Born To Run

In Calcutta-Two Years in the City, Amit Chaudhuri while describing the pre-Naxalite milieu in Calcutta, West Bengal quotes Keats’s Ode To The Nightingale: The weariness, the fever, and the fret/ Here where men sit and hear each other groan/Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs/Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin and dies…

While a more informed person may ruminate on the aptness of those immortal lines as a descriptor for the period, it reminds me of a few more celebrated lines from a movie which can be called an ode to the nightingale in us all –a tale of an artist who remains manqué by choice and disappears in the quest for fulfillment.

But  Shahir Ludhianvi’s lyrics in Pyaasa was more pointed to the society at large – a generic critique of the malaise that haunts the humanscapes from the beginning of time, I would like to concentrate on the neurosis of the urban youth as a byproduct of the Life in a Metro. But please, for the time being, resist the temptation to look at A Clockwork Orange as a poet puts it this way: human beings cannot bear too much reality.

Anurag Kashyap’s Paanch, or Bejoy Nambiar’s Shaitan makes the grade: they are gritty, and closer home. Paanch is a milestone in a way different than Dil Chahta Hai; both are like the opposite sides of the contemporary. However, a post that begins with Keats should focus on the lyrical (literally), and that is why I am not even mentioning Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! when Dibakar Banerjee is perhaps the only talented director who has managed to keep his talented ‘outsider’ status intact even after breaking in.

There are two songs from two different movies which handle the claustrophobic situation in a touching manner without losing their Indian roots. Of course, they are set in retro periods, and that is why they are so believable when they flash their glimmer of hope – something which we all fall for hook, line, and sinker even when we have stopped believing.

Don’t believe me? One of the most searched dialogues on the net is this one from The Shawshank Redemption: I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

The songs may sound negative, and they evoke the darkness before the breaking of dawn; but after many a listen it is possible to hear the muted confidence in their essence - the certainty that they will be awash by the winning lights of the day.

Sudhin Dasgupta, and Javed Akhtar, legendary lyricists (among other things) have their fingers on the youth and their restlessness effortlessly as expected from artistes of their calibers. What makes these two songs break out and be counted among the timeless is the way they manage to weave the subtext through insinuations-that the young are born to run, and after the weariness, the fever, and the fret, they are bound to do what they are born for - run.

Ke Tumi Nandini, Tin Bhuvoner Pare (1969), Lyrics and Music : Sudhin Dasgupta,Singer: Manna Dey

 What I won’t  get, I (did) forget

It may not be gold what glitters ahead…

Where do you come from, my love; have not seen you before, my love

You walk away in beauty; may not see you ever cutie

Why don't you stop for a while?

It may not be gold what glitters ahead

-       what looks brio may be brine.

 

I don't know right from wrong

I don't want to know who's right and who's wrong

If you can listen to the song, knowing that everything can go wrong

And still find it right to hum along

Why don't you stop and stay for a while?

 It may not be gold that glitters ahead

-       what looks brio may be brine.

What I won't get I (did) forget...

 

 

So Gaya Yeh Jahan, Tezaab(1988),Lyric: Javed Akhtar Music :Laxmkant Pyarelal, Singer:Nitin Mukesh, Shabbir Kumar, Alka Yagnik,

World’s downed its shutters; the sky is fast asleep
Destinations too are drifting off; sleep roams the streets

Night came and packed off the stars home for the day

Night came and the extras like us went whistling in the bay

This way or that? Old town or new?

Can we really go anywhere even if we go to a few?

Destinations too are drifting off; sleep walks the streets…

Ask me or say something,

Anything…

Sitting beside, not for nothing

Yes we are close, but far as well

Should we speak? Only time can tell

When did we leave ourselves behind?

How did we miss the world go by?

The sun has set and gone out of our sight

For some hours at least there won’t be any light

World’s downed its shutters; the sky is fast asleep

Destinations too are drifting off; sleep roams the streets.