Here’s about 1:15 of a song called “Dil Dance Maare” from the new Hindi film, Tashan. The two male leads are the currently ubiquitous Askhay Kumar, and Saif Ali Khan. The female lead is Kareena Kapoor:
The lyrics are a little… well… I don’t really know how to describe them:
White white face dheke dil woh beating fast sasura [When I see a ‘white white’ face, my heart starts beating fast]
Jaan se maare reeee eehhheeee
Aare
White white face dheke dil woh beating fast sasura
Jaan se maare re
Ohhhooo
White white face dheke
Aahh…
White white face dheke dil woh beating fast sasura
Jaan se maare re
Oh very… oh very…
Oh very happy in my heart
Dil dance maare re
Very happy in my heart, dil dance maare re
Dil dance maare dance maare
Dil yeh dance maare
Oh very happy in my heart
Dil dance maare re
It’s not entirely an arbitrary expression of a self-hating colonial mentality (or, as Fela Kuti said, “colo-mentality”); in the context of the film, the characters apparently come across an American film crew while traveling around India, and join the production — hence the blond wigs and so on. (My wife was watching the DVD in the other room, and she called me in when this song came on: you have to see this.)
Still, am I the only one to find the song/video at once deeply embarrassing and oddly catchy? I’ve been finding myself singing it for comic effect for family and friends this week.
43 · razib said
Have to put in a word for Nandita Das. She’s quite dark-skinned, and very beautiful too, and no contadiction there. And yes, she does completely different kinds of roles from the average Bollywood star, but some of that is Bollywood too (and Kollywood). Of course, with make-up, lighting, and angles – you can change the perceived (and actual) ‘reflectance’ spectrum, and so, when the role demands it, I’m sure she goes in for that stuff too. But at least she hasn’t been pre-selected, or ‘selected out’ for her skin color, and that’s something worth mentioning.
It is ‘chance maare’, not ‘jaan se maare’. That is desi slang for ‘hitting on’. And this is so ridiculously over-the-top, for god’s sake, how can anyone take this seriously. I mean I know Indians are poco-ignorant, self-loathers, wagerah, wagerah, but just look at the clothes, lyrics, dance steps, the whole combination is so obviously a parody.
And since the song is in simulated Bhojpuri it should be transliterated with “dilwa” (a affectionate form of dil) instead of “dil woh”.
You can hear the same construction in this Dilip Kumar song: ‘nain lad jaihe to manwa ma kasak hoive kari’.
The best bhojpuri song has got to be “Saawan ka mahina, pavan kare sore…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSqwfhYAoxs
Here are the lyrics from rediff’s music review of the album:
Here’s Vishal Daldani, one half of the composer duo Vishal-Shekhar that put this together, on this song:
3.Dil Dance Maare Re: What a song! The energy of all the autorickshaws in Bombay flows thru this one! Why is it the way it is? You’ll have to ask Victor. There’s a place in the film, and I can’t tell you where without giving it away, that the three characters played by Akshay, Saif and Kareena find themselves in a bhojpuri item song in Englisss. The song is based on popular Bhojpuri folk melody, with utterly deranged lyrics, that I myself have had the honour and pleasure of writing. We put the mukhda together in Shekhar’s car, en-route to YRF Studios in Andheri. Victor heard it and loved it, so pretty much there and then, based on the situation, we put the antara together. The film had, by now, revealed to us it’s direction in terms of sound, and so we just needed to amp it up for this one. Once again Abhijit, and Warren brought their superb musical minds to the song, and gave it a totally new dimension. While we were working on the song, I came up with the second verse. I actually had an option ready for the “tohra dil ka theater maa…..” line, just in case everyone flipped out when they heard it! Luckily, they loved it! Sukhwinder came in and totally nailed it, so did Udit and Sunidhi, as you can plainly hear. I hope you all think of how much fun we had putting this song together when you hear it! ‘Cuz I can feel it in every “Jaalim Beat!”
Link: http://www.bollywoodhungama.com/blogs/vishaldadlani/index.html
By the way Vishal-Shekhar are great fans of RD Burman (Hare Krishna Hare Ram, Mehbooba (Sholay), etc). They’ve done songs like this before where you know they are trying to recreate the madness of RD Burman.
amardeep, why dont you understand, that half of bollywood is a spoof on the other half? this is the first half.
Which is why the lyrics to this song sound like the shameless truth rather than a “spoof” or “sarcasm”. So much self-loathing among desis.
6 · PS said
Yeah, especially in those black and white films.
50 · ylrsings said
You are a lefty artsy girl with no sense of humor. I am a lefty artsy dude and I think this $hi+ is effin BRILLIANT. Why did it take 26 for someone to even suggest this might be satire? (Thank you anjum–seriously, even though I’m a lefty Amreekan desi.)
11 · chicagodesidiva said
Learn to like the ridiculous and life becomes a lot more fun. (Next week’s lesson, laughing at one’s Selves.)
Amardeep said
That’s one of the things that makes it so wonderfully complex–that it implicates the viewer even as it mocks its own ridiculosity–all tied up with a catchy tune you can’t get out of your head. I’d like to see the whole film now, see if they pushed it far enough or stopped just shy of really making a meaningful statement in favor of commercial viability.
7 · Meena said
Exoticize much? Plus what LandBeyond7Zs said @ 24.
Harbeer – why not exoticize. It is a foreign language to me. Plus mixing of Hindi and English messes up the flow of the song, as someone mentioned above.
I think you’ve taken these lyrics a tad too seriously, dude. Relax. In the context of the movie (the biggest ‘hyped’ flop in Bollywood in recent times), the three protagonists are trying to escape the cops and so, in order to pass off as ‘Firangis’ from a movie set, they don this kinda warpaint. And the song is meant to be a spoof, using two extremes (in linguistic terms) that India is exposed to – the ‘foreigners’ and the ‘dehaatis’.
24 · LandBeyond7Zs said
You got it exactly inside out. Let me rephrase it and straighten out that Gyanendra Pandey influenced absurdity for you.
Urdu has been influenced at birth by Farsi and in growth by Sanskrit. Urdu is anchored in India by Sanskrit. Why not get enriched at its old age by English?
Take any Urdu sentence, replace the Farsi (or the rare Arabi word) with a Sanskrit equivalent, and hey presto, you have Hindi. But my friend the professor of Oriental languages in Madras Univ, will tell you that Muslims must use as much Arabic in their Urdu rather than Farsi, because then they might as well use Sanskrit, because you see Farsi and Sanskrit are both India-Iranian or Iranic-Indian languages!
And how convenient blaming Bollywood for its whiteness obsession and winking at the soft bigotry of the rationalist Dravidians in the South. The fair skin business is a fetish for all the Tamizh obsessed parties in the TN. The DMK that created the MGR brand made it a point to cast MGR with fair skinned actresses, a habit MGR continued when he broke free of his friend Karunanidhi. Not a single film produced by the DMK or its sympathisers has ever featured a dark skinned hero or heroine. Even in Neerum Neruppum – one of the last films MGR did before he left the DMK – a twin story (remade from the Rajendra Kumar-Hema starrer Gora Aur Kala) the good twin is fair while the moody and violent MGR twin is dark! Even Bharatiraja who supposedly revolutionised movie making (as MSS Pandian would have it) did not risk taking on a dark looking hero or heroine ever (excepting for the offbeat KallukkuL Eeram). He went with Kamalahasan. Even now “color comedy” of the basest and crudest kind is a staple in Tamizh movies. There are any number of Senthil-Goundamani comedy routines with an occasional Vadivelu thrown in for good measure, that the masses lap up – social justice be damned. As for colour prejudice and off-colour jokes, TN has much to be ashamed of.
Rajanikant’s success is his own, and marks a clean break in Indian casting.
louiecypher and Amitabh, LOL!! relax dudes and chill out! No one has to identify with hindi cinema. Its not a religion, its entertainment industry. You are taking it way to seriously. Its not like you have to identify with it the way you identify with your parents!! Bollywood does dish out some stupid films now and then but also some gems nowadays. This is actually the best time for indian cinema. Some really good stories, with new filmakers, directors are being appreciated which never stood a chance a decade ago. You guys need to chill out and get a dose of optimism.
Have to put in a word for Nandita Das. She’s quite dark-skinned, and very beautiful too, and no contadiction there. And yes, she does completely different kinds of roles from the average Bollywood star, but some of that is Bollywood too (and Kollywood). Of course, with make-up, lighting, and angles – you can change the perceived (and actual) ‘reflectance’ spectrum, and so, when the role demands it, I’m sure she goes in for that stuff too. But at least she hasn’t been pre-selected, or ‘selected out’ for her skin color, and that’s something worth mentioning.
Nandita Das – yes, she’s dark (I’d say the average color that most desis fall into) and you can see that prominently in that awful movie with Ash Rai acting as an abused wife in Provoked;
15 · Heeraadhi hero said
Hmm, what a weak excuse. So, Eva Mendes wouldn’t hook up with me solely because she’s a Pisces and I’m an Aries? Righhhhhhht.
BTW, I am not against mixing English words with Indian languages in their songs as long as the accent is consistent. WHat I am talking about are some songs where they break into English with a weirdass accent that is neither Indian nor American. Take that Rajnikanth video. Sounds like some deaf guy singing.
Oh if you look at the Telugu clip of Kamalhassan I put up in comment#20, you will see that South Indian heroines had no problem finding high profile roles regardless of skin color. I think South India has become as bad or probably even worse than North India because they recruit non South Indians pretty much for their color and no other reason in recent years. I do think South India accepts darker heroes more willingly than North India. But they are just as bad with the heroines.
I am not sure if anyone in Bombay is trying to define anyone’s identity. It is entertainment for Indians and the choice to watch it or not is ultimately yours. I don’t think most Bollywood films should be dissected for deeper meanings such as identity definitions.
All this talk about skin color. As if on this side of the sea it is so better. Please give me the names of top actresses in Hollywood who don’t have a blue or green eye.
68 · Pravin said
That’s Maro Charitra the K.Balachander Telugu original remade in Hindi again by KB as Ek Duje Ke Liye. But we are talking of K.Balachander not any director. That’s a director who has taken bigger risks than any popular movie maker. He has never made a movie starring either MGR or Sivaji. Sarita starred in the original, and from the song you can see she does some pretty nifty dancing – especially jumping down those steps. Can’t think of any heroine wanting to take such risks. Rati Agnihotri acted in the Hindi remake. Sarita went on to star in a few more unglamourous roles, notably Thaneer Thaneer, the story of a drought stricken village that fights a corrupt politco-bureaucratic establishment. In that movie Sarita walked a few miles everyday to fetch water for the location unit!
Not to forget V. Shantaram’s Parchaiyan in which the heroine plays a dark complexioned woman who marries the youngest son of an idealistic a multi-cultural family. Yash Chopra for all the themes he has explored – romantic love in every possible context – has never explored the colour divide.
All this talk about skin color. As if on this side of the sea it is so better. Please give me the names of top actresses in Hollywood who don’t have a blue or green eye.
I understand what you are saying. Indian actors are said to be lighter than the average skin color of their desi counterparts. Light skin is considered more attractive in India.
In the US I don’t think there are many natural blondes, yet highlighting or making your hair blonder is all the norm. I really don’t think there’s one real blonde actor in Hollywood – that doesn’t rely on highlighting.
I think the preference for light skin can be benign but I feel that preference goes along (for some people) with racial hierarchy, even though INdians are not different “races”. I have to say I still meet north indians who are my friends, who think south indians are a different race – I just don’t get it. I mean what do they teach about Indian history in the schools these days in India?
I’m from Kerala and so many members of my family are light skinned or dark skinned. I never grew up with a concept that skin color designated race. But I have met northies who subtly suggest they are from a different race and read vapid discussion on the dark dravidian and light skinned aryan. So with such talk and myths floating around, I can’t help but feel such songs as this feed into the light skin, racial hierarchy.
that’s what I think is missing from comparing india’s bollywood starlets with the fact that there are so few real blondes in the world, but half of hollywood is made up of blonde hair and tall and fit (when the average american never has that size or height or hair color);
Bollywood serves the 40% of Indian Population who are illeterate. We do not need to dwelve more into the intellectual aspects of Bollywood. This NYT article is the best I have seen on the audience quinarian(sorry!) of Bollywood.
Hey Landbeyond7ZS, you are right, bollywood is for the dumb (The same NYT quoted Mukesh Ambani is a big fan of bollywood movies)I know many american people who claim they have become very intelligent after watching juno and knocked up and oh also wedding crashers:)
69 · umber desi said
Whether or not they are intentionally creating, depicting, upholding, or questioning social norms, the fact remains that art/narrative/culture does influence a society’s values. Whether high art or popular art, it’s all fair game for close analysis.
To clarify thsi is not Hindi-English…or hinglish its really Bhojpuri-English or should we call it Bhojlish?
people are getting worked up without understanding context. I remember being a bit shocked and uncomfortable in the theater when the song started off with “white white face”. But once you watch the whole song, and if are familiar with bollywood fare, you realized that those words are not in any way racial – its just a straight translation of gora i.e. fair-skinned. The english-hindi blended lyrics of this song would be typical of what someone with limited english-speaking ability, but a person fascinated with the language, and aspires to use it as a statement of ‘cool’ would do. Its classic hinglish. it is 100% in line with the character singing the damn song. The problem is that ‘white’ and ‘black’ are loaded words in this country and sets people down the wrong path.
btw, Akshay Kumar & Anil Kapoor did a fabulous job in this movie, which i found very entertaining, paisa-vasool, except for the cartoonishly OTT violence towards the end. 2 thumbs up from a former mumbaikar, inspite of the movie flopping and getting as much love from the critics as ‘the happening’.
Harbeer,
I agree with what you are saying, but I don’t agree with the statements that claims Bollywood is somehow trying to define identities for ABDs.
Whom does a girl have to sleep with to get a part around here?
The average Hollywood comedy is so crappy I stopped watching ages ago. The buddy movies like White Chicks or Chuck and Larry or The Love Guru: don’t even get me started. The premise itself is so stupid I have no clue who watches them. And the rom-coms: I was forced to watched ‘How To Lose a Guy…’ a few days ago, and I am still suffering from PTSD.
It’s satire, you idiots. Nothing to get worked up about. D’oh!
and just yday, my bf and i were trying to forget the embarrassing-catchy song from Kismat Connection …are these types of songs becoming a requirement for bollywood flicks? ay papi!
Methinks (many of) the ABDs doth protest too much! more obsessed with fairness than DBDs? Why, I wonder?!! True, most Indians back home consider fair is more beautiful. But, I doubt very much whether the fairness Indian Indians aspire to is the pale, pinkish European colour. By my beauty standards, formed growing up in India, Salma Hayek/Penelope Cruz is more beautiful than, say, Nicole Kidman, and I would think, many DBD readers of Sepia Mutiny might agree too.
I don’t know about how many feel that way, but speaking for myself (DBD here), I’d entirely agree with that. However, that does not necessarily prove your point, since my standards for attractiveness go much deeper than just the skin. Yes, sir! Much deeper. Salma Hayek’s appreciably bustier than Nicole Kidman, and she’s got absolutely delectable cleavage. Can’t get deeper than that.
But for a counterpoint, try asking a bunch of people to rank Salma Hayek and Halle Berry.
Gross and baseless generalization!! Now where did my King magazine go?
Sivaji & other Rajni gems are available with subtitles here . The graphics to create that dreadful look in “Style” apparently took a year, & the song is satire on the fair skin obsession I believe.
84 Rm, you can’t hide behind your copy of the King Magazine, we know your true colors, at least Ping Pong is honest about his deep standards for beauty ;-)Seriously, meant to say more obsessed with ‘the fairness issue’ (with ‘fairness’, was a mistake)
And Ping Pong, Salma Hayek-Halle Berry ranking would be more about race than pigmentation of the skin.
If you want to see good desi music that will blow away most of today’s Bollywood crap then watch this…it’s awesome… and at least in this clip the attractive, fair European women are actually doing something important along with looking good.
please – salma is way prettier than halle who is prettier than nicole who is prettier than meryl streep. And the prettiest of the lot is bipasha 😉
you guys are out of touch with india if you think it’s all about fairness. there are lots of successful actors and actresses who are dark skinned such as bipasha basu, priyanka chopra, abhishek bachchan. even rekha wasn’t fair and nor is shahrukh khan. i’m getting bored with your knee jerk reactions.
there are dark skinned very successful models as well such as lakshmi menon and once while i was visiting india, i was looking through a magazine and i saw a black model in an ad for a famous jewellery company called tanishq.
The message of Bollywood is that native indians are too dark and ugly act as heros and heroines in the movies. Most of the posters here seem to think that there is nothing unhealthy at all about this message.
The search for bollywood worthy talent involves hunting down indians who look middle-eastern; half-breeds who look middle-eastern; and more and more today, europeans who look like they could pass for middle-easterners. In other words the ideal bollywood look is the muslim west asian look. This may be a legacy of the 800 years of muslim rule in India. Not surprising when you consider that Bollywood was dominated by muslims in its early years, who set the pattern. Even today the top male matinee idols are mostly muslim.
This oft repeated argument by bollywood-brainwashed drones is a good example of how deeply Bollywood has screwed up the indian mind. The people you mentioned are actually light-skinned by native indian standards. They are dark only by the muslim west asian standards of Bollywood. You all dont even realize how silly and deluded you as indians look calling these people dark 🙂
Of course, because these two women are representative of the middle-eastern look glamorized by Bollywood for decades. One of them Salma is actually of arab ancestry.
Seeing how ga-ga indian men went over the blond american cheerleaders in the recent 20/20 cricket league debut shows that these beauty standards set by Bollywood can change with exposure. Its likely that the chinese and eurasian look will one day also be glamorized in India. Numerous white westerners already have a fetish for oriental women.
all i heard was tashan was a major waste of time. the song seems to solidify that feeling for me…
92 · Bollyhood said
This is a remarkable point, actually. However, we must ask ourselves why Hollywood, which is dominated by Jewish directors, didn’t depict the heroes/heroines as having Jewish features.
But your point is well-takent. Frankly, I’m tired of all the European-mixed (i.e. Katrina Kaif), Afghani (SRK, Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Salman Khan), and otherwise freakishly light-skinned Indians (Ash Rai and everyone else) on the screen. I’m dyeing to see swarthy, moustachioed men, and swarthy queens like Nandita Das there.
25 · Samir said
Also, our politicians and Pakistani politicians have been getting more and more white. Observe Rajiv Gandhi who was half Zoroastrian. Observe his kids who are half Italian, and believe me, they will become senior politicians soon.
Regarding the Pakis: Even Benazir Bhutto was half Kurdish, and they’ve had an ethnically Iranian as their prime minister in the past. His surname was Khan, and he was descendant of the “Kwizibash(?)” (Turkish for Red Hats).
Also, this trend is found in our beauty queens as well. I’m embarrassed that half of them are half white, and never half East Asians or Africans.
72 · PS said
Linguistically speaking, South Indians are totally different from Northern Indians. N. Indians speak an Indo-European language (along with Sinhalese, Bangladeshi, and Nepali). South Indians speak a Dravidian language.
I think that this is what trips up most N. Indians who view themselves to be in the same race as Swedes, and S. Indians to be of the “Indian race.”
I actually had a Kashmiri Hindu tell me in a very very polite way that he’s a mix of European and Indian races, and his Punjabi Hindu friend was parroting his speach. They said that a South Indian like myself were “pure Indians”.
i’m kashmiri hindu and i am really embarrased when other north indians think they are somehow half european. please don’t think that we’re all that stupid. i don’t think myself different to south indians. i think some people of my parents’ generation used to say that they were derived from europe but now nobody says that anymore.
Not sure where this is going. We Indians are mixed and for lack of a better term there is an “Iranian” contribution to the DNA. Where it gets ridiculous is when people feel the need to reject the much larger genetic contribution from “people X” (I use this term because it doesn’t make sense to use linguistic terms like Dravidian to describe “race”) to feel superior. Fair skinned green eyed Punjabis and upper class Turko-Afghan Muslims are part of the Indian fabric and clearly they have a place in Indian cinema. The issue is that this phenotype dominates to the near exclusion of all others. And I find it laughable that Nandita Das is referred to as dark. She might be dark as far as the nightclub/gated community set in Delhi go but she is towards the lighter end of the population as a whole. She would look like a (sexy) marshmallow standing next to me. Film studios spoon feed the public, they are ready for more varied forms of beauty.