Delhi 6: Music Review

Delhi 6.
Music: AR Rahman
Lyrics: Prasoon Jhoshi.
Director: Rakeysh OmPrakash Mehra.
Rating: ****

I am a person who believe in theory of diminishing utility. The more something is available for the public consumption, the lesser is its value. I believe it is the unavailability of AR Rahman that made him a legend of our time. So when I first came to know about ARR's association with Delhi 6 project I was a bit apprehensive, there was too much of ARR for me, more than ever, during 2008.
Of course, its my sheer gut that ARR can never be "average" made me wait before I could review the music for Delhi 6. Its typical of ARR music to settle 'late' in you.

Well, much to your knowledge, the Masakali sits on your tongue instantly. There is a naughty touch to the tune and Mohit Chauhan did a great a job to bring that naughtiness to the song. The best part of the song is that it makes you smile, it churns out that happiness out of the soul. I was inadvertantly smiling and banging my head as I hear Mohit Chauhan performing the tounge twisting composition. Masakali is for sure a song that would haunt you for next few months. Fresh and very AR Rahman.

The next track Arziyan reminded me of khwaza mere kjwaaza. As expected from these genres, the metallic voice Khailash Kher and melodious Javed Ali competing voices will take you into trance. The song takes some time for settling on you, but once it does so, it creates its own space. Prasoon Joshi did a good job with lyrics.

The next track Dilli-6 seriously sounded like Paatshaala types. The beats are simple and good and there was a good fusion with some rapping mixed with metal and alternate rock. Blaaze, Benny Dayal, Vivinenne, Tanvi and Claire really did a good job. The song is very young and I guess its a definite disco mix. I guess this song will be played as in bits and pieces all over the movie especially "yeh Delhi hain meri yaar". The transition from one genre to another was performed effortlessly and the song would be a definite chart buster.

You would then come to what I think is the best song of the album. Rehna Tu starts with a a very groovy beat and in no time Rahman intrudes and the next six minutes he would take you to an altogether a different world. Your heart just flows along with the song as Rahman plays with swaras, the song ends with a flute performance, the flute was played at a very base level then picks up very high notes with Rahman humming in the back ground ocassionally, this is what made the song special to me, this is definitely scores better than Masakali. Prasoon Joshi's lyrics were just perfect for the romantic wonder.

Hey Kalaa Bandar again is in lines with Dilli-6 a good dance number, the beats are groovy though the song is not fresh it makes your feet tap.

Dil Gira Dafatan sounds more like poetry sung slowly with some guitar and really takes a very long time to settle in you. Each and every note of the song touches your heart, the guitar work is so awesome that it altogether takes you to another world. I am expecting this song to be the Tu bin bataye type used by Om Prakash. This song definitely has a special aura that flawlessly mesmerizes you to feel the romance. There is this one part of the song where the notes go pretty high, this part was performed very well by Ash King and the ocassional humming by Chinmayee added nice flavor to the song.

Ghenda Phool is a pleasant surprise for me. For the first few seconds it sounds like a folk song that was there in Saathiya but within no time ARR's genius steps in with an awesome western fusion. The song is fun to listen and you thoroughly enjoy the song. A typical close-your-eyes-bite-your-lips-and-tap-your-feet type song. Will be remembered for quite some time.

Bhor Bhaye is a Ghulam Ali composition, so not many comments from me and neither are any for Aarti.

Overall, Delhi-6 is a pleasant surprise for me. ARR did not disappoint me if not bettered his own scores that he earned in his recent releases. Prasoon Joshi did justice to wonderful compositon. I rate the music at 4 out of 5.

My picks: Masakali, Rehna tu, Ghenda Phool, Dil Gira Dafatan

My pongal...

I celebrated pongal with family after three years. I still remember those childhood days when we used to go to our grandparents’ place every pongal and enjoy the pleasures of village. It has been eight years that I had been to my grand parents’ place and this year my mom was hell bent to be at my grandparents’ place.

I packed my things in back pack and got ready for a 2 hour joy ride in a bus (there is no helipad at the destination so could not use my copter). Now an ardent follower of my blog would instantly understand the affinity I have for the government buses.

                The moment we entered the bus station, a couple of khaki clad men started lobbying about a bus that would not stop before our destination, and they promised to drop us there in less than two hours, once they cross the city. Given the unsuspecting nature of our parents, I ended up in a 2X2 seater, which is generally used for intra city shuttling.

                The bus was half filled when we entered, with an occasional nylon gunny bag blocking the way. My parents settled in an empty two seater and I settled beside them in an Aisle side seat as the window one was already occupied. Our khaki clad men were talented they poached upon a lot of customers and the bus was more than full now. Both of them kept on shouting non-stop incessantly. It worked, as there were lots of passengers flocking the bus like the flies flock to jaggery.

                For the next fifteen minutes, the bus stopped at any place that the bus could stop and the khaki clad men, the driver and the conductor, kept on shouting ‘non-stop’. The more they shouted non-stop more people started boarding the bus. Soon my parents went out of my sight, as the space between us was filled by a family of eight. There was a father, two mothers (my assumption) and five kids. The family happily settled on the floor and occupied the space between my limbs and my body. It’s like I immersed my left leg and left hand into the sea of people, you get the picture?

                The bus stopped again, the men shouted non-stop incessantly and the cycle continued. This time there were more people, I felt as if I was going to be part of team that won Guinness record for accommodating maximum number of humans in a small area. A space which was once occupied by just three people is now occupied by more than twenty people and some uncountable bags of God knows what. There were three people between my left hand and left leg, four kids between my legs, two bags and a person between my right leg and right hand. My shoulders and head were spared as I was wearing a T-shirt.

                The bus stopped again. I gave up and took a mental note to change the meaning of the word ‘non-stop’ as the driver shouted the word again. In a few minutes the buildings of the concrete jungle that spawned along the road were replaced by greenery. Not knowing exactly where my body parts were there, I decided to take a nap, I was almost successful if I were not to smell the aroma of under arm of one of the person surrounding me. The distance between my nose and his armpit was second only to the record set by a gentleman when I was travelling in a Mumbai local, another difference was that the gentleman used a deodorant.

                There is one more thing that is typical of buses in long journeys in our part of the world, people throwing up. There is no problem if they throw up once, but they do it as if they are paid by someone if they sporadically shout Oaaaak with special long emphasis on O and extra stress on K, hearing it for three or four times would automatically induce a nauseating feeling only amplified by the gentleman’s armpit.

                The bus stopped again, after a long interval though. When I said the bus stopped, it is not the normal stopping, where we see a bus loaded with people dashes its way into a thousand passengers waiting anxiously in the bus stop, where an undoubting onlooker would die of tension, speculating on how many would be crushed to death by those hefty tires. But this time the bus came to a screeching halt. Like in many places in India, animals like cows, buffaloes and goats pay road taxes; at least they behave so, when they use the road in a direction perpendicular to the normal crossing roads at incredibly slow speeds. Our bus encountered one such herd of lazy buffaloes. Within seconds the demography of the bus changed as if it was a migration season. The family of eight surrounding my body had been replaced by a smaller family and few nylon gunny bags, I am not sure if there had been any expulsions out of the bus. Before even I could think about the law of conservation of mass, the bus accelerated and the small family and gunny bags were again got replaced by the family of eight; I breathed.

Meanwhile, the gentleman sitting beside me, after hitting my shoulder with his head a few times, found a comfortable position on my shoulder to take a power nap, which of course I disturbed almost immediately. I don’t like oil patches on my T-shirt. However, I could not stop him from collapsing into my lap, which acted as a blessing in disguise s he woke up and found a resting shoulder on the glass window.

                The deep orange light that lit the horizons a while ago was then replaced by twinkles of stars. The greenery was then replaced by an occasional hut. After a few more stops of ‘non-stop’ bus, it became almost empty. I could see my parents again. The cycle was complete, we alighted the bus.

…… to be continued.

Review: Slumdog Millionaire

10^th January 2009, I was in an A/C chair car of a train that is heading towards my home town.

I settled in the seat, the one which I reserved. There is something peculiar about travelling in trains. It instantly gives you the sneak peek into the much talked about the rising affluence of Indian middle class. Now there is a catch with this, by rising affluence I mean there is richness in everything, I mean what is once accessible only to rich and powerful is now available to masses. So rising affluence means there are more people everywhere.

The A/C compartment in which I was travelling is no exception. There are people everywhere; I mean there are more people without reservation in the compartment than there are people with reservation. Chaos was the word!

A few minutes into the journey, things settled down. Now is the time for please-look-at-me-I have-a-mobile clad people to show off their pseudo affluence to others, so there are a few dudes who pulled out  a mobile and the whole atmosphere was filled out with a tweeting sound everywhere. There was one such person beside me.

Now, this guy is a real dude. He pulled out a laptop and much to his expectations the girl opposite dropped her jaw and bit the back of her palm. His eyes twinkled as the lappie made the standard windows login sound. After all the hush-hush about the machine settled, the media player beamed out a few noises, it’s a movie; a new one too.

                I was in no mood to watch a movie. Primarily there were questions about personal choices; I was not too happy to watch a movie and secondarily there were question of conscience- the movie seemed pirated. But I peeked into the screen and believe me my friends, I engulfed by the movie for next hundred twenty minutes.

                When I started watching, I saw a few kids playing cricket on the edge of a runway and police chasing them; an awesome score of music from behind. It went on O saya…. The song was great to say the least; it instilled in you the spirit of freedom.

                A few minutes into the movie, I realized that a teenage guy was being interrogated by policemen. Apparently, he was suspected of a fraud in a show and earned around 10 million rupees. As the police interrogate Jamal Malik looking at the video of the show so far, we see the movie through the eyes of Jamal. How he answered each of the question from his life experiences to become a millionaire.

                I laughed my heart out looking at how Jamal, as a kid, gets the autograph of Amitabh; the experience which helped him answers the very first question. The gripping screenplay completely engrossed me here as I enjoyed the childhood of Jamal and his elder brother Salim. The movie then changed the gear from subtle humor to thought provoking and sensitive mood as Jamal explained how communal riots took his mother’s life to teach him that lord Rama carries a bow and arrow in his right arm, the answer to the next question. Also, at this juncture Jamal sowed the seeds for his future love, he introduced Latika here.

                The train stopped, I looked out of the window for a moment only to see scores of beggars, most of them children, flocking the windows of the train. They were begging alms showing much younger people in their arms. I could instantly relate to Jamal’s narration of how he knew the answer to the question about the author of a song "darshan do ghanshaym". The movie gave intricate details about how a begging racket works.

                The sympathies and disgust that the communal riots instilled in me slowly metamorphosed to anger as Jamal told the inspector how he had to lose Latika and almost his eyes to know the answer for the next question. 

Just as I thought the movie got serious, Jamal and Salim grew up and Jamal took me through how he tasted the dollars as he and his brother Salim cheated foreigners as fake guides at the Taj Mahal. And Jamal answers the question on American Dollar to become a millionaire.

                I looked around, there was a young couple talking to each other with just eyes. I looked around only to see humans paired up with their loved ones; they are talking, smiling, conversing, worrying but all of them had one thing in common- love. Its love; love in its purest form devoid of all materialistic desire.

This is what you feel when teenage Jamal, along with his elder brother Salim, returns to Mumbai just in search of Latika. Here Jamal is exposed to another evil of the Indian society-flesh trade. Jamal comes to know that young Latika was forced into prostitution. Your blood boils.

                My anger amplified when someone from the corner of the seat made an angry gesture to reduce the volume, he had a logic in his demand. But it was not the time for logic, the movie engrosses you so much that instigates revenge in you.

                Your anger subsides when Salim pulls out a colt 45 revolver and kills the racketeer. Salim would later be befriended by a local don and becomes a small don himself. Jamal loses Latika again, this time to his own brother. He then leads the life of an assistant at a call center.

                The remaining movie thrives upon how Jamal gets on to the show just to make sure that Latika sees and comes to him. To know how this happens, you will have to see the movie.

 

Dev Patil, Tanay Chheda, Ayush Khedkar- the three characters who played Jamal at various stages were simply great. The director got the best out of them, I liked the kid Jamal (Ayush) the most; innocent, sweet and very expressive. The screen play was so gripping that your mood changes along with the movie for each scene, you feel what Jamal feels as he narrates his story. The music, though I could not figure out much, sounded great during a few songs like O saya and Ringa…Ringa.

Overall, Slumdog millionaire is the first great thing to happen to me this new year, I am really happy that I watched this movie and it is beyond any doubt that it is one of the best movies I’d ever seen. It is a must watch for everyone.