Sunday, September 2, 2007

From the Sometimes Resident Engineer

Who is in residence today. A lazy Sunday morning when the wannabe golfer rose at the crack of dawn, went for his golf coaching, came home, and is still wide awake at ten-thirty a.m. Miracles will never cease.
I felt that he has been eyeing my blog space recently, so I'm being nice and letting him say a few words here. This is a copy of the letter he wrote to his IITK mail group, the redoubtable class-of-75 who will figure here occasionally. So here's sharing his no-longer-innocent query:

Sunday mornings is the time to laze around coupled with the chai cuppa. Top it with a mix of old Hindi songs and it can be nostalgic bliss.
The lyrics of some old Hindi songs have me totally baffled at times, poetic license is so intelligently used that one keeps wondering why the Censor Board stays totally silent on such matters. Probably it's the language issue, for example a Bengali friend of mine for years could not understand how a ladies petticoat could follow a man
every where the man went, a very poor adaptation of Mary's little lamb.
It was much later in life he learnt that "saaya" in Hindi meant shadow. The song I am referring to is one from the movie "Mera Saaya".
What baffled me for years as a kid was this one,
Do badan pyar ki aag mein jal gaye , ek chameli kai mundawe taley,
How could two bodies burst into flames,under the chameli shrub? I was obviously very innocent then (bhola bhaala)!
What takes the cake though is the Geeta Dutt song from the movie "Sahib Biwi aur Ghulam":
Na jao Saaiyan ---Chhudah kai Baiyan---- Main ro Padoongi-
"Machal Raha hai Suhag mera"----I don't know how you would explain to a ten year old, in whatever language you
choose, Hindi, English, Bangla, Punjabi, how does the Suhag Machlo?
Gyani log please help,
Abodh Balak

10 comments:

  1. SRE appears to pay very close attention to the lyrics. One song that had my ears red was Mora gora ang leile, mohe shaam rang dede. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sorry Sweetheart, you misheard the words- it is 'mora gora rang layi lei, mohey shyam rang deyi de':
    she wants to be dark enough to be camouflaged by the darkness so that she can meet her beloved. Quite innocuous.
    Though he often suffers from selective deafness, the SRE can be surprisingly accurate in some auditory matters:)

    ReplyDelete
  3. "My marital status is hopping up and down?"

    That makes it sound like a visit to the bathroom is imminent.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sue, both of us were ROTFL! Absolutely brilliant!

    ReplyDelete
  5. No, no. I meant "Kuch kho diya hai paike, kuch paa liya etc". Nevermind, I am a perv.

    ReplyDelete
  6. We didn't remember the rest of the song, Neha! Yes, it is quite suggestive. I guess several of our lyricists are past masters of the
    double-entendre. Now that the SRE has put this bug into our heads I think we will find that there are actually very few squeaky clean lyrics around:)

    ReplyDelete
  7. first time here and loved all your posts - great writing ! YOu will find me here regularly from now on :-)

    ReplyDelete
  8. 2B's mommy: Thank you and Welcome.

    ReplyDelete
  9. you guys need to check our rec.music.indian.misc - a group of folks who are absolutely gaga over hindi film songs (amond other music). the group is located among google groups.

    - s.b.

    ReplyDelete

Your comment will be visible after moderation.