Gulzar in Guru
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(Here is a little analysis of Gulzar’s work in Guru. I have picked some tracks from the album and translated them and added to the imagery (in the under-running emotion of the song) at places.)
The songs are beyond comparison. The words deserve a separate in-depth session. I just immersed myself in the music, and what I came up with is these words. If you see more images behind the music/words, please do contribute.)
Aye hairat-e-aashiqui
Aye hairat-e-aashiqui, jagaa mat
Pairo se zameen lagaa mat
Let me sleep and dream longer, in this bliss of love
Wake me not
Let my feet stay afloat in the blithe air, eternally
(The absolute ecstasy of love, the elated trance one feels when a love succeeds, a celebration and reassurance that life will have a love to fall back on, whatever the times be….)
Kyun urdu faarsi bolte ho
Dus kehte ho do tolte ho
Jhooton ke shenshah bolo na
Why do you say what you do not mean?
What do your words mean when you don’t know them?
Tell me what’s your story, O king of liars!
(An affectionate chhed-chhad between two lovers)
Kabhi jhaanko meri aankhen
Sunaaen ek dastaan, jo honthon se kholo na
Look into my eyes, you will see a story
The story that is there is in your heart but not on your lips
(A surreal color scheme, a theatrical cyclorama, a real celebration interspersed with a dreamy portrayal)
Do chaar maheene se lamho mein
Umro ke hisaab bhi hote hain
In these moments, in these months,
An age can be summed up
Jinhe dekha nahi kal tak
Kahin bhi ab khokh mein wo chehre bote hain
The one whom I have never seen
The one whom I do not know
Somewhere faces are being born out of that one
Faces that shall stay forever in my psyche
(Illustrates the beauty of anonymity in a marriage, and the subsequent delight in this illusion, this mirage)
Tere bina
Tere bina beswaadi beswaadi ratiyaan
Rukhi re oh rookhi re
Katore kaate katena
(The subtle declaration of a sublime love)
Without you, my nights are tasteless
They are dry like the homeless wind
Those intolerable nights….
(The helplessness of a heartfelt love)
Aalaap
(A huge roofless expanse emphasizing the limitless possibilities of young love)
Na jaa chaakri ke mare na ja
Sautan pukaare
Saawan aayega to poochhega
Na ja re….
Pheeki pheeki beswaadi ye ratiyaan
Kaatore kate na kate na
Tere bina chaand ka sona khota re
Peeli peeli dhoop udaawe jhoota re
Without you, the moon has no sheen
It just glimmers with stale sunlight, the liar it is.
Tere bina sona petal
Tere sang keekar peepal
Aaja kate na ratiyaan
Jaage hain
Jaage hain der tak humein
Kuchh der sone do
Thodi si raat aur hai
Subah to hone do
Aadhe adhoore khwaab jo
Poore na ho sake
Ek baar phir se neend mein
Wo khwaab bone do
We have been awake for long
Let us sleep for a while
The night is not over yet
The morning is yet to come
The dreams that were never lived
Let us sleep again and search them again
(Sadness despair gloom agony failure
The ache a heart feels after a long night lack of sleep, lack of any hope
Through the spires of gloom, the heart will find a path
Through the trifles of life, life will find its reason
The reversals of night and day shall disappear
What we will see is unbridled dazzle.)
(I had done similar works on Water & Omkara; let me know if you would like to read them)
Tushar Shukla
Tags: Medium, Songwriting, Soundtrack, Teaching Film-making
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Good work Tushar
Certainly would like to read about Omkara. Water i haven’t heard so cannot comment.
Now the lyrics make a lot of meaning.
-Punds
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Thanks Punds(also thanking HG, who lead to the thought of doing the article)
There are some scores that inspire to go deeper than just an ear(literally), Guru was one of them.
Albums like these create an imagery in the head, and you start visualizing the tracks.
And its great fun to see the director’s vision and see if it matches it with yours. I am sure a many people would have felt the same way.
Water was another similar work, though I am still waiting for the audio to release(a pity!), I have been listening to it on music sites for a long time now.
I will publish the other articles soon. And as of now and the next few weeks, at least, Guru will be stuck on my player and comp.:)
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Tushar …
the thing i’ve observed about gulzar is that his lyrics are too good…
the only problem is that it becomes to problematic to fit into tunes… And if it is someone like Rahman who cannot understand urdu/hindi poetry and doesnt/can’t pay much attention to them… he goes with his tune … and gulzar goes with his poetry …
Result : Sometimes out of synch – mismatch like
Aye udi udi … (Saathiya)
Yammo Yammo .. Mayya Mayya (Guru)
Chori pe chopri … Saathiya
Javed akhtar is better off in that sense … coz he has a better sense of music and he can effectively fit words to the tune …
That’s why the Vishal-Gulzar combo is more lethal anyday than the Rehman-Gulzar combo ….
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Karthik..
I partly agree with you and partly not…
with saathiya, it was a reworking of alaipayuthe, which I had listened to over an year before saathiya came out, and since I was so tuned to the tamil songs, that I could hardly like the hindi ones, the only ones that I liked were the title song, chupke se, yaar milade & naina milaike(last two being original works in hindi).
I agree that in rahman’s beat based orchestration, words do get muffled, many a ppl have agreed on that..
but with gulzar, he gives special attention to the ’sounds’ of the words, with gulzar’s help, so that they get suppressed to the least. I am not saying this on my own, I read gulzar’s interview where he said that Rahman and him do work towards understanding both their inputs.
for example- dil se’s title track saw the same ‘muffling’ but on repeated hearings, it did get understood. on the other hand, the way rahman renders the tracks(in urdu) make you wanna go for the rewind button more often, which makes the interpretation more fun than annoying.
in guru, i agree that i did have to go to the lyric book for the exact words some of the times, like in tere bina, i did not know it was beswaadi hai ratiyaan, i used to think it is beswaadi hain piya…
javed akhtar adds a different color to the songs, ex- earth, lagaan, zubeidaa, mangal pandey etc, but gulzar n him are both distinct, and have their own magic. i would still rate gulzar higher in poetry and the enjoyable ‘un-interpretability’ which makes you wanna reach a dictionary or knowledge source(i did that for chaiyya chaiyya, and believe me, whatever i know abt urdu is thanks to the gulzar songs like this and the older ones like zihale maskin..)
rahman does understand little urdu and hindi, which is evident in his chaste pronunciation of qawwali songs like zikr, al maddath maula, or piya hazi ali…
vishal and gulzar combo also create magic, but not to the same level as a rahman and gulzar..
but on second thoughts, things like music and poetry are highly subjective and cant be essentially quantified or compared …
sorry sorry
:(
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pls pls Omkara.
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wah tushar, i was not expecting you to translate songs, but i am glad that you did.
like you i also found hard to grasp the first line of Tere Bina song, but rest was fine.
Jaage Hain has the minimal lyrics and, erm, minimal musical instruments played in the background, but kya geet hain!
thanks for this, yup, can you do it for Omkara and any other soundtracks that you have done.. cos i like it.
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thanks HG.
now after a weekend immersed in listening(no listening like a drunk listening b-) ) to Guru, I am glad that I talked so highly of it the first day I heard it.
Jaage Hain doesnt leave my head, Rahman has truly played with the listeners imagination, for startling results, i would love to play the song to some of my annoying distant aunties who criticise my music :d
i ll be like, “Aunty, listen to this slow number,” and when rahman blasts the living daylights out of them, i ll say, “sorry aunty, lagta hai volume tej ho gaya hee hee ;)”
I ll do Omkara soon, also Water.
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Wow! That was great, Tushar. Yes, do Water, please. :d
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thanks Monica.
glad to know that you want Water, I am just keeping a count here of Omkara Vs Water
I ll post whichever wins by wednesday.
As of now,
Omkara 3 Water 2
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Great job with the translations. By the way, did Gulzar pen the lyrics for Omkara and WAter too?
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shravan, gulzar did omkara, while water(songs) was penned by sukhwindara singh.
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very good job, would like to see ur work,
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thanks raghu, i will put the work up soon.
waitin for a comparatively ‘dry’ day here
it seems to be raining posts today, i guess it might even be some sort of record!
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It is Wednesday today, Tushar. So, will you be posting Water translations? :d
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monica, sorry for the delay, you can check the water post now..
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Mayya Mayya snippet:
http://www.ibnlive.com/videos/28097/exclusive-mallika-sexes-up-guru.html
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I am also a great fan of Gulzar Saheb’s poetry.
Great translations, but I would like to make a slight correction. The correct line in the aye haiart-e-aashiqui song goes:
do chaar maheen se lamhon mein
umron ke hisaab bhi hote hain
translation (using your words):
In these “delicate’ moments
an age can be summed up
Gulzar Saheb’s correct word is ‘maheen’ (delicate, thin) not ‘maheene’ (months)
I also think your translation doesn’t do justice to this line:
Ek baar phir se neend mein
Wo khwaab bone do
the truly Gulzarian touch to this line comes from the word “bone” which means “to sow”.
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Tushar, nice job. Enjoyed it. But somehow always felt that if its a good hindi song, then one should try to understand the hindi one rather than translating the song in other language. Words can be translated but u need to understand the thought behind the song…for good songs its mostly story/region/character specific. Like the songs of Omkara.
Kartik…completely agree…n thats why when u hear Rehman’s songs for first time, its difficult to figure out the words….only after hearing it many times more, u can get the exact words.
I dint like Guru’s music except jaage hain…that pani ka bosa-tosa n the title song…kuch baat nahi bani…i think maiyya-maiyya will pick up..but it will do more cz of Mallika than Rehman…;)..also they are adding two more songs in the album. Is it cz the music is not doing great like it worked for RDB ???
The title song gives so gujju feel to it…I guess, after Shubha Mudgal criticised Rehman for Mangal Pandey’s music, now he has done extra research to match the era/region/setup of the story.
Gulzar..always loved his work n respected him a lot…but got to know few things about him just few days back…..have lost all respect for him now…though love his words. Have always believed that its better to be a good human than a great artist.
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comment on GULZAR ON GURU
@phoenixnu, thanks.
I agree with you, I love the songs in their original flavor be it from anywhere from the world. However this is something that I accidentally started and caught on to it. Some friends of mine could not understand the songs so I translated for them, since I am basically a writer, I loved the process of just reinterpreting the songs and triggering my imagination to write something original on an existing piece of work. and so the string of such works.you can also check out
http://passionforcinema.com/song-project-part-i/
http://passionforcinema.com/music-interpretations-omkara-rdb/
waise sach poochho to, hindi aur urdu ka koi saani nahi hai..
but i take these works as an independent piece as the texture, setting and “zaayaka” are lost anyways..
regarding GURU, i love it. each n every track, and for the music sales thingy, it is proving to be the highest seller of the year.they are just adding the 2 tracks to further its dimensions and also push the emotion of the film. i feel the film will bring mani to the fore, and bring him back his lost glory.
i am not aware of the shubha mudgal thing. i wonder how could she criticize a rahman! may be because he never gave her a song.
love your comment on Gulzar.
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thanks for the correction, aditya.
i do not consider these works as exact translations. i would call them reinterpretations them more.
as for the ‘maheen’ thing, i took the lyrics from the song book that came with the cd. and in my view, it should be maheene, as the line goes…
do chaar maheene se lamhon mein umro ke hisaab…
the ‘time’ thingy suggests the use of maheene to be more apt…
i might be wrong though.
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Hi Tushar,
If you really look at the song book, it has many mistakes (which is very common with Gulzar’s lyrics because he uses uncommon and unconventional words, which transcribers find difficult to comprehend). Listen carefully, and you will realize that the word is actually ‘maheen’. It is this word that puts Gulzar’s disctinctive mark on this line. Besides “do chaar maheene se lamhon mein” doesn’t quite gel in terms of the grammar or the intention of the poet.
Anyway, maybe we’ll get to see the real lyrics some day. Maybe Gulzar would himself quote it somewhere.
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Hi Tushar,
Thanx a lot for giving lyrics of Guru.. u know till date i had no clue what the song is all about.. i think someone has already said that A.R and Gulzar is a mismatch, even i feel that.. look at all the gulzar songs till now right from Do dooni chaar to Maqbool, u feel like listening to them again and again, infact i am a gr8 gulzar fan for his lyrics, but somehow i just don’t like the Gulzar and A.R combo, i really feel he cant give right kind of treatment to Gulzar saab’s lyrics..
About water, yes i have heard the songs and i LOVE “Piya ho”..
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Thanks Neha. I dont agree that Gulzar’s rich repertoire can be summed up in a sentence. his words irk you, intrigue you, and grow on you, irrespective of the composer. IMO, he works best with Rahman after the golden combo with RD.
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very nice n sincere conversation is going on…
just want to add and put my outcome of interest in poetry of two legends that where Gulzar sahab is expolring every root of urdu with lots of very basic n rural words, Javed sahab is setting new possible heights in poetry on urdu blend with touch of urbanization…or can say Gulzar sahab is finding new albhabets and Javed sahab making poetry on that.
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great work.. keep it up..
btw.. let me know if u get the meaning of ZIKR song from Bose movie.:)
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Awesome work!!!! i’ve been looking for a decent translation cuz i’m learning hindi! thanks a lot!
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Great job, Tushar!
What i really liked was that u didn’t just translate d songs but also interpreted the underlying emotion. Ur a fabulous writer and frm what i can make out, a great musician too. Excellent combo!
I luv most Guru songs, especially aye hairathe, jaage hain and tere bina.
Could u do a translation of Khwaja mere khawaja frm Jodha Akbar?
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Thanks Sapna. Khwaja mere Khwaja could be tough but I did attempt an interpretation in a Jodha Akbar post. I should be doing something similar on Yuvvraaj soon.
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