Hip Hop and Holy

Like Einstein is supposed to have worked out his equations on the backs of envelopes  post-cards , used paper, legend has it  that the 18^th  century Bengali mystic, poet and devotee of the Goddess Kali,– Sadhak Ramprasad Sen penned his lyrics in the ledger book (which he was supposed to keep) of his employer.

One day he got caught. His employer pensioned him off with a monthly allowance till death, and Ramprasad spent the rest of his life worshipping the Goddess through songs which he wrote and sang.

Ramprasad’s songs influenced the latter day Bengali mystic Ramakrishna Paramhansa, and the doyen of Bengali literature Rabindranath Tagore among others.

Spiritualists have this reputation of being out of the ordinary, and at times childlike. Ramprasad was all this and more. His entire life was dedicated to praising the holy mother, and as single-minded devotion sometimes makes one oblivious of the ways of the world – Ramprasad was a simple soul who was not aware of anything outside his calling, not even the fact that he was blessed.

This lack of self-consciousness is reflected in his songs, written in a robust language- an eclectic mix of the erudite and the colloquial. The words have a natural hip hop feel and can be hypnotic at times like the truly simple.

Here is a transcreation; the original follows.

 

O heart of mine! had you sowed,

This body – this pasture of heaven goes to seed,

Would have reaped gold.

Shout ‘Kali’, shout out loud; the yield would be forever

Where the long-haired girl steps in

Evil looks for cover.

Now, or a millennium later

The stake will get cold and bare

Tune in and be a player

Romp in and get your share.

Seed your mentor’s blessing

Spray devotion on it

Heart ,if you feel left behind,

Call Ramprasad at your side.

 

The original

Mon re! krishikaj jano na

Emon manobjomin roilo potit

Korle abad falto sona.

Kali name dao re byara

Fasale tachrup hobe na

Se je muktokeshir shokto bera

Tar kachete jom ghese na

Adya ki shatbdante

Bajapto hobe janao na

Ekhon apan ektare

Chutiye fasal kete ne na

Guru data bij ropan kare

Bhakti bari senche de na

Eka Jodi na parish mon

Ramprasadke sange ne na.

 

 

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.

 

Romeo loved/lost Juliet

Reality dazzles when it is pruned and presented in style. Truth tempts when it is narrated by a master raconteur. Beauty blazes when it walks away in the night…Truth, beauty, and reality makes magic with the mind when it is young.

An epigram is a pithy saying – a witty ‘tweet’ that encompasses a moment of truth, or a piece of reality, almost iconic in its essence in the way it is told. Up close, it is mostly found lacking in its sagacious appeal, but by then the point has been made, and the argument won. Nobody enquires after a nine-day’s wonder; nobody forgets those nine days either.

The prince of tweets is, who else, but the crown prince of storytellers – the marvelous Oscar Wilde, and his quips are as addictive as Lucy in the sky with diamonds. If you get to know his epigrams while in school/college, they are sure to come back and haunt you like the memory of the girl with kaleidoscope eyes from time to time.

Sample this sparkler from his treasure trove – In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. Vintage Wilde, it is a show stopper of an epigram, the only catch being, after the show ends, when you look for it to take home - it is missing. But say this while you are having beer with your buddies in a proper context, you shall probably get the middle finger, and also a silent and grudging admiration for saying what is probably going on in their minds at the time.

Oscar Wilde came out with epigrams with the same fecundity as that of a ten-year-old shooting pebbles from a catapult on a summer afternoon. The only difference being the child had to stop when its stock of pebbles ran out. It is not for nothing, that he famously wrote, I can resist everything but temptation.

I could not resist the temptation of trying my hands at it, and what I came up with was at best a one line summary of the two stories that they were based on. One was the Beauty and the Beast, and my take was Beauty saw beast and became more beautiful. The other one was Romeo loved Juliet/ Romeo lost Juliet.

Neither of them is strictly an epigram, and the second one is appalling. Then why have I chosen this as the title of this post, you may ask. Epigrams, quotations, lyrics, or anything that you remember are enriched with the years that pass by while they are sitting in your minds, and when they stand up, they become imposing by the virtue of association. Memory is a time machine; you get back to the beginning in a trice.

And no matter how much razor-sharp your memory is, you are bound to have forgotten something of the actual and got it replaced by a reminiscence of a latter day. When the mind, and the memory do a tango together, you sit back and enjoy. My riff on the Shakespeare classic represents to me the electrifying times when I was getting acquainted with epigrams and other facets of literature. It was a moment of celebration, and the title is a reflection of that festival of youth, that festival of first love – an ode to all Remembrance of things past.

Oscar Wilde almost always had the last word, but witdom is not exclusive, and nobody can win them all. Once while appreciating the aphorism of the painter Whistler (Yes, the same artist whose celebrated work Whistler’s Mother, Rowan Atkinson vandalized in Mr Bean) at his table, Wilde said, I wish I had said that. Whistler replied famously, You will, Oscar, You will.

Wilde died in 1900, and even a century later his epigrams are top of the charts. Some of them are :-Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes, There is only one thing in the world worse than not being talked about, and that is not being talked about, Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught, The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius

If Oscar Wilde lived a life of the dandy, the French nobleman La Rouchefoucauld was in the thick of things in palace intrigues and had crossed the path of the authoritarian Cardinal Richlieu ( yes, the same person who turns up as a mighty foe for The Three Musketeers in Dumas’ eponymous novel) more than once. He witnessed loss of fortune, regained it and earned the respect of the literary world with his Maxims, his observations on mankind.

Laced with wit, and backed by first hand experiences of the ups and downs  of life, Rouchefoucauld’s wisdom is sought and quoted even today. A handful of them are :-In love there is always one who  loves, and one who is loved, How can you expect another to keep a secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?, We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves,It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves, Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors, Few things are impracticable in themselves; and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail to succeed

Romeo loved Juliet/Romeo lost Julie is not an epigram at all. But if you want to head a piece on the love of something that was mindblowing while it lasted then there are few things on earth as apt for it as the careergraph of Romeo.

He loved Juliet, and he lost her, you see?

N.B. Lucy in the sky with diamonds is a Beatles song on the effect a particular mood enhancer which can make one visualize Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Here is the lyric:

Picture yourself in a boat on a river,
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly;
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

Cellophane flowers of yellow and green
Towering over your head;
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes,
And she’s gone.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds!
Lucy in the sky with diamonds!
Lucy in the sky with diamonds!

Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain,
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies.
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers
That grow so incredible high.

Newspaper taxis appear on the shore,
Waiting to take you away.
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds,
And you’re gone.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds!
Lucy in the sky with diamonds!
Lucy in the sky with diamonds!

Picture yourself on a train in a station,
With plasticine porters with looking-glass ties.
Suddenly, someone is there at the turnstile:
The girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds!
Lucy in the sky with diamonds!
Lucy in the sky with diamonds!

India’s Most Wanted

He spooked the living daylights out of leading ladies for decades and almost brought the heroes to their knees before being customarily vanquished. He fine-tuned the enemy of the people act to such perfection, that people desisted from naming their off springs after him for a long time. For six decades and for over 400 films he remained India’s most 'wanted', even when his on screen characters stopped being on the wrong side of the law.

Pran was a star actor-a powerhouse performer-an artist who crossed generations and touched the borders of innumerable lives.

If the mass wanted to watch him in over 400 plus screen appearances, then he must have been doing something right and was lucky at the same time. But he also risked getting stereotyped (which he was to an extent) – it is not possible to not to recycle one’s tricks, if one is called upon to use them again and again. Pran, or Pransaheb as the Indian film industry rightly addresses him, escaped the contempt of familiarity due to his protean gifts. He would imbue the stock characters that he played with a tic, a mannerism, or a demeanor that would make them connect with the timeless.

Raka, the bandit from Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai was one such character. The menacing robber was afraid of the gallows and would occasionally loosen his collar as if it was getting too tight for him. The seemingly unconscious act, enacted with a naturalness that came from art and more of it - brings out the fact that though criminals may appear otherwise, they are mortally afraid of the punishment that they keep eluding.

Thakur Ramesh from Dil Diya Dard Liya, an Indianized adaptation of the dark classic Wuthering Heights is another example. In a scene or two, Pran conveyed the descent of a character into one’s personal hell with the felicity of a Japanese master of the haiku. The movie did not turn out well, but Pran’s presence in it is beyond reproach.

When you watch Kashmir Ki Kali, you realize how Pran had been trying combinations of several shades in his character portrayals for a long time so that his black acts do not become monotonous. A negative character may be a buffoon as well; there is no hard and fast rule that a villain has to be ramrod straight.

What could have been one of his best role ever because all the salient points of the character seem to be tailor-made for Pran’s on screen persona was Faria from The Count of Monte Cristo. The sage-like convict from the Dumas bestseller whose middle name was never-say-die, and who taught the ingenuous sailor Edmond Dantes the ways of the world, and finally transformed him to the Count of Monte Cristo so that he could go back to society and take his revenge had Pran written all over him.

For reasons unknown, the Indian film industry shied away from adapting Dumas, though the plot of his The Corsican Brothers, have been tweaked into several Indian blockbusters like Ram aur Shyam, Seeta Aur Geeta, Chalbaaz, Ghazab, Kishen Kanhaiya, etc.

Whether he played a jailor (Kaalia) or a crippled war veteran (Upkaar), a noble savage (Dharam Veer) or a tyrannical feudal lord (Madhumati) – Pran ensured that India would want to get spellbound by his magic once more.

He remains one of India’s most wanted forever.

 

 

 

 

Who’s who?

He had a one-track mind which made him a roaring success in his pursuits. Naturally gifted, his reputation as a sharpshooter became a legend, and he is among the all time greats. Yet, he is known to have suffered from performance-anxiety, and on the most important day of his life was numb with doubt. If not for his friend, who galvanized him to action with the best pep-talk ever in the history of the world, the man would have gone down and been remembered as a royal choker.

Suave, courteous, knowledgeable, and prodigiously talented – the only chink in his armor was a lack of killer-instinct. Perhaps, that’s why women found him irresistible, and old timers still recount his exploits with as much fervor as they talk about his derring-do. He eloped with his best friend’s sister.

Some say that he was the brawn, and the brains behind most of his feats belonged to his friend, who was almost his alter-ego. Like the MGR-Karunanidhi duo, they had a firm grip on the pulse of the moment. When bad times hit him, he had to spend years incognito, sometime disguised as a eunuch.

He came back from the cold, set back his setbacks, and lived a dream life. Only in the autumn of his years, his prowess faltered. Street thugs molested the consort of his best friend in his presence, and he had to digest the ignominy.

On judgment day, he was found to have suffered from the sin of pride, of feeling that he was the best.

Who is this man? Is he only Arjuna, the archer prince from Mahabharata? If you look at his trajectory, you find that he was good in his job, and yet required constant reminders that he could do it. He had a support system in his best friend, with whose sister he eloped. Reversal of fortune hit him like a Muhammad Ali punch, and remained 'emasculated' for some time. He regained what he had lost, and enjoyed the good life. At the end, he discovered that even his own country was No country for old men.

If we take away the gloss, it could be the story of every man - the man, who is brave and coward at the same time. Arjuna was skillful, but needed recognition from others to bolster his self-esteem. He was a champ, and on his day could easily stop the world; and yet suffered from performance-anxiety. Though he did not know it, he felt that he was the best. And, yes – he had a thing for his best friend’s sister.

Heroes are Hollywood versions of the common man, or common men are heroes without the fancy trappings.

Which side are you on? Who is who?

Rolling stone_Daddy’s girl

How do you solve a problem like Maria?

How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?

How do you find a word that means Maria?

A flibbertijibbet! A will-o’-the wisp!

                                                                               -The Sound of Music

 Well, yes! How do you solve a problem like Maria Faye Dunaway? How do you reconcile with the fact that she remains elusive, in a mental countdown of the acting legends, even when you are overwhelmed by her talent? Is it because, she may not seem to possess a ‘body of work’? But that’s not kosher, you know yourself very well. After all, she has more than one performance (and I am no thinking about The Netwok; it has an Oscar) to her credit, which makes you spellbound with the knowledge that madness is a country, just around the corner.

It is Faye, and Faye alone, who can make you want to put a step forward despite knowing that what shall ensue can only be mad, bad, and dangerous to know. And not only when you have just started, but also when you have been on the Mean Streets for quite some time. Again and again. If that is not greatness, then what is?

Bob Dylan’s trailblazing Like a Rolling Stone, 1965 asked How does it feel/To be on your own/With no direction home/Like a complete unknown/Like a rolling stone? The answer came two years later in the shape of one Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde, 1967. Faye Dunaway, not only blazed as the lawbreaker on the run; she created a mercurial chemistry with the magnetic but continent Clyde Barrow played by Warren Beatty – a liaison kindled by the fire of non consummation that makes an offer you can’t refuse.

Dunaway made you realize that a stone while it is rolling can only fall down, but during that free fall, it is unstoppable! Amorality, violence without a cause, complete disregard for society and its norms – Bonnie and Clyde were epitomes of everything that is a threat to life. Yet, Faye makes it bonnie while it lasts, almost to the very end and you have to stop yourself from marveling at their swinging out of control act.

Edna St Vincent Mallay wrote about a candle burning at both ends, and not going to last the night. But ah my friends/ and oh my foes/ it gives a lovely light. Bonnie Parker was such a character-a will-o’-the wisp! After you shake yourself away from the lure, if you want you can shake your head in exasperation and say, it’s Chinatown! But, you know, it won’t change a thing, it never has, and never will.

And nothing changed in Chinatown, 1974. Except the fact, that Faye could fall back on a decade long experience, and give the slowly getting mentally unhinged process a precision that is as visceral as a knife wound, and as fatal as a gun shot at point blank.

Evelyn Cross Mulwray, in Chinatown has a secret. She is at once the daughter of Noah Cross, the father figure to a community, and also the mother of his child. Faye Dunaway fights till the last moment to not to give in, to remain sane. But some fights are won, only because they are lost, and you have to let the blood drip drop by drop, and are not permitted to wince till the last.

And because one does not cry out, one has the appeal of an exotic. Silence is charming, most of the times, because it is covering something sinister. Even, if we sense it, we are conditioned to applaud, or even get enticed by what we feel is strength of character. We get turned on by an aberration and also relieved that somebody apart from us has also erred – it makes us human.

Dunaway’s portrayal of Evelyn is a wrist-slitter, a noted film writer describes her as a ‘broken orange doll’ and nothing could be more apt. It is acts like these that make one wonder, why did she have to do a cameo in Dunstan Checks In?

Perhaps, the answer is in the same lines of Dylan with which I opened Dunaway’s case. Art is To be on your own/With no direction home/Like a complete unknown/Like a rolling stone, and an artist can never know when the crest shall break, or form. All one can do is wait for the wave.

Faye Dunaway has not given up romancing life. Meanwhile, if you ever wonder how Chinatown may look like without her – then watch Navtej Singh’s extremely competent and adroitly Indianized Manorama Six Feet Under, 2007.

Hamlet, without the Prince of Denmark, may not be a bad idea, if it is written by somebody with the caliber of William Shakespeare. In this riveting drama, Navtej Singh, proves that he does not have to be Roman Polanski to pull it off. Of course, the movie does not have the Faye Dunaway character.

After all,

                                            Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

 

Meet Johnny Sokko

The flying robot was Johnny Sokko’s friend; JS was mine. Or so I thought in those days. At some point of time and for a while, a robo-buddy - or the idea of it, become as central to the existence of a child as that of a pair of jeans with that of a teenager, a pay cheque with an adult. And if the robot was as big as a dinosaur, possessed firepower like a commando, and listened to your command like Bruno the pup; then adults could frown as much as they wanted to because study time was getting frittered away, one would be perfectly content in gallivanting away and saving the world although one was likely to flunk the math test the day after.

It was sometime in the 80s when Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot was shown on Doordarshan, and everybody liked it. Even Kuber and Moumita, who topped the class alternately, and looked as if they would choke to death if somebody caught them enjoying anything other than textbooks and formulaes. Rumor had it, that they could create a robot on their own, if only they joined forces and shared know-how. We were careful not to let them know – after all rumor mongering was not a sign of enlightenment that comes from education, and on second thoughts what if they succeeded?

Johnny Sokko and his group’s main enemy was Emperor Guillotine, a super villain who would conjure extra-terrestrial baddies in episode after episode who would nearly exterminate the earth before being vanquished by the giant robot. The robo only responded to Johnny, and the first half of the episodes were a blur of devastations of various degrees, after which the robo would be called in, and we would start the cheer.

The robot was huge and had a pharaoh’s head dress. Why? Well, you see, only when you are young, you have that ability to take in the bigger picture and not get lost in insignificant details. The big picture started as soon as the android sprang to life with a call from Johnny in movements that reminded one of drills from a physical training class in school. And if I tell you, it never failed to get us going, you would know what kind of hold Johnny & co had on us those days.

The story line was simple. For over half-an-hour every week, the world would be on the brink of a disaster and you would have to fly in and save it. Because Emperor Guillotine was unpredictable – you never knew where his ugly henchmen would pop up, one week it would be on the high seas, and an ice-capped mountain top the next.

Much much later, Pranoy Roy would wow India with a weekly news capsule called The World This Week. If I am not mistaken, the burning desire to know who let the dogs out was instilled in us by the sci-fi fantasy serial from the land of the rising sun, years earlier. When I was growing up, Wren & Martin had an idiom for it – child is the father of…

Coming back to Johnny, we never missed his adventures, at least I did not. We did not talk much about him, we were yet to hit the age when the pleasure of saying that we did (something) would overtake the actual deed. Stoically we saved the world, week after week, and returned to class to accept laurels for our scholastic efforts, or get pulled up for the lack of it.

Unlike Star Trek, a few years later. We built the communicating device with two match boxes and an elastic band and skipped lunch to role-play the inter-galactic epic for months before parents and teachers wised up and forbid us from passing food. After that most of us finished tiffin in the period before recess, and rushed out to play as soon as the bell rang. If you want to make something popular, ban it.

Yes, poor Sachin was going through a phase when he wanted to be accepted, to fit in, and would willingly play the ‘monster’ everyday till his patience ran out. I don’t remember much of it except that he put his foot down one day, and we acquiesced rather sheepishly. Kids do have a natural affinity for cruelty as William Golding points out in Lord of the Flies; they also can make out what’s right from wrong. Borrowing Heath Ledger’s words from The Dark Knight, the sense of right and wrong like madness is similar to gravity. All it requires is a little push…

But Johnny was different. Thankfully, he came in the evenings, and I did not have to bunk school. Several years down the line, with one year to go before the board, I would discover an afternoon serial with Swaroop Swampat in it, and I would never be in school on Thursdays. (In a different context, I would come to know that she was married to Paresh Rawal, and for a while I would know what it is to live with hope. And then, when I would get acquainted with Mr Rawal’s body of work, I would know how hopeless hope is…)

Johnny was special because I could be him, and so could Kuber, Moumita, and Sachin. I met him when the world was young and possibilities endless. We were all kings in the world of kingdoms (amra sabai raja amader ei rajar rajotte).  Maybe that’s why he has remained a friend forever.