Music for your soul?

Some Hindi/urdu songs are sheer poetry. Not the new ones though, gah.

Gulzar and Javed Akhtar have come up with some of the best lines through the ages, and so have the guys in the period before the horror that was the nineties. The magic of good old hindi songs – the music, the singers. Sigh.

Some songs I love (my main source of old Hindi songs is Ma, and my knowledge is nowhere as vast as hers):

1. Abhi na jao chod kar (Hum Dono) – My favourite. Always makes me smile. Love the playfulness of the lyrics, and the wistful longing behind them. Mohammed Rafi (aka God, always sounds like he is smiling as he sings) and Geeta Dutt, what a pair.
2. Dil dhoondta hai (Mausam) - pure nostalgia
3. Is mod se jaate hai; Tere bina zindagi se koi (Aandhi)
4. Mera kuch saaman (Ijaazat) – not big on this one’s musical arrangement, but the lyrics – what imagery.
5. Tere mere Milan ki yeh (Abhimaan)
6. Huzoor is Kadhar, Do naina aur ek Kahani (Masoom)
7. Tum itna jo (Arth)
8. Ehsaan tera hoga (Junglee)
9. Katra Katra (Ijaazat)
10. O sajna Barkha Bahar aayi (Parakh)
11. Kahin Door jab Din dhal jaye (Anand)
“Mere khayalon ke aangan mein koi sapno ke deep jalaye”

I could go on. These are some of my favourites though.

Among the newer songs, some really good ones:

1. Chod aaye hum woh galiyan (Maachis)
2. All songs from 1942 A Love Story, Khamoshi
3. Piya tora abhimaan, Mathura Nagarpati (Raincoat)
4. Bawra mann (Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi)
5. Gali mein aaj chand nikla (Zakhm)
6. Tose naina laage, Maula mere maula (Anwar)
7. Mehfuz (Euphoria)
8. In dino (Life..in a Metro)
9. Mori Araj Suno (Tina Sani, Coke Studio)
10. Chal Diye (Zeb and Haniya, Coke Studio)
11. Bhaage re Mann (Chameli)

What say?

Silence and Noise

How do you put a feeling into words? A sense of what should be? Imagine a silent valley. A house, a veranda. You recline on a comfortable chair. Dusk. Silence. The suspension of reality and that in between world where memories, ones you never even knew you had, stroll in to accompany you for the evening.

Memories, are we not made up of them? Do we not make more memories every day? They are more than pictures or videos. They capture that part of life that was ordinary, mundane. They transport you back to those sights, sounds, smells of long ago, or yesterday, or an hour ago, to everything you felt and did not feel.

Your father reading the newspaper, his glasses at the tip of his nose; your mother waking you up. A dear friend’s laughter. The face of a stranger who held your gaze for a second longer than necessary. The sound of trains. That BEST bus bell. Conversations. Your reflection in the mirror. Laughter. Thunder and rain. The hypnotising wave of the wiper on the windshield of the car, tiny rivulets running down windows.

Silent summer afternoons. So silent that the birds huddle in trees that are still, no wind to bring relief. Evenings. The television plays, and the strains of an old hindi song tiptoes out from the kitchen, bringing memories of its own.

Diwali. The crack of fireworks, the twinkle of fairy lights on every window you see. Silent lamps standing guard at every doorstep. The day after Holi, slightly pink people on the streets. Ganesh Utsav, ten days of bells, drums, incense and chanting.

Silence and noise. They seem to mark out moments more than anything else sometimes.