and then he died and lah di da

was it around this time last year that rajesh khanna died? all i remember of the man before his death was this rather unpleasant, unsatisfied looking persona. a stale goatee on a stale face, a life that reached its peak too early on. one that had to wait too long to finally end.

the only reason rajesh khanna's death was of any concern to me was because of the relief it brought to friends at the newspaper i worked for. we could devote a full page to the superstar of yore. we didn't have to go through the trouble of finding more celebrity news for the next few days.

i only began to take note of rajesh khanna as a superstar a few months after his death when i encountered a song from his movie anand. i half remember watching the film when i was very young. and being deeply moved by it. and especially by rajesh khanna's performance of a man dying of cancer but full of more life than any of the louts that surround him.

i remember that ending scene in particular when amitabh bachchan yells at his dead friend to wake up. and he puts all his might into it, of course. knowing that that's never going to happen. and that's exactly when you hear rajesh khanna's chirpy voice yell back at the awkwardly lanky bachchan.

babumoshai!

it gave my heart pretty much the same painful flutter that amitabh bachchan must have felt. for it isn't rajesh khanna himself but an earlier recording of his voice that suddenly begins playing. was that the first time i encountered a complex knot of emotions at once so painful, shocking, hope-inducing, awe-inspiring? i don't even know if i watched the whole movie, but i must have. for that scene, and that feeling, have stuck with me.

and yet, in more recent years, i had managed to feel for the man a general distaste. and then he died and lah di da di da...until a song from the film that i came across once again, this time on youtube. zindagi kaisi hai paheli haye. and suddenly a tiny whirlwind began to stir within. and then there were goosebumps all over my thighs (god knows why there of all places). and i was quickly transported back to the days when rajesh khanna was the 'it' man when it came to emanating charisma on screen, armed with nothing but genuine simplicity. and in that one song, dressed in a pale purple kurta, the man actually glows. there's that fire within back then that must have died later on. there's a vastness in his smile, like he's caught on to the secret. one he seemed to have lost hold over in his latter years.

there he is in the song...strutting along the naked beach with confidence, carrying a naked soul so easily available to anyone who wishes to take a look.

the song begins with balloons. rajesh khanna buys a whole bunch of them--helium filled ones--and sets them free. painted half yellow half red they float leisurely. and for a while, it is just a dance between the balloons and the deep blue sky. rajesh khanna looks up at them in awe. are they handing to him that secret so big it can only be contained by a smile that swallows eternity? rajesh khanna looks at them and smiles as if in his head he's saying...

only god knows where they are headed.

and that's when the song really begins. zindagi...kaisi hai paheli haye...khabhi yeh hasaye, kabhi yeh rulaye.

as the song nears its end, the man keeps walking, this time with his shoes in his hands, farther and farther away from the camera, farther into an unending ocean as it brushes with the unending beach. spurting out words about happiness and sadness rubbing shoulders and being playful together and the likes. rajesh khanna keeps walking to the beat of the song until it ends. wahi chunkar khamoshi, yoon chalajaye akeley kahaan. and so he keeps walking even beyond the song.

god knows where he's headed.

can i please be one of those helium filled balloons that his hand releases? will you let me be one more grain of sand in his shoe?

everytime i listen to this song, without knowing what meaning it intends to convey, i am heartbroken. like it is begging to be known, and i cannot reach out entirely. like it is handing me a diamond that i do not know how to hold. is this diamond made out of ice? that if i hold it in my palms it will melt? or is it just another dream? for it smells of loss. it offers with one hand, and holds out a note with another that says 'you can never ever have it.'

i want to tag along forever.

god knows where to.

i keep coming back for more.

if this isn't nice

then what is?


-vonnegut

lai bari lai

beautiful things take very little time to take up a lot of space in the heart. this man first happened to me yesterday while i was in the office and a friend was playing his songs softly on the speakers. the first time i heard them, i barely heard them really, just a muffled melody like you would hear if it were being played in the room next door, with the doors closed. that's what robert frost calls poetry. i remember him saying something along the lines of how poetry is like that sound you hear of people talking behind closed doors, so that you can't really hear what they are saying, but you can feel what they are talking about because the melody, the rhythm of their conversation escapes and enters your ears anyway.

that was frost. and poetry. and this is bipul chettri. who has gotten me interested in nepali music for the first time in life. all i heard the first time around was the melody, and his words that came to me only in the form of a soothing hum. and music hasn't moved me like this in such a long time. and music is the only thing that can move things inside me like that. isn't that the same for most, if not for all?

so i've been listening to him ever since. again and again. and whenever i'm not, i realise i'm trying to hum to myself the lyrics that i barely know.

this man radiates talent in all its rawness. and there's no music video to accompany the music, there's no face of the man, no identity. it's his music standing on its own feet, and doing a splendid job of that. at the moment it feels more like the song's got wings. cannot help but draw comparisons with nick drake, that other music man forever tugging at this pathetic heart of mine.

what do you think? and it's so...ethnic. i mean, how do you put it. it's very modern and minimalistic on one level, yet there is something so very nepali about it. it's got that nepali ring to it that you can trace even when the words are all muffled and the melody is barely audible.

and even though bipul is from darjeeling, there's something in his music that brought about this surge of patriotism in me. it isn't the angry and defensive nepaliness of flags and boundaries and national anthems. it's something much more basic, more primal. in fact, it's so ordinary that i'm not likely to keep it in mind at all. the songs don't tell me what being nepali means. but i think i can feel nepal in his songs. whatever being nepali means to me--is reflected in this song. this nepaliness, i could belong to.

like how, more often than not, my sense of being has evolved from the times i've spent at dusk looking out the window and listening to the rain. this song would actually make a perfect accompaniment for an occasion such as that. yes, i could live in a nepal like that.

i have a feeling this man will make it big. but i hope he will make a lot of really good music before the bigness gets to him. wish him lots of luck.

can't. stop. gushing.
filled with so much gratitude for having gotten such a cherished experience

a reminder really
about how easy things are to love
and how lucky we are that way


really wish i could describe what's it's doing to me better, but i'll leave that to the better writers out there.

hope you all enjoy.

here's the song on soundcloud. there's wildfire too, which is equally delicious.

dearest,

what would we be
without the mistakes we make?

"we are all in the gutter,
but some of us are looking at the stars"

-wilde

stage fright

the shakespearean kind

the kind that includes all the world

the kind where we are all but players. 

because i could think of no title for this one

aahhh

this.
is.
empowering.

when you begin splashing inane words in such abundance
you never have to worry again about making sense.

like taking gravity for a ride to zero.

visceral

yes.

from here on, there is only one direction onwards.

lost track of time
of words
of meaning
and punctuation

lost track of which phrase is followed by a comma
or how many
how many times

working with building blocks
one at a time
forgot what it was
a house
a cage
a block of impenetrable concrete

what were we making?

the burden too great
the word too small
the meaning unable to lend itself to anything

still explodes

and that is how we end up here.

breaking free
breaking loose
like the loose winds
free and freewheeling
and while we're at it

why worry

there was a time when everything that came dripping out of the mouth felt like poetry
mostly because it didn't have to mean anything
and didn't mean anything much anyway

now we calculate our words
weigh them in the flawed system of our mind
and use language for every other purpose than to communicate
the most absolute and essential truths

and that is how we end up here.

here, now, drowning in this pool of desire

for the visceral
once more

so that silence can eventually suffice.

side note on the implications of being pyaasa

so badly want to believe this is my life's story

but am too much of a coward really
to ever allow such a thing to happen

life's mantra is to 'be water'
yet so cautious about not letting anything spill


will eventually have to die of thirst then.

so they say

the thing that makes us most afraid

is the thought of being brave.

isn't it so?