Saturday, May 29, 2010

Still high

You'll be surprised at these frequent posts. But the thing is I'm having an keep-off-facebook week, maybe two weeks if I can keep at it.
I can't knock the service, of course - I'm too social a being not to enjoy it rather too thoroughly, too much of a geek not to relish how easy technology makes so many things. But it drains your time and what would once have been a mail or a post, however short, becomes a status update or a poke. And then there's this privacy thing! bah.

+++++

Still captivated by Pakistan's Coke Studio. I'm obsessing over one song a day and here is song du jour, Ali Zafar's Dastaan-e-ishq.

की दसां, की बात सुनावां इश्क दियां
ki dasaan, ki baat sunawan ishq diyaan…

What shall I tell you? How to narrate this story of love?

राँझा राँझा करदी नि मैं, आपे राँझा होई
राँझा कहो सहेलियों… मैनू हीर ना आखो कोई

ranjha ranjha kardi ni mein, aapay ranjha hoyee
ranjha kaho saheliyon…mainu heer na aakho koyee

Ranjha, Ranjha I cry... and have myself become Ranjha
Call me Ranjha, my friends, let no one call me Heer

The love story of Heer and Ranjha so permeates the Punjab that even sufis then must borrow their names, use them and own them till Heer becomes the lover, Ranjha the beloved.

This video is only a rehearsal and the final take, for some reason, was never done. But see the quality of their discards! I want a waistcoat/robe like the one Zafar is wearing here - how nice to stride about with that streaming behind you.



And oh, Coke Studio's Season Three starts June 4. Five episodes only and they air at 10.30pm IST every other Sunday. I have not managed to persuade my cable service provider to supply even one channel (CS airs on all of them) but there is apparently a ban on Pakistani channels in India and they're jibbing. There is the internet of course but nothing like catching it on TV.

2 comments:

footloose said...

sheetal, ye dekhe?

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/05/the_french_word_frisson_descri.html

Sheetal said...

Thanks! He's quite right about the 'skitterish impatience'.