Timeless Classics

On an unusually quiet Sunday, was listening to few old Hindi songs. What hit me is the beauty of words created by Kaifi Azmi in “Arth”. “Tum itna jo muskura rahe ho”, “Koi yeh kaise bataye ki wo tanha kyun hain” and “Zuki zuki si nazar” ...each song hitting a chord somewhere...beautiful, soulful. Don't have words to describe the depth of the words. Unfortunately, I'm no Kaifi Azmi!

These soulful numbers are so.................timeless. The Music Industry has grown by leaps and bounds – we see a lot of technological improvement, have a plethora of singers, have loads of options for making music an integral part of your daily existence, courtesy the I pods, MP3s and I Phones of the world, yet “timeless” is not how you can describe songs of today's time. The shelf life of a music album is limited – who listens to “ Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam”, “Cash”, “Partner”, “Rang De Basanti”, “3 idiots”, “Rock On”, “Murder”, “Gangster” now? When all these albums had released, they were a rage and were well appreciated by the masses (and by some classes as well). 1/ 2 months down the line, they make way for another album.

As against that, you listen to classics like “Arth”, “Saath Saath”, “Aandhi”, “Anand”, “Mili”, “Abhimaan”, “Kabhi Kabhi” , “Ijaazat” and similar old marvels of the golden era. You can hear them again and again and..... yet again. I sound like yesterdays generation when I say that “Woh songs to kuch aur hi the...aaj kal to bas aiwe hi songs bante hain...
do din ki chandni aur phir andheri raat hain”.

We can attribute this to many reasons; the absence of “traditional Urdu learnings”of the wannable lyricists, the pace of churning out of films, the importance given to quantity over quality, money over talent, sensation over sensitivity and the works. Music has a divine quality which is being lost in the “dhantanans” of today's world, I guess. Not that I did not enjoy “Dhantanan” - it was an intelligent use of music and lyrics but was it “timeless”? Only time will tell.