Wo Tere Pyar Ka Gum

On a lazy Sunday morning I woke up to the strains of Asha Bhonsle singing “Chain se humko kabhi, aapne jeene na deeya, zeher bhi chaha agar peena to peene na deeya”. It was that kind of song, which gave the listener, pleasure even in pain. My thoughts went back Suri Uncle, a widower, who used to stay on the ground floor of the building I grew up in. Couple of pegs down, with Mukesh singing in the background, he used to say
“ Beta ye gaana gamgeen hai, is gaane main dard hai”.

“Chain se humko kabhi” was that kind of song. Has a lot of pain. Pain, in the way it was written, set to tune and sung. Not surprisingly Asha Bhonsle won her first Filmfare award for it. This entire thing set me thinking. Do people who write, compose or for that matter sing these “Dard bhare” songs or Urdu couplets for that matter, have unhappy lives?

For a very long time my favourite song used to be a song sung by Kishore Kumar, and written by Anand Bakshi. “ Jab dard nahi tha seene main, tab khaak mazza tha jeene main, ab ke shayad hum bhi roye saawan ke mahine main”. Kishore Kumar was not a trained singer but he was sung some of the most “dard bhare geet”, where you could feel the heartache in his voice.

The story goes that during the period, Madhubala, his second wife was dying, he had almost stopped singing. He returned to singing towards the time she was dying. S D Burman apparently convinced him to start singing again. And we got gems like “Kuch to log kahenge”, “Chingari” after that. Would these songs have sounded the same had he not gone through the experience he did?

My current favourite dard bhara number has been sung by Ataullah Khan and is called “Baddua” . The lyrics are very disturbing and go like this:

“ Tu bhi kissi ka pyar na paaye khuda kare,
tujhko tera naseeb rulaye, khuda kare,
Meri tarah tujhe bhi jawaani main gum mille,

tu dar badar ki thokre khaaye, khuda kare”

What would make a singer sing a song like this? Or sample the lyrics of another Ataullah Khan song (this one though has some hope)

“Usne shaadi ka joda pehan kar
sirf chooma tha mere kafan ko
Bas usi din se janat ki hoorein
Mujhko dulha banaye hue hain”

The story goes, I don’t know how true it is, his girl friend cheated on him and he killed her and went to prison. In prison he started writing such songs. Some kind prison wardens allowed him to record and distribute his music.

Or lets take the song I mention at the beginning, “Chain se humko kabhi”. Chandan Mitra has an interesting explanation for it in an article in the latest issue of the Outlook Magazine. “Chain se humko kabhi, perhaps O P Nayyar’s most melodious composition, rendered by Asha with abundant pathos, got the singer her first Filmfare award. But Asha had broken up with him just then and since the lyrics could well be related to their relationship, she refused to attend the function to collect the trophy”. Given this, it’s safe to assume that the song would have been composed well towards the end of their relationship.

As is the case above, the pain may not be immediate. Let’s take the case of Ahmed Faraz, who is deemed to be the greatest living Urdu poet. He’s written what is currently my favourite urdu couplet.

“ Zara si garde hawas,
dil par lazmi hai faraz,
Wo ishq hi kya,
Jo daman ko paak chahta hai”

(Translation : There has to be a little bit of lust, what is love if its absolutely pure. I guess the translation is not so much fun)

I remember reading an interview he gave to the Indian Express a few years back. He said, he had had a decent life, and the pain in his poetry was for a girl he had fallen in love with during his teenage days.

And if we are talking about “dard” one cannot leave out Sahir Ludhianvi, known for his obsessive love for the much married Punjabi writer, Amrita Pritam, best expressed in the following lines:

“ Tum agar mujhko na chaho to koi baat nahi,
tum kissi aur ko chahogi to mushkil hogi”.

Or the pathos he expressed when he wrote

“Kal koi mujhko yaad kare

kyun koi mujhko yaad kare

masruuf zamanaa mere liye

kyon waqt apna barabad kare”

But he had hope. Even when things did not work out the way he probably wanted them to be:

"Rishton ka roop badalta hai, buniyaden khatam nahin hotin

Khwabon aur umangon ki miyaaden khatam nahin hotin"

But not everybody seems to agree with the above theory. In a book titled “Death at the Doorstep” a compilation of obituaries written by Khushwant Singh over the years, there is an obituary on the famous poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Faiz is known to have written some very depressing urdu poetry on having loved and lost, when he had an extremely happy family life. He wrote a doggerel to explain this contradiction:

" Faiz Ahmed Faiz se badhkar koi shayar nahi

chaman main rah kar roz maare hai veerane ki gaand"

On Priyadarshan remakes and in defence of copy paste

People wonder why Priyadarshan keeps remaking Malayalam films (ones directed by him as well as others) in Hindi all the time and never really works on so called ‘original scripts’. In case you still haven’t heard this by now, his latest release “Chup Chup Ke” is a remake of, as usual a Malayalam movie, called Punjabi House. Well nothing new, though his last release “Malamaal Weekly” was a remake of an Irish movie called “Waking Ned Devine'”. But a remake none the less.

Back to the original question of why does Priayadarshan keep remaking his Malayalam movies in Hindi? Simple economics, conventional wisdom would tell us. In an industry where only sex and Shahrukh sell, Priyadarshan movies have done good business in the last few years.

His first film in Hindi, made in 1992, was the Jay Mehta (don’t ask me who he was?) starrer, Muskurahat, which was a remake of the Malayalam movie, Kilukalam. The movie did not do well. But the director repeated the formula again in 1993 and hit pay dirt with the Jackie Shroff starrer Gardish, which was a remake of the Malayalam movie Kireedam. And since then he has stuck to this formula (See table). Though at times the strategy has fallen flat on its face, as the director found out when movies like Doli Saja ke Rakhna and Saat Rang ke Sapne, flopped. But since the year 2000 when Hera Pheri (originally titled Raftaar) released and became a cult movie, the director has stuck to remaking Malayalam movies.

The economic reason though is a very conventional way of looking at the situation. The answer to this question I think is a little more complicated. As individuals involved in any creative field will tell you the temptation to fall back on one’s own past work is very high, especially if it has been received well. One it makes the job easy and more methodical, since you have already done it once before. The job now is about lifting an idea from one context and applying it in another.

If you take a look at the movies Priyadarshan has made in the last few years, there is a certain same ness in the making of it. Sample the actors he works with, Paresh Rawal, Rajpal Yadav, Om Puri, Shakti Kapur and gang find their way into most of his movies. I guess he’s the only director in Bollywood, who believes in giving his character actors meaty roles (Rajpal Yadav has more screen space in Chup Chup Ke than Shahid and Kareena put together). The sets are always done by Sabu Cyrill and all his laugh a minute riots usually have dialogues written by Neeraj Vora (who in fact has directed the sequel to Hera Pheri). So there is a certain method in the madness.

And the bigger reason is that the remake helps a good story reach a wider audience. Without the intention of hurting my Mallu friends (for the uninitiated, journalism is 50% Mallu and 50% Bong) I don’t have any immediate plans of learning Malayalam and I would have never had seen all these great comedy movies had Priyadarshan not remade them in Hindi.

And for people who have problems with his lack of originality, should take a look at the shameless copying of Hollywood movies the so called Bollywood greats indulge in. At least this man is bringing to us good original scripts written in India, so what if the language they were originally written in, is unknown to most of us. And most of the times the guy is copying his own work and in other cases gives due credit to the original source, unlike the way it is in Bollywood. Makes me wonder why are people complaining?

PS: As far as Chup Chup Ke is concerned, the first half is a laugh riot. The second half though has gone hopelessly wrong, with the director making the cardinal mistake of trying and failing to build in a story into the plot.

Another point, what’s Kareena Kapoor doing in the movie? Well, the only reason I see she is there is to prop up boy friend Shaheed Kapoor’s career. And of course she gets him in the end.

And finally, watch this movie for Rajpal Yadav…..he is awesome….and please walk out after the interval, or as a colleague suggested watch the first half two times over

Movie Name Original Malayalam Original Director
Muskurahat Kilukkam Priyadarshan
Gardish Kireedom Sibi Malayil
Virasat Thevar Magan Bharathan
Saat Rang Ke Sapne Thenmavin Kombathu Priyadarshan
Doli Saja Ke Rakhna Aniyathi Pravu Fazil
Hera Pheri Ramji Rao Speaking Siddique-Lal
Hungama Poochakkoru Mookkuthi Priyadarshan
Hulchul Godfather Siddique-Lal
Garam Masala Boeing Boeing Priyadarshan
Kyon Ki Thalavattom Priyadarshan
Chup Chup Ke Punjabi House Rafi-Mecartin

Source : http://varnachitram.com/2006/01/06/priyadarshan-and-bollywood/