याद किया दिल ने, कहाँ हो तुम?

In this song, the female lover expresses her feeling thus: ...

... मतलबी जहां, मेहरबान हो तुम

Don't we all value selfless behavior, romance or otherwise?

ಕೃಷ್ಣನಾ ಕೊಳಲಿನಾ ಕರೆ

The mesmerizing sound of Lord Krishna's flute is described through the act of a housewife running towards the source of sound, abandoning the all-important house work ... That the raga ♫भैरवी, or ♫ಸಿಂಧು ಭೈರವಿ, has been chosen to bring out the lyrical essence visualized by the poet, ಪು ತಿ ನ, is noteworthy.

Acknowledgments are due to my dear friend, Alamelu Iyengar, the poet's daughter, for helping me present the correct lyrics. (Disclaimer: If mistakes still exist, you can attribute them to me, the blog post author).

चिंगारी कोई भड़के, तो सावन उसे बुझाए

When you discover some good characteristic about a matter than you knew previously, there is a certain immense pleasure.

I first heard this song nearly four decades ago. Even though I liked the song, and even hummed it on occasion, I didn't know that it is in Raag Bhairavi; neither did I know it projected a certain sadness by invoking the ideas in proverbs such as the Fox Guarding the Hen house.

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There is a Kannada proverb with a similar import: ಬೇಲಿಯೇ ಎದ್ದು ಹೊಲ ಮೇಯ್ದರೆ

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सुमिरण कर ले मेरे मना

A moving rendering of the Guru Nanak composition by Pt. Jasraj. The Guru exhorts:

"Meditate on the Lord, Oh my mind,
Otherwise, your life will be over without the Lord's name."

The first video (1988) is a concert to present, along with Smt. M S Subbulakshmi, Mahatma Gandhi's favorites. This particular number starts at 10:15 in the video.

There is another rendering (2004) Pt. Jasraj has provided along with Kavita Krishnamurthy and Dr. L. Subramanian.

कैसे कहें हम प्यार ने हमको ...

Kishore Kumar brings out, very powerfully, the despair of a lover.

ರಾಮ ರಾಮ ರಾಮ ಸೀತಾ ರಾಮಾ ಎನ್ನಿರೋ

This post is as reminiscent as it can get: I first heard the song when I was a high school student in Bangalore. It was very memorably rendered by one of my classmates during an 'Arts' class.

Recently, my music teacher suggested that this may be a good song for my collection.

I have excerpted a few lines from another blog post, ರಾಮ ರಾಮ ರಾಮ ಸೀತಾರಾಮ; this subset is the same as that chosen by the artist in the video rendering, given below.

तू जहाँ जहाँ चलेगा, मेरा साया साथ होगा

This is a song that, I learnt recently, has been dedicated by Lata Mangeshkar to Sachin Tendulkar, the cricket maestro who retired yesterday from test cricket after his 200th appearance.

If you want to listen to all the four stanzas, use the audio track hyperlink.

ಓ ರವಿಯೆ, ನಮ್ಮ ಕುಲಪತಿಯೆ, ...

When you witness a musical production such as Jaya Jaya Vijayee Raghurama, presented under the auspices of One School at a Time (OSAAT), with a string of songs each of which is composed in a raga to suit the mood portrayed by the song, you will find yourself humming, or recalling, that one song over and over again. The following song is one such in today's presentation in Los Altos Hills, California:

आजा रे परदेसी

This is a second song I have encountered recently that uses the phrase पंथ निहार to describe the act of waiting for someone by looking at the road on which the expectant person would come. The first one is मेरे जनम मरण के साथी.

ನಾ ನಿನ್ನ ಧ್ಯಾನದೊಳು ಇರಲು ಸದಾ

A devotional composition by ಪುರಂದರದಾಸ.

The lyrics on the web are somewhat conflicting and I have, therefore, not provided any links to transliterations and have provided my own transliteration from listening to Bhimsen Joshi's rendering.

Another ♫दरबारी कानडा feast.

मुहब्बत की झूटी कहानी पे रोये

This song came to my attention when I looked for some Bollywood songs in the raag ♫दरबारी कनाडा. I had just previously blogged on मनो बुद्धि अहंकार by Pt. Jasraj, and you can feel the intensity of the emotion in both the songs, thanks to some unique property of the raag (that I don't know).

मनो बुद्धि अहंकार ...

It is an ecstatic treat to listen to Pt. Jasraj render the निर्वाण षटकम्, written by Adi Shankaracharya. I had occasion to attend The Music that Swami Vivekananda Loved today, on the occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, where Pt. Jasraj introduced this song as one that Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa used to sing, and the one that Swami Vivekananda liked.

इन आँखों की मस्ती के

You sometimes hear a song that fleetingly gets your attention, but you really don't pay serious attention to it until you become aware some characteristic the song has. I learnt recently that this song is, for the most part, in raag ♫भूपाली.

I am a student of this raag and, naturally, had to explore its lyrics: Bollywood's lyrics are sometimes amazing.

ಕಲಿಯುಗದಲಿ ಹರಿನಾಮವ ನೆನೆದರೆ

Simple lyrics to remind us — any of us with whatever failings — to recall, reflect and realize God. Purandara Dasa is no match to anyone, when it comes to crafting lyrics that even a layperson can relate to.

[Note: In the MS rendition linked to this post, the second stanza is not presented].

ज्योति कलश छलके

The raag is what attracted to me to the song first, and I subsequently discovered that it celebrates the onset of morning.

ओ सजना, बरखा बहार आयी

The female lover declares her love through singing in the rain. You can, however, sense a certain pure innocence in her singing.

(This drab translation doesn't do justice to what is behind the song. If you click on below, you will visit a blog post that gets into greater details).

जलते हैं जिसके लिए

Nice song to listen to. Wonder what the male is singing about ... since the 'song' he has brought ought to appease the female ...

ಸತ್ಯವಂತರಿಗೆ ಇದು ಕಾಲವಲ್ಲ

This song is a somewhat cynical view of life, as seen through the eyes of ಪುರಂದರದಾಸ, the 16th century poet & philosopher. The title of the song can be translated literally as:

This is not the time for truthful people ...

The song elaborates on how unrighteous people end up enjoying comfortable life, and the righteous end up suffering in their life. Perhaps this situation was more seen frequently during his lifetime, and produced the cynical outlook captured in this song.

The song's special significance for me is that I used to hear it, quite regularly, from my late paternal grandmother.

(It appears that this song can be rendered in different ragas; the video by D K Pattammal is in ♫भैरवी).

पूछो न कैसे मैंने रैन बितायी

Shahnaz Akhtar gave a very memorable performance of this song on Sa Re Ga Ma Pa 2012, and Shankar Mahadevan had a lot of praise.

Good expression of pain in a person's mind.

कोरा कागज़ था ये मन मेरा

Today marks the end of an era. Rajesh Khanna: The death of Romance.

In memory of his contributions, I present this song that describes, in poetic manner, how lovers declare their love to each other.