The intoxication of love
After a long gap, I am back with another song which is a permanent member of my playlist. This song comes from a not very well known movie released in 2002, ‘Kya yehi pyar hai‘ starring Aftab Shivdasani, Amisha Patel, Jackie Shroff and others. If you look at its IMDb ratings (don’t even bother), you will find out that it is not even a highly appreciated movie. To be honest, it was a super-flop at the box office.
I have my own opinion on the movie though. It’s not a very well thought out and well made movie, but the intention was right. Unlike the highly romantic 90s and 2000s Bollywood movies, which championed the never-accept-no kind of stalker style love on part of the male protagonist, this movie tried to depict the downfalls of a crazy juvenile college long-time-stalker type love. Aftab looks cute and Amisha looks beautiful (that’s something which didn’t last for long).
Now Bollywood called it love, what in real life is understood as stalking. But that is another debate. Nonetheless, this movie had quite an unusual climax given the rest of Bollywood movies of its time. After having lost his loving elder brother by the end, Aftab Shivdasani finally manages to win the heart of Sandhya (whom he stalked for the first 1 hour 45 minutes of the movie) but refuses to accept it ultimately. In his words, ‘If you attain love only after losing everything, then I don’t want such love.’ The moral of the story, ‘Love is not the heart of life, it is only a part of life. Young men should definitely fall in love but only after they have fulfilled the dreams of their parents and loved ones.’
No wonder the film didn’t do well at the box-office. Who wants to go all the way to the cinema to watch a guy dramatically pursue a single girl for about 2 hours just to see him reject it all at the end rather than to get that romantic happy-ever-after ending! In short, it’s not a feel good movie and not even serious enough to be able to be considered as an art movie. In most of the parts it is too dramatic, starkly contrasting with a too practical (yet over-the-top) ending. At any moment in the movie, either the girl or the guy will be acting extremely stupid and crazy in love. I do feel that the movie is made from the perspective of the crazy lover boy Rahul who has some illogical justifications for loving a girl for her heart. A girl he has never even talked to ever, clearly he is only in love with her for her face. Because how did he ever get to know that she has a beautiful heart just by stalking her from a distance for four years?
The girl definitely has sane reasons for not indulging in something like teenage love. She is a bright student who thinks of advancing in her studies and career before anything else. She has her priorities set. But the treatment of the movie makes her the villain of the plot (kind of). The cherry on the top comes when Sandhya’s mother tells her, ‘You can get any gold medal with your hard work, but a good life partner is something you can get only by good fortune‘. It’s kind of confusing whether she is telling her that the gold medal she got with her hard work is not important any more or that now she shouldn’t think of her academics as much as of trying to find the perfect life partner, since she just finished her bachelors with top grades? And if you get a good life partner only with luck, then you anyway cannot do anything about it. You just grab it when it comes to you. And lastly, what credentials did Rahul ever show for being considered by them as a good life partner? Just by stalking her for four years, not having a good job or academic background, hanging out with weird friends and fighting like hooligans on the streets, could he have proved with all this that he is the perfect life partner for Sandhya? The content could have been more sensible. But alas, I wasn’t the script writer.
Having said all that, I’ll now talk about the song. This here is a love song with a passive aggressive feel to it. Perhaps it’s more about the feeling of frustration due to unrequited love. The words express extreme and deep love but the music seems to have a certain boldness and robustness which you won’t find from just a soft love song. The very beginning shouts out the eponymous ‘Is this what love is…’ (Kya yehi pyar hai) in a sort of painful drawl. Listen to the song to understand better.
I can’t say if this song is the title song of the movie because there is another song with the title of the movie. The lyrics are pretty straight forward with very few big Urdu words. Words commonly used in conversations. Nothing that you rush to open the lexicon for. While the song is amazing, the same can’t be said about the video which seems to be a flurry of dancers in various clothes filmed on a conspicuous movie set.
Male: Kya yehi pyaar hai…
Kya yehi pyaar hai
English: Is this what love is…
Is this what love is
Female: Dil pe chhaane laga hai nasha pyaar ka
O dil pe chhaane laga hai nasha pyaar ka
Ab to aane laga hai mazaa pyaar ka
English: (My) Heart is suffused with the intoxication of love
O (My) heart is suffused with the intoxication of love
Now I have started getting enjoyment out of love
Male: Bekhudi chha gayi, bekhudi chha gayi
Aashiqui aa gayi, kya yehi pyaar hai
Dil zara tu bata
Dil pe chhaane laga hai nasha pyaar ka
Ab to aane laga hai mazaa pyaar ka
English: Senselessness has spread, senselessness has spread
Love has arrived, is this what love is
(My) Heart please tell me
(My) Heart is suffused with the intoxication of love
Female: Meri, meri nazar mein jaadoo, jaadoo, jaadoo basa hai
Meri, meri har ek ada ka tu hai tu hai deewana
English: My, My glance is filled with magic, with magic,
My, My every graceful gesture is what you are, you are crazy for
Male: Jaadoo, jaadoo to tera mujhpe, mujhpe chala hai
Uske, uske asar se main hoon, main hoon deewana
English: Magic, magic of yours is what worked on me
By its, by its effect, I have, I have become crazy (in love)
Female: Tu bata de zara, yeh tujhe kya hua
kya yehi pyaar hai, dil zara tu bata
English: Tell me at least, what has happened to you
Is this what love is, (my) Heart please tell me
Male: Dil pe chhaane laga hai nasha pyaar ka
Ab to aane laga hai mazaa pyaar ka
English: (My) heart is suffused with the intoxication of love
Now I have started getting enjoyment out of love
Male: Hey chanda, chanda sa jaana tera, tera badan hai
Uspe, uspe, uspe qayamat tera yuhi sharmana
English: Hey like moon, like moon is, darling, your, your body
On top of that, on top of that, catastrophe is your being shy for no reason
Female: Tera, tera sanam yeh kaisa, kaisa deewaanapan hai
Tune, tune banaya yuhi kaisa afsana
English: Your, Your, sweetheart, what kind of craziness is it
You, you created such a romantic tale for no reason
Male: Pal mein dil yeh gaya, pal mein dil yeh gaya
Kuch pata na chala, kya yehi pyaar hai
Dil zara tu bata
English: This heart left (me) within a moment, this heart left (me) within a moment
(I) Couldn’t even realize it, is this what love is,
(My) Heart please tell me
Together: Dil pe chhaane laga hai nasha pyaar ka
Ab to aane laga hai mazaa pyaar ka
English: (My) heart is suffused with the intoxication of love
Now I have started getting enjoyment out of love
Glossary:
- Chhaana: To spread, to suffuse,
- Nasha: Inebriety, intoxication, drunkenness
- Mazaa: Fun, enjoyment
- Bekhudi: Bekhudi is made up of the khudi (self-consciousness) with the prefix be (without). So a person who is not conscious of himself or herself is bekhud and thus living in the state of bekhudi i.e. a state of aloofness from reality and even from one’s own self. It can also be equated to the feeling of being intoxicated or inebriated. This person doesn’t have any control on him/herself.
- Nazar: Glance, vision, eye
- Jaadoo: Magic, spell
- Deewana: Crazy lover, mad for someone or something, lunatic, lover
- Asar: Effect
- Chanda: Moon
- Jaana: Beloved or darling. Literally comes from the word jaan which means life. So somebody who is your life can be also called jaan or jaana.
- Badan: Body
- Sharmana: To be shy, to be coquettish
- Deewaanapan: The state of being a deewana
- Afsana : Fictional tale, legend, romantic tale
The Heritage Chutney 