my fourth year. To be gifted to the school library, but upon my graduation. To sit between the wall and my mat that I slept on until then. With all the six open-faced shelves in the front showcasing textbooks and notebooks. Not a single soul in the teacher community could sniff a radio wave in the years that followed. Except on that one surreal night. Just weeks before the end terms. Grandfather had passed away a few months earlier. I was listening to a shortwave station that played old Bollywood hits from the 90s every night. And the dorm room opened. I turned to shut radio and push the bottom shelf door in one go. Shelf closed. But the radio was still on. Too late. In walks Mr.Rao, the history teacher. Everyone is asleep. Except me. And the moonlight through the window is falling straight on my face and the heavy bookshelf that is hissing a song at low volume. Anuradha Paudwal and Kumar Sanu crooning at their romantic best. Something about how their hearts were not listening to them. (“Dil Hain Ke Manta Nahin”). He looks at my motionless face. Looks at the sleeping dorm around. And walks out. And I peer through the window. He walks out of the main gate and towards teachers’ quarters. And I knew what I should be prepared for in front of the whole school in the prayer hall when the morning prayers would come to an end. When I look back, the word most teachers used the most often while holding ‘conversations’ with me was “incorrigible”. As I look back now, I think, that I was, and without even knowing what the word meant. I didn’t turn off the radio that night. I knew the 10kg wonder would be confiscated and duly disposed the morning after. That was my last night with my Bollywood melodies. The song about the heart just ended. My heart was beating hard with trepidation about the morning after. And the song that came on air next was this. All vocals. Minimal instruments. And the soothing voice of Farida Khanum with that raw silk texture that is possible only in the analog realm. A song about how life is about just that one night. Surreal. Like grandfather himself was sitting behind that bookshelf to pick that song for my last night with the radio. I just couldn’t get it out of my system ever since. What made it even more surreal was that Mr.Rao didn’t utter a word the morning after. No teacher ever got to hear about it, let alone the principal. I kept my word. I moved the bookshelf to the library the night before I left school upon graduation years later. With the Grundig still lying in the bottom-most half-shelf on the back. Where I believe it still is.
Years passed. And on another surreal night when my very life and career were at stake and I had to leave India with just a backpack, and I filled it with hard drives containing project files of some films I had made, with room for just one book, and I chose Orwell’s “1984”, because that’s the only book I hadn’t read in my now many many bookshelves, Mother gave me two of the pocket diaries my father, a Doctor Zhivago type, had kept before he passed away while I was still in the boarding school. And on the first random page I randomly selected to open and read, as my Air France flight left Delhi behind and flew a mile above Pakistan that night, he alluded to “Aaj Jaane Ki Zidd Na Karo” by Farida Khanum being the most romantic number he ever listened to, and how, if not for the cancer that was weakening him, he would’ve crossed the border on foot to catch ‘The Queen of Ghazal’ in a concert in Lahore. The same old moonlight was hitting my face through the airplane window as I read it. And I didn’t have to excuse myself to go to the restroom to cry. Like always, everyone else in the room was already asleep at 2AM.
Aaj jaane ki zidd na karo
Yun hii pahloo mein baithey raho
Aaj jaane ki zidd na karo
Haaye mar jaayenge,
Hum toh lut jaayenge
Aisi baatein kiya na karo
Aaj jaane ki zid na karo
Aaj = Today
Jaane ki = Of going
Zidd = Insistance
Na = Don’t
Karo = Do
>> (Insist not on leaving today)
Yun hii = Just/simply
pahloo = near
mein = at
baithey = sit
raho = keep doing
>> (Simply remain sitting near me)
Haay = O My!
marr = die
jaayenge = will die
hum = I
lut = loot / bankrupt
jaayenge = will be lost/ bankrupt
>> (I will be dead, I will be lost)
Aisi = Such
baatein = words
kiya = do
na karo = don’t
>> (Speak not of such things)
// Stop insisting so much on leaving.
Come, sit next to me forever.
I will be dead, if you don’t.
I will be so lost, if you leave.
Speak not of such things.
Insist not so much on leaving //
Tum hi socho zara, kyun na rokey tumhe
Jaan jaati hai jab uth ke jaate ho tum
Tumko apni qasam jaan-e-jaan
Baat itni meri maan lo
Aaj jaane ki zidd na karo
Yunhi pahloo mein baithe raho
Aaj jaane ki zidd na karo
Tum = you
hi = yourself
socho = think
zaraa = a little
kyon = why
na = not
rokey = stop
tumhe = you
>> (Tell me why I ought not be stopping you)
Jaan = life
jaati hai = goes
jab = when
uth ke = stand up
jaate ho = go
tum = you
>> (My life comes to an end every time you say it’s time for you to get up and leave for the day)
Tumko = To you
apni = my
kasam = swear
jaan-e-jaan = The life of my life
>> (I swear on my life, my beloved)
Baat = Thing / subject
itni = Such a small
meri = My
maan = Accept
lo = Just do
>> (Just accept this small request of mine)
// You know pretty well why I ought to be doing everything I can to stop you from leaving. My heart sinks every time you say you need to get up and leave for the day, I swear, you must concede to my request //
Waqt ki qaid mein zindagi hai magar
Chand ghadiyan yehi hain jo aazad hain
Inko khokar mere jaan-e-jaan
Umr bhar na taraste raho
Aaj jaane ki zid na karo
Waqt = time
ki = of
qaid = imprisonment
mein = in
zindagi = life
hai = present
magar = but
>> (Life is but a prisoner of time)
Chand = a few
ghadiyan = moments
yehi = just these
hain = present
jo = which
aazad = free
hain = present
>> (Free but few are these moments)
Innko = these
khokar = losing
mere = my
jaan-e-jaan = the life of my life
Umr = age/life
bhar = full of
na = don’t
taraste = yearning / pining
raho = stay
>> (Lose not these or you will remain yearning for love)
// We are all prisoner’s of time, love. Lose not these few fleeting moments or you will forever remain pining for love //
Kitna maasoom rangeen hai yeh sama
Husn aur ishq ki aaj mehraaj hai
Kal ki kisko khabar jaan-e-jaan
Rok lo aaj ki raat ko
Kitna = what a
maasoom = innocent
rangeen = colorful
hain = is / present
yeh = this
samaa = weather
>> (Such a pleasant and colorful weather it is today)
Husn = beauty
aur = and
ishq = love
ki = of
aaj = today
mehraaj = procession / ascension
hai = is / present
>> (It’s such a heaven-like day that beauty and love are ascending to their peaks of power)
Kal = tomorrow
ki = of
kisko = to whom
khabar = news
jaan-e-jaan = the life of my life
>> (Who knows what happens tomorrow?)
Rok = stop
lo = do
aaj = today
ki = of
raat = night
ko = of
>> (You better freeze the night tonight)
// The weather looks so pure and electric that only beauty and love can possibly be ruling the world now; you better make the night stay frozen for good tonight; none knows what tomorrow might be like //
Aaj jaane ki zid na karo
Yunhi pahloo mein baithe raho
Aaj jaane ki zid na karo
// Stop obsessing about leaving ; please remain sitting next to me with a hot chocolate //
“Aaj Jaane Ki Zidd Na Karo”:
(“Insist Not On Leaving”)
This article is part of the 3-song series,
“The Philosophy of Bollywood Song”.
Song#2 is here.
Song#3 is here.
Printer-friendly Version is here.
