MADHUBAN MERA DHIKA NAACHE RE

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, 14^th September 2017