The soundtrack of the new Yash Chopra movie… based on the tunes composed by Madan Mohan and sung by Lata and others…
You know… Sometimes there comes a moment that reinforces one’s belief… this was one of those moments.
I had a conversation with a friend of mine the other day… about a biography of Balgandharva that I was reading at the time. I told him about how, in the twilight days of his career, he still used to perform his pet role of Sindhu in Ram Ganesh Gadakari’s ‘Ekach Pyaala’. He was paralyzed in one side of his body and could not even stand at times… and then he used to perform sitting in a chair!! And the shows were still sold out… (Or ‘house full’ as we call them)!!! No doubt it shows the enormous affection he commanded from a Marathi man and mind….and no doubt what people were there for was his singing and not the ‘play’ per say…but we should also note that even his voice was way past its zenith at that time. This is mid 1950’s I am talking about!! The peak period of his ‘Gandharva Natak Mandali’ was 1920’s and early 30’s.
My friend’s reaction was that this kind of over-emotional adulation compromises the ‘play’. He is not alone in saying this. Many people even in Balgandharva’s time have said this. And coming from a person like Mayur who truly loves the ‘theatre’ I can completely understand it. That whole episode… of him performing sitting in a chair and people rushing to see him…does not even appear rational to me… much less to a pure theatre lover like my friend.
What I said to him was the description that belief of mine… that was reinforced yesterday when I heard the Veer Zaara songs.
I said… What those people heard in those performances of Ekach Pyaala or what I felt yesterday listening to the Lata Mangeshkar songs from Veer Zaara was not rational… or purist… it was emotional… purely emotional…
I have always felt that if one really loves something or someone that much…. one would start to see that thing or person differently than the rest of the world… one would begin to see it’s …. God... if only I could write this in Marathi…. ‘kaiwalyatmak’ character… one free of any limitations of its physicality.
Listening to Balgandharva or Lata in her twilight days now… is to me… like looking at an ancient but damaged sculpture of VeruL’s Kailas Mandir. Your rational mind can see that the condition of that sculpture is not what it used to be in its prime… but your emotional mind can feel that its beauty is still undiminished. The condition almost does not matter… in fact it adds an aspect of pathos to its beauty…
The song was ‘tere liye ham hain jiye…’ I was blown away by the tune and Lata’s rendition… and suddenly I had a revelation that I had heard that tune somewhere earlier…and within a few seconds I realized where… it was on one of the Madan Mohan CDs I have…in his own voice… in fact it was an alternate tune that he had composed for his famous song from ‘Mausam’ … ‘dil dhoondhtaa hai phir wohee fursat ke raat din’…. but when I heard it in Lata’s voice… it was as if … as if… I was looking at an old Kandil…. its body and the glass was worn out… old… from a different era… but the flame within was the same… eternal… and after a while that glass disappeared completely….and what remained was only that flame… as bright as ever… the same one that dazzled a nation with ‘uthaye jaa unke sitam’ … ‘ye jindagi usee kee hai’… and countless more songs like them
.... and I could listen to them all…. standing in the
************************************************************************************
On the Occasion of Veer Zara copyright © 2007 by Sushrut Vaidya. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No changes or edits in the content of this work or of the digital format are allowed. For information, write Sushrut Vaidya at sushrut.vaidya@gmail.com.
Comments