PROJEKT iVIEW : Just Sing for Me
iVIEW AUTHOR:
Kumar Gautam (Bombay, India)
email: writerdirectorgautam [at] gmail.com
What better a poet or lyricist can ask for? An audience for free, isn’t it? An audience who does not say that Paka mat yaar… (Don’t irritate). If the audience has sense of poetry or even little understanding of poetry, then it’s almost like getting ice-cream toppings for free. And, what if there are equally competent poets and poetess who really don’t bother to appreciate other’s poetry and look for a point of criticism. Then its, “Ye…hay…hay…uuu…huh…huh” at least for me. Why? Here’s the answer:
“Nindak niyare rakhiye, Aangan kuti chawaye
Bin pani sabun bina, nirmal kare suhaiye”
(Keep your critiques close to you; let their hut be in your courtyard.
That way you don’t need soap and water to cleanse self)
Another twist in the tale is what if audience is more interested in catching up weekend gossips, a mug full beer and a glass of wine, thus signaling “Dude…you better keep off…else do something exciting to grab our attention…” This was the adventure in a south Mumbai pub, when I went for my poetry performance aka poetry slam.
Poetry slams…what’s that? It is performance poetry, a form of spoken word performed at a competitive poetry event called a “slam” at which poets perform their own poems that are “judged” on numeric scale by randomly picked members of the audience. The interesting part of poetry slam is audience. They are mai-baap (judges) so better you keep things simplistic, humourous and popular else you are booed out. So, if you are a Gulzar (lyricist) perform, “Lakdi ki khati…” and if you are Sameer (lyricist) then never perform, “Saiyaan ke saath madaiya mein…” Aaa! if you are English poet better keep off your romantic memoirs, and come up with something satirical. Its better if you study the background and tastes of audience else be there at your own risk…ha…ha…ha.
The scene was not much different at this event too. My first performance was the title track of my play, “Mehman Hazir, Mezabaan Gaayab” (Guest Appears, Host Disappears). One of the judges in the house was firang (foreigner). I asked him, “Dude…you don’t understand Hindustani…how did you rate me?” He replied cheekily, “It was simple…I looked around and saw people excited with your poetry…so I thought it must be good.” Got the point…audience man…they rule. My second performance just didn’t suit the taste of South Mumbaikars.
“Piya tore naynan bade beimaan
Jab-jab ye taaken mui, nikle mori jaan”
(Dear you eyes are too naughty, whenever they look at me…I almost die)
They just couldn’t understand the Awadhi-Brij Hindi, even though they thought that it was something melodious. Performances by other artistes were equally cheered and applauded by crowd. The one performance taking on BIG B almost ripped him apart and pointed out that BIG B ji is all because of his great father poet ‘Harivansh Rai Bacchan Ji’ and this stupid society doesn’t honour him at par with Amitabh Bacchan.
One thing was very obvious during the event, slam and culture is a closely related thing. Every f*** word earned cheer from crowd. The more abuses poured in, cheers grew louder from discerning crowd. The most interesting aspect was, the poetry was in English and the abuses were in Hindi. I guess abuses are still easier to relate with in Hindi. Altogether it was an attempt of GENERATION NOW to tear out their lungs in closed walls of pub and scream out all their angst and complains against society without any fear of being caught or scolded or abused back.
For me, it was great fun. It made me remember of those old days in Delhi, when I used to do street plays. We used to try out every trick in acting, writing and performing to involve audience and leave an impact at the end of the day. All thanks to my friend, Shivani Tibrewala from no license yet for reviving my old days and providing me an honest instant result giving audience for free.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Paka mat yaar (Don’t irritate)…
j/k….Welcome…
wow…gud poetry…yaar gautam …kuch sunaao sir hume bhi…piya tore naynan remind me of….
Apni chhab banaikay, jo main pi kay paas gayi
Chhab dekhi jab piyu ki so apni bhool gayi.
With my beautiful face all adorned, when I went to the beloved,
I saw his face, and forgot all about my own beauty.
Amir Khusro’s immortal lines….
and the one of Abida Parveen song..
bhala hua meri matki foot gayi
main to paniya bharan se chot gayi
the other one is
Nainon say naina milaaye,
Suhaagun, aaj basant manaalay.
Maccharji aapki dhwani rupi haansi sargoshi kar gayi…shukriya.
Dipankar…aap toh geet-ghazalon ke bahut jankar kar hain…aapke dwara Gulzar saheb ke geeton ke bhut, vartaman ka sandhi-viched maine padha tha…kafi rochak tha…Aapke saath baithne se jarur kuch seekhne ko milega…saheb, aapne apne comments mein Khusrau, Kabir jaise gunijano ke geeton ka varnan kiya hai…mere geeton mein toh unke ek harf ki bhi khusboo nahin…abhi toh bas seekh raha hun…phir bhi hausla-afzai ka shukriya….
Good job Gautam!