Bombay of the Silver Screen
Duration: 00:13:17; Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1; Hue: 173.127; Saturation: 0.003; Lightness: 0.447; Volume: 0.286; Cuts per Minute: 21.078; Words per Minute: 31.015
Summary: If there is one city that exemplifies India's contradictory modernity, it has to be Bombay. The city of dreams and nightmares has had its fair share of cinematic time, and these two songs form the fifties show us two different Bombays.
Nargis
A number of the films of the fifties acknowledged the question of migration, and the themes of the films often reflected the tension between the city and village life. Ashish Nandy argues that slums in India can in fact be seen as a part of the continuum that exists between villages and cities, and prefers to describe them as urban village. A number of Raj Kapoor films deal with the theme of the villager who finds himself trapped by the evil lures of the city. The contrast that is generally staged through these films is the contrast between tradition and modernity, community and alienation. The city presents itself both as a space of opportunity (Shri 420) but an opportunity that comes with an inevitable corruption of the honesty and integrity of the protagonist. In other films such as Jagte Raho, the city appears as threatening space, with very little redemptive possibility.
In Jagte Raho for instance, Raj Kapoor portrays a villager who has just arrived, in the dead of night, in Calcutta, and is desperately looking for water to quench his thirst. His quest for water takes him inside a massive and gated apartment complex but before he can satisfy his thirst, a watchman sees him and assuming that he is a thief, raises an alarm, setting off a massive manhunt that lasts through the night. Trying to escape the mob, the villager witnesses a variety of vices that lurk behind the facade of bourgeois respectability.
In this particular song from Shri 420, the city becomes the space in which the conflict between the city and the village is played out. Running away from a gambling den, Raj stumbles across an urban village in which people are celebrating and remembering their village, as well the reasons for their migration. The songs works through contrasting the two worlds of the city and village.
(Us desh mein, tere pardes mein, sone chandi ke badle me bikthe hain dil, Is gaon mein, dharti ki chaon mein, pyar ke naam pe hi tadap te hai dil). The idea of an idyllic rural community is contrasted to the alienating aspects of modern life in the city.
Bombay, Urban Village
Community
Rural
Urban Village
Contrast
Ai dil hai mushkil jeena yahan
Zara hatke zara banchke yeh hai Bombay meri jaan.
(My love, it's difficult to survive here.
Twist and turn, stay on your guard, this is Bombay, my love.)
Ae Dil hai mushkil jeena yahan:
The ultimate lyrical tribute to urban life in general and Bombay life in particular, this catchy song has often been the answer, whenever complaints about life in Bombay are made. Made in the fifties, CID is a film that exemplifies the fraught relationship that cinema in the fifties had to the city. The Bombay of fifties cinema was the dark city of alienated desires and dangerous temptations. A number of the films of the era, Awara, Jagte Raho, Baazi represented Bombay as the site of an ambivalent modernity. The use of Bombay's urban landscape in these films were perpetually struck by the deferral of the good life for its inhabitants. While the city in postcolonial India was cast as the engine of a modernizing, democratic India it also failed to fulfill its promise of extending the full rights of social citizenship to the vast majority of Indians. And alongside the shiny glittering city, emerged the shadow city of Hindi cinema.
Bombay
Marine Drive, Bombay
city life
unintended city
Kahin building kahin tramen kahin motor kahin mill
Milta hai yahan sub kuch ek milta nahi dil
Insan ka hai kahin naam o nishan
Zara hatke zara banchke yeh hai Bombay meri jaan
(Buildings, trams, cars, and mills,
You can find everything here except for a human heart.
There is no sign of humanity here,
So twist and turn, stay on your guard, this is Bombay, my love)
Ai dil hai mushkil jeena yahan
Zara hatke zara banchke yeh hai Bombay meri jaan.
(My love, it's difficult to survive here.
Twist and turn, stay on your guard, this is Bombay, my love.)
Kahin satta kahin patta kahin chori kahin race
Kahin daka kahin phanka kahin thokar kahin thes
Bekaronka hai kayi naam yahan
(Here you see gambling, there you see stealing,
and there the race course.
Burglary, cheating, disappointments, and insults abound.
Here the unemployed have many names.)
Ai dil hai mushkiljeena yahan
Zara hatke zara banchke yeh hai Bombay meri jaan
(It's difficult to survive here, my love,
So twist and turn, stay on your guard, this is Bombay, my love.)
In his introduction to The Secret Politics of Our Desires, Ashis Nandy contentiously argues that Bombay cinema is located in the unintended city or the urban slum and characterizes Hindi cinema as an expression of the "slum's point of view" of Indian politics, society, and the world." The urban slum is his chosen metaphor for Bombay cinema because he sees both as modes of negotiating survival in the city and as "low" forms of the modern: "The popular film is low brow, modernizing India in all its complexity, sophistry, naivete, and vulgarity".
While the song also replays some of the themes of the films of the fifties, it is also a much more playful look at the city, with an interesting exchange between the small time pickpocket and a woman who counters his view of the city.
Sudipta Kaviraj has written an essay on this song called Reading a song of the city from Flicks: Indian cinema and the Urban experience
People here mock the homeless, call them tramps,
They themselves slash people's throats but that's called "business".
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Begharko awara yahan kahte hans bans
Khud kate gale sabko kahe isko business
Ik chiz ke hai kayi naam yahan
Zara hatke zara banchke yeh hai Bombay meri jaan
Ai dil hai mushkil hai jeena yahan
Zara hatke zara banchke yeh hai Bombay meri jaan.
(People here mock the homeless, call them tramps,
They themselves slash people's throats but that's called "business."
Here are there are so many names for a single things!
So twist and turn, stay on your guard, this is Bombay, my love
It's difficult to survive here, my love.
So twist and turn, stay on your guard, this is Bombay, my love.)
Bura duniya woh hai kehta aisa bholatu na ban
Jo hai karta woh hai bharta hai yahan ka yeh chalan.
Tadbeer nahin chalne ki yahan
Yeh hai Bombay, yeh hai Bombay, yeh hai Bombay meri jaan
Ai dil hai aasan jeena yahan
Suno mister, suno bandhu, yeh hai Bombay meri jaan.
(Don't believe everything you hear, you simpleton.
The only ruleltruth here is that you have to take the initiative to win.
Fate does not determine lives here.
My love, it is easy to survivellive here,
Listen to me, this is Bombay, my love.)
Instead of confirming the pessimistic refrain - "
ai dil hai mushkil jeena yahan" ("it is difficult to survive here, my love")
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