Jawed Akhtar Disappoints again in Jodha-Akbar

Yes i said it.  I eagerly waited for Jodha-Akbar’s music release. AR Rahman and Jawed Akhtar coming together for a mega period movie: a murid of good poetry and great music in film songs could not have asked for more. I hoped, the Lagan team complete with Ashutosh Gowariker as director, will recreate the magic. But no. the music does not touch my heart and lyrics disappoint. Not one song is hummable, not one line memorable. I listened the whole album to catch that one line, one bandhish, one imagery, that one Aha moment. All in vain. And no, I was not even comparing Jawed Akhtar with Shakeel Bundayuni and Jodha-Akbar with Mughale Azam. Jawed Akhtar at his best is all i hoped for.

The Khwajaji number has recieved high praise in music reviews I read. I love sufi songs but this is not in the league of the best. I will give it a low B. Rahman himself has been better in the past. Remember Piya Haji Ali from Fizaa. Talking about lyrics, Khwajaji’s lyrics is ordinary at best. Biased and opinionated all reviews are. But when talking about lyrics, our film reviewers are amazingly shallow. They follow a simple formula : If Jawed Akhtar or Guljar have penned lyrics, the lyrics are great. If Rahman has composed music, it is good. If it is not good, just wait, it will grow on you. Let me aks you a question: when is the last time you read a review that critiqued Jawed Saab’s poetry? I haven’t read one.

In the title I say Jawed Akhtar disappoints again. Again? When was the last time he disappointed me? Umrao Jaan Ada! Another period movie that afforded a rare opportunity for rich old world poetry. This time Jawed insisted on writing lyrics first rather than following the usual practice of pasting words to a readymade tune. Yet there is nothing in the lyrics. I do not remember one song, nor does anybody else whom I know. Again ab ke janam mohe bitiya na keejo was chosen for high praise in reviews. I found it completely lacking in subtlety and refinement–characteristic  of good poetry and of the people, place and period depicted in that film. May be good for a bhojpuri film album but certainly for a film about a 19th century Lucknow courtesan.

Between the two, however, Jodha-Akbar is worse.  Jawed’s poetry in Umrao Jaan was lacklusture; in Jodha-Akbar it lacks everything. Words seems to be pasted, songs lack in lyricality and they say nothing to me.

Is it so that Jawed Akhtar is a poet of modern sensibilities and he is at his best when he is writing about our times? He was rather ordinary (but not this bad) in Zubeidaa also. Yet I do not think this is a dair assessment. He is versatile. He was fabulous in Lagan and so too in Sardari Beghum, one of my favorite film albums. Huzoor itna hampe karam karte to achha tha, taghaful aap karte hain sitam karte to achha tha; More kanha jo aaye palat ke, Raah mein bichhi hain palkein aao were not chartbusters but there is amazing poetry in these songs. I hope we get to listen, read (yes i read film songs) and hum to new Jawed Akhtar gems very soon. 

Eminent Bihari : Sir Ganesh Dutta Singh (1868 – 1943)

Sir Ganesh Dutt Singh

Here is the first biographical essay from Dr. Sachidanand Sinha’s “My Eminent Behar Contemporaries”. This is not the first biography in the Book. The book has biographies in the chronological order with older men coming first. But I am posting Sir Ganesh Dutta’s biography first. There are many reasons.

First, I have a family connection with him. He was my granmother’s granduncle. That’s close enough for being partial to some one. Isn’t it? . 

Second, he was a late bloomer in his life. I like late bloomers and envy the precocious. Late bloomers give me hope, the precocious, a sense of inadequacy.  

Sir Ganesh Dutta started studying english only when he was 18 in an era when you could not take ICS entrance examinations after you were 19. There is an interesting family story about how he took to english. He was at is in-laws place when a telegram came. Someone asked him to read it. His father-in-law tersely remarked “oh If only i was that fortunate that my son-in-law could read english”. The remark hurt Sir Ganesh Dutta’s pride. He devoted himself to studies and matriculated five years later with first division and a scholarship for proficiency in maths . He did not stop there and went on to become a modestly successful lawyer and later a minister in the government of Bihar and Orissa from 1923 to 1937, the longest tenure for any minister anywhere in the whole British empire. The story reminds me of Kalidasa, the poet. There are some similarities and like that story this one may be aprocryphal too, it is inspiring nevertheless.

Third reason I like him so much is his austerity and philanthropy. He was no Gandhian. In fact he was a British loyalist but he led, what Dr. Sinha calls, a severely simple and stern life marked even by hardships to  advance the cause of education and to help the deserving poor in Bihar. He donated 4 lakh rupees to Patna University. Raj Darbhanga and Banaili Raj might have donated much bigger sums to build educational institutions, but he remains unmatched in philanthropy if we looked at the share of earnings and wealth dedicated for a cause by any person. He earned to donate.

Not less valuable was his inspiration to young men to acquire modern education. He was the tallest leader of Bhumihaars in his time. Bhumihaars in early 20th century were an incredibly inward looking community obsessed with land ownership and zamindari. They dominated rural Bihar and owned disproportionate amount of farmland but were mostly uneducated and unrepresented in professions and public life. He pushed them, inspired them to acquire modern education. Story goes that whenever young men approached him for jobs, he would encourage them to get more education and offered to sponsor their studies.

Lastly, Sir Ganesh Dutt was a great institution builder. As a minister, he helped build and fund some of the best educational and research institutions of Bihar like Prince of Wales Medical College and Hospital (now known as Patna Medical College and Hospital or PMCH), Darbhanga Medical College, Kanke Mental Health Center, Lac Research Instituite at Namkum and many more. Our generation needs another institution builder like Sir Ganesh Dutt to create and nurture institutions of excellence that our state sorely needs.

A Balanced Perspective on India and China

Like all Indians, I am also obsessed with our recent growth, its many positives and negatives and most of all how it compares to China. Here is the best piece i have read on the topic over last few months. It is balanced, full of insights and very well written.  Here are excerpts from the article:

1. “…educational inequality in India is among the worst in the world. According to the World Development Report 2006, the Gini coefficient of the distribution of adult schooling years in the population was 0.56 in India in 1998/2000, which is not only higher than China’s 0.37 in 2000, but even higher than almost all Latin American countries”.
2. “When I grew up in India, I used to hear leftists say that the Chinese were better socialists than us. Now I am used to hearing that the Chinese are better capitalists than us. I tell people, only half-flippantly, that the Chinese are better capitalists now because they were better socialists then! (emphasis mine).
3. “Cultural Revolution may have resulted in the largest destruction of human capital in history”. I have read about cultural revolution and have talked to my Chinese friends about it. But i never thought of it as history’s largest destruction of human capital.
4. “It may seem counterintuitive but the potential for unrest is arguably greater in the currently booming urban areas where, along with the breaking of the real estate bubble, a possible global recession could ripple through the excess-capacity industries and financially-shaky public banks”.

Eminent Bihari Contemporaries of Dr. Sachidanand Sinha

Dr. Sachidananda Sinha (1871-1950) was one of the builders of modern Bihar. Barely in his twenties, he launched the movement for a separate Bihar, soon afterreturning from England as a barrister. Not many believed it was possible or even desirable.  His sub-nationalism was denounced and people attributed selfish motives to him. But he and a small group of others persisted and the dream came true in 1911 when Bihar and Orissa came into existence as a separate province at the famous Delhi Durbar.  

Besides being a lawyer and a politician,  Dr. Sinha was also a  leading journalist and a great educationist. He was one of the first vice-chancellors of Patna University and built the famous Sinha library in 1924 in memory of his wife, Radhika. He wrote rich biographical sketches of his eminent contemporaries from Bihar and the rest of India which were later published in two volumes: 1) Some Eminent Behar Contemporaries and 2) Some Eminent Indian Contemporaries.

Some Eminent Behar Contemporaries was published way back in 1944 and is out of print now. The anthology sketches lives and contributions of twenty-three public figures of Bihar–politicians, educationsts, philanthropists, historians, scientists and missionaries–who  lived and worked in pre-independent India. Most of them have completely faded from public memory. We Indians are amazingly ahistoric people. We love to tell but loathe to document. We relish myth but ignore history. No wonder, we know so little about our past, even the recent past. And that is why this book is a wonderful find for me. It tells me so much about Bihar in the late 19th and the early 20th century that i had never known.  

Till now i have posted verses i liked on this blog. Now i am going to make this wonderful book accessible on the internet. I will attach chapters of this book as PDF files that can be downloaded and printed.

An earnest request to the readers: 1) Please post as comments: anecdotes,  personal/ family memoirs,  stories you heard from your grandfather, your school teacher, your old office colleague, anything you read anywhere that may illuminate the lives and times presented in this book. I know that a lot of these stories may be apocryphal or pure urban legends; much of it may be biased too. I still think there is a great value in documenting them before they are completely lost. I promise that i will put all your posts together and put them in an easily accessible document on web. So, please write.

The first post contains a short Preface by Dr. Sinha, foreword by the then Allahabad University Vice Chancellor Dr. A N Jha and an introduction by the author where he tells the story of creation of Bihar as a separate state and what public life was like in Bihar of 1890s and early 1900s. Dr. Jha calls it the most interesting chapter of the book and I agree. Enjoy.

1. preface1.pdf