If you're one of those who listens to music not because you need a rhythm to which you can tap your feet, but because it can be a ballast and mitigate the disturbing contrast between the external world and the realm within - whether it's a sunny spring day out and a stormy night inside, or a boisterous/frantic ambiance from which you'd like to retire to a quieter dimension - I have a question for you. Take a moment to consider the melodies that haunt you the most. Are they dominated by melancholy?
I ask you this out of curiosity stoked by an observation of the songs I know by heart and the ones that usually crowd my playlist. Mohammed Rafi's poignant rendition, Din Dhal Jaaye... from the movie Guide is a video I've looked up many times on YouTube, yet have never managed to view entirely, despite the desire to pit Dev Anand's visual portrayal of Raju's gloom against the musical backdrop that sways you into closing your eyes and losing yourself. Mukesh's Kabhi Kabhi... is a song whose every note is heavy with tragic recall and ends with the poet regretting the recalcitrance of his heart that keeps painting this scene from his past on the canvas of his present, leaving him in a temporal nescience that is jarringly ruptured by the head's recognition of the futility of his musings. Then, there is Nanna Jeeva Neenu... from Shankar Nag's Geetha, where the male protagonist voiced by SPB tries to insulate himself from the sorrow of the imminent death of his cancer-stricken beloved, determined to salve her angst at the rapid devastation of her not-so-long-ago lush landscape of existence. I could list more: SPB's high-pitched musical wail Neene Saakida Gini from Manasasarovara; Kishore Kumar's Chingari Koi Bhadke from Amar Prem, Yeh Joh Mohabbat Hai from Kati Patang, and Jab Dard Nahin Thaan Seene Mein from Anurodh; Da Ra Bendre's Nee Hinga Noda Byaada Nanna; Gopalakrishna Adiga's Yaava Mohana Murali Kareyithu; K S Narasimhaswamy's Ninna Premada Pariya...
After ruminating on this for a while, I concluded it must be because I fixate on the words making up the song. But, my inveterate need to query even the most trivial of matters ruined my evening coffee. Yeh Chaand Sa Roshan Chehra was wafting from my laptop's speakers and creating the storm in my coffee cup. Although I do not understand Hindi songs wholly due to the Urdu utterances, a holistic picture of what the songs convey, fortuitously, doesn't always evade me. This particular song in Rafi's voice is as romantic as they come, packed with a posse of punctuating parallels in hyperbole. The damsel's face is the resplendent moon, her tresses cast the shadow that is the cloak of dusk, the sky of the dawn has but the hue of her flushed cheeks... I do not know if you caught the drift, but all these exaggerations would be largely stale unless love has you enchanted. And all enchantments seem to last only a short while. Across languages, such comparisons have been used and reused when voicing love. Love may well be the white light that passes through the verbal prism to emerge as a palette of predictable bands of colors.
Melancholy, however, seems to be the dark energy that exists and makes its presence felt without ever being fully determined. Many a creative expression it wrings out seem to literally jump out of the dark, erecting an all new metaphor for one more invisible yet palpable strain of the gloom, a gloom that to sight appears an unteasable black shroud. Every cloud doesn't have a silver lining - that would be too uniform. Each cloud, despite the fact that it may rain in the same manner as the others, seems to cultivate a slender vulnerable sprig that is beyond the capacity of the spring. This sprig is special not because it departs from the monotony of the desert, but because it is markedly different from all the trees that have till now grown and firmly entrenched themselves in your memory, the wanton weeds vexing your wakefulness and the select seeds sown in that most prolific plot of your imagination.
Comments