Fida over Fana'a

OK, I’ve tuned in late again. But my god, Fana’a! What a brilliantly put-together song – I saw it for the first time the day before yesterday and (proving the funda that what has hit you once will hit you again) I happened to catch it again yesterday. On the surface, it’s a trance-disco number, obsessive, repetitive, beautifully shot and edited – I have never seen Kareena look lovelier.

Point is, AR Rahman never ceases to surprise. He’s obviously deeply spiritual, but what is amazing is that he manages to get his falsafa to piggyback popular vehicles, oh so neatly. He serves two masters, apparently irreconcilable and delivers to both. I mean, look at Fana’a. No light word, this: it can mean annihilation, extinction, destruction, transience… in sufi terminology, it means “a cessation of ego-awareness in various degrees or at various levels or depths" or "the sense of loss of self in mystical experience.”

fana’a
hone do dil ko fana
hone do dard ko tabah
udne do har ek woh tamanna
aao na, aao na, aao na, hona hai fana

In case you think it a flash in the pan, a random word inserted by lyric writers to sound vaguely profound, no! The rest of the ‘lyrics’ bear out the mood:

ulfat ka hai dariya
ye jaan ek qatra
dariya mein hai qatra
ya katre mein hai dariya

saaya hai badan ka
ya tan me chhupa saaya
dono mil gaye to
kya tan kya saaya

Straight out of the sufi masters. This isn’t the first time Rahman has done this – listen to Menda yaar milade saaiyan from Saathiya. The very same yearning for divinity that the sufis are known for. And he churns out hit after hit after hit.