An Anthem And Two Counter-Anthems: Watching 'Pyaasa' On The Big Screen In 2017

A hall, about three quarters full, stands solemnly as the national anthem plays before a film club screening in a Delhi PVR hall: it라이브 바카라Pyaasa. Halfway into the 1957 Guru Dutt classic, they sit and watch an irony-laced lament unfold on screen. If an anthem is a rousing celebration,바카라 웹사이트Jinhe Naaz Hai Hind Par Woh Kahan Hain바카라 웹사이트is like a softly sung dirge, slow and elegiac in tone, a statement of grief and a rumination on the state of the nation at once. Where have they gone, those who take pride in India, ask Sahir Ludhianvi라이브 바카라 lines. The hall, deathly silent through it, breaks into applause at the end of the song.

A few reels later, they hear the most pristine articulation of a politics of having no stakes in the status quo:바카라 웹사이트Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaaye toh Kya Hai바카라 웹사이트(So what, even if such a world becomes mine?). The breathless events towards the end of the song give no one any space to clap, but even after the sequence is over there is a pause in our collective souls: How to imagine the resolution of a story once its protagonist has rejected바카라 웹사이트everything, in particular바카라 웹사이트success, wealth, status?

The well-established reading of바카라 웹사이트Pyaasa바카라 웹사이트(1957) sees it as a disheartened allegory of young heroes being let down by the nation after nearly 10 years of independence and its failed promises—or at least as a story made possible in the context of such a failure. (It라이브 바카라 worth remembering that Guru Dutt wrote the original story, ‘Kashmakash’, on which바카라 웹사이트Pyaasais based, in 1947/48). Unemployment, hunger, inequality, women forced to sell their bodies, lack of compassion in society, and greed for money and power are some of Pyaasa라이브 바카라 leitmotifs. Today, thanks to the exigencies of legally enforced symptoms of nationalism (the Supreme Court having made it compulsory for the national anthem to be played before movie screenings), we get the remarkable cinema experience of moving from Tagore라이브 바카라바카라 웹사이트Jana Gana Mana, written way before independence, celebrating the destiny of the land, to the realities of the nation as recorded by sensitive observers in the 1950s, to the fact that none of바카라 웹사이트Pyaasa라이브 바카라 themes have become dated even after 60 years.바카라 웹사이트Jinhe naaz hai Hind par woh kahan hain?

It does not feel ironical at all. The time for irony is already well past everyone once a nation adopts as its anthem the song of a poet who said he was “against the general idea of all nations”. And who wished to fight against the “education which teaches (people) that a country is greater than the ideals of humanity.”

As바카라 웹사이트Pyaasa바카라 웹사이트unfolds, we see that the unemployed, unsuccessful poet-hero Vijay gets to speak exceptionally few dialogues, the many silent moments of his character being lovingly drawn out as if in a lyrical cinematic dream. When he does have something to articulate, he does so through poetry and song. In that sense, Sahir라이브 바카라 verse is as much ‘dialogue’ in the film as screenwriter Abrar Alvi라이브 바카라 lines. Guru Dutt라이브 바카라 erstwhile assistant, the director Raj Khosla, recalled in an interview that when Guru Dutt first heard the lyrics of바카라 웹사이트Jinhe naaz hai, he became very moved and excited, saying “This is it!바카라 웹사이트This바카라 웹사이트isPyaasa”. Sahir had written his critique-in-verse in far tougher, more general but no less lacerating language in the original poemChakle바카라 웹사이트(Brothels). The line went: “Sana khwane taqdis-e-mashriq kahan hain” (Where are those who eulogise the greatness of the East), which were softened to바카라 웹사이트Jinhe naaz hai… for the film.

If Tagore라이브 바카라 anthem invokes the subcontinent라이브 바카라 vastness, its provinces, its rivers, the seas that rise to wash its shores,바카라 웹사이트Pyaasa라이브 바카라 counter-anthem turns to the intimate geographies of Sonagacchi, Calcutta라이브 바카라 red light area. It describes the oppressive bylanes (kooche) and fearful lanes (sehmi si galiyan), the auction houses of traded pleasure (neelam ghar dilkashi ke), the soulless rooms (berooh kamre). The national anthem is rich with바카라 웹사이트Jai(victory),바카라 웹사이트mangal바카라 웹사이트(well being) and바카라 웹사이트ashish(blessings). The counter-anthem speaks of a society that is preying upon humanity), a barren one where every body is wounded, every soul thirsty (har바카라 웹사이트ik rooh pyaasi). “Take it away,” cries the poet in the other song, pointing to the world.

The two critical songs, left without any but the most minimal orchestration by S.D. Burman, came to define바카라 웹사이트Pyaasa바카라 웹사이트well beyond the first run of the film, forever inscribing Guru Dutt as a tortured, sensitive soul for whom the world was too corrupt. But바카라 웹사이트Yeh duniya agar바카라 웹사이트is much more than a critical song. Read along with what happens in the film, it라이브 바카라 that radical moment when “All that is solid melts into air”. After all, how many times have we seen an underdog protagonist, finally finding recognition in a cinematic ‘happy ending’,바카라 웹사이트reject바카라 웹사이트all possibility of adulation, success and wealth? “I’m not the Vijay you are celebrating,” he says in public and walks away from it all.

He rises above the happy ending (just as Gulab rose above the security provided by her life라이브 바카라 savings, in order to get his poems published after she heard the rumour of his death). Vijay라이브 바카라 rejection—his act of burning all stakes in the perpetuity of such a world—is a positive and creative act in itself. Writer Abrar Alvi did not agree. It felt escapist to him; he wanted Vijay to stay and fight. And anyway, he argued, where would Vijay and Gulab “go away” from such a world?

But perhaps Vijay and Gulab라이브 바카라 transcendent incorruptibility and fearlessness in withdrawing from the world-as-is…in merely existing…have already rendered an alternative world real. We see what is here with such shining clarity (sadness in hearts, thirst in souls) and we do thoroughly reject it. It is only such a clear-eyed rejection that can create a world of integrity and humanity. A world in which a barber can make this radio announcement: “Look up Hannah! The clouds are lifting, the sun is breaking through…we are coming into a new world… The soul of man has been given wings and at last he is beginning to fly” (The Great Dictator).

In fact, this world can be found in the third stanza of Tagore라이브 바카라 lengthy song바카라 웹사이트, which lent its first few lines to the Indian nation-state. As Vijay and Gulab walk into the sunrise, it라이브 바카라 in a sense Tagore, the poet of nature and worshipper of the formless, who describes what is happening: “The night fades, the light breaks over the peaks of the Eastern hills, the birds begin to sing and the morning breeze carries the breath of new life….”