Sometime back, I watched the movie ‘Gulaal’. Quite an intriguing and arrogant movie, I must say. The Take it or leave it approach of the moviemaker had an impact. Either you would love the movie or you would find it worth running away from the theatre even before the interval.
The storyline and the nakedness in presentation of the ugly side of politics is quite catching. However what I liked the most was the songs. To be honest I did not like them when the movie was going on. But it certainly left something lurking in the back of my mind.
Back at homoe, I browsed to raaga website and listened to the songs and without delay, I was into it. That started search for the audio CD. Searching in 4-5 music stores went in vain. In a couple of shops, they did not even try to search – “Not available” was the readymade answer. I was not surprised as the songs were not advertised much, they were not even catchy for those who do not like poetry in its raw form . But those who love Hindi poetry would certainly find it to be a good collection – and you would not find many in Bangalore of that class.
Finally a friend of mine shipped the CD for me from Delhi – I was sure the CD woudl be available in Delhi. Couple of days later, the CD was lying in my hands and immeidately went into the CD plpayer of my Black beauty and the songs keep on flowing as my hands were busy on steering wheel. On a long drive to Pondicherry, I made Prof Pankaj Gupta and his family listen to them song and also made them admire the satire in ‘Rana ji ….’. In fact then Prof’s wife told that she had listened to the song partly somewhere and was searching for the album name. Apparently she had liked the song beforehand only.
Personally my favorite is ‘Yara Maula……….’ the song whch retells the saga of student politics and the whirlpool students get into and end up in helplessness and thereby being a part ofthe system. just a couple of lines “Hum Nahin jaante ye bhi kyun kiya – kyunki unki to farmayeesh yahi thi”
Whereas ‘Yara Maula………..’ depicted the sad state of student politics, ‘Ranaji…’ presented a wonderful satire on things ranging from commercialization to international politics, targetting mostly the policies of US. ‘door desh ke tower men ghus jaye airoplane’ sets up the stage, followed by “sare aam iraq men jaakar chhip gaye Uncle Sam” to ” ………bina baat Afganistan ka baj gaya bhaiya band”. At the same time another song “Ek waqat ki baat batayen….” portrayes the agony of common man at the somnabulist state of the indifferent society has been picturized quite well.
Another osng that i like a lot is “Aarambh hai prachand…”. This certainly is a master piece by Piyush Mishra. A class of poetry unparalleled in films, apart from the ones written by Gulzar. For a person who adores poetry and enjoys it written in tatsam (same as that (sanskrit)) and tadbhav (derived from Sanskrit) words, it is a marvel. Not only did Piyush Mishra used the might of his pen but his voice too had an immense impact. Not only is the word selection but the intensity they bring in is what you end up enjoying the most.
Overall I really enjoyed listening to all the songs of this movie and do hope that lyricists like Piyush Mishra comes up with more and more of such songs.
