Rediscovering Shailendra

One treasure of the Internet is the RMIM Usenet group and its more user-friendly compiled archive. One of my favourite pastimes over the years has been to open random articles from the archive, read about the songs there while making a playlist of the songs discussed in the thread. It’s one thing to listen to these songs. But the additional notes posted by the knowledgeable RMIM community along with the painstakingly compiled lyrics base of Giitaayan and Smriti.com create a totally different engagement.

Recovering from an illness at home, with lots of time to spare, I went back to the archive. I found this 1997 article by Amla Mazumder, daughter of lyricist Shailendra. Ms Mazumder writes a touching tribute of her father and presents the ideas and world views that went into many of Shailendra’s songs. She closes the article with a list of 11 songs – these are songs of Shailendra which Shailendra considered his favourites.

It is a remarkable list. When a writer (or any artist for that matter) picks his favourites from his own works, the list in a way showcases what the writer really wants to say to the world. They represent his view of the world and the writer feels these works communicate them better than any other. The writer finds himself in his true form in these selections.

I immediately made a playlist of this and spent a whole day listening to them. It has triggered many thoughts which I am putting down here below.

First, here are the 11 songs in chronological order

1. Awara hoon (Mukesh, Awara, 1951, Shankar Jaikishen)
2. Mera Joota Hai Japani (Mukesh, Shree 420, 1953, Shankar Jaikishen)
3. Dharti Kahe Pukar Ke (Manna Dey & Lata Mangeshkar, Do Bigha Zameen, 1953, Salil Chowdhury)
4. Sab Kuch Seekha Humne (Mukesh, Anari, 1959, Shankar Jaikishen)
5. Mat Ro Maata (Manna Dey, Bandini, 1963, SD Burman)
6. Ab Ke Baras Bhaiya Bhejon (Asha Bhonsle, Bandini, 1963, SD Burman)
7. Koi Lautade Mere Beetein Huen Din (Kishore Kumar, Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein, 1964, Kishore Kumar)
8. Jin Raaton Ki Bhor Nahin Hai (Kishore Kumar, Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein, 1964, Kishore Kumar)
9. Aaj Phir Jeene Ki Tamanna Hain (Lata Mangeshkar, Guide, 1965, SD Burman)
10. Sajanwa Bairi (Mukesh, Teesri Kasam, 1966, Shankar Jaikishen)
11. Sajanre Jhooth Mat Bolo (Mukesh, Teesri Kasam, 1966, Shankar Jaikishen)

Here is a YouTube playlist that I have made. If you want to listen to the songs, then I can suggest something. Pour yourself a nice shot of your favourite drink, settle into your recliner, dim the lights, quieten down everything and then press play. You don’t need to see the visuals (though there is some breathtaking black and white camerawork  and scene design by the masters), just engage with the songs word by word.

---

Now, to put down a few words that have been evoked by this list.

 

Language of the commoner

One of the first things that one notices is the simplicity of language. All songs form a vocabulary that a common person on the street can use. To some extent, the nature of the characters for whom these songs were written plays a part in the construction of the vocabulary. There’s a tramp, there are paddy farmers, women convicts and bullock cart drivers. Of course, there are a couple of urban, sophisticated characters like an engineer, a dancer and an army officer. But even for them, Shailendra keeps it simple. One can contrast this with “labz” play that other writers indulge in – Gulzar with his sargoshians and satrangis, for example. If you follow some of better modern songwriters, people like Irshad Kamil, Amitabh Bhattacharya, Swanand Kirkire,etc, you’ll see their songs dripping with some really sophisticated, esoteric words – khanabdoshiyan, sukun ka zazira, chand ki firaaq, etc.

One of SD Burman’s personal quality control habits was to test his tunes with his servants and various tradespeople like the laundry man, the security guard, etc. If he found them catching on and humming the tune repeatedly, he knew he had a winner. All his legendary folkish sounding tunes went through that QC. It appears Shailendra might have, mentally if not actually, done the same – test his lines with common people.

One example is the villager calling out to Shambhu as he walks to the city looking for a job. In order to reclaim his land, Shambhu has to go, his situation demands it but the villager knows this is a point of no return. So he says,

“Apni kahani chhod ja
Kuch to nishani chhod ja
Kaun Kahe is or tu phir aaye na aaye

Just two big words of three syllables. Every other word is a single or at most two syllables long. Easy on the tongue, easy to remember, easy to hum. You probably use these words everyday when chatting with friends over coffee. And yet such depth. Contrast with a similarly placed song, Kabira by Amitabh Bhattacharya

Ae Kabira maan ja, ae fakira maan ja
Aaja tujhko pukare teri parchhaiyya
Ae Kabira maan ja, ae fakira maan ja
Kaisa tu hai nirmohi, kaisa harjaaia

Lovely writing, meant for an urban, elite character – the effort of constructing sentences using inherently deep meaning words like fakira or nirmohi is praiseworthy. But it enhances, in a way, the charm of how Shailendra, in simple words, describes the same emotion of seeing someone close leave and go away.

Social themes – migration, alienation, boundaries

Let’s look at some of the themes covered in these songs. How do they convey Shailendra’s view of society? As Ms Mazumder mentions in her article, there’s a lot of Shailendra in these songs, even if they explicitly refer to the on-screen characters.

If you start with Awara, the first big idea is one of social alienation – the alienation that a poor orphan feels in modern urban society.

Sunsaan nagar, anjaan nagar ka pyaara hun
Awaara Hun

There is a metropolis outside but for the individual, he is as good as living in “Empty Ville”. Shailendra considered himself an orphan after his mother’s death. When he moved to Bombay for work, he found himself in a strange land. All that comes out in these lines. There is a story that when Raj Kapoor first met Shailendra (he heard a poem of Shailendra and wanted to buy it for his film), he asked him to say something about himself. Shailendra replied, awara hun, is gardish mein aasman ka tara hun. RK was floored.

Then we come to the the emotions and trauma of migration. In the 1950s, in newly independent India, people had new hope. This hope drew them to the cities where they would find new careers as engineers, craftsmen, scientists, etc. Shree 420 begins with this hope. A young man is off looking for new opportunities. But Shailendra has a twist.

Naadaan hai jo baith kinaare
Puuchhen raah vatan ki
Chalana jivan ki kahaani,
Rukanaa maut ki nishani

These lines can be read in two ways (at least I am reading them in two ways). One, it’s a good, philosophical rule of life to keep moving. Stagnation is death. The other way is a sly bit of trolling by Shailendra, if I may say so. The country is moving forward and everyone needs to catch up. If you don’t, it’s death. These lines raise questions on the inclusiveness of growth and change. People take their time to sense the new ideas and make their decisions to join the movement. However, in reality, there is always some coercion, some collateral damage of  any change. One can say that the need to migrate as a consequence of progress is an unfortunate but real phenomenon.

But the overall mood in Mera Joota Hai Japani is positive and optimistic and let’s keep it that way for now. For real, serious stuff, we need to see the next one, Dharti Kahe Pukar Ke.

One of Shailendra’s greatest abilities was to capture the essence of the film or the story in the song, and specifically in one or two lines.

This song does that. Do Bigha Zameen as a film describes how a landed family who have their goals and plans worked out and are steadily working their way towards them end up becoming landless roadside dwellers in the city with no hope of anything. It is the story of migration, of the impact of urbanisation on rural families, treating them, making them homeless nomads. About this, Shailendra writes

Dharti kahe pukaar ke,
Beej bichhaa le pyaar ke
mausam bitaa jaay, mausam bitaa jaay

Shailendra tells the migrant that to plant some roots else there may be no return. He will be left with nothing. And what is it that is really lost. It’s the social goods – the community, the collective love and support from everyone during harvesting, festivals, or anything that happens in the village. The seeds of love that you sow in a place, the migrant will miss that. He has to now start all over again in the city.

Tilt then, the poet gives the migrant a tip to maintain his humour.

Nila ambar muskaaye,
Har saans taraane gaaye
Haay tera dil kyon murjhaye

Man ki banshi pe
Tu bhi koi dhun bajaa le bhaai
Tu bhi muskuraa le

Relationship Themes – separation and breakups

There are three songs which are about separation – Ab Ke Baras Bhejo, Sajanwa Bhairi, Sab Kuch Seekha. Each one highlights a different cause of separation

In Ab Ke Baras Bhejo, a woman is serving her time in jail. She prays for someone from home to come and see her. She recalls the joys of the monsoon and the greenery and energy that came with the rain winds. It’s interesting that the lady keeps mentioning her “baabul”. She is in jail and euphemistically, a jail is often called a “sasural”. As a prisoner, she has been separated from her family and they seem to have abandoned her.

Baabul ki main tere naazon ki paali
Phir kyon huii main paraaii
Bite re jag koii chithiyaa na paati
Na koii naihar se aaye, re
Ab ke baras bhej bhiyako baabul

The stigma of being a convict has broken all relations.

Then we come to separation triggered by deceit and betrayal inAnari. Here, we see some very personal anguish infused in the words

duniyaa ne kitanaa samajhaayaa
kaun hai apanaa kaun paraayaa
phir bhii dil kii choT chhupaa kar
hamane aapakaa dil bahalaayaa

Shailendra had many incidents of people not keeping their commitments – film directors, actors, music directors. These include those who were supposedly very close to him and had great regard for him. The above lines bring out some of that angst.

The last of the separation songs deals with marital separation. The husband (Sajanwa) has become a stranger

Jaae base parades balamavaa sautan ke bharamaae
Naa sandes naa koI khabariyaa, rut aae rut jaae
Naa koi is paar hamaara
Naa koI us paar

The lines are quite explicit and clear.

Personal Themes – Nostalgia, loneliness and a second chance

There are two songs from Door Gagan Ki Chhaon Mein. Shailendra was Kishore Kumar’s favourite by far and he got some absolute gems as songs. If Pyaasa was Sahir expressing himself, DGKCM is Shailendra expressing himself in the voice of Kishore. Koi Lautade Mere Beetein Huen Din is very clearly about the old days. Again, it touches on changes in people’s lives and the havoc it causes.

Main akelaa to na tha, the mere satha\i kai
Ek aandhi si uthii, jo bhi tha leke gai
Aaj main dhundhun kahaan, kho gaye jaane kidhar

The nature of the storm is part of the film. But there may be some autobiographical element in here. Shailendra lost his mother early and that had long lasting effect on him. His daughter tells us that Shailendra brought out that angst in many of his songs. The descriptions of loneliness and feeling of hopelessness caused by such events came from his own personal life. The other song from DGKCM is even more depressing.

Raat ke taaron tum hii bataao
Meri vo manzil hai kahaan
Paagal banakar jisake liye main
Kho baithaa hun dono jahaan

Utter hopelessness. When someone loses all purpose.

We are talking 1960s now when Shailendra’s health has worsened, physically and mentally. He died in 1966. In these last years, he seemed to have decided on his second life. The last three songs are all about journeys and possible rebirth.

The first one is a death row convict being led to the gallows. It’s a fait accompli but the convict says he is only getting liberated.

Ho hanskar mujhako aaj vidaa kar
Janam safal ho meraa
Rotaa jag me.n aayaa
Hansataa chalaa ye baalak teraa
Mat ro maataa laal tere bahutere
Mat ro

Ho kal main nahin rahugaa lekin
Jab hogaa andhiyaaraa
Taaron men tuu dekhegii
Hansataa ek nayaa sitaaraa
Mat ro maataa laal tere bahutere
Mat ro

Then there is Heeraman, the bullock cart driver, making what appears to be a smuggling trip but is unaware of it. To further highlight the irony, he is singing

Tumhaare mahal chaubaare, yahii.n rah jaae.nge saare
akad kis baat ki pyaare
akad kis baat ki pyaare,
ye sar phir bhi jhukaanaa hai

Incidentally, the mukdha of this song comes from the original story i.e. it’s written by Phaniswarnath Renu. Shailendra took the two lines from Renu and added the rest. The certainty of mortality is presented thus and it puts a frame on the crime that’s happening on the screen.

Then there’s Rosie. She had tried to commit suicide but was saved. Now she is looking forward for a new life, a new career. Aaj phir jeene ki tamanna is probably, in my view, the only positive, optimistic song in the list, relatively of course.

Infinite Sadness

10 out of the 11 songs convey different forms of sadness. This is what Shailendra picks as his favourite. He has written lots of fun songs, mind you. But he seems to prefer these. In the words of his daughter,

“For me   there is  a Shailendra song   for  any emotion,   any situation, from birth to death, such  was his versatility. Millions of listeners feel this way about his work.”

…

Yet  the spectre  of death  always haunted him.   He   was obsessed by death. There was no fear involved, but a kind of helplessness drew him towards it.”

---

 

I shall close this article with a song which I thought should have been in the list. Here is the final song of Bandini where he explains the life story of Nutan’s character

“Main bandini piya ki,
main sangini hoon saajan ki”

 

The Golden Gaans of Bappi Lahiri

Back in the 1980s when the primary sources of entertainment were Vividh Bharati and Doordarshan’s Chitrahaar, it was quite typical to wake up in the morning to neighbourhood radios playing the latest Hindi film music interspersed with advertisements and the soothing announcements of Ameen Sayani et al. The radio and TV announcers would mention the credits diligently – singer, lyricist and music director. In the latter case, there were three names that were repeated all the time – Laxmikant Pyarelal, RD Burman and Bappi Lahiri. In some of the programs which were request based (Jhumritalaya se Sonu, Monu, Deepak aur saathi farmayish karte hain…), RD Burman and Bappi Lahiri generally got more mentions. It is this upbringing, if I may say, that leads me to pick my favourite music directors of all time – RD and Bappida.

In the case of the former, there is a lot of literature by his legion of fans. Bappida always seemed to get subaltern treatment from so-called critics who were more influenced by his appearance, inarticulateness and general demeanour. Not that it matters, but those who have heard Bappida beyond the overplayed disco songs will know that he was a much bigger talent than otherwise perceived. In this post, I will list 10 songs which I don’t think most people would have heard of, let alone heard. Once you hear these songs, we can then talk.

Song #10: Jalta Hai Jiya Mera, Zakhmee (1975)

The film, according to reports, did relatively well. 1975 was the year of Deewar and Sholay, so the word “relatively” is the keyword. Produced by Tahir Hussain, brother of Nasir Hussain and father of Aamir Khan, the movie was a typical multi-starrer convoluted story based film. But like all Nasir Hussain films, this film had good music – by Bappi Lahiri. This was his first major hit score.

In the 1980s, Bappi Lahiri scored a number of films of Jeetendra which involved, what people like to call, “raunchy” song sequences. These sequences involved Jeetendra cavorting with the likes of either Sridevi or Jayaprada singing songs with “suggestive” lyrics. But, back in 1975, in his only third year of his career, he did this song featuring Rakesh Roshan and Reena Roy.

Songs #9: Main Deewani Radha Tumhari, Shikshaa (1979)

A young man, with a privileged upbringing, drives around showing off his fancy wheels. He runs over someone killing that person. When the police come to arrest him at home, his privileged surroundings intervene and the driver steps up to take the cosh. The driver goes to jail and the young man is back on the road. This does sound familiar. And very recent too. Writer M Balaiah and director S Ramanathan might well be pre-cogs when they weaved this story into their 1979 film Shikshaa. Raj Kiran plays the young man. The film did moderately in the matinee shows and faded away. With films like Mr Natwarlal and Kaala Patthar anchored by the Big B doing the rounds, this film had no chance. But we may remember this film for two songs.

It was always difficult for any singer, especially female, to break into Hindi playback singing in 1950s and 1960s when Lata Mangeshkar was around. The occasional song offered by Hemant Kumar and Salil Chowdhury notwithstanding, Arati Mukherjee would be a less familiar name for most listeners. Though popular in Bengali cinema sharing space with Sandhya Mukherjee for the coveted honour of doing playback for Suchitra Sen, Arati Mukherjee found fame in 1982 when she won the Filmfare and National Award for Do Naina Ek Kahani in Masoom. Here, she is singing this lovely Gita Govinda style song (poetry where Radha sings of her love for Krishna).

Song #7 & #8: Humse Tum Mile & Zid Na Karo, Lahu Ke Do Rang (1979)

This Mahesh Bhatt film starring Vinod Khanna was a reasonable hit but is notable for a more than significant role for Helen which got her a Filmfare award for best supporting actress. An interesting casting choice was to have Danny Dengzonpa as the son of Helen, suggesting some realistic film making techniques rather than pandering to box office formula on casting. There are two very interesting songs – a gem by Yesudas (I could not find the original film scene featuring the song. There is a Lata Mangeshkar version also).

The lyrics are by Farukh Kaiser, a lyricist who started song writing in the 1950s itself but his best work were in the late 1970s-1980s). Again, we see a lot of poetry in the songs. The second song from this film that I will direct you to is performed by Danny Denzongpa and Chandrani Mukherjee. Danny was a very competent singer with a unique voice.

Song #5 & #6:  Aawaz Di Hai & Kisi Nazar Se, Aitbaar (1985)

Mukul Anand had a brief but extremely exciting 12-15 year film making career. He started with the remake of the 1962 Gregory Peck film Cape Fear – Kanoon Kya Karega in 1984. One year later, he took a Hitchcock classic Dial M For Murder and made a very competent remake – Aitbaar. Dimple Kapadia, Raj Babbar and Suresh Oberoi come together in this thriller and Raj Babbar as the insidious husband puts in a fine performance. The trio were however topped by Danny Denzongpa as a coughing Inspector Barua providing the denouement

Suresh Oberoi plays a ghazal singer and Bappi Lahiri produced a couple of ghazals for the film. Written by Hasan Kamaal, these two songs show the range that Bappi Lahiri was capable of. 1985 was bang in the middle of the decade and Disco Dancer, Sharaabi, Namak Halaal, etc had already made Bappi the leading contender in discos, pubs and parties everywhere. Here he was suddenly breaking the trend and producing these two gems.

Both the songs are duets featuring Bhupinder and Asha Bhonsle. I must say that Bhupinder’s voice does not quite cast well with Suresh Oberoi’s hamming. It may even be distracting. I suggest you listen to the audio and forget about the hamming.

One of the features of Bappi Lahiri’s songs is the fine poetry in his songs. While they cannot rival the greats like Shailendra, Sahir and Majrooh, Bappi Lahiri had the likes of Gauhar Kanpuri, Anjaan and Hasan Kamaal pen some fine words.

This stanza from one of the songs captures relationship between the three main characters, from the point of view of the woman. It also brings out the essence of the film’s story to follow.

Kabse khadi thi baahein pasaare
Is dil ki tanhaaiyaan
Duniyaa se kah do na ham ko pukaare
Ham kho gaye hain yahaan

Song #4: Pyaar Chahiye, Manokamna (1979)

Can we have a list of Bappida songs without Bappida singing? For that we pick a film starring Raj Kiran and Kalpana Iyer. I am not too sure anyone saw this film. I can’t find any review of this film online. This particular song, with lyrics by Indeevar, is filmed along Juhu Beach.

Song #3: Jaana Kahan Hai, Chalte Chalte (1975)

Incidentally, there are a whole lot of Bappi songs filmed on beaches. Like this one from Chalte Chalte. Vijay Anand moves in front of the camera and tries to work his elder brother’s charms.

Song #2: Zindagi Hai Zindagi, Shart (1986)

Ketan Anand, song of Chetan Anand, was a long time fan of Bappi Lahiri and had him as a music director in many films. Shart starring Naseerudding Shah, Shabana Azmi and Kanwalijit is an interesting film inspired by the Jack The Ripper story. Yesudas gives voice to this song.

Song #1: Mana Ho Tum, Toote Khilone (1978)

It is quite revealing to see the number of songs that Yesudas has sung for Bappi Lahiri. One normally associates the great singer with Salil Chowdhury or Ravindra Jain. I have already played two Yesudas songs earlier. Here is by far the best song from the duo. The film, directed by Ketan Anand, is notable for featuring Shekhar Kapur in the lead role. Not much of an actor, thankfully he was better off as a director.

And just to round it off, here is Sonu Nigam recreating Yesudas’ song.

 

 

 

 

Rhythms of the Indian Ocean

The chief language of Madagascar, Malagasy, belongs to the Malay family of languages spoken on the islands on the other side of the island. On the Konkan coast, from Karnataka all the way up to Gujarat, there are people who owe their origins to Abyssinia and beyond. In Maldives, they speak Divehi, a word which borrows from the Indian root Div meaning island. In Mauritius, Hindi (specifically Bhojpuri), French, Swahili and English have got mashed up into a lilting creole which Amitav Ghosh plays with in River of Smoke, his second book in the Ibis trilogy. Every piece of land on the shores of or sitting in the middle of the Indian Ocean share languages, religions, cuisine, customs, trades and even disasters.

These are just a few examples which give evidence of the intense traffic in the Indian Ocean over millennia. Cargo including spices, rubber, teak, opium, coffee, horses, gold, frankincense, myrrh and slaves were exchanged between the lands. All this togetherness is also embedded in the music of this part of the world.

The rhythmic movement of waves and tides serve as the basic tempo of boatmen and fishermen songs from Indonesia to Tamil Nadu to Sri Lanka to Maldives to Madagascar. Islam has contributed to a Sufi like structure to song writing where the Almighty is personified as the beloved. Africa and South India have sent out varieties of drums and percussion instruments to the far lands to lend the beats.

To start exploring the music of the Indian Ocean, we can follow the spice trail – starting with Indonesia and Burma in the east through Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the islands of Lakshadweep, Minicoy and Maldives in the middle on to Arabia in the north.

We can also follow the people trail – slaves transported from Africa to India and the East Indies; indentured labourers from Bihar and Bengal transported to Mauritius, East Africa and Southern Africa; Arab traders settling down in Zanzibar, Somalia, Kutch, Malabar and the Malay; pirates setting up free cities in Madagascar and Mozambique; peoples of one land crossing the seas to another land escaping persecution and war and of course the Europeans of all shades and tongues conquering everything in sight.

In this post I go east and explore the music of a contemporary band in Aceh.

Aceh, in the northern tip of Sumatra, has a history of its own. Being closest to India and West Asia, it was a port of call for ships sailing east. Islam came to this part of the world in the 13th century with graves of Sultans dating to the period found here. There may have been some influence from Hindu kingdoms of India as there are a number of places with Sanskrit names. But for the last 800 years, Islam has been the guiding force here and remains so. The Sultanate of Aceh was one of the wealthiest in the region because of the strategic location and was much coveted as an ally by the Portuguese, Dutch and of course the Arabs. It is still has a status of an autonomous region within Indonesia, the outcome of the peace accord that ended over 30 years of internal conflict, triggered by the tsunami.

This move towards peace, some people say, started with the huge destruction caused by the tsunami in December 2004 that wiped out 120,000 people from the town of Aceh and destroying 60% of the city. There was thus a two levels of rebuilding – one physical from the calamity and one more psychological from the horrors of conflict.

I found this band called Kande (meaning candle). Built around frontman Rafli, considered a rockstar in his country, the vocals and the strong bass lines of the band generate a powerful force that makes you pay attention. His vocals remind me of the legendary Baaba Maal of Senegal.

Kande’s 2006 album Meukondroe (If Not Us) discusses the dual rebuilding process which requires peace and unity and this message comes through in this album. Rafli himself traveled from refugee camp to refugee camp in Aceh province, singing and providing solace to the internally displaced people there. Incidentally, most music shops in Aceh were washed away and it is very difficult to find music discs in Aceh itself.

The songs which I have put in this playlist are in Acehnese. I don’t understand the words. But some of the visuals in the video give their own message. The vocals themselves resemble the muezzin’s call. Aceh is one of the most conservative parts of Indonesia and the call to prayer is very much part of the ambient audioscape. Rafli’s voice travels through like those of the best qawwaals and classical singers. The band that plays around him accentuate the power of the vocals.

Playlist:

1. Meukondroe, the title song from the 2006 album. There are two versions – the original and a concert version with a string orchestra
2. Hoom
3. Bumoe, the opening screen of the video suggests that the song is about the tsunami and the destruction it caused
4. Asai Nanggroe
5. Meukuta Alam, which has old archival pictures of Aceh and has a touch of the saudade in its tune.

Jamaica: Journey of roots reggae – From Sugar Farms to Abyssinia

The history of the people of Jamaica is a microcosm of the history of the entire Americas – “founded” by the Europeans and populated by migrants from three continents with the Europeans coming in as landowners and the Africans and Asians coming in as the labourers.

From the sugar farms, came slow rural folk music styles like mento – one of the most famous mento songs is Jamaican Farewell by Harry Belafonte. As settlements became urban, music evolved as dance halls, clubs and urban hang out places mushroomed. Also as influences from New York and London started coming in, musicians of Jamaica saw themselves in a position to establish a new genre altogether. Ska and rocksteady evolved along with imported genres of jazz, samba and rock & roll. In this whole mix, Reggae music evolved from Jamaican styles of ska and rocksteady. The presence of Indians (through indentured labourers in the late 19^th century) has also been a big influence in all the different Caribbean music styles. Later, reggae and Indian forms of music merged through the work of migrant communities in the UK.

The characteristic reggae beat was first recorded in the 1960s with an appropriately named band called The Pioneers credited with the earliest recording. Reggae music is and was always a dance hall phenomenon. It was controlled by the DJs, jamming the beats with random sounds. But the origins of reggae lay in folk music where the importance of lyrics was always paramount. As Jamaica progressed post independence, reggae musicians found themselves with a new way of expression.

This transformation of the genre happened when a whole army of Rastafarians took to the music form and made it a medium of expression. Big Bob was one of them. Perhaps the most famous. And according to American music critics, he was possibly the most profound and artistically sound.

One of Bob Marley’s classics is Sun is Shining, used by Ten Cricket as background theme song for its broadcast opening sequence for cricket broadcasts from the West Indies. Recorded by Bob Marley in 1971, it was covered in 1977 by Black Uhuru and it hit the charts again.

Sun is shining, the weather is sweet, ya
Make you want to move, your dancing feet
Who, to the rescue… here I am
Want you to know ya
Where I stand, know, know, know, know.
When the morning, gathers the rainbow
I want you to know, that I’m a rainbow too.

What Bob Marley pioneered was roots reggae – where the songs explored the roots of the Jamaican people – in Africa. Jamaica’s African heritage, both West African (physical origins) and East African (spiritual origins), resonates in these roots reggae songs. Songs that bring alive Jamaica flow into songs about Jah (Jehovah) and King Selassie (Haile Selassie) which in turn flow into songs about Rasta (referred to as dreadlocks in most songs).

In this post, we will not discuss Bob Marley. One single person, however influential, cannot define a genre. It requires a whole generation of musicians to work on this genre, produce some excellent exhibits or specimen musical works.

Bob Marley was a great ambassador for reggae and roots reggae of Jamaica. And also the worst. For the outside world, there does not seem to be anyone else in reggae music apart from Bob Marley. The nearest one gets is UB40. Or maybe The Police. Duckie Simpson of Black Uhuru says

“You notice, whoever sings reggae, apart from reggae singers, sells. But when guys from Jamaica sing reggae, it never sells. When UB40 or The Police do it, it’s great.”

We will listen to the music of three pioneering bands who balanced roots and dance hall beautifully, while living in the shadow of Bob Marley and Burning Spear – Inner Circle, Black Uhuru and Third World.

All the three bands are contemporary of each other. They began in the early 1970s where all bands start from – clubs and hotels of Kingston. The demand for more and more dance music – in clubs, on radio, on television – meant that they had work.

But these were not mere drum bangers and hip shakers. They were thinking artists. Duckie Simpson says, “.. I’m not the type who goes for DJ music. I strictly go for lyrics. I’m a songwriter, so when I hear stuff that’s not put together properlythen I don’t really go for it. “

All three bands combined popular tunes and rhythms with thought provoking lyrics.

Inner Circle

Inner Circle, which had begun life in 1968, went through multiple personnel changes before got Jacob Miller, a strong vocalist and even stronger songwriter, and in the late 1970s, Inner Circle got themselves a recording contract. A bunch of albums and couple of US-Europe tours later, in 1980, only Bob Marley was more popular than Miller and Inner Circle. In 1977-8, one big hit of Inner Circle was Tenement Yard. While its rhythm has become iconic, the song itself is a lament or maybe a mild protest.

Dreadlocks can’t live in privacy
Anything him do, old near-guy see
Too much watchie watchie watchie, too much su-su-su-su-su

Till 2015, smoking marijuana or ganja was illegal in Jamaica. This meant people had to do it in their privacy. But the poor people living in tenements did not have their space to practice their religion. That is worthy of protest. Courts of various countries have barred the Rastafari people from carrying their herb stocks around causing, what the Rastafari call, oppression.

Jacob Miller died in 1980 in an accident and the remaining Inner Circle members, the Lewis brothers, moved to Miami from where they continue to work. Their 1987 song Bad Boys got picked as the theme song for COPS.

Why did you have to act so mean?
Don’t you know you’re human being?
Born of a mother with the love of a father
Reflections come and reflections go
I know sometimes you wanna let go

The special thing in the song is that, while it looks quite innocuous and preachy, there is also an empathy for people who may be have floated into crime because of poverty and economic desperation.

Black Uhuru

Black Uhuru gets their name from the Swahili for freedom. In that they follow the footsteps of Burning Spear in using Swahili imagery for their name. Their personnel changes resemble most bands of the era. Only Duckie Simpson remains as the constant member from start to present. Over the years, they had many members including Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare and the ethereal Sandra “Puma” Jones

One really deep song by Black Uhuru is What is Life? From their Grammy Award winning album Anthem. The lyrics go something like this:

What is life? I try to see.
What is life? It’s unity.
What is life? I try to feel.
What is life? It’s really real.

Another song from the same album is the Black Uhuru Anthem where songwriter Duckie Simpson refers to the Rastafari faithful as the “living dread” and rhymes it with the “living dead”, referring all the other people.

Third World

Third World and Inner Circle had a lot of common members including Bunny Rugs and Stephen Coore. In 1977, they published an album 96⁰ In The Shade. The title song referred to an incident in 1895 called the Morant Bay Rebellion where over 500 people were killed by the British either through military action or through execution. In the song, the songwriters write:

You caught me on the loose,
Fighting to be free,
Now you show me a noose,
On the cotton tree,
Entertainment for you,
Martyrdom for me.

These songs were, of course, very popular in Jamaica. But international fame required them to cross over. Third World got international fame when they did a number of cover versions like Now That We Have Found Love (The O’Jays) and live shows with Stevie Wonder who loved their song Journey to Addis. Stevie Wonder wrote a song for them called Try Jah Love which is a very syruppy American pop song.

In 1988, came Hurricane Gilbert. Willie Stewart, the drummer, was one of ther long standing members. He says that 1988 was a life changing year for him and most Jamaicans as Hurricane Gilbert tore through the island. Stewart says in Bordowitz’s Noises of the World:

From the whole thing we got a very important message. Your home is within you. You can’t get a physical structure and say, that’s your home, because that can be broken up.

…

Jamaica was going to rebuild the country fully. The world has to take theat structure from Jamaica. Say that we are going to rebuild a new, musical sound/

In 1989, the song Forbidden Love saw Third World go beyond dreadlocks, Jamaica and Jah and they were writing about love in a verySufi sort of way.

When I look into the mirror I see someone
Who’s life will never be the same again
‘Cause they say that what we found forbidden love, love
And the question we are up against

Dance Hall Poetry

In a very weird way, I find all these reggae bands very similar to our own Bappida. Ostensibly dance music, the songs themselves were extremely poetic with deep messaging embedded in them. When you listen to dance songs in a dance hall, you are not paying attention to the lyrics at all. In fact dance hall music is not supposed to have any lyrics. But these songs draw your attention, like Bappida’s disco songs which had some heavy lyrics.

Roots reggae takes you to the milieu of Jamaica, both physical and mental, and you are vicariously living the lives of the Rasta on the streets of Kingston or on the ridges of the Blue Mountains or in Addis Ababa. To close this piece, it would be apt to go to Bob Marley and his epic Roots, Rock, Reggae.

Feel like dancing, dance cause we are free
Feel like dancing, come dance with me
Roots rock reggae, this a reggae music

Reggae Playlist

I have created a playlist of 11 reggae songs here: They are:

• Jamaican Farewell, Harry Belafonte, (cover traditional)
• Long Shot Kick de Bucket, The Pioneers, 1968, considered the first reggae recording
• Sun is Shining, Black Uhuru, 1977 (cover of Bob Marley)
• Bad Boys, Inner Circle, used in COPS
• Tenement Yard, Inner Circle / Jacob Miller, 1977
• What is Life, Black Uhuru, 1983
• Black Uhuru Anthem, Black Uhuru, 1983
• Now That We’ve Found Love, Third World, 1978 (cover of The O’Jays)
• 1895 (96⁰ in the shade), Third World
• Forbidden Love, Third World
• Roots, Rock, Reggae, Bob Marley and the Wailers

Senegal: Returning to the Source of Jazz Music with Youssou N’Dour

Exploring the world through music

Part 1: Senegal with Youssou N’Dour

Senegal is on the western coast of Africa. Like most West African countries, its ports were used to load slaves on to European ships bound to the New World. This historical legacy triggers a simple question. Can jazz music be linked to Senegal? Can rhythm and blues, soul, rap, hip-hop, maybe even reggae, link up with Senegal?

The lexicon of music in America and Europe borrows heavily from languages of West Africa. Merengue, the dance, is possibly related to mererek, a Fulani word meaning shake or quiver. Marimbula, the plucked instrument in the Caribbean, is very much a West African contribution. As is jive, a Wolof word and jukebox, also Wolof. And the big one, jazz – among the many theories, the Mandinka word jasi and the Temne cognate yas are prime candidates for being the mother word. All these are, of course, theory from a linguistic history point of view for the simple reason, that there are no written records or chronicles or memoirs of that tumultuous period and the journey of words from one continent to another will remain a matter of conjecture even though it sounds convincing and matches up with the recorded history of forced migrations.

But, let’s assume it is so. So if Senegal, the home of the Fulani and Wolof people, is where they – the people, the language, the music – embarked on their journey to the New World, what if those people, the words, the music came back to Senegal?

Youssou N’Dour, possibly the most famous Senegalese musician, helmed a project in 2007 called Return To Goree. This project involved N’Dour going to all the musical hubs of America like New Orleans, Atlanta, New York and Chicago to meet some of the brilliant contemporary jazz musicians there and bring them to Goree Island for a concert. The island, just a few miles off Dakar, was a custom house – for slaves. Human cargo was brought in from the interior villages, stored here in the basement, weighed, accounted for in the inventory ledgers and then loaded onto ships. They went through the Door of No Return – a doorway opening on to the small jetty that led the slaves from the custom house on to the waiting boats.

For N’Dour, this project culminated over 20 years of being an ambassador of African and specifically West African music. Back in 1984, N’Dour was in Paris playing songs from his album Immigres (Émigré) when among the audience was Peter Gabriel. That began, to use an old cliché, a beautiful friendship. N’Dour guested singing Wolof in In Your Eyes from Gabriel’s most successful solo album So. Then he toured with Gabriel, Springsteen, et al in the 1988 Human Rights tour. Since then, artistically and commercially, N’Dour kept growing to become the superstar that he is today.

In 1989 came Peter Gabriel’s magnum opus – Passion, the soundtrack for Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. Youssou N’Dour was a major contributor as were many others including fellow Senegalese legend Baaba Maal (I will explore his music in the next post). You can hear N’Dour’s voice in the title track itself where his voice is blended with that of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (with L Shankar providing the strings).

Musically, N’Dour’s work encompasses multiple styles. In Noises of the World, a oral history of musicians by Hank Bordowitz, N’Dour says

My music is modern African music. African music is the mother of all these other musics (sic), and that is the truth.

This sentiment, incidentally, goes back to the narrative in the beginning of the post – where do all the various styles of music come from?

Apart from the music, N’Dour the songwriter has also been very active in raising awareness and consciousness of the culture, not just outside Africa, but also within Africa. Very consciously, he has been writing songs in French and English, international languages, that, although imposed through colonial means, help reach out to a wide spectrum of nationalities and ethnic groups in Africa (and indeed rest of the world). Much of his music also ties up with his activism.

Birima is a song from 2000. It refers to a 19^th century monarch King Birimba Ngone. Birimba was known for his hospitality, his honour and that he always kept his word. N’Dour’s song, translated, has this line

Ah! Birima! A day spent in your presence
Was the picture of hospitality!

This song comes from another part of N’Dour’s lineage – the lineage of griots. Griots are a separate caste in west Africa – they are story tellers, balladeers, historians, hagiographers. Their job is to convert the events of the day into song and ensure people remember those events through those songs. N’Dour, on his mother’s side, comes from a family of griots. Birima, a tale of a king, comes out of that. In 2008, N’Dour started a microfinance institution in Senegal and named it Birima Microfinance.

Youssou N’Dour is also a Sufi follower. He is part of a brotherhood called Mouridism founded by Sheikh Amadou Bamba. Mame Bamba, a song from the 1994 album The Guide (Wommat), written in Sufi style, celebrates his spiritual guru. The song begins in Wolof and then for the most part is in English. Sheikh Amadou Bamba was a Qadriyaa sufi saint in Senegal. He resisted the French colonial rule and was even exiled. His philosophy, ensconced in Mouridism, influences Senegalese life even today. N’Dour in his song writes:

The man in me changes
Every time I read your khassayids
My strong faith in you
Makes me survive in this crazy world.

In 2004, N’Dour hooked up with the Fathy Salama Orchestra of Egypt to record an album of songs celebrating the Sufi spirit. It was originally called Sant Allah (Thank you Allah) and was ready five years ago. The events of September 2011 and the general response of the Western world to all things Islamic forced him to hold the release of the album. It was finally released with a simple name Egypt. This was a coming together of extremities of the Sahara desert but it also established Senegalese Islamic traditions as distinct from Arabic traditions. There are songs about the leading figures of his brotherhood, about Touba, the city that serves as the cultural centre for the Mouridists and about his faith. Critically hailed by everyone, no one was surprised when it won the Grammy Award.

Robert Christgau, in the Village Voice, writes,

So for N’Dour, who for 20 years has been building bridges to Europe and America, to go to Egypt to record these pointedly pan-Sufi lyrics–in addition to praising the two Mouridist founders, he devotes songs to Qadiriya history, a Tijani anti-colonialist, a Tijani pan-Africanist, and an eccentric messianic brotherhood–is to remind his Western friends, and enemies, that in the crucial matter of faith he is not “Western,” not even a little bit.

The career graph of Youssou N’Dour, from the 1980s to the present, shows his journeys across the world. His music today is spans multiple genres – rock, reggae, electronica, jazz, soul. He uses synthesisers to generate traditional mbalanx sounds. His favourite music, apart from African sounds, if one might say, won’t shock anyone – Marley, Gaye, Prince. He is called to tribute concerts, charity concerts, World Cup football opening events, political events and other occasions. He tried to run for president but withdrew. He has set up a state of the art recording studio in Dakar, where he continues to live, when not traveling. His studio has now become a hub for Senegalese music which had to otherwise go to Paris to be recorded. He is an important person.

My Youssou N’Dour Playlist on Youtube has the following songs (You can check out a pre-curated playlist on Apple Music)

1. Return To Goree, a documentary that rivals Buena Vista Social Project in artistic excellence
2. In Your Eyes (Peter Gabriel)
3. Passion (Peter Gabriel), a most goosebumps raising blending of voices of N’Dour and Nusrat.
4. Birima, with a simple video from the streets of Dakar
5. Badou, composed and created when he was still unknown to the rest of the world.
6. Mame Bamba, one of his older songs about his spiritual guru Sheikh Bamba
7. Egypt, 2004, Grammy Award winning work, to use a much abused word – seminal
8. La Cours des Grands, a typical song for the World Cup, used in 1998. The original French song does however have a slightly more poetic feel than the modified English version.
9. 7 seconds (with Neneh Cherry), from 1994, the title of the song refers to the brief fleeting moments of innocence that a new born baby experiences before being told who he or she is, what the colour of his or her skin is, what it means, etc.
10. Ob La Di Ob La Da, a lovely rendition of a Beatles classic

Explore The World Through Its Music

The ancient Greeks used the word barbaros to refer to various groups of peoples – those who spoke Greek badly; those who did not speak Greek (and therefore were incomprehensible and strange to the Greek citizen); the Persians; the Turks; the Huns; etc. Today, the word barbarian has come to mean a person who is not civilised i.e. not from the mainstream.

However, one person’s barbarian was another person’s model citizen. The perspective of the observer was the deciding factor. Who decides what is mainstream? Who decides what is the reference point for being termed a member of a civilised group of people versus a barbarian group of people?

The term World Music was a lazy attempt at defining any thing which was not Western Popular Music. The perspective of the observer was clearly American.

Carl Rahkonen sums it up in his 1994 technical paper when he says world music is more about what it is not rather than what it is:

World music might best be described by what it is not. It is not Western art music, neither is it mainstream Western folk or popular music. World music can be traditional (folk), popular or even art music, but it must have ethnic or foreign elements. It is simply not our music, it is their music, music which belongs to someone else.

So the next time you select world music in your playlist settings, you are essentially saying, hey, let’s listen to their music.

I got hold of Paul Simon’s Graceland cassette quite soon after it was released. Like everyone else outside of South Africa, I got to hear artists from that country for the first time. The opening A Capella by Ladysmith Black Mambazo followed by the opening bars of the guitars in Diamonds on the Soles of the Shoes are to me one of the finest openings in pop music. Later, I learnt that this was fusion music. I also learnt that this music brought hitherto unknown ethnic sounds from South Africa into the mainstream. The commercial success had made Graceland a template for future musical experiments in cross-border music mash ups. To top it all, with record companies coming out with International or Ethnic recordings, World Music got its stamp of credibility when an artist of the stature of Paul Simon immersed in it with considerable artistic and commercial success.

Over the years, I have come across music from many countries and at any given point in time, my smart phone music player has a playlist of songs which cover at least 10 languages and sourced from at least 15 different countries. Each of these songs come from long musical traditions which have their own stories. Appreciating the differences between the music of the Senegalese musicians Baaba Maal and Youssou N’Dour or between Amadou & Mariam and Tinariwen, both from Mali, and acknowledging that they come from completely different traditions should be as natural as discerning the difference between rock & roll and soul or jazz and reggae or electronica and heavy metal. As jazz, soul, R&B or rap tell stories of an entire race liberating themselves from slavery, the music from the world over tell their own stories about their people.

In the coming months, I will revisit all these musical works and explore the home country through the music. I hope to cover all the continents and will mostly avoid using the term World Music. Watch this space. Till then a playlist of six pieces of popular music from six continents which I will cover in the next six posts. I hope to hit at least 30 countries in the next month or so.

“A Sparrow Falls” by Wilbur Smith (and also “When the Lion Feeds” and “The Sound of Thunder”) – and a look at the narrow perspectives often held in conflicts

After a long time, came across a piece on Wilbur Smith whose books I once used to devour. Very nice read here.

Books, Films, Travel. A world of words; words about the World

These three novels form the original Courtney trilogy, an epic saga that has subsequently grown to more than twice that number of novels including both sequels and prequels to these original three.

This trilogy focuses mostly on the life of Sean Courtney (born c 1862 and not to be confused with his great-grandson, the later Sean Courtney) and covers several historical events.  The time span is approx 1875 to 1920s and Sean’s life includes involvement in such historical events as the Zulu War (1879); the gold rush in Transvaal of the 1880s; the Boer War (1899-1902); the formation of the Union of South Africa (1910); the First World War (1914-1918); and the beginnings of the wildlife conservation movement in the early 20th Century.

SPOILER ALERT: please note that this post does reveal some details of the story (although there is also  a considerable amount of the story that is not…

View original post 883 more words

This is My Generation. The End, almost.

Leander Paes, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly are all a few months to 1 year older than me. Bhaichung Bhutia is 2 years younger. These five people have been my contemporaries literally. And their life over the last 25 odd years has, in many ways, mirrored my own. The contexts are different but the questions are the same. The similar conflicts of choice, responsibilities, ambition and aspirations. The shared pain of graduating from random teenage dabbling to becoming a contender and then becoming class, the pressure of maintaining that class and trying to evolve oneself and maintain relevance and motivation as the environment changes and age and cynicism kicks in. I have followed the careers of these five people not just because they play a sport that one has an interest in but also because they faced and struggled with and overcame the same life questions as I did, at the same time as me.

The retirement of Sachin Tendulkar from active sport (he still has to play a couple of tests) makes it 80% down for my generation. That Leander is still around winning Grand Slams is something that, in a way, does not surprise one at all, given how one has seen him over the years. Of course, he does not wince when Patrick McEnroe calls him a senior citizen. He wears that tag quite openly and is still a medal contender at the Olympics, even with a rookie who did not even have a pair of shoes.

Given these almost parallel lives that one has lived with, it would be too shallow and meaningless to call myself a fan of any of these players. To me, each one represents a model of, a way of life in a way, of what an Indian can do. We all have our talents and abilities and our respective areas of interests, aspirations and passions. These five people demonstrate a very human and ergo realistic way of bringing all of those things to life in spectacular fashion, not just for a short burst of 15 minutes but for an entire lifetime of a generation, a quarter of a century. And more. These five people are not supermen who come from a different planet and have different non-human qualities. They come from the same social milieu (barring Bhaichung Bhutia whose background is far different from the urban middle class environs of the other four) as me (heck, Sachin flunked HSc, something that I was in danger off till I managed to get some tuitions classes) and I can see and empathise with their failings as many of those failings are issues that me and most people of our times face and have faced.

Bhaichung has moved off the football field for India but continues to score goals through his wards from his football schools and the United Sikkim club he founded to give opportunities to fellow Sikkimese people like him. He is the biggest voice India have in football and given his age, his role as a coach and manager is going to be huge.

Sourav and Rahul have moved on, immediately, to some commentary duties but there would be, no doubt, some more productive activities that they are likely to turn towards in due course.

Which brings us to Sachin. What is he going to do? This is a question that he has been asking himself for the last 5 years. It is a genuine fear. Sachin took to top level competitive cricket since his age crossed double figures. Since then, he has done nothing else. Like a software programmer who spends 30 years in the trade and knows only coding (and over the years has become brilliant at it). Take away the coding job of the software programmer, what is he to do? He has not bothered to engage with anything else. He has no other skills or affinities or preferences. Without the coding problems, he has no meaning in his life. Like actors who find it difficult to adjust to life when they retire, a Norma Desmondesque schizophrenia grips such people.

Sachin knows everything there is know about playing cricket. But that’s it. From the repeated use of the phrase (and variations of it) “It’s hard to imagine a life without playing cricket because it’s all I’ve ever done since I was 11,” it is very clear, this is a very big fear in his life. (A fear all of us have).

I, for one, never understand this whole farce of asking people to retire. It is the selectors’ job to pick and drop players. A player has the full right and freedom to play till whatever age he or she wants. This is true for all professions. A journalist can continue to write even if he or she has turned senile and is in advanced stage of dementia. It is for the editor to decide whether the copy is legible and publishable. Sachin was perfectly right in continuing to play and believe that he was helping Team India.

In the last test series against Australia, while most people, the regular hecklers who measure human achievement in quantitative terms QSQT (quarter se quarter tak – a company is as good as the earnings announced last quarter), claim he did not score a single century, I believe he played an innings that made the series a one sided one for India. In fact, one does not have to take the full innings. Just 3 shots. 1st test match, 12/2 in the first innings, replying to the Australian score of 380, given the performance against England in the previous series, it could very well have become 20/5. James Pattinson was easily the best bowler for the Australians in the entire series. In his 2 overs and 2 deliveries, he produced a burst of speed (150kph yorker to knock out Murali Vijay, 147kph shortish ball that Sehwag couldn’t control, it rolled on to the stumps) that saw the two openers walk back. In came Tendulkar in the middle of the 3rd over from Pattinson and he smashed 3 fours in 4 deliveries, all of which were above 144kph. This had shades of the Dale Steyn – Tendulkar tussle in the South African series in the previous season. The best bowler of the team being played out by Tendulkar. Leaving the rest of the batsmen to play the lesser bowlers. Almost the same happened here. Pattinson was out of the attack and the rest of the Indian team were happy to play a docile Australian bowling attack.  The phrase “India won the test quite easily in the end” is a bit misleading. Without that show of intent in the 6th over of the innings, things could have been vastly different.

The idea of Tendulkar, for me, stays in those moments. There are countless of them and this patch of 4 deliveries was one of them. I don’t really care about his not scoring centuries. (In fact, centuries are a bit like the photographs that people take once they reach the top of Mount Everest. Only the last step, probably the easiest, is seen. Not the climb itself.) He doesn’t have to. There are 10 other people in the team who are equally obliged to play for Team India. They can score those centuries.

The model of Tendulkar has always been to enter the worst challenges possible and try to win over it. And to do so, one has to be simply world class. Nothing less will do. Sometimes you succeed, sometime you don’t. Sometimes it is brave, sometimes it is foolish. But it is an idea worth appreciating. It’s an idea worth adopting.

Ganesh Visarjan 2013

Religious events are good for business. Take this family. Everyone is putting in their last breadth to stock up on balloons to sell on Visarjan Day. I saw them when I was walking towards Shivaji Park taking photos of the city. When I returned and walked past this spot, they were done. All balloons sold.

18th September 2013, the 10th day of the annual Ganesh festival, like all parts of the city, Dadar in central Mumbai, was the scene of what I would call the Mardi Gras of Bombay.

It’s an event. You can shut your ears and moan about it. Or like these college kids, go out there and volunteer to keep order. Or do some filming.

 

The Death of Nehru

Yesterday, India survived (and done quite well for itself though things can always be better) 49 years of the post-Nehru era.

At 2 p.m. local time today 460,000,000 people in this country that has been forged on the anvil of this one man’s dreams and conflicts were plunged into the nightmare world which they have, in the last decade, come to dread as the “after Nehru” era. (link: Guardian archives)

But a small hint of one of the key factors why “India after Nehru” is where it is today (instead of being a developed nation).

One walked out to let in the diplomatists, the MPs, the Sikhs and the Hindus and the Moslems. They came – but they did not weep. Instead, the eyes shifted, there were tremors of disbelief, tinctured with moments of illumination as if this had to happen, and then the eyes shifted again. This time with fear.

Fear was the one dominant feeling one experienced as one came out. Fear that at this moment one had to avoid the reality of Nehru’s death and the Pandora’s box of suppressed ambitions it will release.

The funeral procession tomorrow will cover six miles. Mr Nehru will he cremated at Raj Ghat, where Gandhi was cremated. The last rites for this agnostic will be administered by Hindu priests

Fear. Need to turn to someone to be a leader. Nehru. Gandhi.