My cousin Harish and I used to visit our maternal grandparents
to spend our summer holidays in a tiny village called ‘Sirsangi’ located in
North of Karnataka and was part of the Belgaum district. My father used to drop
me there each year, an overnight journey by bus. This was something I did religiously
till I was about 8 years of age and Harish used to join me over there.
Staying with grandparents for a period in excess of two
months was exciting to us. Those cartons of Frooti’s, unlimited supply of
mangoes, sitting inside the official jeep imitating Sunny our driver, playing
in the house garden, visiting places of interest nearby, cricket and not to
forget the wrath we faced from our maternal aunt for staying outside for long
hours under the sun. We feared her though we loved her so much because of her
expression of angst; she used to place her teeth on her lips holding a stick in
her hand chasing us when we refused to come home. We eventually did end up at
home at noon because of scorching heat and to have lunch.
Sirsangi being a village had repeated problems of
electricity back then. Al though there were quite a number of historical
sites, we seldom went out. Even if we did, I cannot recall the importance
of those places. My grandmother was strict and never allowed us to venture
outside the community boundary walls by ourselves. We were allowed to play in
the huge open field which separated my grandpa’s office and our home.
When staying out and playing became mundane (which used to
happen each day) we pleaded with our maternal aunt to switch on the TV. And we
pleaded her more when there was electricity. Apart from weekends, the
television programmes during daytime did not appeal us. There were no cartoons
or no fights on TV. It was boring until one day we saw my grandfather bringing
in a new piece of gadget and placed under the TV rack. It was a Video Cassette
Recorder (VCR).
With the VCR, came a video cassette sent from Bangalore
which played for an hour. It had songs from English, Kannada, Tamil and
cartoons. If I remember correctly, the fifth song of the recording was a B/W
video of a Hindi song. At first, it was boring and we didn’t quite know how to
operate the remote and moreover my aunt would be away doing her household
chores and she knew where the remote was. Nevertheless, we committed ourselves
each time to watch the tape end to end.
All I remember from the song is that – there is a small
gathering of people both kids and adults and behind them sat an elderly gentleman,
rocking the chair. His walking stick is visible placed beside him and also seen is
him patting a young girl’s head who is seated below next to the chair. There
is a lady playing the piano and within seconds, he starts to utter words in
phrases which had a sense of melody. Not that we knew anything about it then.
He goes on singing and the camera shifts to an idol to whom
he is referring to in the song. The children who are seated also join him
forming a chorus which is used as a buffer between his lines and the theme
music.
Next scene, I see a
young lady away from this group in a room getting up, irritated by the song
decides to shut the windows and frenetically tries to open the door of her
room, but in vain. She seemed unhappy, restless and doesn’t quite know what to
do. As kids looking at this video then, we too didn’t know what was happening.
The scene then shifts to the gentleman who continues to
sing. At this point, it becomes unbearable to this young lady who is shown
closing her ears trying hard to not just hear what’s been sung. She is not a
happy person from the looks of it. The song proceeds and parallely this poor
lady is shown with her tears locked in a room and unable to break free.
This is how I looked at the video and each time (innumerable
times) I have watched this video I always wondered why she was crying. I would
have asked my grandfather or my aunt about this or even discussed with Harish
but the conversation never went on for a long time. In any case, how would they
know; the only thing I remember my grandfather saying was that, he had watched this
movie before my mother was born.
As soon as this song was over there was another song
playing, a new adventure of 4-5 minutes set in a totally different world with
another set of actors, actresses and scenarios. And in between these songs from
different genre came two episodes of Tom and Jerry and an episode of Goofy.
In 1993, my grandfather retired from the services and he
settled down in rural Bangalore. The VCR was neatly packed and I never saw it
opened again since the shift. Even today, twenty years later it is somewhere
sealed in one of the storage cabinets but no one knows where. It became redundant
with each year since the advent of cable television, VCDs, DVDs and now with
YouTube.
Years later sometime towards the end of the millennium, I
heard this song again. The name of the movie ‘Seema’; the elderly gentleman in
the video was Balraj Sahni and the furious, frustrated young girl so to speak
was none other than ex-Miss India of 1950’s Nutan. The movie was released in
mid 1950’s and till date I have not watched this movie and I do not know the
story. My curiosity to know why she suffered during the song also died with
time. And yet even today the song remains close to my heart.
It might not be the first old song I would have heard in my
life, but I am quite sure ‘Tu Pyaar ka Saagar’ is not too far behind. In fact,
I have watched the video of this song close to 50 times or more even before I
was ten years of age. In that sense it has been ingrained just like many other
songs in that video cassette.
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| Image Courtesy - Frontline India |
This was the only song in the movie which was sung by Manna
Dey. He took his
last breath today in Bangalore and the first thing that came to my mind was
this song. In fact every time the name Manna Dey was mentioned in any of my
conversations, this song and the picturisation of the same flashes scene by
scene.
Over the period of time, I have heard many of his other songs
on the radio, tape recorder, on a CD player and YouTube but none came close to ‘Tu Pyaar ka Saagar’.
