Friday, November 19, 2004
Great lines!
Zindagi mein koi kabhi aaye na rabba
Aaye jo koi tho phir jaaye na rabba
Dene ho agar tho baad mein aansoo
tho pehle koi hasaaye na rabba
Well, what shall I say? These four lines beautifully express the unavoidable paradox of our lives, haven’t all of us at some point in our lives felt like the above? And why am I even talking about ‘at some point in our lives’? Don’t we feel like this every day? These are absolutely brilliant lines and form the opening lines of a fabulous song in the movie ‘Musafir’! Yeah, I can already see raised eyebrows and I don’t necessarily blame anyone. Anyone who has seen the steamy, stylish promos of ‘Musafir’ circulating on all the channels will find it hard to believe that this is a song from that movie.
Sanjay Gupta, the director of this movie is famous/infamous for all his movies being rip-offs of Hollywood movies. Infact he has to be appreciated for his consistency in ripping of storylines! Even the biggest solo hit of his directorial career ‘Kaante’ (with all his remaining movies going down the drain) was an out and out copy of the cult movie ‘Reservoir Dogs’ (directed by the irrepressible, brilliant Quentin Tarantino). So I await this movie’s release to find the original movie it’s based on and only for this song’s sake, I sincerely wish to be proven wrong and at least the story of ‘Musafir’ happens to be an original one. With this kind of respect I have for the director, a natural question pops up: How on earth did I land up buying a CD of ‘Musafir’? Two precise reasons:
1. The music of ‘Kaante’ rocked. Can we ever forget the tracks ‘Mahi Ve’, ‘Yaar Mangiyasi’ & ‘Maut’?
2. The tagline on the CD: “India’s first Lounge/Club soundtrack’.
More than anything else, I was just plain curious to listen to two versions of the same songs and research on these so called ‘club/lounge aspects’ of the songs. And very surprisingly, I took an immense liking to the CD because of its opening songs that are superb dance numbers. Then comes this gem of a song ‘Rabba’ with the above lines that left me speechless and has me writing on it now. :-) Understandably, there are four versions of this song and the best version belongs to ‘Krishna’, who has sung this song with an ‘out of the world’ voice modulation and a passion that’s as intensive as religious fervor displayed by a fanatic devotee. A great song.
So if you like listening to some fantastic dance tracks, this CD is a must buy and as for me, this CD happens to be a ‘must buy’ for this song itself.
Zindagi mein koi kabhi aaye na rabba
Aaye jo koi tho phir jaaye na rabba
Dene ho agar tho baad mein aansoo
tho pehle koi hasaaye na rabba
Monday, November 01, 2004
Public Power in the Age of Empire - Arundhati Roy
When she writes, prose looks and sounds like poetry. Using the best possible combination of the right words to express the exact meaning of a complex concept comes naturally to her. The way she brings down high brow topics to a layman’s level of understanding with the help of her command over the English language is amazing. But no thoroughly researched and detailed work will never achieve the status of ‘greatness’ unless it is backed up with the author’s passion about the same. And when it comes down to passionately espousing a cause, Arundhati Roy stands tall among the world’s best writers.
I first met her in the pages of “The God of Small Things” that was her debut and was staggered by her writing. I was immediately taken in by her lyrical flow of words that alternately reminded me of the sound of a torrential waterfall and that of a quiet stream. In all the reviews of this monumental debut, the acclaim by John Updike stands out: "A novel of real ambition must invent its own language, and this one does.....". All said and done, this fictional work deserves to be amongst the top ten books of 90’s and I strongly advocate it as a must-read for a lover of fiction. After this debut, quite contrary to what one would expect from a Booker winner, she branched off into writing about critical non-fictional causes that were and are still troubling the world.
Starting off with her ground breaking essay “The End Of Imagination”, she has come a long way in her career with a Tihar jail stint thrown in the middle. One of my three favorite Indian authors, the other two being ‘R.K.Narayan’ & ‘Amitav Ghosh’, she recently delivered a public address at California; the text of that public address was the cover story for Frontline’s previous issue. She elaborates her thought process in answering a question ‘What are the avenues and strategies of protest available to people who wish to resist the crisis of modern democracy ’ that is needless to say, exceptional.
