Posts Tagged ‘Shubhomita Bannerjee’
Bahu manorathe saaju abhisaare pahilu suneel besh
Posted by: Atul on: August 28, 2023
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in other sites without the knowledge and consent of the web administrator of atulsongaday.me, then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.
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‘Memories in March’ (2011) is an English language film with some dialogues in Hindi and Bangla. The film was produced under the banner of Shri Venkatesh Films and was directed by Sanjoy Nag. The story, screenplay and dialogues were written by Rituparno Ghosh. The film’s story centres around three main characters played by Deepti Naval, Rituparno Ghosh and Raima Sen with supporting actors comprising Rajat Ganguly, Suchita Roy Choudhury, Pradip Roy, Ekavali Khanna, Buddhadev Chakraborty, Manjit Mukherjee etc.
Rituparno Ghosh was an ace director who is regarded as a worthy successor to Satyajit Ray. Having written the story, screenplay, and dialogues for the film, Rituparno Ghosh would himself have liked to direct the film. But instead, he entrusted the work to debutant Sanjoy Nag. The reason could be that Rituparno Ghosh was playing a major role of a gay boss of an advertising company and the role suited him the best. In real life, Rituparno Ghosh had worked in a major advertising agency prior to film making and that he was a gay was publicly known.
The film had a world premiere in September 2010 at Pusan (Busan) International Film Festival, South Korea. Thereafter, it has also been shown in some more national and international film festival circuits. The film won the National Film Award for the Best Feature Film in English in 2010. The film was not well distributed. It got a limited theatrical release in April 2011 and proved a disaster at the box office.
I could not find the film on any known OTT platforms. I watched the film on Dailymotion where it is available in 4 parts with some problems in audio synchronisation. The story of the film is as under:
Aarti Mishra (Deepti Naval), a divorcee who stays in Delhi arrives in Kolkata to collect the ashes and belongings of her only son, Siddharth who had met with a fatal car accident. (Siddharth is not shown in the film even in flash back. Only his voice-over is heard for flashback scenes). She is helped by her son’s boss, Ornab Mitra (Rituparno Ghosh) who is a Director in an advertising agency and Sahana Choudhury (Raima Sen), her son’s colleague and a close friend. It takes about a couple of days to complete the formalities during which Aarti stays in her son’s house in Kolkata. During her stay, she remembers all the things he said about the house. Next day, she has interactions with Ornab and Sahana about her son.
During the course of her interaction with Sahana, Aarti is shocked to know that her son was a gay and his boss, Ornab, was his lover. Sahana at one time had a crush on her son but later knowing his sexual orientation, she remained his close friend. Aarti gets angry with both Ornab and Sahana. More than coming to terms with losing her only son, she is distressed by the fact that her son was a gay and had a partner. However, the next day, she realises that just as she has lost her son, Ornab has lost his partner. Both are sailing in the same boat of sorrow and despair. The film ends with Aarti leaving Kolkata with the happy memories of Ornab and Sahana who helped her. Aarti also gets to know that they loved her son more than she loved him.
As one will observe from the above, the film’s story is very simple. But it is the screenplay by Rituparno Ghosh which gives the human touch to the story. He does not say much about the gay relationships. Instead, his emphasis is on the human relationship, in this case the mother and son, Siddharth, between two partners of the same sex (Ornab and Sidharth) and the friendly relationship between Sahana and Siddharth. There is one more relationship. It is between Aarti and Ornab and Aarti and Sahana. At first, for Aarti, both Ornab and Sahana are strangers. There are some conflicting situations with them. But at the end, before Aarti leaves Kolkata, she has bonded well with her son’s lover, Ornab and her son’s close friend, Sahana and they all are united in grief.
Deepti Naval in the role of Aarti Mishra has given a fantastic performance in the film. This has to be one of her best in performing an intense role displaying different moods. The way she control her tears and change her mood from despair to normal is marvelous. This is the first film in which I have seen Rituparno Ghosh as an actor. Being in the role of a gay boss in the advertising agency, his performance was as natural as he was in his real life. In an interview, Rituparno Ghosh had said that he had kept his head shaved for the role as insisted by his director, Sanjoy Nag.
The film has six songs including the second versions of two songs. All the songs have been written by Rituparno Ghosh which are set to music by Debojyoti Mishra. All the songs sound very pleasant to the ears. I have selected my favourite song from the film, ‘bahu manorathe saaju abhisaare pahilu suneel besh’ among the six songs which is the first song to appear on the Blog. The song is rendered by Subhomita Banerjee. The song is written in what is known as Brajabuli dialect by Rituparno Ghosh.
Some discussions about Brajabuli (Brajaboli) dialect may be in order as I was presuming to be Brajabhasha spoken in Braj region surrounding Mathura and Agra. But it was not so. I came across an article by Kaustav Bakshi, Assistant Professor in Jadavpur University on the use of Brajabuli dialect for the love songs written by Rituparno Ghosh for some of his films. I have heard a couple of the love songs from his films and the song under discussion is one of them. A seminal work on Brajabuli has been done by Sukumar Sen in his book, ‘A History of Brajabuli Literature’ (1935). The book is available for reading online here.
Brajabuli is not a spoken language. It is used in literature especially poems depicting the Radha-Krishna love. The dialect is the mixture predominantly of Maithili and Bangla languages with some Hindi and Brajabhasha words. Maithili is regarded as a language having more similarities with Bangla than Hindi. The Bengali poets with their limited knowledge of Maithili used Bangla words also while writing poems on the Radha-Krishna love. Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, in his teens, was impressed by the poems of Vidyapati who wrote in Maithili. He started writing poems in the Brajabuli on Radha-Krishna topic in the pseudonym, ‘Bhanusingha’. He wrote about 20 poems. Rituparno Ghosh was inspired by the Brajabuli poems of Rabindranath Tagore. So, he wrote lyrics in Brajabuli dialect for his Hindi film, ‘Raincoat’ (2004) and the English film, ‘Memories in March’ (2011).
When I first heard the song under discussion, I thought it to be a Bangla song composed in Rabindra sangeet. But when I watched the video clip of the song, it got identified with the film. Deciphering the lyrics was tough work especially when I am not familiar with Brajabuli dialect. Fortunately, lyrics of a few lines were available in the article I referred to above. But some of the words were not exactly tallying with the way the playback singer has pronounced. So, I have deciphered the lyrics the way the playback singer has pronounced.
It is a song of separation of Radha-Krishna which fits very well as a background song to the situation in the film. Ornab’s partner, Siddharth has met with a fatal car accident. His feeling of despair is compared with that of Radha who has come to the shore of River Jamuna, well dressed up to secretly meet Krishna. But he does not turn up even after waiting for a long time. Radha is disheartened by the act of Krishna. Despite this, Radha is determined to wait again to meet Krishna because ‘etat dukh kahaan paaun’ (Where will I get such a pain?).
What a melodiously composed poignant song! Playback singer, Shubomita Banerjee has succeeded in bringing the pathos in the song which would touch the heart of the listeners. I find her voice close to that of Lata Mangeshkar.
After listening to the song umpteen times, I get a feeling that Brajabuli is a musical friendly dialect. Listen to the longish verses of the song rendered by the singer, and one will get a feel of singing musical notes (sargam). Perhaps Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore during his teenage years may have got attracted to the ‘musical’ element in Brajabuli and wrote poems in this dialect in his collection of poems, Bhanusingher Padabali. .
Video Clip:
Audio Clip:
Song-Bahu manorathe saaju abhisaare pahilu suneel besh (Memories in March)(English)(2011) Singer- Shubhomita Bannerjee, Lyrics-Rituparno Ghosh, MD-Debojyoti Mishra
Lyrics (Based on Audio Clip):
bahu manorathe saaju abhisaare pahlu suneel besh
kaajare nayan salaj bayane kusume sajanun kesh
sakhi hum…….
Mohana abhisaare jaaun
bolo hum……
etat sukh kahaan paaun
Jamunar paare gahana aadhare kanha re pawan aawaze..ae
piya se thha mor bedana ratar mohe laage baithe aache
sakhi hum…….
Mohana abhisaare jaaun
bolo hum……..
etat sukh kahaan paaun
sakhi chira abhaagini hum
baithe ekaakini pohano rajani tobo nailo Shyaam
sakhi chir abhaagini hum
Krishna kaajare pighala saajre nayaner neer dhaare
ek kathin patha britha manorathe biphal abhisaare
sakhi hum………
kabhoo na abhisaare jaaun
dukh aaj……
etat sah nahin paaun
brithi manorathe saaju abhisaare pahlu suneel besh
kaajare nayane salaj bayaane kusume sajaanu kesh
phir aaju……
Mohana abhisaare jaaun
sakhi bol………
etat dukh kahaan paaun
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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