dil se ...

Since we’re all celebrating #DilSe and the songs have never really left me, here’s a small nostalgic semi-novelette on my memories related to the songs. I was in the fourth standard when the movie released. Father highly detested (still does) Hindi cinema after the seventies, so we weren’t allowed to see the songs on tv or hear them on radio. So brother and I never really got around to listening to them at home. In school there was a feee period on Wednesdays Thursdays, right before the bell would ring signifying it was time for us to go home. The period lasted for about 20 to 30 minutes. Depending that day on the mood of the teacher minding us, we would be allowed to entertain ourselves. A boy or a girl from the class (mostly boys would only) would volunteer to sing to us. More like sing before us songs they had mugged up. And there was our star. Mahendra Vikram Pandey. A rakhi-brother, charming af, a ravishing young boy, with curls of hair dropping on his forehead. He would step up and like a cassette side-A and then side-B present before us all songs of Dil Se before us. Mind you, all of them. Sans any background music. Sans anyone even tapping on the table to give him cues. Of course he was a big Sonu Nigam copier, but boy was the singing beatific! Even noobs like us who would otherwise prefer playing BOLLYWOOD or just tic-tac-toe, we would all sit in wrapt attention (or maybe that’s just me). He would begin with the title track and go on and forth with all the songs. With his right hand rising up and wayward as and when the crescendo rose or fell. He would shut his eyes sometimes in “mera jeena junoon, mera marna junoon”. Beating this feet to the concrete floor. His beautiful face dissolving in the background as he would allow the sound of the words to take over him. And then we would clap, all 40-45 of us. And he would smile his charming dimpled smile. Am sure none of us then knew what #Gulzar lyrics are and who @arrahman is. But just the simple rapture, the easiness with which we as eight-nine year olds could sit and just listen to MVP croon, enjoy with him, rise and fall with him, is something that obviously has stayed. Been about two decades since all of this. To my added good luck, MVP and I were also family friends. Me being the ever so quite one, whenever we would hang, I remember his dad would “make him sing” all #DilSe songs before or after dinner. But would come back to uncle promising that he won’t make him sing before guests again. Obviously the promise lasted till the next time uncle poured himself a whisky. Last I heard MVP was in IFS or so. So long. Dil Se forevz yo!

ps: read this beautiful piece on the movie by Rangan this week:

https://www.filmcompanion.in/10-memorable-moments-from-mani-ratnams-shah-rukh-khan-dil-se-which-turns-20-today/