Just like that

I came across a Reel video, which was actually "shorts" from a movie, with Irfan khan mouthing a couplet for the heroine and another couple of friends, all of whom were sitting around a campfire. My first reaction was that the poem sounded nice but there was a lingering feeling about it. It felt like i had heard it before but couldn't quite remember when and where. Incidentally the next video on the reels section was that of a kid singing that song in "Indian idol". The power of algorithm and how they line up things for our viewing is really amazing when it actually works for the reason it was meant to be!! From there began the rabbit hole that took me through the entire back story about the song, the singer, his background, his claim to fame, the original movie where it was picturized, the other movie where Irfan was quoting that song and finally why it sounded so familiar!! You would've heard of songs being ear worms, playing in loops in your mind, in that aspect this song was more like ear python for the last one week with constant reminders and videos and lyrical references about the same popping up wherever i was looking!!! 

When i was in Bangalore a teammate of mine who is a big-time fan of Kishore kumar, used to hum this song, but only the first line - "Bade achhe lagte hai". He would just hum the other lines and would voice out only the first line. It kind of became registered in mind despite not knowing anything else about the song. When i first heard it in the vide after so many years, it felt so nice to hear and the wordings were so beautiful that they painted a picture of their own. When i actually listened to the original song with the music and setup, it was unbelievable. I was surprised that how come i never ended up listening to this song despite having a sizeable collection of kishore kumar songs in my playlist!! The trivia that i learnt about the song being, it was sung not by him, but by his son Amit (probably the reason why it never turned up in the suggestion for Kishore songs!!) and even though their voices sound so similar, it seemed he had owned this song!! The best part about songs of RD Burman or Ilayaraja being that the composition will accompany the voices of the singers and would complement each other rather than one drowning out the other. This song in particular has bare minimal instrumentals and solely runs on the voice of the singer. The movie "Balika badhu" again, seems to be an interesting premise of its own that i've only read about in the course of this song rather seen.

Coming back to the song, the first thing that strikes you are the lyrics. Literally translated it goes something like, the guy saying, everything looks good, this place, this river, this night and there is a gap where a female voice asks playfully "and" for which the guy replies "you as well". Until i listened to this song, i always thought sunil dutt in "jumka gira re" song held the record for having the least amount of lyrics in a superhit song, for in that entire song he would've just said "phi kya hua" in various modulations. But this lady takes the cake with just a single word "aur". The playfulness of the placement of the word, the way it conveys the tone and mood of the situation, well if there is something called perfection, this is it!! The recreation of this song in the shorts video with Irfan is from "Qarib Qarib single" a movie i hated just for its title. But after looking at that scene, i have added that movie to my playlist. The magic of the song is such that, once you listen to it, it takes forever to come out of it and every time you listen to it, it intoxicates you even more!! After listening to it possibly for the 50th time in a week, i felt it carried traces of "Phoolon ki rang se" song from "Prem pujari" and since that song is another big-time favorite of mine, maybe this lingering effect is more pronounced!! Either way, glad to've stumbled upon such a wonderful song masterly rendered.