Mixed legacy: The undivided business
During the recently concluded ICC Champions trophy, I inadvertently entered into a Facebook spat with a friend after he raised objectiontomypostcelebrating India’s victory over Pakistan in the league match between the two cricket greats. Apparently, he suspected that the exultation was made on unsporting grounds.
Feeling stung by his post casting aspersions on my motives over an innocuous post, I realised that unremitting ferocity of gunfire at the border and drumming up of war hysteria on popular mediums have blighted the discourse to an extent that every utterance can be anathema to doves and hawks alike.
Pronouncementsareperforce leashed to political labels as being liberal, patriotic, nationalist, fanatic, anti-nationalist — or in my case ultra-nationalist.
Today, it is safer to bet on Kaun Banega Crorepati than to decide who is a true nationalist and who isn’t. The episode causedsomebitternesswithmy friend who consequently took India’s loss to Pakistan in the finals as the collective redemption of all the votaries of peace.
Reflecting on the subject of estrangement and separation between those who used to be intimate, Momin Khan Momin’s verses ‘Wo jo hum mein tum mein qaraar tha, Tumhe yaad ho ke naa yaad ho …Kabhi hum bhi tum bhi the ashna,Tumhe yaad ho ke naa yaad ho’ echoed in my mind.
These simple lines so beautifully express the universal human urge to nostalgically remember old friends and lost friendships. Parting and estrangement, whether among peoples or individuals, leave behind a fractured trail of pain, loss and longing.
The sentiments attending the unfinished business of broken relationships have found rich resonance in songs and poetry. My mind began to hum with such verses and I discerned almost all these songs have a cross-border connection.
After Pakistani folk singer Reshma lent her mesmerisingly crusty voice to Akhian nu rehn de akhian de kol kol, chann pardesia bol bhanve na bol in Sindhi-laced Punjabi, melodious and immaculate Lata Mangeshkar slightly tweaked the opening lines in Akhion ko rehne de akhion ke paas paas and went on to cast her own stanzas in Hindi.
However, both the ladies poignantly dovetailed the mood of pain and desire in the wake of disaffection among lovers.
Reshma’s lilting lamentation in Lambi Judai found a bugle call albeit in her own voice on this side of the border in the Hindi movie Hero. The Punjabi folk song Chhalla (a ring given as a token of love) begins with the plaintive cry ‘Oh Javo ni koi
mod leaavo …’ as the beloved uses the absent lover’s keepsake to speak to him. Much before Gurdas Maan delivered the song with his trademark tambourine, Pakistan’s Inayat Ali Khan and many more rode the song to fame.
InthesamewayMittidabawa (a model of clay) which acts as a substitute for a dear departed is like a folk anthem for singers on both sides of the border. Warish Shah’s Heer has also remained an undivided legacy. A range of singers like Pakistani folk artiste SainZahoor,AsaSinghMastana and Jagjit Singh have added it to their repertoire.
In Amir Khusro’s Kaahe ko biyahi bides, the metaphor for the separation of the soul from God gets suffused in the departure of a girl from her father’s house. Whether it is rendered amidst the ringing timbre of claps by qawwals Wilayat Ali Khan and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or as a traditional marriage song in the movie Umrao Jaan, it does remind us that as we sing of love and separation somewherethepoliticalboundaries get swept away as though a wave had washed away a line drawn in sand.
I looked back at the Facebook spat and saw my friend and me standing at an angle perpendicular to history engaged in an unprofitable argument over politically correct statements.
Far away at an obtuse angle to history outside the whorls of knowledge, I heard the voice of Sain Zahoor singing Bulle Shah’s Ilmoun bas kari o yaar;
Eko alif terey darkar (Enough of learning, my friend! An alphabet should do for you).
AS WE SING OF LOVE AND SEPARATION, SOMEWHERE THE POLITICAL BOUNDARIES GET SWEPT AWAY AS THOUGH A WAVE HAD WASHED AWAY A LINE DRAWN IN SAND