Roop Tera Mastana

Is there a dividing line between the sacred and the profane, wonders RANJENI A SINGH as she navigates hidden or double meanings in love lyricsAnother traffic jam! Are we going to miss the first chunk of the Meera bhajan concert? Calm down, I told myself as I began humming the poet-saint’s famous bhajan, Mere to Giridhar Gopal…. My husband chose just that moment to burst into song, one from the latest Saif-Deepika film, Cocktail. Yaara tere sadke ishq sikha/...Main hoon hi nahi iss duniya ki….Tumhi din chade, tumhi din dhale, Tumhi ho bandhu, sakha tumhi ho — I am in awe of you, teach me what love is/ ...I am not from this world/ I think of you when the sun rises, I think of you when the sun sets/ You are my mate, you are my buddy.“How could you interrupt my bhajan with a raunchy Bollywood number,” I spluttered.“Relax, darling! Even Meera can sing Tumhi ho bandhu to Krishna. Can’t she?” he drawled, his voice heady with mischief. “Meera believed she was a gopi in her previous birth. So, if Deepika sings, Main hoon hi nahi iss duniya ki, don’t the lyrics gel with your bhajan?”He had a point. Both bhajans and film songs express affection between the lover (devotee) and the beloved (Creator). Material or mystical, love can be professed in so many ways. The lyricist adroitly merges part of the shloka from Vishwanata Suprabhatam — Twameva Mata, Cha pita Twameva into the song.Aye ri main to prem diwani, mera dard na jane koi - Meera addressed Krishna thus. Is it all that difficult to imagine Kareena Kapoor singing this to say, a Shahid Kapur? Puritans may think that’s blasphemous, but songs — whether of the pop and filmi genre or classical - are expressions of prem or love.The definition of love is highly subjective, and continues to evolve transcendentally over centuries. A lover’s longing for the beloved is at the very core of heart-tugging lyrics. Aradhana’s steamy hit - Roop tera mastana, pyar mera deewana could be taken as eulogising the lover’s enchantment with his beloved. But the moment you turn spiritual, love transcends rajas, sattva and tamas gunas - and connects you instantly with the Creator.Lovers And Mad MenBoth the sacred and the so-called profane, one could argue, might have the same effect on a person. If you’ve ever been in love, you’ll know that it’s not easy to define or describe passionate love. You hardly eat, yet you aren’t hungry; but miraculously, you have boundless energy. Your mind is suffused with thoughts of the beloved, to the exclusion of all else. In such a state, there is no difference between a besotted Majnu or Romeo and divine ‘mad’ men like Ramakrishna Paramahansa and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. People who saw them — laughing, singing, joking, looking always lost — assumed they were mad. Did I hear you sing, Dil to paagal hai, dil deewana hai or Kehta hai joker, sara zamana?Ghazal, a form of poetic expression that originated in the sixth century, is a genre that offers an amazing variety of expression around its central themes of love and separation. Bollywood has borrowed extensively from ghazals. In many faiths, devotees meditate and connect with the divine. In a ghazal from Umrao Jaan, In aankhon ki masti ke mastaane hazaaron hain - Thousands are intoxicated by the playful mischief in these eyes - the courtesan describes the captivating beauty of her eyes. This could well allude to divinity within. One recalls Teri aankhon ke siwa duniya me rakha kya hai....Ghazals view love as an emotion that completes a person, placing one in the ranks of the wise. Ranjish hi sahi, dil hi dukhane ke liye aa/ Aa phir se mujhe chhod ke jaane ke liye aa (Even if it’s anguish, come, still, to torment my heart, come back only to leave me again). This ghazal by Pakistani poet Ahmed Faraz may or mayn’t have an element of physical longing, but the love in it is certainly spiritual.They say ranjayati iti ragah - that which colours the mind - is a raga. “Through rich melodies, every emotion and subtle feeling in man and nature can be musically expressed and experienced,” observed Pt Ravi Shankar. In that sense, endorphine-inducing film songs do expand your consciousness.