Raijei Bhaoriya: People are the Players

A Song by Bhupen Hazarika


People are the players
And the world is a stage.
What role do you want to play?
Come, there's no time to lose.


No need for a rehearsal
No need for costumes.
Just come out naked.
Tie your own towels 
Around your hungry bellies
And come out.
That's the way
To make a colourful play.


It's time to ask the director,
How long will you cheat us
With the mask on your face
And your dramatic techniques.


No need for sweet dialogues;
Say it with your screams.
Fight the corrupt men
With your consciousness
And become worthy heroes.
That's the way
To make a colourful play.
What role do you want to play?
Come on! There's no time to lose!

Transient light

Bit by bit,

The dancing flames

Grow dim

As an evening lit up

By a million sparks

Comes to an end.

An evening

When a million homes

Came alive,

United

As one vast expanse

Of sparkling light

Under a cold, misty

Rumbling November sky.

Now, as the dying flame

Sucks dry every pore

Of the darkening lamp,

Time surrounds me

And swallows me

Into it’s darkest depths,

Like a sparkling moment

Of transient light.

Monor batoribur: Tidings of my heart

A song by Jayanta Hazarika. This is how I would sing it in English:


If the tidings of my heart

Fall like the petals of a flower

And my silent poems

Come alive in new forms,

Would you come flooding in

With the colours of Phagoon*

And songs of the monsoon?


The sun sets
On the dreamy blue horizon;
The evening falls
On the wings of the stork;
O what a picture it paints!


Would you wipe out
The vast darkness
Of the night sky? 

If the tidings of my heart
Fall like the petals of a flower
And my silent poems
Come alive in new forms....

*I prefer to keep the word Phagoon here, even if it can perhaps be translated as March or spring, because it reminds me of Holi, the festival of colours. And of course, it rhymes with monsoon.

Guwahatik Nomoskar

The song of the Assamese common man, sung by Dost Habibur Rahman in the 1970s. I have always been delighted by this song about a villager who visits Guwahati, the confusing, corrupt, muddy, dusty, mosquito-infested capital city of Assam. I remember hearing it for the first time on the radio when I was a child, and I remember going breathless with laughter. After that, this song has been a fleeting thing which I would hear once in a blue moon, always on the radio, till a person named Himjyoti Talukdar uploaded it on Facebook and Youtube for everyone to hear at leisure. Although I'm afraid that the old world delight of being taken by surprise with this song playing on the radio has gone away, I have to admit that I'm grateful to him for making it possible for me to hear it so far away from home in Delhi. And I also have to admit that this song might soon be rarely played, or not at all, by the radio stations of Assam.


Rahman sings the song in the Kamrupiya dialect, and the song has a typically perky, funny folk tune. Each and every line in this song is so hilarious! And in the midst of that humour, he manages to touch so many socio-economic problems in the state. I wish I could translate it right now, but I know that this seemingly simple song is extremely difficult to translate. The accent and dialect, along with region specific idioms, and the situational humour make it practically untranslatable. So, I'll compensate by translating two lines that made me chuckle this time I heard it, but I'll have to tell you the story in order quote those lines. So here goes:

One day, our common man sits under a tree and wonders where his life is going, why his life is so sad. He wonders how people get to live in buildings in the city, while they can't even build a small house in the village. The next morning, he sets off to the railway station before anyone wakes up at home. There, he decides that Guwahati is the best place to go, because that is where he will be able to make some money.

When our common man gets down at Guwahati Railway Station, it begins to rain, and the water flows all over the roads and houses. After the rains, the sun comes up and dries the water and mud. The mud promptly turns into dust, which flies around and drastically reduces visibility. When the dust clears, our man sees people walking down narrow lanes and sings,

Nau men baat manuh soilsi, soisli motar bohu, 

Tatei dekhu baat gilanot dangar dangar khohu.

(So many people , so many cars 

are running on such tiny lanes,

And there are such big blisters on those lanes.)

These are probably my favourite lines now because of the current deplorable state of the roads in Assam (usually a seasonal problem), what with the Brahmaputra rising and the roads getting battered with heavy rains and heavier vehicles, and the government's famous inefficiency at repairing the damage. And I know that each time I hear the song, a new line will catch my attention, depending on what concerns me about Assam at that point of time. 


To continue with the song, our man goes through a lot of misadventures: 

He mistakes the High Court for Kamakhya temple and prays to Kamakhya Devi; he goes to the marketplace and sees 'foreigners' monopolizing the market; he sees people indulging in adulteration, smuggling with impunity; he sees 'beggar-like' people lining up at the ration stores where they are given half a kilo of rice each for a week, and he wonders how they manage with that; when evening comes, he sleeps in some verandah and is woken up in the middle of the night by the crowing of a cock and the buzzing of mosquitoes.... 

Finally, at dawn, he decides that his village is much cleaner (in all senses) than Guwahati and bids goodbye to the city, hence the name of the song: 'Guwahatik Nomoskar!' 


It's a wonderful song, so here's the Youtube link to it:

Set me free

There’s anger in the wind today

Out there, the world is red with rage

And yet an icy numbness kills
Each remnant of my dying soul

‘cause where I live, there’s emptiness

Bricked up with walls of silences


Break this wall of silences

And let this anger fall on me

Twist my heart, break my soul

Let this anger set me free


Trees are lashing at the skies

The skies are crying angry tears

But not a teardrop in my eye

Reveals my aching soul within

‘cause where I live, there’s emptiness

Bricked up with walls of silences


Break this wall of silences

And let this sorrow rain on me

Burn my eyes with salty tears

Let this sorrow set me free

Rise...

Gonna rise up
Burning black holes in dark memories
Gonna rise up
Turning mistakes into gold...

Bird Thongchai - Bahn Kaung Row (Our Home)

Another beautiful song by Phi Bird, about home, about a mother's smile...."There's no smile as sweet and warm as a mother's smile..."

Bird Thongchai...my first crush...

Yesterday, I remembered my first crush. Me and my friend were having a conversation about good looking Irish men like Aidan Quinn and Cillian Murphy: men with beautiful watery blue eyes....Yes, much as we protest against racial stereotypes and commodification of women, we ourselves engage in the crime of commodifying men, our evaluations laden with thousands of racial considerations. But we can't help it. We are self-confessed connoisseurs of beauty in all forms. So we unabashedly went on to a discussion on how children of mixed parentage would look, you know, like children of Irish and Asian parentage; when an image and a voice--a twenty year old memory--floated into my mind: Thongchai 'Bird' McIntyre, 'Bird Thongchai', or simply, 'Phi Bird,' the Thai singer and actor with a sweet and powerful husky voice, a charismatic performer, capable of singeing a thousand hearts with his disarming smile and twinkling eyes. Born to a Thai mother and an Irish father, he did not have typically Irish features, but boy, he was definitely a heart-breaker!

This was something like twenty years ago, when my father had gone with us to Bangkok on deputation for three years. I was nine years old when I went there and almost thirteen when I came back. Those three odd years there were the most exciting in my life, as it always is, for a pre-teen, who is just beginning to open her eyes to the beauty all around her. And then there was Phi Bird, the craze of Thailand, who was in his early thirties, and had just tasted sweet success and fame. I think it was 1990, when he sang "Boomerang," a cheerful song that swept the nation. There was 'Bird' fever all around, and I was one of the afflicted ones. The song went: "I will always come back to you, because I am a boomerang!" Then there was the wonderful "Boomerang Man Concert" with the live-wire Bird on stage, and fans swooning all around him, and then, videos of the Boomerang concert playing in every store you entered. He was a phenomenon. Here is a clip of the music video:





Although I can speak very little Thai and have forgotten most of it by now, I still remember each and every word in that song, and I don't think I will ever forget, even if I try. I had fallen in love. I followed his every move. There was this serial he used to act in, called "Koo Kam," in which he acted as this intense Japanese soldier in the second World War, who was in love with a Thai girl. And even if there were no subtitles, and I could only understand the expressions on the faces of the actors, I used to sit and watch it every afternoon and weep salty tears because Phi Bird was so torn apart by the conflict between love and war!


I was so much in love with Phi Bird that I developed a crush in school, on a boy who looked a bit like him. As my crappy luck would have it, that boy broke my heart by not caring two hoots about me, but that was alright, because I still had my Phi Bird to fall back upon.


Then we moved back to India, and I shut out all memories of Thailand in my enthusiasm to adjust to life in a new school, in an attempt to make new friends with new people. I went through all the trouble and adventure a child goes through in a life that is full of unstable circumstances. Those three years in Thailand were the longest time we had ever spent in any city. Otherwise, our life was all about packing and moving to a new place almost every year. Not that I didn't love the variety in my life, but sometimes, the constant moving and adjusting got to me.


But no more of that whining about "I had a difficult childhood." I'm sure it was not all that bad. As time went by, I began to appreciate beauty back home with the same fervour that I had for Phi Bird, moving on to home-grown stars and then to classmates and friends who did not necessarily look like my star crushes. In other words, I grew up.


And then yesterday, I was suddenly flown back on a trip to the past. I searched the net for any remnants of old memories and found two clips of "Boomerang." One being the old music video I used to love, in which Phi Bird was thirty two years old, and a new one in which he is much older, but sexier. It took me some time to get used to the sexy avatar of the cute man I used to know, but I like him both ways now. My friend, of course, prefers the new, cooler video in which Phi Bird dances with his hands in his pockets and shoots smouldering looks at the camera:




In my enthusiasm to catch up with the past, I found out that Phi Bird became even more successful after we left Thailand and became the first Thai singer to get an MTV award. I also found a newer song of his that I really like, "Mee Tae Kid Teung," a sad song about lost love, which goes, "I keep thinking of you." I just love the emotions in his voice and his new maturity. I also love the beautiful blending of Thai cadences with western music. I think, for a Thai singer who uses western styles, this blending is inevitable because Thai is essentially a tonal language. This song is so typically Thai in tone, and yet so accessible:

Maybe I'm making too much of a silly little star crush. I don't know what it is about star crushes, why they sometimes seem more tangible than the reality around you. This one, at least, is significant because it is a sweet childhood memory, and I thank my friend for bringing it back to me.

I don't want to know

Is that Orion?
Smiling down at me

As I sit sighing

Into the dark night?

Or is it just me reading signs

Where none exist?
I don't want to know.

And the other day,

Did the sun really wink at me,

Peeping out of cottony clouds

As I smiled up at the sky?

Or was it just my impish mind

Pulling a prank on me?
I really don't want to know.

Just for once,

Leave me alone

With tales I have woven

Out of nothingness.

Just once, this once,

I don’t want to know.

Waiting.

Waiting.
I am waiting
For the sun to rise.

The world is asleep.
And here I am
Walking.
To and fro.
To and fro.

Waiting.
For the sun to rise.
For life to take over
And set me free.

Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen

The song I want to hear on my deathbed. Sums up life most beautifully.
"Listen love, love is not some kind of victory march,
No it's cold, and it's a very broken Hallelujah!"

Oasis

There is sunshine in my eyes,

There is music in my soul,

And I have nothing more to ask for.

Today, I have found an oasis

In the heart of a burning desert.


I close my eyes and wonder,
Will the music fade away?
But does that really matter so much?
'cause today, I have found an oasis
In the heart of a burning desert.


I will not think
Of yesterday or tomorrow.
Does it really matter at all?
Today, I will soak it all in,
With every pore of my being.
Here, in the oasis that lies
In the heart of a burning desert.

Untitled

The long lost music

Danced back into my life

Softly, but surely.

My cocoon of silence peeled open

In a single moment of beauty.

A bad, bad haiku written with a smile!

Strumming a guitar

Is quite like painting a wall!

Swish swish, I strum away!

Arirang by Jang Sa Ik:

The most beautiful folk song I've ever heard.



I first heard this song as a kid, in the voice of one of my father's Korean students in a Postal Training Institute in Bangkok. It has stayed in my memory ever since. It is a song that can move you even when the most ordinary singer sings it. And in the voice of Jang Sa Ik, it's heavenly. I love the expressions on his face when he sings. This man is so shy when he is even a few feet away from the mike, but when he starts singing, he just transforms into this inspired being with music flowing through every vein. The song goes something like this (not my translation):

Arirang, Arirang, Arariyo... 

I am crossing over Arirang Pass. 

The one who abandoned me  

Will not walk even ten li before their feet hurt.  

Just as there are many stars in the clear sky,  

There are also many dreams in our heart.  

There, over there that mountain is Baekdu Mountain,   

Where, even in the middle of winter days, flowers bloom.

I think Jang Sa Ik does not sing these exact lyrics, he improvises a lot, but this is a translation of the lyrics which usually go with the melody.

Antaheen-Amar Bhindeshi Tara

Ever since a friend introduced me to this song, I have been in love with it. A beautiful song by Chandrabindu. The film seems to be good too.

Edited 17th May 2013:

I just discovered this version. It's even more beautiful.

sorrow

sparkling golden dust

came swirling down to settle

upon my sunny doorstep

and salty tears pricked my eyes

as the darkness loomed within

Not tonight.

No, I can't sleep.
Not tonight.
Not when the sweet silence
Brushes against my ears
Like a soft breeze,
Not when my droopy eyes
Fill my lazy mind
With hazy waking dreams.
No, I can't sleep.
No, not tonight.

thistledown

flighty thistledown

floating across the meadow

flirting with the breeze


-- a construction of the 'Self'  ;-)

Abu...

One of the things I learned from my grandma was how to find pleasure in the blandest fare that life has to offer. And I don't mean this in a boring figurative way, but in fact, with regard to the most tangible, most sensuous aspect of life--food. Not that she did not give me that same wisdom at the figurative level: I did ultimately learn that every experience, whether sweet or bitter, had its own unique taste, and that even the most terrible moments deserved to be savoured because they were just as beautiful and ephemeral as the pleasant ones; but I'd rather talk about food here, because that was something my grandma savoured at a level almost bordering on spirituality.

When I was fourteen years old, my grandma decided that she wanted to live with her youngest son and moved in with us. That was the beginning of trouble for me. I was an obnoxious teenager, that too an only child, who was forced to submit to the authority of one more adult in her life. What was worse, I had to share my room with her! And she was a disciplinarian who thought I was the worst brought up kid in the world. She needed to feel that she had some say in the upbringing of the only child in the house she was a part of, and also wanted to mould me into a person of her liking. And I had a fierce resistance to this kind of manipulation, along with a feeling of rejection and an aching desire for unconditional approval. Those were turbulent times--shouting matches, slamming of doors, bouts of crying--I just hated her.

But I am digressing here. I was going to talk about food, right? Well, when she first came, I thought my grandma was the most boring person in the world. And she ate the most boring kind of food. Poor thing. Bland boiled food for her delicate stomach and high blood pressure. I used to pity her, with silent pleasure, of course (I was such a jerk). Mealtimes were the only part of the day when I enjoyed the sweet pleasure of revenge. But as days went by, I began to feel that her food looked tastier than mine. She had a way of mixing the food on her plate that made the pure white rice and the fresh green vegetables of all shades look like a work of art, and a way of rolling that mixture in her mouth which made that austere morsel look like the food of the gods. Soon, the food on my own plate became progressively unattractive and I found myself eying her food during every meal till one day, she offered me some of it. It wasn't bad at all. Every meal after that day was topped by one huge morsel of her food as the last bite.


That was the thawing of the ice. We became great friends after that and all the shouting matches proved to be the building blocks of a most beautiful relationship. Ultimately, I think I became the only grandchild of hers who was allowed to scream at her, storm out of the room and then come back an hour later to lie by her side while she gently stroked my hair. And I have abused that privilege so many times! It's needless to say how much I miss her now.

Now that she is gone, I cook boiled food for myself when I am in the mood sometimes, while my poor exasperated friends attribute my bizarre taste to an obsession with healthy food habits. I have learned that the taste of food lies in the art of eating (very mundane wisdom, but wisdom nevertheless), and I have also learned how to make that heavenly mixture she used to make on her plate,  but I still can't get rid of the nagging feeling that the mixture on her plate was far far tastier than mine.

haiku

prejudiced darts

missed their target today-

-the loser won.

Five Hundred Miles

...But I would walk five hundred miles
And I would five hundred more
Just to be the man
Who walks a thousand miles
To fall down at your door.
                                     The Proclaimers.
The Scottish 'national anthem'. The ultimate 'wooing song', as me and my friends would say. Embarrassingly sentimental, stereotypical, conventional and what not, but lovely. Why is it that in spite of all feminist pretensions, in spite of being able to fend for ourselves, having insisted on not being put up on a pedestal and insisted on paying bills on equal terms, this song which says, "when the money comes in for the work I do, I'll pass almost every penny on to you," does not come across as offensive? Is it just because of the catchy tune of the song? Is it just because of these two cute, heavily bespectacled Scottish twin brothers bouncing up and down and belting out this number with so must gusto? Or is it out of nostalgia for old codes of love? Or because certain aspects of conventional love are actually still beautiful?
What is it that makes the cartoon-like image of this man lying on your doorstep with worn out shoes, grimy face and tongue hanging out, (in other words, half dead) so so endearing? What?

'Amen'

From "LiIies of the Field".
I remember this song because my poor father once tried to hum Sidney Poitier/Jester Hairston's part but got the timing completely wrong, and finally exclaimed, "Arre baap re, this is a difficult song!"

from Dr Zhivago: the joy of writing

     After two or three stanzas and several images by which he was himself astonished, his work took possession of him and he experienced the approach of inspiration. At such moments the correlation of the forces controlling the artist is, as it were, stood on its head. The ascendancy is no longer with the artist or the state of mind he is trying to express, but with language, his instrument of expression. Language, the home and dwelling of beauty and meaning, itself begins to think and speak for man and turns wholly into music, not in the sense of outward, audible sounds but by virtue of the power and momentum of its outward flow. Then, like the current of a mighty river polishing stones and turning wheels by its very movement, the flow of speech creates in passing, by the force of its own laws, rhyme and rhythm and countless other forms and formations, still more important and until now undiscovered, unconsidered and unnamed.

     At such moments Yury felt that the main part of his work was not being done by him but by something which was above him and controlling him: the thought and poetry of the world as it was at that moment and as it would be in the future. He was controlled by the next step it was to take in the order of its historical development; and he felt himself to be only the pretext and the pivot setting it in motion.

     This feeling relieved him for a time of self-reproach, of dissatisfaction with himself, of the sense of his nothingness....