Appa deepo bhava

"Mann se Ravan jo nikale Ram uske mann mein hai...”

I woke up with this line ticker-taping through my mind yesterday morning. A sub-conscious reminder that it was Deepavali perhaps, but there was no very coherent train of thought leading to or away from Javed Akhtar’s words in Swades.

It is a traditional, oft-repeated sentiment, of course. That, for Ram to reign, Ravan must go. And typically, as we tend to do in India, sophisticated ideas and concepts get distilled into names, into personifications – powerful receptacles and representatives of everything that the dialectical process that preceded it bestows upon them.

Naraka Chaturdashi is named for a powerful and evil man who met his death at the hands of Krishna – and realised, in his dying moments, what a fool he had been. In a message for this day, Sadhguru says that what happened centuries ago can’t surely be relevant to us but we mark it because we must remember – now rather than on the death bed – to purge ourselves of negativity. Consciously sit down and remove accumulations, prejudices that have gathered when we weren’t looking.

In today’s Deccan Chronicle, Swati Chopra writes that in his dying hours, his disciples asked Gautama, the Buddha, for one last teaching. He uttered: “Appa deepo bhava!” Be lamps unto yourselves.

She says:

This Deepawali as we light our homes, let us take a moment to think about the inner illumination the Buddha pointed to in his last words. How might we become lamps unto ourselves? There are two points of emphases in this statement — “lamps” and “yourselves”. In saying “unto yourselves”, the teacher is laying the responsibility of working towards enlightenment upon the student. Do not think of the teacher as the one who will illuminate you. Do not outsource your spiritual work. The teacher can point towards the path; it is you who has to actually walk on it. Thus, the dying Buddha asks his students to look beyond him, the form of the teacher, which will die soon. The real illuminant is within.

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This song, Ishq di booṭi, from Coke Studio Season 6 is very special to me. I love every note, every detail of the arrangement, I love the words and I am blown away every single time by the climax. Written by the singer Abrar-ul-Haq himself, there is one succinct passage that tells you what you must do to advance.

The song is laid upon an imagery that was invoked by the Sufi mystic-poet Sultan Bahu:

Alif Allah chambey di booṭi Murshad man vich laayi hoo...
My Master has planted in my heart a jasmine plant... in the name of the primordial one...

That ‘chambey di booti’ is very precious seed, from which the spiritual quest begins. It must be looked after, it must be nourished, it must become the focal point of your life. When that plant grows, when it blossoms... there is havoc but oh, “jaan phullan te aayi hoo” – the very life-breath comes aflutter, Bahu says.

Abrar-ul-Haq goes further with the horticultural theme:

dil di kheti de wich pahlaan niyat da hal waah
khoṭ adaawat nafrat jhagṛe saare maar muka
nafs jiya dushman wi koi naeen, zahr da ṭeekah la
laalach badla hasad kameenah choolhe de wich pa
ishq di goḍi kar ke te hanjuaan da paani pa
te booṭi beej lai
chambe waali booṭi beej lai
haq wali booṭi beej lai

First plough the field of your heart with your sincere intention
Falseness, enmity, hatred, strife: send them packing!
There is no enemy like your own ego – feed it some poison
Greed, revenge and envy are vile – cast them into the fire
Cultivate the field of love, water it with your own tears
And sow the seed!
Sow the seed of the jasmine flower!
Sow the seed of Truth!

The CS video is here, but I recommend closed eyes.

Mukammal jahaan

It is almost time, I hear, for the next season of Coke Studio – the material is ready even if the airing is postponed indefinitely due to the political turmoil in Pakistan.

Mixed feelings. I wish the new team well but I expect, I fear that they cannot match the genius of Rohail Hyatt. Nothing lasts forever and I am happy that the end of CS as propelled by this man tapered down not due to a dilution of music or integrity but other circumstances. So easily it might have happened, as it all too often has, that corruption seeped into the show. It didn’t here and that heartens me considerably.

Anyone who followed and listened to the previous season will know that Hyatt took Season 6 to a new level altogether. Hitherto, these had been studio sessions – not entirely jam sessions – but well-rehearsed, well-constructed pieces that were recorded all together. This brought a remarkable synergy to the music and I was a bit doubtful when Season 6 started with the concept of recording disparate strains in various locations that would be later put together on the console. What would the difference be then between Coke Studio and, say, AR Rahman or any number of Bollywood composers who take this structuralistic approach as well?

I had reckoned without Rohail Hyatt. In Season 5, he had experimented briefly with the idea with Koi labda. With the band Symt laying out the overall mood and theme but leaving preplanned room for an insert, Hyatt had Sanam Marvi record an aside later. This was so neatly integrated with the main recording as to appear seamless. Technicalities apart, the song is sheer pleasure, and one of my enduring favourites.



Season 6 went international. Serbia and Italy provided entire orchestras, and individual musicians from Nepal, Turkey, Bangladesh, Morocco and Norway were roped in for small accents and airs. So then these were songs that were created between some overall controlling vision and the fluidity of so many inputs – the lyric and the tune were the choice of the singer, the basic voice recording was made, sent to the orchestras who then clothed them with sounds of their choosing. (The relish, the delight that coursed through these video conferences was palpable and very contagious.) At the end, I imagine it was Hyatt who put the song together – muting out whole tracks, adding here a touch of flute from the Bangla artiste, here inserting the finishing chords from the heavenly Oud. Inordinate attention seems to have been paid to every sound, every note on these songs – the result is a set of polished pieces that will endure any number of listens. The synergy that I feared would go missing was very much there, but in a different way. What was once smooth was now textured, interpretations were unusual, listeners found something old, something new... Parts of the experience were somehow meta – ‘is this how the Serbian brass section sees this tune?!’

With Rohail Hyatt leaving, he will obviously take this work aesthetic with him – for, unless they are very evolved and supremely devoted to their craft, the new team will want to bring themselves in. They will want to change, assert, leave their stamp. Already the website www.cokestudio.com.pk has been shorn of its archives – I tried to find credits for Season 6 and couldn’t.

Nevertheless I am excited. New energy, a new way of doing things, a new season.

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The title is from Nida Fazli's sher:
Kabhi kisi ko mukammal jahaan nahin milta
Kahin zameen toh kahin aasmaan nahin milta

कभी किसी को मुक्कम्मल जहाँ नहीं मिलता
कहीं ज़मीं तो कहीं आसमां नहीं मिलता

No one has ever achieved a complete perfect world,
Here the earth eludes us, there heaven

In Koi labda, Symt uses this as ground, expressing the inadequacies of our lives.

Mahiya ve, jindri bulave

Back home after a bit.

The place I left behind is a space of great glory and like always, it was a wrench to leave - I was in tears saying my goodbyes, hoping very much that the time I spent away this time wouldn't be long enough for me to make too comprehensive a mess of myself. Making a mess and then untangling it in a cyclical fashion doesn't seem like a too-sensible method of handling things... but let us see.

But having come back, there are the pleasures of home. I usually play music on my laptop, fix a couple of portable speakers if I'm working around in the room and need the volume to be higher. I have a Bose player with fantastic speakers but it's too much trouble to hook them up every time - the audio jack is short, which means I'm tethered by a really short rope if I want to work as well as listen to music. But sometimes, nothing else will do. Coke Studio Season 6, particularly, has such a depth of sound, so many fascinating layers - the songs need the Bose to do them justice.

So, to compensate my bereavement, Mahi gal...

Haath, Kangan aur Farsi

Sometimes I find English too unemotional a language for my needs; it is too easily embarrassed. I was thinking the other day about people who use language well and how I tend to become ‘nisar’ over them. I cannot of course translate this: ‘I am squandered... I am strewn over articulate, vivid speakers of native tongues...’ As you see, it sounds ridiculous.

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Truth is I have a crush on languages. Punjabi, Farsi, Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, Kannada, Telugu... they fascinate me all. My own ability to pick up a new tongue or dialect or accent is good but nowhere near where I would like it to be. I remember my sister saying once that if she could pick a superpower it would be the ability to understand every language in the world. I agree wholeheartedly. But alas, to acquire a true and imaginative mastery of a language needs exposure, it needs you to steep yourself in a culture – and for that you would need: a) an unadulterated petri dish of said culture and b) the time, space and adequate excuse to do the steeping. Situated as I am, it cannot be done on a whim.

So I pick up things – savour a phrase, wonder at the context of a particular way of expressing. It is unsatisfactory – I am ever aware that I am feeling a small wrinkle in the elephant’s skin – but there is nothing else.

In the latest season of Coke Studio, Sanam Marvi sings a mysterious snatch without giving us the backstory. The beloved has come across the river to meet but doesn’t spend too much time with the poet: “nah main majlis keeti, na mai raat rahaaya”. ‘I didn’t get the chance to sit together awhile, or spend with him a single night’, she laments. In fact: “onṭhi uṭh nah jhukaaya.” So fleeting a visit, he didn’t even lower the camel to the ground. How delicious is that phrasing – a mere half-sentence gives us glimpse of an entire way of living.

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While on this subject, I have a fond ambition: to speak in fluid ‘ba-muhavra’ Hindustani. You know, have a ready proverb or a saying for every situation. This now is doable. I trying to learn them up from here and there – in spite of the apparent homogeneity that has set in to our national media, you can still sift some nuggets, I find. So, I found occasion to exclaim ‘Bheda garak!’ several times this week, and when a friend told me they had to let their (very inept) administrative man go, I was happy to be able to assuage his conscience with ‘Khus kam jahaan paak.’

I am looking for a reason to say ‘Oonth ke pair toh paalne mein hi dikh jaate hain’ and but quite despair of being able to tell anyone: ‘Arre, aam khaona, guTliyan kyon ginte ho?’

Incidentally, I’m collecting these, so you if know any, do pass them on? After all, akela chana bhaad nahin phod sakta.

Awwal, akhar

When I was reading the Gita for the first time a couple of years ago, this passage (Chapter 8, Verse 5) stunned me. Krishna says:

अन्तकाले च मामेव स्मरन्मुक्त्वा कलेवरम्
यः प्रयाति स मद्भावं याति नास्त्यत्र संशयः

anta-kāle ca māmeva smaranmuktvā kalevaram
yah prayāti sa mad-bhāvam yāti nāstyatra samsayah

And whoever, at the end of his life, quits his body, remembering Me alone, at once attains My nature. Of this there is no doubt.

So, essentially, on your dying breath, you had to remember Krishna. Ok. It sounded doable. Obviously, there was a catch: the pun notwithstanding, what was it? And thus, we fell through the yawning chasm between bookspeak/theory and the actual doing. A lifetime – no, several lifetimes of Krishna Consciousness don’t apparently prepare you adequately for ‘smaranam’ at the ‘anta-kala’. “Me alone”, the god-man says, “mameva”. Pure awareness.

I am a smidgen more aware of the difficulties of awareness now. When you go to sleep, see if you can be aware of the last breath as you pass into sleep. Once my head touches the pillow, I go to sleep fairly quickly but I understand the romance of pillow thoughts. Mine are diverse. Pleasant things, mostly. Often a prayer, sometimes a flower, a story or a fantasy. All very nice, but what is needed is single-mindedness.

And we must go to Khwaja Ghulam Farid for that.

meda ishq vi toon
meda yaar vi toon
meda deen vi toon,
iman vi toon

you are my love and also my friend*
you are my belief and also my faith

meda jism vi toon
medi rooh vi toon
meda qalb vi toon

you are my body
you are my soul
you are my heart

Then he lists exhaustively: you are my ka'bah qibla, mosque, pulpit, the holy pages and the Koran, my duty, responsibility, pilgrimage, alms, fast and also my call to prayer…

meri zohd, ibadat, taqat, taqwa, ilm vi toon irfan vi toon
my asceticism, worship, power, virtue, learning and knowing

zikr and fikr
my remembrance, my contemplation

aas umeed te khattiyan wattiyan, ve te takiya raat taman vi toon
hope, wishes, gains, losses are you, and the night's contemplation is also you

He goes on, but I always linger a moment here. Takiya raat taman vi toon… the translation calls it ‘the night's contemplation’… it's possible I understand it imperfectly but is ‘you’ the all consuming focus of Farid’s pillow thoughts as well? Why not? After all, ‘you’ are also the tilak on my forehead, sindoor in the parting of my hair, my coquetry, my fortune, my henna, mascara, collyrium, rouge, tobacco and my betel-leaf.

Mera andar bahar
Mera awwal akhar
My inner, my outer, my beginning and my end….

I think Farid would’ve thought of ‘You’ on his last breath, don’t you?


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*I’ve used the Coke Studio translation of this poem as basis, though I’ve altered a couple of phrases here and there. The original is here at the song Rabba Sacheya.

Mahiya ve...

Last year, when Coke Studio Season 5 ended, I was so keen to blog about it, discuss the songs I loved. But it would have been an elaborate post and I put it off and it never happened. This is not THAT post but this song, which I’ve heard a few times today, would have been part of it.

Farhad Humayun (of Overload) singing Mahi. He puts a lot of feeling into it and the orchestration – Coke Studio meeting Shankar Tucker, to my mind – is outstanding.

Mahi! Mahi! Mahi! kookaan…

Mahi



And since I brought it up and this is a rains-y song as well, Shankar Tucker's Night Monsoon:

Paagalaan

Hyderabad is crazy sometimes. It is something like 42 degrees outside and we wondered, a little boldly, if we could catch the 2.45pm show of Vicky Donor. The movie has been on for four weeks now, it is a weekday and plus this heat wave business on... all things considered, we might get four tickets, you know?

What do you think? SOLD OUT. And people still streaming in, haranguing the man at the counter to try a little harder (this is our local stand-alone cinema hall where pressure or blandishments actually stand a chance), and when all their efforts failed, settling for Jannat 2.

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I just caught the promos for the second episode of Coke Studio Pakistan. Looks good. Again. The first episode was excellent too - they haven't lost their touch.

Atif Aslam is going to be singing a version of Ghulam Farid's Mera ishq vi tu... and this wonderful troupe called the Chakwal group with Meesha Shafi.

Mixed Feelings

For the first time since I started this blog, a whole month has gone by without my posting a single time. So April 2011 has no entries under it - strange, because it was a highly significant time. But रहिमन बात अघम की, कहन सुनन की नाही... it doesn't matter.

Exciting times for lovers of music. Coke Studio is coming to India and I'm all a' tremble with anticipation and anxiety. I blogged about Coke Studio when I first discovered it, here and here. I said then that I couldn't think of an Indian musician/producer who could produce the series or a channel that would be willing to do that. When I racked my brains about it, I came up with AR Rahman, who of all musicians, has the musical maturity to straddle all of India's versatility. But what of people management, and the ability to compose, work in constrained studio circumstances?

But here they are after all - in no small part due to the raging success Coke Studio Pakistan has been. Leslie Lewis is the man they've appointed to do what the wonderful Rohail Hyatt did for CS-P, and MTV is the channel that's seeking to break this new ground (and resurrect itself, while it is at it). A unofficial list of artists is out and it looks very interesting.

I am nervous about the task in front of them. CS-P began in relative anonymity and they had nothing to guide them but their own immense enthusiasm and inherent high standards. They also had the luxury of a sense of play. Coke Studio is now a huge brand - even the makers, I imagine, are struggling with how serious and earnest it has become.

How will they deal with that here? This is not Pakistan where tasawwuf and a certain kind of spiritual purity still holds sway; this is India - television in India - where the gods of success are placed higher than the ideals of integrity or good work. Where the audience becomes VERY important, more important than it should. I am afraid that Coke Studio at MTV wants to succeed more than it wants to create good music.

Evidently, I am not alone in my fears. The programme's facebook page is full of entreaties not to dilute the essence of the original show. They're promising not to but do they realise the essence isn't in the details, but in the approach?

I will be ecstatic if these concerns prove foolish. Just think of the potential in India - classical ragas, Carnatic voices, Vedic chants, the possibilities of folk, the revival of 'samuha gaan', choirs perhaps, desert voices, hill voices... good luck, Leslie Lewis. 

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Edited to add:
While on CS, read this by Rashmi Vasudeva, who is also addicted.

Ae ve mere peer di jugni ji

I realise I’m beginning to make a symbol of fireflies. The other day, I relished the idea of a firefly-guide, dancing ahead of me as it illuminates the path. The words for it sound so nice – jugnu, minmini, minugupurugu...
Shweta and I were trekking once in Coorg. It was a simply wonderful; each campsite during the six-day trek was special. We ploughed through spice and coffee plantations one afternoon and arrived at a flattish sort of a valley where we set up camp. It had rained earlier but the mud and fibrous grass had caked into fairly hard ground. As we sat about, we puzzled over crater-like depressions that riddled the field. Largeish depressions; in fact, I sat comfortably in one. Then we remembered we were in elephant country. These pockmarked fields had, perhaps only last night, had a wild herd cross it, and what I was sitting in was a footprint.

We had dinner around the fire and by the time we wound down to snug sleepiness, the looming hills around us came alive with fireflies. They blinked and messaged – their codes complex, secret and very beautiful.

All this to point to a new header:

tough as we sound
our eyes
on the fireflies
-Paul Pfleuger, Jr.

We have tried to be brave this year. Disbelief comes even now, especially every morning at the point before complete wakefulness. Reminders come in bald statements: Mum’s dead. Of course. It’s silly to be sissy about death. It comes to everyone and when it’s such a good one, it’s cause for rejoicing. Also the alternative to this bracing attitude is a very crumbly mess. Not a good idea. It would be unworthy, unfair to the woman who put in so much to strengthening us, and quite wrong.

It is enough to be given the occasional firefly.



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The title is from this Coke Studio lyric:
Ae ve mere peer di jugni ji (oh, the light/spirit of my sainted master)

The song by Arif Lohar and Meesha Shafi is here:

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.

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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.

Yeh khazanein

Still stuck on Mae ni mai kinnu aakhan. I blogged about it last week, and spent a goodish time listening to various versions on the glorious youtube, the ever-expanding internet. And look what I found! Atif Aslam again with an 8½-min version - a soulful, innovative, just-right fusion version - of the song:



But the find was a small tell-tale string that drew up a treasure. As you'll see, it's a studio recording, and fabulously produced. The recording is superb, the lighting is wonderful, the shots are delicious and if the camera is obsessed with Atif Aslam's slender hands, who can blame it? It didn't seem random. Who had produced this? Was this a music label with a repertoire of sufi fusion? Was this clip made for a music video?

The productions are from Pakistan, from a series of live music recordings from a house called Coke Studio. Produced by Coca Cola and musician Rohail Hyatt, these are not music videos but in fact made for television. I have, of late, been so traumatised by what passes for music on mainstream Indian television, it took me a while to understand that that such music was produced and aired for consumption by mass audiences. Also, immensely gratifying to know it's all up there on youtube in high quality and there is PLENTY of it.
Here's the wiki page for Coke Studio, here is their website and here is the wiki entry for Rohail Hyatt.

Now, I'm not asking for an Indian version - I can't think of an Indian producer who could combine these production values with such a sense of music; I can't think of an Indian channel that would consider such a project worth their effort, or not cheapen pure music with cheerleaders, hooting audiences, large stadium-stages and festoons of pompoms.
But can't the Coke Studio performances be aired here? I was embarassed to discover this late a project that aired first in 2008. Anyway, yay for this world without borders and thanks to Coke Studio for allowing the recordings to stay in the public domain, letting them be accessed.

Before I go, another sampler. Ali Zafar and Tufail Ahmed sing Allah Hu: