A R Rahman and 'It-Grows-On-You' Theory

[The inspiration/aspiration/perspiration for this post comes from a review of ARR's latest offering Raavan by 'Saurabh' an occasional columnist in the forum-- www.passionforcinema.com]

Back in '90's,Bacchu had a small shop in Free School Street, Calcutta, India. Free School Street is a road in central Calcutta, running through the heart of Park Street(The unofficial downtown) and in those days was famous for easy access to pirated music and home-grown marijuana and hookers.


It was the pirated music that Bacchu used to sell. Long before the arrival of DVDS and CDs, acts like 'Iron Maiden', 'Black Sabbath', 'Joe Satriani' featured in Bacchu's 4 by 6 shop in tapes covered in cheap imitation of the original cover art. Those were the music I grew up with. I grew up with one of my closest friend Arani Basu in many a perspiring afternoons vandalizing through Bacchu's collection for some of the rare gems. I still remember getting an LP of Pink Floyd's 'Atom Heart Mother'(original 1973 version) or a copy of Deep Purple's club days.
One strange thing about those music was it supposedly got me hooked on the 'very first' listening.Half of the lyrics obscured by the British/Texan/Midwestern accent, half of the songs often having a quality as good as a dead prostitute's ass--- still it was an 'obligatory' liking as listening to rock music was a ticket to be 'different' and 'intellectual'. And being surrounded by like minded teenagers who could inform yout the length of the nail of Ozzy's right index finger to the brand of Crystal Meth that Jim Morrision used to smoke---you don't want to be an outsider.
I was still a little bit of spoilsport as I also had a liking for a certain Hindi 'muzic' director named A R Rahman. I forced some of my 'Rocker' friends to listen to tracks of 'Bombay', 'Thiruda Thiruda' or 'Tu Hi Mera Dil' ('Duet' in tamil, if I am not wrong). Although they did not find any worth in replacing their shrines built for 'multi-talented' gentlemen like Ronnie James Dio or Axl Rose with one for the chubby,black, deglam-ed boy from Chennai,most of them agreed that this guy is trying something which was never tried before in 'muzic' for mass.
And then I grew up. I got a job, I got a cubicle, I got a family, I got EMI, I got a potbelly, I got dark patches under my eyes, I got dead body of my dream of forming a band where Dave Mustain meets-Rehman meets-Roger Waters lying by my office PC. Was it then when a new 'Rahman' album started to sound no longer 'extraa--ordinary' but 'yeah-it's-good-but-something's-missing'. Was it then when that boy whose ancient Phillips tape could recite each interlude and prelude ranging from 'Choti Si Ashaa' to 'Chale Chalo' died?
Is it Rahman who chose to be a lesser mortal with sweet scent of money tingling in his brain cell or was it I, drifting apart in the hopeless ocean of adult life, whose ears and hearts got filled up with sediments of 'office-going' life?
With all those doubts in my heart, I turn on to youtube and pick up some of his mostly forgotten tracks. I play a track called 'Jo Manga Tha' from a movie whose name even I forgot (a Priyadarshan movie starring Anil Kapur,Jackie Shroff and Pooja Bhatt), a track from a movie called Viswabidhata or from a movie called Priyanka/Indira. My little room, my little room hot from an angry sun suddenly starts feeling tranquil and peaceful.
So, this is what I feel: If you ever met A R Rahman now, not the boy from Chennai but the Oscar-winning,cropped hair,king of orchestration---just ask him,"Rahman, how much of GOD was there in your music when you created Bombay Theme,Anjali Anjali or even 'Kaal Nahin Tha Woh Kya Hain' and how much of HIM is left now?"
In the answer lies the simple fact that the music that Rahman made back then had this divinity, this magic, this very visible effort of a craftsman trying to contain his genius though his blood and sweat. The oscar-winner for whom another movie soundtrack is 'just another movie soundtrack' is much more conformed, much more polished and much less experimental now. And so, did the God of music left him to put the mantle in the hand of someone else? Time will tell. For now let's listen to 'Raavan' hoping like all those tomorrow-never-dies Rahman fans that the next Bombay, the next Duet even the next Dil Se is just around the corner hidden beneath the heaps of heavily technology dependent orchestration and pray that the man who gave us "Khili Chandni", "Tu hi Re" or "Ai Ajnabi" will again give us that one simple un-technofied, pure, simple thing. Melody.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfC3yx2srzE

'UP' and Scenes from a marriage

UP started as another weekend adventure in 3D. So far my experience included Terminator 3D in Universal Studio,FL(Quite irritating) and "Monsters vs Aliens"(sorta OK) and apart from an interest in Steve Jobs' fading role, PIXAR never attracted me. I was, thanks to all those Disney time in Indian Sunday morning TV, a die hard devotee bowing his head down to the shore of Lake Buena Vista.
UP was going to change that forever. And not for the movie which undoubtedly continued PIXAR's motto of 'simplexity' by fighting the formula of Disney's beautiful but downtrodden people doing heroic things with a misfit(WALL-E) or a bunch of misfits(TOY STORY) doing something equally heroic. The magic, the myth, the inexplicable joy of movie-watching came in a four minute long montage showing Carl and Ellie's journey through married life.Together.
The montage did not contain one single line of speech. In a tune set to violins, to organs, to all the unknown instruments and to that painful chord called fleeting happiness---the track called 'Married Life' left a theater that looked like a giant bowl of popcorn soaked. And no the popcorns did not get wet from snot, saliva, sweat or from any other bodily fluid. It was a story of Carl and Ellie told through music, it was a story of a dream that tied them together , a dream of finding 'Paradise Falls' and it was a story of how life, that inscrutable scoundrel, crept in. Carl and Ellie, much like Frank and April Wheeler, never really left for South America and through all those years got old, got broken hearted, got used to living another uneventful American dream. But the dream,like the memory of a dead deer cub in the highway,kept coming back. I know that my inner skeptic will scream that such a love and dream and hope,very unlike of Wheeler's fate, is nothing but 'cliche'. But where Richard Yates/Same Mendes took an entire novel/movie to show gradual decay of a dream, it really feels nice to put my buck in that four minute long 'half happily ever after' celebration. Hope is, after all, as smelly as your good morning's first fart but never the less comforting. Ain't no denying on that.
Here's that four minute. Popcorn, at your own risk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yjAFMNkCDo&feature=related

Songs and Sunetro: Richard Yates---Ballad of A Very Thin Man

Songs and Sunetro: Richard Yates---Ballad of A Very Thin Man

Richard Yates---Ballad of A Very Thin Man

I had this illusion that I can write. A little bit of style taken from Garcia Marquez and Jorghes, a little bit of word-play taken from good old Dylan, a little bit of philosophy misinterpreted from Kafka and Camus...I had rather a growing pride of a 'one-night's-jackpot-hitter-in-Vegas' telling me to write more and 'the greatness is around the corner'.

Tonight all those futile vanity, all those feeling of being God in my own world of words sit naked in front of me. I completed reading the single book of Richard Yates that I started reading back in 2009 after watching the movie adaptation by Sam Mendes and long long time after reading a book(The last one I remember was 'The Outsider' by Camus, read and finished in an overcrowded train coming from Burdwan) I have a feeling that ol' EC would sing out as ,"Drowning in a river of tears".

Hang on one second. This one is supposed to be a blog about music. Then from where the hell Richard Yates, the writer's writer of American words who was pushed into oblivion gradually even during his lifetime until his recent comeback in NYT's Bestseller list(Thanks to Mr. Di Caprio and Ms. Winslate's Titanic 2 pose in the cover) through the paperback version of REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, drops in?

Well,my constant reader (If there is anyone like that out there...thanks Dr. Livingstone), in my defense I would like to say only one thing : while reading REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, so many tunes rang through my head, so many sad and erratic and folksy scores from REM, from Dylan even from Rabindranath that if I had the talent(sic) of Rob Marshall or Buz Luhrmann or even of Gurinder Chadda(Remember Jane Austen's Santa Singh adaptation) , I could make a musical out of it. The musical would be a precious piece of extreme boredom. The novel is far from it.

And like I used to say a long time ago : You can put anybody's life in the context of Floyd's The Wall; The same remains true for the story. Written from a '50's perspective, of Frank and April Wheeler , who are alone with everyone and always believing that "this is what salvation must be after a while"(F_ing Bob, Leave my brain once),of slow erosion of an imperfect American family torn between "staying and returning to south", REVOLUTIONARY ROAD,unlike its protagonists, can fit in to the scenarios of the young generation of this brave new world. Take a look over the cubicle, the bored IT worker who once loved Automata and Dus Capital at the same breath, who once fell in love with the girl who could listen to his ideas of writing software for deprived and downtrodden while resisting his hand's rather capitalistic approach and widening her eyes in an ignorant sweetness, and you got your Frank Wheeler of 2010. Look inside one of those matchbox shaped home, sold for enormous price with even more enormous titles like "Sernity, Vedic Village,Infinity etc" and in one of those sleepy afternoon you will find that girl, now gradually the sorrow of a life deprived of a magic called love putting the inevitable shadow of age layer after layer on her, doing chores while listening to a half-forgotten tune of Suman Chatterjee ; and you have your April Wheeler.

In this all engulfing new age where I also belong with you--- in your next bus, in sharing your cubicle, in a brawl to overtake your mini-sedan--I don't know what will happen to all those Frank and April Wheelers , already a very endangered species, of our time. Will this race to have a new apartment, a car, a status, a comfortably conformed way of living make them what Yates did predict in his book? Like a shell, like a hollow of a man...a complete antithesis to individualism. We don't have another Richard Yates to chronicle that. So all I have is (Yeah, you guessed it right...another Dylan, for a man so ignorant in English poetry my only true calling...always):

I was born here and I’ll die here against my will
I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still
Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from
Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.

Of Sampooran Singh and Other Demons

Four years. Four long years. That's what I've waited to write a small piece celebrating the decay and degradation of India's most famous and most quoted Hindi song lyricist, Sampooran Singh 'Gulzar'.There were ample evidence for having this cruel glee. After all the man who gave us poems like "Raahon Pe Rehte Hain" had started to write ,"Personal Si Sawaal Karte Hain". I waited for the day when some big mouth would declare "Gulzar is finished".

And 'He' proved me wrong. For every 'Personal si Sawaal' there was one 'Jaage Hain Der Tak'; For every 'Beedi Jalaile' and 'Phoonk De' there was one 'Dil to Baccha Hain Ji'. In between Gulzar came back with his ghazals which in an age where 'simplification' and 'spoon-feeding' are the rules of the game, remained unabashedly closer to classical urdu. And with use of phrases like 'Kinare ka Phandar' or 'Aankho se Anshoyo ka Marasim' that makes an urdu illiterate like myself scratch his head, he just showed the world of showbiz where fickle is the new name of being 'classic', how the tricks of old world can remain timeless.

I could go on bitching about Gulzar. Bitching coz other than Mr. Robert Zimmerman ,he is the only man whose pen gives me the feeling of being impotent with mine. Why I can't look at the mmon and think of it as a shinning cup of a beggar hanging around neck of the sky? Why I can't look at life and think of life as the light of heaven and fire of hell at the same time?
Someone tells from my heart: That is not possible. In this fucked up flow of life, in this aging universe there is only one ageless Gulzar. His observations, his words that he shows and meanings that he does not, his wit, his word play, his ability to paint an entire canvas within two simple lines of a couplet...only once in thousand years the God of art can create someone like Sampooran Singh Carla. In the world of urdu poetry there was Mirza Asad Ullah and there is his self-proclaimed servant Gulzar, what lies in between is just the space where people of very limited or no talent like this writer keeps on bowing down in utter awe. So, with all the envy in my heart and all the devotion in my soul I keep on discovering different era of this immortal genius. I dive in to his RD era, to his Jagjit Singh collaboration, to his Rahman and Bishaal era and these are some of the pearls that shine thru my tired night:

"Hey Lau Zindagi, Zindagi Noor Hain,
Magar is pe Jalne ki dastur hain."

"Jal Gaye Jo Dhoop Me to Sayaan Ho Gaye
Aasma Ka Koi Kona Thoda So Gaye
Jo Gujar Jaate Hain Bus Us Pe Guzar Karte Hain"

"Jaane Kya Soch Kar Nahin Gujraa,
Ik Pal Raat Bhar Nahin Gujraa"

"Ik Kwaab Tut Jaane Ka Ehsaas Hi to Hain
Thodi Si Raat aur...Sehar...Paas Hi to Hain"

[Holy Fuck...Holy Fuck...Holy Fuck. If Orwell ever read the 2 lines above, he might skip taking the pain of writin 1984...well most of it or the pain of writin Keep The Aspidistra Flying...all of it]

mujhko bhi tarkeeb sikha kuchh yaar julahe

aksar tujhko dekha hai ke tana bunte bunte
jab koi taga toot gaya ya khatam hua
to phir se usme bandh sira koi jor
aage bunane lagte ho
tere is tane mein lekin,ik bhi ganth
girh buntar ki dekh nahi sakta hai koi

maine..to buna tha ik bar ek hi rishta
lekin uski saari girhain...saaf nazar aatee hain

mujhko bhi tarkeeb sikha........


Keep discovering Gulzar Sahaab. Time for me to discover his introduction to Mirza Ghalib. Once again.

The power in the flower

Old rush, hurricane
country lad, just insane
guitar chord sucks the blood
my brain is trying...trying so hard
vaccine,sexless
blind man heading west

keep my foot in the air
my innocence died in her chair
lock up,up and lord
Jeremy's got a new ipod
New needle old vain
I pee on a one-way lane.

East street, second ave,
once u called my house a cave
Blood is running east and west
Time has a strange taste
Once I was there,in her yard
Her dad was busy to kill a bird
I told her I can give you a name
She used to live across Michigan and Harlem
She took the name that rhymes with rose
And my dreams took an overdose
I was standing under a burning tree
She was solving a problem of geometry
I called her ,"Come on you will catch a fire"
She smiled like a body smiling from a funeral pyre
I took a good look but it was not like her
rather like that old Irish who died in war
And the old Irish told me."get lost, boy
I have snatched your green heart and it's just my toy"
From that moment on, I felt no pain
no love, no agony,no kindness again.
No beautiful face ever left un-scarred
Legend started giving me the name of massacre
In the dark gloomy face, in the aimless, hopeless mind
You will know my place, the corner to find.

Songs and Sunetro: All That You Can't Leave Behind---Sudarshan Faakir and others

Songs and Sunetro: All That You Can't Leave Behind---Sudarshan Faakir and others

All That You Can't Leave Behind---Sudarshan Faakir and others

I had my nights.
A high speed fan,making his complaints again the insurmountable heat felt--a gigantic desktop computer,taking three quarter of a rickety table and loaded with songs ranging from howl of Dave Mustain to bliss of George Biswas---two computer speakers, who would refuse to work in synergy if the left one not pressed with the weight of my palm---and Jagjit Singh.
Nights after nights,songs after songs, the clean-shaved Sardar crooned thru tons of mp3s and I sat in my shrine with silence in my heart and a bewitchment in my head.
Those nights are gone. My nights of giving in to Ghazals,to popular Ghazals for ignorant populace are long gone.
But a few thoughts a few questions--apart from a few Urdu words which would forever remain unfathomable for me--still keep on coming back. I think of all those writers whom Jagjit chose. i think of might of their pen and clarity of their heart. I think of how little do we remember them.
Did they write high-art? Art which was less accessible to someone having similar intellect like mine, art whose meaninglessness often praised by a society who often feels pride to be a part of that circle that talks in the toungue of senselessness and burdens us with the artistical merit of such thing, art which thinks painting a can of campbell soup or writing "Shanti, Shanti,Shanti" at the end of a long delerium is something which has no earthly equivalent. Nope. They spoke of very common, very rusty philosophy-- of very earthy love,lust, anger and faith. That too within the classical dictum of binding the message within two lines of Ghazals.My small life, my small ignorant life, which has made me familiar with three languages, often failed to show me an example from Bengali,English or Hindi poetry such genius. Lines, couplets containing witty word play or philosophy evading test of time or very simplistic beauty...how could those bunch of people write them year after year, life after life while being so inevitably less known?
And so as I pound thru my rack of tapes of Jagjit Singh, tapes for which I don't have an instrument to play or an analog ear to listen,I came across names like Kaif Bhopali or Sudarshan Faakir.Nobody remembers them, nobody cares whatever happened to them. Only their words...now commonly known as Singh's Ghazal...get downloaded from one PC to another.
And I sit with those words...Sit with my head bowed...sit with my heart that knows each 'lavz' yet waits to be mesmerized by another turn, by another clever word-play.How I wish that someone would come forward to give these guys their dues and the young touchphone-loving India would look beyond Sampooran Singh 'Gulzar'(Although he deserves to be Elvis in Ghazal's rock-n-roll heaven) and would understand that 'Ghalib' is there not just for being the butt of the joke in one of those obscene,funny Ghazal-jokes coming in forwrded mails.
Till then... a few words that I don't know who were so blessed to be able to write:

Chan Patto Ki Lahoon Hain Faakir
Jise Mehboob Ki Haath Ke Heena Kehte Hain
Samne Jo hain Use Log Budaa KEhte Hain
Jise Dekhaa Hi Nahin Usko Khudaa Kehte Hain


Main Kiskaa Chehraa Paraa Karoon
Ihaan Kaun Itnaa Kareeb Hain
Koi Dost Hain Na Raqeeb Hain
Tera Sahar Kitnaa Azeeb Hain

Jab Ke Maloom Hain Aakhri Anjaam Phir Bhi
Khud Ki Najaron Me har Insaan Sikandar Kyun Hain?

Phursat Kise Thi Ke Meraa Halaat Poonchtaa
Har Saqs Aapne Baare Me Kuch Sochtaa Hua Milaa

Thanks

Khalil Gibran: 12 years later

Last time when I drowned myself in this strange beauiful words, that was summer of 1997.

As Sampuran Singh would say : "Ik Puranaa Mausam Lautaa/Yaad Bhari Purbayee Bhi".

A few of 'His' words lest I forget again :

Work:
When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.

Time:
And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.

Good and Evil:
For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?

Of Pain:
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears

Marriage:

And stand together, yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.


Of Joy and Sorrow:

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Sab kuch aise hi chalta hain

Sab kuch aise hi chalta hain
Zindagi ka ajab sa karbat hain ye
abhi kuch paas jo tha
abhi kuch dhundlayee si ho gayee o
Sab kuch aise hi chalta hain.

mutthi par daag chipak ke dhunye jaisaa bighal taa hain
ek pal me sona to duje me mitti lagtaa hain
har ek din ek benaam bhir aake mere jehan ko chun gaye
har ek din us bhir se nikle koi apnaa lagtaa hain
Sab kuch aise hi chaltaa hain.

o jo mere ainee pe chaand sa kabhi chamke the
aaj unhi-ke aankhon me kohraa ka waseraa lagtaa hain
haath pakadr ne ke liye ye haath bhi to pehlanaa hain
Manzil to chuth gaye bas afsanaa kuch kehlanaa hain
Apna sehaar na jaane kab se itnaa ghum shum lagtaa hain
Sab kuch aise hi chaltaa hain.