Sunday, May 20, 2007

My newest toy

No, the D40 doesn't cook :) But these are some of the first pictures I took!



Click here to view all the pictures.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Tose Naina Lage

Last week, I was watching "Antakshari - the Great Challenge" - it was the episode in which Vasundhara Das was a guest. There is a round on the show where the celebrity sings a favorite antara of theirs, and the contestants have to identify the mukhda.... One of the songs she picked was Tose Naina Lagey (Javeda Zindagi) from Anwar. (The teams were not able to identify the song, they confused it with Maula Mere Maula from the same sound track.) I loved what she sang, and I looked up the song on the net. I have to say, I hit a JACKPOT! This song is amazing, fabulous, awesome, well, adjectives don't do justice do it ....

I admit, I am late to the party, the album was released in 2006, and I hadn't heard this song till last week. (I had heard Maula a couple of times in bits and pieces.) But once I heard it, I was totally hooked. I rented the movie on Netflix, and watched it. (The movie isn't anywhere close to being as wonderful as these two tracks, but can be watched once. A subject matter of an hour or so is unfortunately stretched out into around two and a half hours. The premise of the movie is, interesting, though.) I listened to Javeda Zindagi straight for 8 hours on two consecutive days at work, and it is PROFOUND. I still get goose bumps when I listen to it. Out of the mediocre-listen-today-forget-tomorrow Hindi film music, comes this gem. What's not to like - the voices, the prelude, the interlude, the chanting (dhyaan dhyaan dhyaan dhar man), the words.... The jewel in the crown is the tabla, though. Specially endearing is the part where Kshitij sings the sargam and alaap instead of the words in the mukhda.

I looked up the meaning of Javeda - it's actually spelt as Javeeda at some places and it means eternal. Now that I know this, the song makes a lot more sense, and it fits right into context in the movie. I liked the fact that it plays in the background in the movie (no one lip syncs it, it actually plays during the end credits). That adds a lot more enigma to the song and makes it apt for the situation. SPOILER ALERT ............ All the central characters in the story are dead, and the song talks about how love gives a whole new life and renders death meaningless.

I like watching music shows for this reason - I don't get the time to listen to all the new music being written, and these shows introduce me to the gems that I miss out on. (I heard Kailash Kher's Teri Deewani for the first time on SaReGaMaPa Little Champs when Abhrokanti sang it.)

Maula is also a great song, though it pales in comparison to Tose Naina Lage. Another song worth mentioning is Dilbar Mera, but I wish that it wasn't so harsh-sounding. I think it's a rare talent that Kailash Kher possesses - to be able to sing in a raw voice, and yet sound gentle. I wonder how this song would have sounded if Kher had sung it, but we will never know ....

Listen to the best song of 2006 here.