This is a long due post. I had been contemplating writing this for many days, but the list of songs grew too much to accommodate in a single post. I had also thought about writing a separate post about qawwalis of A. R. Rahman, mainly the trio: Piya Haji Ali from Fiza, Khwaja Mere Khwaja from Jodha Akbar, and Kun Faya Kun from Rockstar. I could not complete that project too. Then, I wanted to dedicate a post to Mann Mohana from Jodha Akbar; again I couldn’t do it. Finally, here I am with this post, and I have decided to base this post only on three songs, three different genres, three different religions, dedicated to that one Almighty.
Tag: Javed Akhtar
Of the dark days of Bollywood Music…
Oh it was a crazy day! I had been singing Nadeem-Shravan songs all the day today. Let me be clear; I dislike this duo’s songs to the extent of hating. I don’t know what made me to go on humming those stupidly monotonous songs all over the day. But I enjoyed singing them and irritating people making them listen all those songs. Some poor guys didn’t even know I’m singing just to irritate them.
The music director duo Nadeem-Shravan reigned on the Bollywood music industry in the 1990s. It was no doubt the darkest period of Bollywood music. It is the period that made people to hate new film songs. If you don’t believe me, try listening Lata Mangeshkar singing chudi mazaa na degi kangan mazaa na dega. Can you believe it is the same magical voice that once reigned the Bollywood industry? (By the way, I don’t know chudi maza na degi was by Nadeem-Shravan or not; but they were the prototype of the 1990s).
Nadeem-Shravan started composing songs way before 1990s, but what brought them to immediate fame was 1992, Aashiqui. The songs of Aashiqui were no doubt good ones, but it was a warning bell – listen the same kind of music for the whole decade ahead. If you ask me, I can sing for at least a few hours straight a lot many songs, from happy to sad, without ever changing the rhythm. And Sameer as a lyricist, oh my God, just pathetic! I am so biased against him that I firmly believe he cannot write even a single good line anymore. Whatever he has written in his earlier days was okay, but Sameer…. Yack!! And I have once heard that guy talking on All India Radio “Javed Akhtar? He writes some shaayari-waayari; Karan needed simple songs for Kuch Kuch Hota Hai..”
Okay, we will again come back to Nadeem-Shravan! These guys gave immensely popular songs to the film industry, but from a musical viewpoint, all those songs were just dumbo: Think of Dil cheer ke dekh tera hii naam hoga../ or paayaliyaa ho ho ho ho / or dekha hai pehli baar saajan ki aankhon mein pyaar..I can give a infinite list!! In fact, I want to give such list, but I want it with my singing performance, is anyone dying to get irritated…
And you cannot sing those songs without singing the dhikka chika rhythm – try singing dekha hai pehli baar saajan ki aankhon mein pyaar.. without singing the dhikka chikik portion after it. It was the era when song lyrics were must to be written with the musical part in it: e.g. naach meri jaan zara dum dama dum.. dil mein hai tufaan bhara dum dama dum… And what a pathetic lyrics “chikni chikni patli kamar aise na hila” etc. etc. in a super duper hit movie song!! I can’t even imagine Amir Khan dancing on this song!
And this duo got three filmfare awards straight in a row, first time after the maestro Shankar-Jaykishan in the 1970s (they too got it much after their top years for so so music)!
After Pardes, I thought Nadeem-Shravan have changed a little bit, but then came Dhadkan, yack yack yack!! Thanks God the 1990s ended soon! Poor guys who had to suffer those era of Indian film music!
Okay, I am not going to lengthen this post (I don’t want to irritate you much)!! I am going to sleep now with just another irritating songs by Nadeem-Shravan “ooff kya raat aayi hai, muhabbat rang laayi hai, dum dum diga diga diga diga dum dum diga diga” Good Night! 🙂
Mumbai Blasts: Some Obervations
Mumbai, the economic capital of India, shook with terror last evening with a series of near-simultaneous bomb attacks. I got this news on my twitter as a retweet by Omar Abdullah (@Abdullah_Omar) immediately after the second blast, when even the news media websites did not have any report. Till now, the death toll has reached to 20+ and my heart goes with the family who have lost some near and dear ones in those blasts.
But I intend to write about some of my observations on the social behavior of people during such time of crisis. People tweeted, and twitter was far ahead of any other social networking, and Facebook for that matter. People tweeted spreading the news, asking help, offering help, and retweeting the helpline numbers. Twitter was flooded with the hashtags, #MumbaiBlasts, #Happy2help, #EmergencyNumbers, etc. For example, some Tejas Tamhane tweeted just minutes after the blast, from Opera House, the venue of one of the blasts, “Anyone going towards Andhrei? Can you pick me from Opera House? #mumbaiblasts.” There were a lot of tweets offering help, as this one by some Dina, “Anyone stranded in Dadar west – contact me” with her phone number. Celebrities like Priyanka Chopra who has a large following base tweeted the police control room numbers etc.
Another kind of behavior I noted was of people who were out there just to create chaos. As Javed Akhtar (@Javedakhtarjadu) tweeted “The death toll has reached 21. What kind of animals commit such heinous acts?”, these stupid were prompt to suggest him that they were from his own fraternity, Islam. These people with apparently fundamentalist mentality were cheap enough to use bad words and **** for the whole Muslim community, and much more for the secular Indians, the prime minister, home minister, UPA chairperson, and Rahul Gandhi (e.g. using the terms naagin and sapola for Sonia and Rahul Gandhi respectively and using **** words for the Prime Minister of India). I too get one such reply on twitter all filled with F*** and Madar*** kind of words for just suggesting Javed Akhtar to ignore such comments.
Lastly, there was a rumor on all the social networks about it being the birthday of Ajmal Kasab (the only terrorist caught alive from the 26/11 Mumbai attacks) suggesting the link to the choice of date for the blasts (though this date is disputed, BBC and IBN Live suggesting it to be September 13. The Wikipedia article on Kasab underwent several edits just after the blasts and Kasab’s DOB was changed from September 13 to July 13). Many were expressing concerns over why he is still alive and why he was not shoot at the same time of the blasts. This is really a naïve question. Nine of his companions were killed in the police action. It was necessary to catch at least one of them alive and put him through the actual judicial process to let the world know who were the actual perpetrators of those attacks. Kasab’s case in the court has made many things clear. It was necessary to put those facts in front of the international community beyond doubt. Had Kasab been died in direct action, we would have only circumstantial evidences to prove he was a Pakistani. In court, he himself claimed this.
Finally, let’s pray for the families suffered. Their losses are immense, but may God bless them with courage to deal with it, and hope the government bring the culprits to justice soon.
I will be back soon :)
This is really frustrating yaar 😦 I had written really a long long post and wordpress has eaten it up. It is not possible to write everything again in the same way. I had written everything from the gloomy morning, tweet reply by Javed Akhtar, a long long day, a fleeting evening, the plans for tomorrow (with every detail of where I would be at what time), about the music I have to face at home, and again finally that “I will be back soon”! Everything has just vanished and my post just shows “I had a lot” and finished! I really hate this thing. The post is not even in the thrash 😦
And I can write everything else again, but what about what I wrote about the evening and all those things. I cannot write them now as I wrote them then. It’s is not a science class, just mug up and write down!
This is really, really, really bad! The worst! I was really happy about what I wrote, I had properly hyperlinked everything, Nandura, Manegaon, twitter page of Javed Akatar, even to the facebook profile of Raju (He’s gonna drop me at the station tomorrow morning)!
Hmm 😦 I am not gonna do all that stuff again. It’s past 11 p.m. now and I must try to get some sleep. I will have to get up at 4 a.m. tomorrow morning. Just copy-pasting the reply by Javed Akhtar here again for documentation purpose:
http://twitter.com/#!/Javedakhtarjadu/status/62319587944955906
And haa, I will be back soon 🙂 (not as much smiling as it was for the first time)
The Blog of Reflections 