Aa Aa Ee Ee, Masterji Ki Aa Gayee Chitthi

Welcome to the 100th post on this blog. 

Adolescence - an age which is most difficult to deal with - for the parents as well as for the one who has just outgrown being a child and yet has not reached the age of being treated like an adult. 

Gulzar's Kitaab was a movie about that difficult age when nothing really makes sense to that growing up child. Add to that the growing discord between his sister & brother-in-law, played by Vidya Sinha & Uttam Kumar, and the child, Master Raju, could not think of anything but to run away from home. The movie, aptly named Kitaab, was like a book with childhood memories - bitter & sweet both.

This was one such movie where the kids were cast as kids and performed like a kid too. There was nothing precocious about them. For the audience weaned on the angry young men days, where their childhood roles would also be about the ill treatment at the hand of the society or villains, a movie like this was an anti-thesis. This could be one of the reason why it did not fare well.

Despite movie being a debacle when it was released, the songs turned out to be quite a hit. The movie, with no major star cast, allowed Pancham to create unusual compositions. Dhanno ki Aankhon men was one such song - played a couple of days ago here.

Another popular song had RD using an array of tables, with varying heights, to create the basic tune for the song. The lyrics itself were unusual, a mish-mash of verse yet the language which normal children, influenced with their surrounding, would probably sing impromptu. 

Here it is, to take you, on this 100th post, to your own childhood memories:

Raat Ka Surma, Chand Ka Chumma

Flanging is an audio effect of mixing two identical sounds - but one being played with slight delay. This results in a distorted sound with different peaks & troughs - which in turn can be manipulated based on the requirement. One of the first persons to use it was John Lenon. Later, as the sound recording became digital, the engineers created an instrument called Flanger - which when attached to any instrument, will create this effect.

In late 70s, RD got his instrument, from one of his trip abroad, and used it for one of his compositions - attaching it the Guitar. As usual, this was the first use of this technique in India.

Since the composition created a very different sound, it also required someone with different kind of vocal rendition. The verse written by Gulzar were romantic - again creating images out of daily routine, but the movie did not have a romantic hero. In fact the song was picturised on Ram Mohan - a character artist, thus freeing the song from the limitation of singer. The location also was far from being termed romantic

As Gulzar, conversing with RD, said in one of their programmes together on radio, this was a composition for which no normal singer could have sung, and thus came in RD.

The composition, one of the highlights of RD's career as a singer, is largely based only on Guitar & the flanging, while a bit of tabla & flute create the effect of a journey - of a train.