Adventures of a Desi KnitterKnitting (and now sewing!) keeps an Indian academic sane in the States. Almost.

The Vagabond

§ October 30th, 2006 § Filed under Film, Music § 9 Comments

I am knitting furiously, trust me, but no visible (or bloggable) progress is being made on any of my current projects. So more distraction from – what else – Youtube!

This song is from Awaara (the Vagabond?), one of Raj Kapoor’s most famous 50s films. Kapoor was one of the leading directors of the post-Independence generation, his films becoming popular not only within but also outside India. We all used to hear, growing up, that the Russians loved his films. Just after I came to the US, I was walking along Harvard Sq. in Boston one day and I heard a familiar film song from one of his films being played on an accordion, by a Russian street performer. On the accordion it sounded vaguely like an Eastern European folk tune (which tells you how much I know about *that*, but I digress). Dang it, I thought to myself, I had no idea Shankar-Jaikishan, the incredibly talented composers for many of Raj Kapoor’s film music, had lifted some tunes from elsewhere.

After he was done, I asked the man what he had just played. Delighted, he yelled, arms wide open, “Raaaj Kapoooooooor!!” After I recovered, I sat by him and asked him if he knew any others. The next hour was spent happily, him playing many of my favourites from Kapoor’s films and me humming along.

This one “dam bhar jo udhar mooh phere, woh chanda” (If only the moon would look away for a moment) is one of those classics, sung by Lata Mangeshkar and Mukesh. It is no secret to my friends that I am not a Mukesh fan. His nasal voice always hovers on the brink of the right note, never quite striking it or going fully off key. This one is typical, but still, the song survives him. Both Raj Kapoor himself and Nargis, his leading lady in many of his films and widely rumoured to be the same in real life as well, sing ostensibly to the moon, telling it to hide behind the clouds so they can be alone. Although later songs would often trivialize it through crude depictions of flowers crashing into each other or worse, this song is, in my opinion, one of the best expressions of the Bollywood aesthetic that hinting at physical intimacy was more sensuous than actually showing it on screen.

Seeing this clip after so long, I’m struck by the chemistry between Raj Kapoor and Nargis: they were good actors, no doubt, but they look totally in love. Kapoor also took on a Chaplinesque persona later on that was intensely annoying, but here he still looks quite handsome inspite of the weird hair (he’s a rakish thief in the film) and the early onset of the Kapoor obesity curse. And oh, I totally didn’t notice the strategically placed anchors on Nargis’s shirt earlier.