Movie - 'It's A Wonderful Life' (1946)

There's a certain charm about olden movies which, while telling a jolly good story, manage to take in a lot about a span of time and a range of topics, describing a whole way of life prevailing at a certain time.  Hindi movies of 1950s like the Dilip Kumar-Vyjayanthimala starrer 'Naya Daur' come to mind.  This style of storytelling is quite different from modern movies which look at so many different aspects of the same thing, be it love or depression, sometimes sacrificing the charm of a good story itself in doing so.

Frank Capra's 'It's a Wonderful Life' (starring James Stewart and Donna Reed) is that kind of a movie.  It's ostensibly about a do-gooder George Bailey in an American small town who gives up his aspirations to help his family (shades of Rakhee's character in 'Tapasya', though George marries and settles down unlike in that movie) and the larger community, is on the verge of suicide at one point (no thanks to skulduggery by a villainous character), is saved by a guardian angel from heaven, and is then helped to his feet by his friends and family.  The angel actually makes him realize how things would've turned out if he was not born at all (as George, in a moment of despair, wishes) - much worse, as it turns out - since our individual lives are connected to so many other lives in so many different ways.  Typical Christmas eve feel good fare.

But within this span, the movie looks at and comments on many American phenomena between the two Wars: the housing crunch (and the beneficial role of S&Ls), the Great Depression and runs on the banks (even a simplistic primer on the mechanics of banking industry), the American campaign in WW-II, et al.  Interestingly, the angel here walks around with a copy of a Mark Twain book - allusions to the post Depression 'New Deal'?

Given that modern life has perhaps grown too complex to be explained with the help of simple stories (though that's a doubtful premise!), it's sometimes good to hark back to simpler times with such movies from a bygone era.

Old Hindi movie songs and spirituality?!

Most Indians of Gen-X who understand Hindi (or at least watched Hindi movies, which is a bigger population!) know that many songs in Hindi movies of yore, say upto 1970s, had 'double meanings'.  But double meaning of the gentle kind like 'Aanchal mein kya jee?...' (Kishore Kumar), not the like of 'Choli kay peechhay kya hai...' (Neena Gupta gyrating in 'Khalnayak').  And I mention one from the 1980s because the ones with 'real' double meanings, especially those from movies made in the 'noughties' (the first decade of 21st century, not to be confused with 'naughty'!), hardly leave anything to imagination.  And that applies to the songs with double meanings, not ones in recent times which have single, explicit meanings (just listen to 'Bheege honth tere...')!

Anyway, talking of the old Hindi movie songs, the double meanings in those songs were of two kinds.  There were some which were naughty (in a decent way, in keeping with social mores of the time), alluding 'between lines' to things which they could not in polite conversation (after all, those were the times when a mere touch between screen lovers could ignite sparks!).  And then there were some with perfectly normal lyrics but with a hidden meaning hinting at spirituality.  These were the songs which really touched the chords of one's heart.

Some of these songs, while ostensibly talking of the mundane, eventually made it clear that the allusion had all through been to higher things.  An example of this kind would be 'Laaga chunri mein daag...' - not the recent movie with that title, but the Manna Dey song picturised on Raj Kapoor.  Here, while the initial stanzas of the song seemed to be saying something mundane, the closing lines make it clear that the connotation all through had been to 'this world and hereafter': 'O ri chunariya atma mori, nain hain maya jaal...'.

And then there were songs which did not make any effort to clarify their meaning in any detail, perhaps because no such clarification was needed by the listeners!  Take the supremely soulful 'Mere sajan hain us paar...', sung by the maestro Sachin Dev Burman for 'Bandini', picturised on Nutan and Dharmendra.  I'm told the tune belongs to a musical tradition known in the Eastern part of India as 'Bhatiyali', alluding to songs sung mostly by boatmen and their ilk.  In this song, the first and the third stanzas, 'Mere sajan hain us par...', and 'Mat khel jal jayegi', talk of the longing of a lovelorn for her lover, supposedly living on the 'other side' (maybe of a river?), while the second stanza ('Man ki kitab se tum...') seems to hint at the ephemeral nature of fame or reputation.

What's to be noted is that while the meanings of the first and second stanzas is clear to the listener (one 'other-worldly' and the other promoting 'vairagya'), the meaning of the last stanza is not so clear.  A casual listener may conclude that this stanza ('Mat khel jal jayegi, kehti hai aag mere man ki...') cautions the lovelorn lady not to be consumed by the 'fire' of love, while she protests that she's after all the constant companion of her beloved ('Main bandini piya ki, main sangini hoon sajan ki...').  But just dig a little bit deeper and there's another meaning that shines forth: that the path of devotion to God is like walking on fire, and your only support is a firm conviction that you (the soul) can gain His companionship.  The masterstroke is the final line which subtly hints at His constant call: 'Mera kheenchti hai aanchal, manmeet teri hai pukar...'.

More on such songs later...

The power of serendipity...

How many times has it happened to you that you're in a particular frame of mind and then, out of the blue, something that is in tune pops out of somewhere!


It struck me when I received the book 'The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma' by Gurcharan Das, from the postal library which I subscribe to.  Now, as it happens, this was just one of the books in my online 'queue' at the library, and not even among the top two (I receive two books a month).  As it also happens, lately I've taken to reading commentaries/fiction based on old texts - the last two I read, both fiction, were 'The Palace of Illusions' (Draupadi's narration of Mahabharata, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni) and 'The Vengeance of Ravana' (one in a series of 'retelling' of Ramayana, by Ashok Banker).


Takes me back to a cliched dialogue from a recent Hindi movie ('Om Shanti Om'?), something like "Jab tum kisi say pyar kartay ho toh saree kayenaat tumko us say milanay ki koshish karnay lagtee hai" - loosely translated as 'When you love someone, the entire universe conspires to bring you together'!  This was probably brought out more aptly in the English movie of the same name as the title of this post, 'Serendipity' starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale.  What we used to simply call 'coincidence' now has another, more chic sounding, name!


Some books like 'The Secret' and 'The Power' by Rhonda Byrne have also tried to make the same point - that if you think about something very strongly, you'll probably get it (eventually?).  But is it ever that easy, that you wish for something strongly and it comes to you?  Doesn't seem so.  What may seem more plausible is that when our mind is focused on a certain thing, we 'see' or catch on to other things in tune with the object of our current attention.  And this process of 'seeing' may happen mostly in our subconscious mind, so that while we may make the right connection, we may not be able to explain (or even understand ourselves) how exactly we did that!  This was the theme of the book 'Blink' by Malcolm Gladwell.


This, though, still doesn't explain how I got that book from my library!  Was it because my mind was focused 'on the subtle art of dharma', in whatever fashion?  A toss up...