A PERSONAL TAKE ON THE SONG “NADAAN PARINDEY”
How can you get influenced by something that is trivialized by most people to be merely a source of pleasure, enjoyment or worse, a relaxing pastime? The certain “something” here, being a Bollywood song. The above definition, however, only refers to people who do not claim to have any sort of expertise in the enormous world of music and most definitely do not pursue it as one of their favourite hobbies. In short, people like me. So the song I am about to devote an entire day thinking and writing about, which had left me with teary eyes and a curious heart from the very first day I heard it, let’s just say that there has to be a lot in it to discuss about. Thus to explore the hidden reasons behind the huge impact that it still has over me, here is my version of an attempted analysis on the very popular and equally extraordinary song from the recently released Bollywood movie, “Rockstar”, called “Nadaan Parindey”, sung and composed by the great maestro himself, Mr. A.R. Rahman.
When I had heard the song for the first time, it did undoubtedly get me hooked, but it was only after I heard it a couple of times after that I started to take notice of how deep its words really were and of the several angles that the song can be evaluated from. Growing up with country pop singer Taylor Swift singing “Wasn't it easy in your lunchbox days, always a bigger bed to crawl into/Wasn't it beautiful when you believed in everything and everybody believed in you/It's alright, just wait and see your string of lights are still bright to me/Who you are is not where you've been, you're still innocent”, and bands like Enigma matching tunes to words like “Be yourself don't hide/Just believe in destiny/Don't care what people say/Just follow your own way/Don't give up and use the chance/To return to innocence”, I was surprised to find out that I could not discard “Nadaan Parindey” as no-different. The hard core guitar playing along with the awe-inspiring drum beats does full justice to the soul-wrenching lyrics throughout the song.
The song begins with the extended utterance of the words “O Nadaan Parindey Ghar Aa Jaa”. The beginning note “O” signifies clearly a form of pleading or begging and the words “Nadaan Parindey” means “an innocent bird”. Thus, it almost comes across like a mother lovingly pleading for her little, innocent child to come back into the safety of his house after dusk. But the tone is far from loving. The tone depicts something coarser than sadness. It depicts a slack futility. The tone defies hope or any expectancy of the fulfillment of the plea referred to earlier. Thus, these provide signs of the possible existence of some inner meaning.
The impetus of the dramatic opening lines is echoed in the first stanza of the song. The mother’s ever-searching eyes seems to have lost track of her naïve child and her distressed heart pains from the uncertainty of her knowledge about the probable harsh and difficult conditions that her child might have had to face alone in the wide open hell of a society. She tirelessly coaxes her child to find his way back to his home for the reality that looms large in the outer world has nothing good to offer him. It would only use him for its own benefit and leave his side when he reaches the worst of his state. In another sense, the fast-deteriorating economic conditions all across the globe or recession as we call it, have left millions of ambitious eyes drained and defeated. A dire lack of job opportunities has forced the most sincere geniuses of our nation to blindly seek for a way to earn their living in the foreign countries. Ironically, they are the first to get stripped of their employment when recession hits that particular region. Afraid to return back to their home place, the battered and bruised strugglers sleeplessly turn into “night nomads” as they move on to a yet another impermanent destination and so on… as referred in the lines- “Kyun desh videsh phire maara/Tu raat beraat ka banjaara”Our holy text, the Gita, places very strong views about “karam” or “karma”. It says that after a body dies, its soul does not die. It simply transfers from one body to another and that is how the cycle of life continues. This transition is symbolically equal to a person taking off his dirty clothes at the end of the day and putting on fresh ones at the beginning of a new day. Thus the line “Sau dard badan pe failey hai/Har karam ke kapde mailey hai”, implies that a hundred atrocious blows were inflicted on the nomads’ bodies, during their life’s journey, and their clothes of karma had become immensely ragged and filthy. This means that it is not long before they would have to stop (meet their end) and change their clothes (let their souls make a fresh start).
The second stanza reveals the child, with twinkling eyes full of unflagged imagination, eagerly flapping his hands in the attempt to fly off into the blue sky. The mother smiles when this image passes her mind and sadly points out that “kaate chahe jitna paron se hawa ko/khud se na bach payega tu”, which means no matter how much he tries to get better of the wind and fight it with his wings, he cannot save himself from the shortcomings or the lack of experience to handle himself. Thus he is bound to be unsuccessful in his attempt. This stanza also might be referring to all those unconventional gems hidden among us, who are born to think and live differently than just the usual trend. The people whose winged creative power if encouraged, could lead to wonders, surpass all boundaries of excellence and even prove to be an actual revolution for mankind. The people who detest the normal routine and age-old traditions of the society and dare to bring a change with their “hatke”(different) thinking. But these precious gems get lost or fall short of achieving what they were born to achieve because of the fact that they belong to the minority section in the 21st century. In today’s materialistic and mechanic world robots are in vogue and in their rule any out of ordinary person is both oppressed and discouraged to a level where they give in and agree to be robots like them or are simply banished. Thus the lines, “tod aasmanon ko phoonk de jahanon ko/khud ko chhhupa na payega tu”, tell us that it doesn’t matter if one decides to break down heaven itself or burn the entire universe in vengeance, nothing will help him preserve what could be his exceptional caliber.
The third and final stanza of the song digresses from the usual tone of the pleading of a mother mentioned in the earlier stanzas. The dialect in which this stanza is written varies a great deal too. An ancient form of Hindi language, known as “braj bhasha” has been used here which adds a unique beauty to the closing stanza and gives it a feeling of time and space. The lines are: “Kaagaa re kaagaa re mori itni araj tohse/Chun chun khahiyo maas/Arajiya re khahiyo na do naina mohe/ Piya ke milan ki aas”. There is a possibility that these lines might refer to the innate thoughts of a youth who has just begun his life as a soldier. The word “kaagaa” here, means “a crow”. But here, the crow is not specified in its literal sense but used as a symbolism to denote “war”. The black colour of the crow points to the dark and gory aspects of war and the appetite of the crow which is based on dead and decaying bodies refer to the blood thirsty battlefield. The soldier requests the crow to cautiously choose its food. The soldier is ready to offer each and every flesh of his body only if the crow agrees to spare feeding on his eyes, for without his sight the only hope of ever being re-united with his beloved would disappear and that hope is all he has left to keep him alive. These thoughts depict the pathos of the soldiers all over the world who have given up everything from friends, families to loved ones to serve and fight in wars which are the ultimate, catastrophic products of the evil government of certain nations.
The song ends with the repetition of the opening lines which confirms the fact that the plea of the mother has remained unsolved which in turn justifies the tone of futility mentioned earlier. It definitely leaves us wanting for more and most importantly leaves us with an inquisitive desire to delve into its hidden depth and explore the various angles from which it can be interpreted to try and seek out the possible answer for the plea emphasized throughout the song.
Pritha Paul, Shri Shikshayatan College
