Pacifist’s Ek Gaon Ki Kahani (A village story)

Dear Pacifist has agreed once again to honour this blog with a post of hers. Thank you, Pacifist!

10 beautiful village songs

Poos ki sard raat thi…, chilchilati dhoop mein nange paon…, (it was a freezing winter night…, bare feet in the blistering heat…,) are phrases I associate Munshi Premchand with. Though we used the term chilchilati dhoop , poos ki raat was new. Village life in the north, as depicted in his novels, was very harsh as these two terms indicate. My interest in his novels branched into reading some of his short stories too, so when Harvey asked me to write a post I thought of Munshi Premchand and villages.

Now we all know that the village life as depicted in our films is nothing like the real thing, but some of the older films did manage to get some sort of realism, simplicity, though in some cases burdensome (Mother India). Whatever the case they always give me a feeling of being purified. Blame it on the pollution inducing contemporary films. Dilip Kumar, Balraj Sahni, even Raj Kumar made convincing villagers. The heroines all looked good enough. Not only that, but the folksy songs were great.

 

Gaane ka kuchumbur

Gaane ka kuchumbur would mean something like rape of a song, but kuchumbur is no drastic word like rape, much more like pounding.

Anyway as a child I quite often used to indulge unwittingly in this hobby of mine.

Surfing through you tube yesterday met this song after a long, long, long, long time and for the first time in my life realised the lyrics.

I used to sing it as

ja re ja o harjaayi

dekhi teri dir daari

dil de re de re bairi

dil ki hai dir darii

By the way is that Helen, who is standing with a shawl over her shoulders?

And in the middle of the song it starts snowing and nobody seems to feel the cold, though dressed in thin clothes (at least the dancers).

But all the same a nice song, isn’t it? Good composition by Kalyanji-Anandji!