Hum apne bhagwaan ko bhi kehte hain basuriwaala.......

Today morning, I woke up with a line from a song on my lips. It was a long forgotten song and I have no clue why it came to me today. It did not take me much time to remember which song it was. It was a line from the song " I love my India" from the 1997 hindi movie "Pardes". So after finishing my chores in the morning, I sat down to watch the song on Youtube......... The song made me so nostalgic and I wanted to watch the movie. I guess the movie was a commercial hit and it had beautiful, soulful songs. I used to love its songs during my college days and took pain in learning each of them by heart for the essence of poetry in the songs. The title of the post is a line from the "I love my India" song and for reasons unknown to me, I love that line. Also, while watching the movie, I realized Independence day is just 4 days later and felt sad that my daughter has no clue about it and cannot even sing "Jana-Gana-Mana".

The songs and the movie as a whole got me thinking, how far movies have come these days from the good old days!! It is claimed that the present audience expect such "contemporary" movies. It is obvious that most of the present movie songs(there may be exceptions) have no poetry essence and the meaning of the song itself is best left unsaid. There are not many movies made these days for audiences like me, for whom the movies of 1990s and 2000s still hold a charm. Instead such audiences are laughed at and ridiculed for their choice. I wonder if the current audience is really so "modern" and "advanced" so as to not like simple and pure movies which don't leave you disturbed at the end. But if the excessive violence, nudity and so called bold themes in the present day movies forces one to change the channel when an elderly or a young kid walks in to the room, I guess we really are not so modern and advanced after all.

I need to work on teaching "Jana-Gana-Mana" to my 5 year old at least before next Independence day!!