MADHUBAN MERA DHIKA NAACHE RE
My Hindi was not always so rusty. It
was worse. To begin with, it was non-existent. As I grew up and studied Hindi
as my second language in school, the “akshars” started to become barely
comprehensible. You see, I studied in a “convent” school and the Hindi taught
there was not very complicated. Rudimentary, in fact. “Thora thora”, as the “gora
goras” would say. Besides, I hardly had any Hindi speaking friends, so the
language remained rather difficult to overcome. Tough. Kathin. Mushkill. Still
is.
I became friendlier with Hindi
during my school final years, when I started seeing Hindi flicks, as we called
films or movies those days. But more than the films, it was the film songs that
did the trick. Mushkill became a little more aasaan. But it remained, and still remains, one uphill of a language. Unmasterable. Isko master karna
mushkill hee nahin, namumkin hai.
Namumkin! That’s a word whose opposite
I learnt from a song where the fellow says it is possible that he may drift or go
off at a tangent because he is intoxicated, oiled, and in the grip of a nasha*¹.
That particular line was reprised by the tall and angry ‘eng man in another
song in another phillum.
Hindi film songs brought to my ears
many Hindi and Urdu words I had never heard before. They sounded exotic to my
ears!
When I was in college, I had a couple
of friends from the Hindi-Urdu belt and one of them was from the heartland. A
dear, dear Lucknowi, though his surname sounds Punjabi and reminds me of camphor.
He was my go-to guy for anything that felt, smelt, tasted or sounded like Hindi
or Urdu. Though I couldn’t tell which was which. For instance, I would go to
him and ask him the difference between “guftugoo” and “justujoo” and he would
push off to Russell Market in a hurry to get some vital stuff or “bhoot zroory
cheese” for the kitchen. On his return, he would come at me with words like
“peshkash”, “rawaiyya”, “bewaqoof”, “takalloof” and so on and thoroughly
confuse the thunderoons (if I may coin a new term) out of me.
And so it went on.
Until one day, while I was carrying
out a rescue act on a particularly recalcitrant
differential equation, the door opened and I was greeted by the characteristic
bouquet of itr. There, resplendently attired in chikan kurta and pajama, stood my
Lucknowi mitr. He wasted no time in button-holing me with a question about a
word that was troubling him.
“Ama yaar, is waqt aap masroof toh
nahin hain?”
I nodded vaguely and replied, “Pehle
aap”.
“One word is troubling me. ‘Dhika’ ka
matlab kya hai?”
“Eh?” was my uncomprehending response.
“Deeka” I’d heard, in the popular song
by Kishore that starts with “Eena” and “Meena” and has a whole bunch of similar
bafflegabby words come tumbling after them in quick succession. But no “dhika”.
I was stumped. No clue. For a couple of hours I was scratching around but
couldn’t figure it out. When I went home, I decided to ask my sisters, both of
whom were far superior to me in Hindi on account of their aggressive nature.
But they were flummoxed too.
I went back to my dear friend and asked
him where he had heard this ‘dhika’.
“Why, in that song, of course.”
“Which song?”
“That Rafi song ‘Madhuban mera dhika
naache re’. Umda gaana.”
I was carrying a rolled newspaper in
my striking hand and my first instinct was to strike him three solid blows with
it on the back of his head. But as he was already weak in the head, I
refrained. As gently as I could, I told him it was not ‘Madhuban mera dhika’ but ‘Madhuban mein Radhika’.
We still laugh about it now, some
forty years later, and I still refrain from beaning him with rolled newspapers.
“Tankhwa”. What a dangerous sounding
word. To many employed people, it happened at the beginning of every month. A
knowledgeable friend, trying to be helpful, told me that “tankhwa” was nothing
but an overhead water storage receptacle or reservoir and nothing to worry
about, except when there was no water. I had to nod his head thrice. I am told
that this word has descended from Akbar’s period.
You see, the whole fault is with these
poetic writer chaps and singer fellows. They are allowed lots of liberties to
change whatever to whatever else whenever and wherever they feel like.
The other day, I was listening to
Mohammad Rafi croon “Let me touch your tender or sensitive (strike off
whichever is not applicable) lips”*² and he speaks of sending good ones
off badly and it being one of the world’s old habits. I had to listen again
before I caught the key words. Send them off? Yes, with my less than poor
knowledge of the language, that’s what I thought it meant. Till someone told me
otherwise.
Or that other one, where Kishore-da’s
son Amit-da talks of someone being some River Mey. Mey? Now from where did that
one come? Burma? Why would someone want to be some Burman river? Irrawady, I’ve
heard of. Arkavathy too, though it has disappeared. But Mey? No, it may not be.
So, what is it? “Tell me you are not the Mey River, I don’t want to live, I
want to die.”*³ Quite a powerful line, that.
Have you heard of a surname called
Ghabra? No? I have. It is there in a song, where the singer is apparently
negating it, along with Sharma. No Sharma, no Ghabra. It’s curtains for the
night.*⁴
Then there’s the funny song that says
that K. John may walk off but Jiya does not go and Jiya will not if Diya does.
Some kind of love triangle, apparently, with poor John (K. John, to be specific,
with a rather stylish accent) caught between Jiya and Diya.*⁵ Cheeya. Ain’t no
place to be but heya.
And after you’ve already eaten the
mango, how can you show it? What a stupid thing to ask, but he does, does the
hero. “If you’ve eaten it, show me the mango” he asks. And like a dolt, she
tells him to smile first!*⁶
I spent many a sleepless night
thinking about these and others like them till realisation dawned on me. The
trick is to just sit back. Relax. And unravel the words syllable by syllable.
Sooner or later it will all come to you. Like Karan and Arjun. We will have a
guftagu over this sometime while I do a justuju. Right? Meanwhile, enjoy the
rangaubhu of the songs.
It is a funny language. So is that
other one. All funny languages, I tell you.
PS: If you know those 6 songs, please
send me a message. But beware the twists. If you don’t, ask me. I will check
with that Lucknowi friend and get back.
© Shiva Kumar – A bit of Urdu
too on Hindi Diwas, 14th September 2017
