From melancholy to happiness: Three solo songs by Lata Mangeshkar

Life has gotten like a musical; I find a song for every situation.  I wonder sometimes whether these song make my mood or my mood brings up these perfectly fitting songs.

I was feeling so low for the whole last week, feeling like I am good-for-nothing, and was singing “na kisi ki aankho.n ka noor hoon…” all the time.  Indeed, it is one of the most depressing songs we have.  Penned by Muztar Khairabadi (Javed Akhtar’s grandfather) and filmed over the last Mughal emperor Bahadurshah Zafar for the 1960 movie “Lal Quila”, Mohd. Rafi’s rendition is heart-wrenching.  For those who don’t know it, it goes like:

Na kisi ki aankh ka noor hoon
Na kisi ke dil ka qaraar hoon
Jo kisi ke kaam na aa sake
Main wo ek musht gubar hoon

Neither am I a sparkle to someone’s eye
Nor I am a solace to someone’s heart
I am a fistful of dust—good for nothing!

If you need a strong dose of melancholy, go and get it!  “Why shall someone come and pray on my grave?  Why shall someone bestow flowers?” etc. etc.

Okay, today I am not here to dip you in that melancholy.  I am here with springs of joy!

The Pursuit of Happiness

I:  I can’t say it in words.  Gimme a pen.

Zen Master:  I don’t have one.  Tell me, what happened?

I:  I don’t know.

Zen Master:  I hate when you say you don’t know!

Enjoying “Chikni Chameli”

Okay!  I must change some of my notions about myself.  For example, I am a damn serious guy.  It’s a million dollar question for me to have a simple smile.

For example, it is against my reputation to enjoy popular music.

For example, I prefer reading nonfiction over fiction, and when I read fiction, I cannot read something lower in ranks than Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and Camus.

For example, it’s my natural tendency to be sad.  For example, I am emotionally weak and too much labile.

No, I don’t mean that I want to give up whatever I have earned bit by bit to this date.

I want to be like you.  You, who at a moment show me (in practical) the suggestive gestures of Chikni Chameli, and the very next moment, talk to me about the intricacies of emotional status of Tolstoy in between the years of War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

I’m enjoying Chikni Chameli

Related Posts:

1. Spiritual songs of A. R. Rahman
2. Of the dark days of Bollywood music
3. A musical ride:  A journey from Amir Khusro to A. R. Rahman

I’m happy!

I usually don’t say such.  It usually turns out to be terribly bad day when I say I’m happy.  But with that risk, I would say, I’m happy.

I had been out of sync for the last few days.  My PC was out of work.  I had to get a new setup for it.  I said I was happy that day.  Later, it turned out my mouse is not working too.  And a lot of things happened to ruin my day.  Got a new mouse today!

With a new setup, I have installed Windows Live Writer on my PC and my further posts will be most probably written with Live Writer.  As I had said, it is really frustrating to install Live Writer, but once you’ve installed it, it works like wonder.  Of note, I want to apologize my e-mail subscribers for the dummy post they might have gotten as a result of my Live Writer template download procedure.

These are all the things happening around.  I am happy for a lot many reasons.  The most important thing is I have gotten a book that I would love to read.  I was looking for “Freedom at Midnight” for a long time.

I am happy, because I have you

Asrar e khudi

It has been a long hiatus.  I haven’t written anything in about a week now.  In fact, I have written nothing of importance since the Nadeem-Shravan post.  I must come back soon.

Times have been tough.  My PC was not working in between too.  I had uninstalled some important files erroneously.  It’s working now, but the mouse is still erratic; sometimes it will work, sometimes it will not!

The only thing worth to say happened in between is I watched Zindagi Na Milegi  Dobara last week.  I couldn’t catch it in theaters and was looking for a DVD for a long while.  Finally, I found the DVD in my home only.  I  had never noticed it before.

I liked the movie.  In fact, I must say loved.  I had got two extreme opposite reviews about this movie:  Master had told me it’s a must watch,  Kailash told me that he had left the movie halfway from the theater.  I chose to go with Master’s word, and I am happy.  Also, a colleague of mine was insistent for me to watch this movie, and it was finally because of him that I watched it.  It was really a wonderful movie, I must thank the guys who recommended it.  Nothing had moved me this much after the Life in a Metro… watched earlier this year.

It has been a tough time for the last few days.  It was meant to be such.  I must move ahead.  There are a lot many tougher times ahead.  If I must go towards happiness across everything, I must go with least pain.  I must take care of my self, because if there is no me, there is nothing.

P.S.  I gave this post the title Asrar e khudi after completing the post.  I had never thought it as I was writing.  Asrar e khudi is a famous Persian poem by Muhammad Iqbal.  One of the greatest work of Iqbal, Asrar e khudi literally means Secrets of Self.  May be this title came to my mind because of the last paragraph.  See you soon

The soulmates

The Soulmates

Like it was an intact stick in His Kingdom.  Like He had to break it and throw it away in two different directions.  Like it was His plan to bring both the segments together to make them one again.  How surprised were they to see how fittingly compatible they were with each other.  It was a first glance; they had not seen each other in proximity.  From that distance, they felt awed with how much “made for each other they were.”  And they came together.

The subtleties began to be apparent.  Still happy were they with each other, but now with a glitch that they were not the same that they thought they were.  They were still happy with each other, but their randomly broken edges got more visible making them afraid what if they won’t match fit.

They were happy; still there was a glitch.  They kept going.  Time passed by.  The randomly broken edges got more prominent; uneven fineness of the broken edges had gotten even more apparent.  And they started looking at it carefully, and moved towards each others, tilted, turned, whirled, hugged… and lo… how happy, how heavenly happy they were to find how finely they fitted in each other.  Like they were the same they had thought they were.

Related articles

• Saathi… (blogofreflections.wordpress.com)
• Day 5: A prayer (blogofreflections.wordpress.com)
• Me and my Orbit White! (blogofreflections.wordpress.com)
• By the River Piedra, I flow and flow and flow… (ghalibana.blogspot.com)
• The image of soul mates above is by Bebulaki taken from here.

Can I ever get out of towel?

This is not a post-a-day post.  I would write it even if I were not on a post-a-day mission.  This is why I had started this blog — The Blog of Reflections — to catch such of my moods, the times when I am lost somewhere, somewhere in or around me, or you, or don’t know where!

I should really take some classes on how to live life.  At this moment, I should have been singing Alvida Alvida loudly with Kailash Kher; I am instead scratching this post lowering the volume of my speakers.

Yesterday, as I was coming back from Reshimbag ground, a 30-something-year-old guy was arguing loudly with his companion on some stupid subject; it was all going in English (so uncommon on Indian streets).  They were apparently drunk, so steamed up, arguing with passionate hand movements, loud voices, a perfect drama.  I sat down on footpath and watched them fighting for long until some other guy came and took them away.  I got up and started walking back to home.

There was some van standing outside the bar.  They were offloading the wine packs from it.  Bottles of different shapes and sizes and colors.  People were coming in and out of the bar.  How lively they seemed!  I cannot even think of drinking, yaaack!  But then why don’t I look as happy as they d0?

Can I ever get out of towel?

I came on main street.  Some procession was going on, Durga immersion (don’t know how it came after Vijaya Dashmi)!  Really loud loudspeakers, heatingly fast drums, some bizarre steel-plate-like instruments making loud cymbal-like noise–mischievously tickling to the eardrums!  Everything so perfect to make you dance, move on the beats.  I stopped.  Watched the procession going, the drummers beating the drums synchronously, in high passion, all in sweats, dhan dhana dhan dhan, guys and girls dancing, playing fugadi–and me–I can’t even dance, not because I have two left legs, but because I don’t have the heart that one needs to dance.  For a moment, I felt I should go and just move, just move as bizarre as I can, that I should forget myself, forget the weight my soul needs to bear 24×7.  I didn’t do that.  I just reclined back to a car parked there and watched the dance with a calm that would suite only to an unrelated funeral.

I want to forget this stuff.  I want to forget what I am; in fact, I need to forget that I am, that I exist.  And just and enjoy the life, the breath going deep in my spastic lungs, the breath coming out of my nostrils.  I want to go out naked on the road when it is still dawn and feel the cool breeze tickling my senses.  I want to go out and sing loud without damn caring about what the next guy will think.  I want to go at some deep dark place and make a loud cry until I lose my sane.

Hmm, enough with impotent thinking–I know I can’t get out of towel even in the bathroom.

An unnecessary explanation!

Yeah, I am a kind of difficult person to be with!  I cannot smile.  I cannot chatter on some nonsensical xyz subject for hours.  I cannot make you smile and I cannot talk to you for hours unless we are discussing on some serious subject.  I cannot be light.  I have lived for years with a habit of being serious; I cannot bring a smile on my face however I try unless I am with you.  This is what I am!  Yes, I know this is not a good way to live life.  If I am really such, I must change myself.  I must learn to make myself happy.  I must learn to make my surrounding happy, or at least try not to make it sad!

I know you will disapprove almost everything that I wrote above.  If I say I am a kind of difficult person to be with, you would say “I had never been so comfortable with anyone.”  If I say I cannot smile, you would say “I like it the most when I see a kid-like smile on your face.”  If I say I cannot be light, you would remind me of some study circle or tum hi dekho na moment.

And I must agree each of you argument is true.  I had never been such happy.  I had never been so smiley.  I had never been so complete.  At this very moment when I am typing this, I am happy, really happy, from the core to crust.  And this is not a momentary feeling; I am happy at heart.  In fact, I do not need to give you such a long explanation, because you know, and you only know, how happy I am!  Just a while ago, I tweeted jaata nahi ye noor hai – I meant it, because the feeling of this noor, of you being with me, never let me go sad for long.

Oh I think I have given more than enough of explanation.  And thanks you provided me some subject to write today; I was a kind of puzzled about what to write.  So if you are reading this, just read it and let it go!  If you can have momentary feelings, I can definitely have them.

I am happy!

No, no, no! It was not what I wanted to write, so I deleted everything twice and starting anew. I am happy, not for anything particular; happy just to find that I deserve to be happy, I deserve to have this much happiness, and it is not a crime if I ask for my happiness, so just enjoying the happiness without being worried about things. Hmm, it is only a half-truth that I am not worried about them, but it doesn’t change the fact that I am happy as I had never been!

Zindagi hai…

Life has gotten such volatile. Here I stop taking breath; there you skip a heartbeat. This is again the same situation whenever I sit with a blank paper (or blank screen). Sometimes I have a lot in my mind and words just don’t come out. The other times, I sit almost blank. This time, I am somewhere in between those two situations; rather, I know not where I stand. So, the best way is to start typing and go on as you go!

Hmm! About half an hour passed since I wrote the above paragraph. The situations are so chaotic that won’t let me to sit still at a place for much time. I can’t blame anyone else. I can’t blame anyone else for the mess that I have created. So happy I was just a while ago – singing dhinka chika and all – doing all the crazy stuff that I would never do in sanity. And then? Everything can’t be published! Imagine a guy like me slapping a 2-year-old or beating a person who is as free as me to live!

Okays The tamasha is on hold now and I am happy again. I have to find my happiness in such pieces. “Qatra qatra milti hai, qatra qatra jeene do, zindagi hain…!”

Once again okays Let’s move to next topic! How wonderful it feels na to think that someone cares for you! It does not mean that you should make that person worry about your safety, but still… Hmm no worth thinking about past! Life should walk with the present moving towards the future… however steep the ways are, we need to move…the deep valleys on each side, the fear of falling back with each foot put forth, discontent with the present, and hopes from the future…

One more okays I don’t know how many okays are still to come! At least, till I am extremely sleepy! So let’s move towards next topic. Yesterday evening was a crazy one and the monsoon showered for the first time this year in Nagpur. Water pooled everywhere and I had a wonderful wonderful ride in the rain. Came back such drenched, had shaving and haircut with totally wet clothes, had ice-cream and all That’s another crazy thing! Can you imagine of me doing such crazy things? It’s me! It’s me! (I don’t know who was he in the second para from above).

Oh, I’m getting bored now just sitting like this in front of PC. Chhodo naa yaar Life hain… and I am really happy with my life, really! I have no reason to lie. I have pretended to be happy for years, just to make a show that I am happy, then now if I am, why should I pretend as if I am not!

Okays (and hope this is a final one), I am going to end this post… damn it.. why should I end it.. I am going to type all the night!