Our Perso-Arabic Roots--Part I

Part of the beauty of a language is its background, and Urdu/Hindi is no exception to this. Like English, which has gathered a worldwide vocabulary like a magnet, Urdu/Hindi is rich in word choice and composition, deriving words from various sources. Other than the influences of Sanskrit and, today, English, a vast multitude of words comes from the past influences of Arabic and Persian (Farsi), words we use every day, regardless of religion or status.
What I have often been fascinated by is the extent to which Arabic and Persian words have permeated these "sister languages" over the years, to the point where nearly half of the words in my Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary are of Perso-Arab origin. Words like haal and musaafir and khairat and ta'aluqaat (all Arabic loanwords) along with sakht and gulaab and baagh and khushbu (all Persian loanwords) are thrown around in daily conversations, mixing in with our local flares of speech, giving our Urdu/Hindi a masala-like consistency: everything jumbled around like a bunch of spices thrown into a bowl. And when we add English words, we can absorb it with our chalta-hai (anything goes) attitude, getting our points across on the pragmatic stilts of language.

Nowhere was the influence of Arabic on Urdu/Hindi more evident to me than when I was taking first-level and second-level Arabic this past year. My teacher was always giving us more vocabulary words, and when she wrote them down in Arabic script on the whiteboard, I noticed words that I knew, most of which had the same meaning in Urdu as they had in Arabic. Fursah meant fursat, muHaafiD meant the same as muhaafiz, hawaa meant the same as hawaa (She told me, towards the end of the last class, that I was exactly like an Italian trying to learn French). I would also write down Urdu words in nastaliq on paper and ask my teacher if she recognized them as Arabic (which she did, about 90% of the time), and of course, when we went together to a masjid, the Islamic terms I'd heard from Pakistani Muslim friends were exactly the same, pronounced a little bit differently ( In Urdu we pronounce the Arabic letters  D, DH, and z  all as "z", whereas they have their own sounds in Arabic). When I played tabla at school for an event earlier this year one of the Saudi students asked the name of my instrument and smiled when he heard it was called "tabla": This is too an Arabic word, Tabla, which means, of course, drum.

As for Persian influences, what can we say? Last week, watching the Persian film Leila, I was stunned to see hear how many words I knew from Urdu reflected in the Farsi I heard onscreen. Words like mamnun and gol and khastegar and shabaash reverberated in my ears, their meanings already garnered from the Urdu vocabulary I'd gotten earlier. The Persians gave us the charbaagh design, the measurement system of nastaliq script (which you can see in the Taj Mahal, where the Islamic calligraphy on the walls is measured so that when you look at it from below it does not look distorted from  the effects of perspective), great poetry (Saadi's Golestan and our Persian-influenced Ghalib), and so much more that this post is titled "Part I". What do we say to our Persian forefathers? "Mamnun (Thank you)". 

Desi-Pardesi Amalgams

In a world that pigeonholes people into every possible category, it is comforting to know that there are others like myself who cannot fully classify themselves as part of one culture or another. For myself, I know it is impossible to completely describe me as "American"  due to my focus on desi culture and language, but at the same time, I cannot completely describe myself as strictly "Desi", due to my upbringing and where I have lived all my life. But I am happy that I am not the only one stuck in between Western and Desi culture. The above documentary, "I'm British But..." by Gurinder Chadha, is an excellent depiction of British desis around 1989 describing their perspectives on their lives and identities as British-brought-up South Asians. The film and the music, of both worlds, casts a light on the dual natures of the interviewees, showing how they are, as Vindu Goel in Vijay Prashad's book The Karma of Brown Folk put it, "in the end, [after much soul searching] you realize...you are simply yourself, an amalgam of cultural contradictions."

About the music: If anybody knows where I can find a copy of DCS's song "Rule Britannia/Bhangra Lovers", please inform me. I have not been able to find anything of it on the Internet.

Diamonds from Heera

In the past year, my awareness of bhangra has expanded from the modern musical scene to the backdrop tunes of yesteryear. And one of the lodestones of the bhangra industry (based in the British cities of Manchester, Birmingham, and London) is the group Heera.  For those who don't know about Heera, you should know that they were one of the earliest bhangra bands to form, around the time of Alaap and Apna Sangeet, who formed in the late 1970s, and made a massive name for themselves in India and abroad.

I got introduced to Heera in early 2011 while listening to a weekend bhangra show on the radio. One of the listeners called in to complain good-naturedly to the DJ that they didn't play any old school bhangra anymore, that he played only the new stuff ("old school" in bhangra terms seems to refer to anything made before the turn of the millenium). After mentioning this to everybody, the DJ put on a song by Heera, Dowain Jaaniya, and suddenly I was surrounded by the sounds of a tune redolent of 80s-style pop music, sung in Panjabi . I had never heard any oldie bhangra tunes, much less heard of any group other than Alaap, and while I sat there in the wake of a blast from the past, I was thinking, what did the DJ say the name of this group was? At the end of the song he mentioned it again, and at the end of the show I was scouring the Internet for who Heera was. I found some of their recordings, some of their MTV-inspired music videos, and opened myself up to the world of old bhangra.

Heera is notable for their myriad musical experiments. The Panjabi tunes they've done have flirted with practically every genre while keeping their distinctive desi sound. Latino piano and conga  influences resound in the classic Maar Charappa and in Naach Patalo, while techno swerves verve around with dholki bravado and keyboard in Sharaabi Teri Akhiyaan Ne. And don't forget the disco-sounds of Dowain Jaaniya. Of course they like to do more traditional bhangra (without the dhol, unlike Apna Sangeet), as in Milna De Naal Aaye Mitro, but despite this they should be counted as innovators, as the diamonds of the era.

Achchi Si Shayari...For Everyone







Kolaveri Di-- Phenomenon in Pan-Indian Identity



Aishwarya Dhanush singing Kolaveri Di

 This past month I was amazed—and vastly proud—to hear that one of the songs from the Tamil film 3 (Moonu) had made it as a vastly popular song in the subcontinent as well as in my local community. Generally, I don’t pay much attention to South Indian cinema, since my knowledge of Tamil and Malayalam is practically limited to how to read and a few words here and there, but this song has apparently taken the attention of desi communities worldwide. According to Khabar Magazine, where I originally heard of the song, if I hadn’t heard of this song yet, I must be in a coma. After reading that line, I remarked that no, I was not in a coma, but lived with a white family who wouldn’t know anything about this song anyway unless Dhanush himself appeared on American television to sing Kolaveri Di. But the song appeared to me in another way when I visited one of my desi friends, who asked if I had heard of Kolaveri Di; when he began to play a clip of the song for me, his sister mentioned, with slight annoyance, that in the past month she had heard this song over a thousand times. I decided, since I’d heard about it twice in that past week, to find out why it was so popular. My inspection began shortly at YouTube. When I viewed the video, I noticed that it had over 33 million views, and that in the span that I was watching it, four more comments had been submitted to the site.

While I was watching it, I wondered what there was in this song that would make it so popular in the desi world. Of course it is new, and filled with combinations of desi and Western influences (the nadaswaram oboe and tavil of the Deccan collaborating with the modern sounds of saxophone and piano), but I knew that there was something else to all of this. It didn’t take long for me to consider that perhaps one of the factors is that is sung in Indian English, that masala-filled dialect of English that makes Westerners’ heads spin.

            This is that one interesting fact about Kolaveri Di then, that it has gathered the attention of the desi communities not by the use of a local desi language (Gujarati, Tamil, Bangla), but by the use of the common bond of English, the language of the British Raj and the lingua franca of the modern world. And mind you, this is not the English that most Westerners are used to, but a singsong version sung in a South Indian accent (hence the “-u” at the consonantal ends of English words), with grammar that most English speakers would frown at trying to understand. But despite this, I find it has appeal, and mostly because of the rawness of the way that the English is used; it is not the English of the refined university student in India brought up drenched in Anglophilia, but the English of the common man, the English of the rickshaw-puller, the bania, and the local paanwallah. This allows it, from my perspective, to be more accessible to the desi populace, so that it can cross the language barriers between Panjabis and Marathis and come out as something that holds appeal to almost everyone who knows a little bit of English. Along with the popular theme of the heartbroken man leaning over his “glass-u scotch-u, eyes full-u tear-u”, I believe that the past integration of English into India has allowed for this song to become one of the most popular songs recently.

Kishore Kumar Ke Kuchch Gaane

Yeh rahe kuchch gaane Kishore Kumar ke jo pichchle kai dinon ke liye mere man mein phas gae hain. Shaayad aapke liye yeh gaane jo hain naye nahin hain, lekin hamaare liye yeh saare gaane kafi naye hain, aur main yeh sab post kar raha hun is liye ki in gaanon ke lyrics to mujhe bahut hi khubsurat lagne lage. Mujhe ummeed hai ki aap log in lyrics phir se parh ke to khubsurti aur zindagi ka ankahe sachchai mil paayenge.

ये ददर् भरा अफ़साना, सुन ले अन्जान ज़माना ज़माना
मैं हूँ एक पागल प्रेमी, मेरा ददर् न कोई जाना - २

कोई भी वादा, याद न आया
कोई क़सम भी, याद न आई
मेरी दुहाई, सुन ले खुदाई
मेरे सनम ने, की बेवफ़ाई
दिल टूट गया, दीवाना
सुन ले अन्जान, ज़माना ज़माना
मैं हूँ एक पागल प्रेमी ...

फूलों से मैं ने दामन बचाया
राहो में अपनी काँटे बिछाये
मैं हूँ दीवाना, दीवानगी ने
इक बेवफ़ा से नेहा लगाये
जो प्यार को न पहचाना
सुन ले अनजान ज़माना, ज़माना ...

यादें पुरानी, आने लगीं क्या
आँखें झुका लीं, क्या दिल में आई
देखो नज़ारा, दिलवर हमारा
कैसी हमारी, महफ़िल मे आई
है साथ कोई, बेगाना
सुन ले अन्जान, ज़माना ज़माना
मैं हूँ एक पागल प्रेमी ...

मन्ज़िलों पे आके लुटते हैं दिलों के कारवाँ
कश्तियां साहिल पे अक्सर, डूबती हैं प्यार की
मन्ज़िलें अपनी जगह हैं रास्ते अपनी जगह - २
जब कदम ही साथ ना दें, तो मुसाफ़िर क्या करे
यूँ तो है हमदर्द भी और हमसफ़र भी है मेरा - २
बढ़के कोई हाथ ना दे, दिल भला फिर क्या करे
मन्ज़िलें अपनी जगह हैं रास्ते अपनी जगह
डूबने वाले को तिनके का सहारा ही बहुत
दिल बहल जाए फ़कत, इतना इशारा ही बहुत
इतने पर भी आसमाँ वाला गिरा दे बिजलियाँ
कोई बतलादे ज़रा ये डूबता फिर क्या करे
मन्ज़िलें अपनी जगह हैं रास्ते अपनी जगह
प्यार करना जुर्म है तो, जुर्म हमसे हो गया
काबिल-ए-माफ़ी हुआ करते नहीं ऐसे गुनाह
संगदिल है ये जहाँ और संगदिल मेरा सनम
क्या करें जोश-ए-ज़ुनूं और हौंसला फिर क्या करे
मन्ज़िलें अपनी जगह हैं रास्ते अपनी जगह

आती रहेंगी बहारें
जाती रहेंगी बहारें
दिल की नज़र से दुनियाँ को देखो
दुनियाँ सदा ही हसीं है

मैं ने तो बस यही माँगी है दुआएं
फूलों की तरह हम सदा मुस्कुराये
गाते रहें हम खुशियों के गीत यूँ ही जाये बीत
ज़िंदगी
हो~ आती रहेंगी बहारें ...

तुम जो मिले हो तो दिल को यक़ीं है
धरती पे स्वर्ग जो है तो यहीं है
गाते रहे हम खुशियों के गीत
यूँ ही जाये बीत
ज़िंदगी
हो~ आती रहेंगी बहारें ...

तुम से हैं जब जीवन में सहारे
जहाँ जाये नज़रें वहीं हैं नज़ारे
लेके आयेगी हर नयी बहार
रंग भरा प्यार
और खुशी
हो~ आती रहेंगी बहारें ...

हम हम हूँ हम हम दे रे ना आ आ आ आ आँ

लोग कहते हैं मैं शराबी हूँ - २
तुमने भी शायद यही सोच लिया हां ...
लोग कहते हैं मैं शराबी हूँ

किसीपे हुस्न का गुरूर जवानी का नशा किसीके दिल पे मोहब्बत की रवानी का नशा किसीको देखे साँसों से उभरता है नशा बिना पिये भी कहीं हद से गुज़रता है नशा नशे मैं कौन नहीं हैं मुझे बताओ ज़रा किसे है होश मेरे सामने तो लाओ ज़रा नशा है सब पे मगर रंग नशे का है जुदा खिली खिली हुई सुबह पे है शबनम का नशा हवा पे खुशबू का बादल पे है रिमझिम का नशा कहीं सुरूर है खुशियों का कहीं ग़म का नशा नशा शराब मैं होता तो नाचती बोतल मैकदे झूमते पैमानों मैं होती हलचल नशा शराब मैं होता तो नाचती बोतल नशे मैं कौन नहीं हैं मुझे बताओ ज़रा - २
लोग कहते हैं मैं शराबी हूँ - २
तुमने भी शायद यही सोच लिया लोग कहते हैं मैं शराबी हूँ थोड़ी आँखों से पिला दे रे सजनी दीवानी - २
तुझे मैं तुझे मैं तुझे नौलक्खा मंगा दूंगा सजनी दिवानी

MAIN BHI DESI HU NAA!

                  One of the most difficult parts of attempting to immerse oneself into another culture is that of being recognized by other members of that culture. Such is my trouble, which has been going on since the very beginning in all of attempts to become desi. My difficulties of completely fitting in with desis has basically been because I do not look like I’m desi at all; when was the last time a young man with blue-grey eyes and brownish hair of European descent and Protestant background was considered desi by anybody? If I tried, I could pass for a Kurd from Iran or an Afghan, maybe even Kashmiri, but not desi, not as it is usually thought of as a general South Asian from India or Pakistan.

 Despite my efforts, it is always a difficult process to get to know other local desis. First, I don't look like a desi, and this causes others to look at me first with the thought that I am nothing more than just an American, who is probably ignorant of desi culture, of major world events, and obviously their language. Not only this, but my attempts to be recognized as a desi are sometimes limited depending on whether that person I see and want to talk to speaks Urdu/Hindi, Panjabi, or Gujarati, or some other language, since there are sizable amounts of desis in my community that speak South Indian languages such as Tamil and Telugu, which I have only limited knowledge and experience of due to lack of material for me to teach myself about them. Even if they do speak Urdu/Hindi, Panjabi or Gujarati, my attempts at cementing a relationship can be difficult, even if we share a common language. This does not mean I have not had success. Many of the desis around the tri-city area have either seen me or talked with me at desi events, and many of them are quite willing to talk again if they see me, and often in their native language. At college, I have many desi contacts, including professors, most of whom are Urdu/Hindi speakers. I have also made impact through attending desi events (such as performing the dandiya raas and coming to desi concerts), and I was even recognized at the Diwali function by the President of the India Association of East Central Michigan, that too addressed in Hindi. Still, I feel pain when I walk into a public place to find desis who don't recognize me and (implicitly) think of me as another white brick in the American wall ( that too, even after hours of listening to Kishore Kumar and singing along with desi-filled joy) or when I talk to a desi in their language and get a reply back in English. In some of these cases, obviously, people are not able to see that I consider myself desi, and would have not opportunity probably to have me demonstrate it. But in others, I feel hurt that I'm not seen as desi, but simply as something of a oddball. Most of them probably have not heard my complaints about fitting in neither West nor East, which is the old desi adage that the washerman's dog not at home in the house nor at the riverside. But I still go about trying to advertise my desi-ness, which I feel is a powerful force in my life. Despite not being brown-skinned and dark-haired, I consider myself desi because I am able to speak desi languages, because I consider the culture embedded in those languages as the culture by which I want to live my life ( a view partly influenced by the decline of mainstream American culure and the general bad morals), and because I surround myself with aspects of desi culture ( desi music, desi literature, some general desi philosophy, desi food, desi media, etc.).

                I wish there were other ways of advertising my desi-ness other than simply by talking to other desis or expressing my desi-ness to my family through our time together. I remember that when I was younger I would always practice tabla motions around other desis in the hope that they would notice (I think only one has noticed so far). I used to not like going out with my parents and sisters earlier on because I was afraid that other desis would look at the ways that they acted and would think of me, by medium of association, as not being desi. Now that I've been so immersed in speaking Urdu/Hindi and Panjabi, my English has an accent, which, though at first was involuntary, has now become part of me, something I practice, and I am proud of my desi accent. I try not to worry about the things that I cannot handle these days, and be moderate about my desire to express that I am desi to the world, but lately I have been wondering about hanging a sign around my neck that says MAIN BHI DESI HU NAA! (“I’m Desi Too!”) Maybe that would get the attention of other desis who don't yet know about me.