Disclaimer: I might sound like an old 80 year old aunty, so you may ignore this post if you find it boring...
My dad has a thing for old songs, which is why he insisted on keeping a purana radio with him just to listen to old hindi songs on vividh bharati early in the morning. He passed on his love for old music to me and even I am as hooked to Vividh Bharati as him. Every morning I wake up to the lovely old hindi songs with no interruptions from irritating RJs and boring advertisements. Yesterday I heard a beautiful song called - Tadbir se bigadhi huvi takdir bana le. It's one of my favorite songs but I could relate to the lyrics only when I heard it yesterday and that's when I knew that the song was written by the great Sahir Ludhianvi. Till date, it was a Geeta Dutt song for me, I never made an effort to know the name of the lyricist. Later in the day, I started hunting for more of his songs and I was hooked to this genius. His lyrics were so pure. His poetry was so simple, yet so deep. Almost all of his lyrics had an underlying social message. I started reading about him and that's when I came across his background. Sahir saab and his contemporaries have gone through a lot in their life, which is often reflected in their lyrics.They have seen the freedom struggle, the world war, independence, partition, shaky government, India - China war, India - Pakistan war, emergency and what not. There was optimism, anger, passion and all those emotions in their lyrics. Their lyrics were progressive and gave you hopes. No wonder my dad is still hooked to these songs and hates it when a song like 'aaj blue hai pani pani pani pani' is played outside :).
Cut to the present times where music and lyrics are pure thrash. In 21st century, we have songs like 'ab karoonga tere saath, gandi baat' to which kids as young as 3 year old dance. Except for the awesome Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, Piyush Mishra, Prasoon Joshi and Amitabh Bhattacharya, I can't think of any lyricist who writes good poetry anymore. None of the lyrics make you think, motivate you or lift your spirit. There is no 'woh subah kabhi toh aayegi' to give you solace when you find darkness looming around you, there is no 'kuch toh log kahenge, logon ka kaam hai kehna' to help you ignore the cynical society, and no we don't have a 'tadbir se bigadhi huvi takdir bana le' to challenge us in life. This doesn't mean that we do not have good lyrics now, but he bad lyrics outnumber the good ones.
Let's lead a lyrical life...
Movies and songs are reflection of what is happening in the society. So the movies in 50s and 60s were focused on patriotism and social problems, while the 70s movies focused on youth anger (more due to emergency, wars and unemployment). There was a sudden degradation in the quality of movies and songs after 80s. I wonder if it is it because we are not challenged? Is it because we live a comparatively easier life than our parents? Of course we have also seen the ghastly terror attacks, recession but we seem to be less affected than the older generation. We have not gone through major setbacks in life, the reason why we give up so easily on relationships, jobs and even life! We lack the fighting spirit. We seem to live in a state of inertia, which is why movies or lyrics no longer have any depth or significance. Our movies do not have anything to refer to, so our film makers have to resort to making lame biographies of stalwarts or remakes of old gems, and not so funny so-called sex comedy movies. I'm not saying that we need to have instability in the society to become creative. But let's make it creative in our own way. Let's get out of our comfort zone and challenge ourselves. After all, our life is not all about paying EMIs and running the rat race. Make your life such that you can write a biography about yourself. Experience all types of challenges so that you can write a poem about your life :).
Go, lead a lyrical life!!!
My dad has a thing for old songs, which is why he insisted on keeping a purana radio with him just to listen to old hindi songs on vividh bharati early in the morning. He passed on his love for old music to me and even I am as hooked to Vividh Bharati as him. Every morning I wake up to the lovely old hindi songs with no interruptions from irritating RJs and boring advertisements. Yesterday I heard a beautiful song called - Tadbir se bigadhi huvi takdir bana le. It's one of my favorite songs but I could relate to the lyrics only when I heard it yesterday and that's when I knew that the song was written by the great Sahir Ludhianvi. Till date, it was a Geeta Dutt song for me, I never made an effort to know the name of the lyricist. Later in the day, I started hunting for more of his songs and I was hooked to this genius. His lyrics were so pure. His poetry was so simple, yet so deep. Almost all of his lyrics had an underlying social message. I started reading about him and that's when I came across his background. Sahir saab and his contemporaries have gone through a lot in their life, which is often reflected in their lyrics.They have seen the freedom struggle, the world war, independence, partition, shaky government, India - China war, India - Pakistan war, emergency and what not. There was optimism, anger, passion and all those emotions in their lyrics. Their lyrics were progressive and gave you hopes. No wonder my dad is still hooked to these songs and hates it when a song like 'aaj blue hai pani pani pani pani' is played outside :).
Cut to the present times where music and lyrics are pure thrash. In 21st century, we have songs like 'ab karoonga tere saath, gandi baat' to which kids as young as 3 year old dance. Except for the awesome Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, Piyush Mishra, Prasoon Joshi and Amitabh Bhattacharya, I can't think of any lyricist who writes good poetry anymore. None of the lyrics make you think, motivate you or lift your spirit. There is no 'woh subah kabhi toh aayegi' to give you solace when you find darkness looming around you, there is no 'kuch toh log kahenge, logon ka kaam hai kehna' to help you ignore the cynical society, and no we don't have a 'tadbir se bigadhi huvi takdir bana le' to challenge us in life. This doesn't mean that we do not have good lyrics now, but he bad lyrics outnumber the good ones.
Let's lead a lyrical life...
Movies and songs are reflection of what is happening in the society. So the movies in 50s and 60s were focused on patriotism and social problems, while the 70s movies focused on youth anger (more due to emergency, wars and unemployment). There was a sudden degradation in the quality of movies and songs after 80s. I wonder if it is it because we are not challenged? Is it because we live a comparatively easier life than our parents? Of course we have also seen the ghastly terror attacks, recession but we seem to be less affected than the older generation. We have not gone through major setbacks in life, the reason why we give up so easily on relationships, jobs and even life! We lack the fighting spirit. We seem to live in a state of inertia, which is why movies or lyrics no longer have any depth or significance. Our movies do not have anything to refer to, so our film makers have to resort to making lame biographies of stalwarts or remakes of old gems, and not so funny so-called sex comedy movies. I'm not saying that we need to have instability in the society to become creative. But let's make it creative in our own way. Let's get out of our comfort zone and challenge ourselves. After all, our life is not all about paying EMIs and running the rat race. Make your life such that you can write a biography about yourself. Experience all types of challenges so that you can write a poem about your life :).
Go, lead a lyrical life!!!
