the way music used to make me feel

I came across this tweet a few days back, which is like one of those we say “Yes!” to, someone had put into words something we are also feeling. I was thinking about this line yesterday as well.

We lose a lot as we get older, a bunch of habits and moods and proclivities, but the one thing I truly mourn is the way music used to make me feel.

https://x.com/_sairamkrishnan/status/1822639043206598836

I was looking for something to listen to in the morning and nothing fit the mood. Spotify showed a new recommended list as “for the baddies”, don’t know what it meant, but the music felt nonsensical. Daylist didn’t excite, Discover Weekly the same. After some time, the line “Uth meri jaan” somehow came to mind, not sure how as I hadn’t listened to this song for years. I was trying to deconstruct the reason why this came up now. I suspect if it was triggered by the radio ad I heard yesterday about Sonu Nigam coming to Kerala for a concert.

I used to listen to songs from the movie Tamanna non stop years back and this song was a favorite. For the first time, went into a rabbit hole about the lyricist. It is written by Kaifi Azmi, father of Shabana Azmi. He seems to have taken a path towards Communism and worked with progressive groups. This song is written as a poem as far back as 1950 - surprising to see the advanced thought even at that time, it must be as the country just came out of colonial rule as a young independent nation.

TAMANNA (1997)
music: Anu Malik
Kaifi saab’s poem Aurat with the famous lines Uth meri jaan… mere saath hi chalna hai tujhe was written in the early ’50s, supposedly for wife Shaukatji (Azmi). But at a wider level it expresses Kaifi saab’s progressive thought. The mood during Independence was that of sidelining love for the national cause. But Kaifi saab’s Aurat urged the woman to walk along with the man. Ghar ki ladai ho ya mulk ki – his was a contemporary take on the woman. The same poem was sung by Sonu Nigam in Mahesh Bhatt’s Tamanna. My Phataka guddi (Highway) has the similar sentiment of revering the strength of a woman.

https://www.filmfare.com/features/kaifiyat-9678-3.html

It led me further to read the original poem, Aurat (Woman). I hadn’t understood the meaning of some of the urdu words, so the English translation helped. It is just beautiful.

Life is in struggle, not in the restraint of patience
The blood of pulsating life is not in trembling tears
Fragrance lies in free-flight, not in the tresses, of hair
There is another Paradise which is not by the side of men
On its free pathways too you have yet to pirouette
Get up, my love, you have to walk with me

What if we don’t discover anything in the new? There is a wealth still to be rediscovered in the old, to be understood anew. Like the movies, books and movies of the past which we may have watched, read or heard, but now we are not the same and maybe there is more meaning to be absorbed from it and now we are ready for it.