NAATU NAATU THAT WON OSCAR IS NOT SO RAW

 

A Telugu song is making international waves winning Golden Globe, New York Critics and ultimately Oscar award. It was picturized in front of Ukraine presidential palace that is in the news in recent past only for the ugly Russian invasion. But in this movie, it looks stunning with the creativity of Rajamouli, a director now a household name in India for making big budget movies. Even South Koreans, Chinese and Japanese not known for enjoyment are dancing to the hook steps of Ramcharan and NTR choreographed by Premrakshit. Even sportsmen and ambassadors are chanting and shouting the not so musical or classical words even without understanding the meaning “NAATU NAATU” ( RAW RAW ) sung by Galli ( Street ) singer till recently Rahul Sipligunj and a little known Kalabhairava , son of the music director of this song M M Keeravani. Ultimately the 95^th Academy award better known as Oscar award was received by M M Keeravani and Chandra Bose, the lyricist making India proud for winning this award for the first time by an Indian language film made in India by Indians.

But my main intention is describing this song. It is not so raw or mass song as it was made out to be or looks like if the words are not understood. This song is the result of excellent creativity and hard work of many days using the words of two dialects of a language mixing in such a way to suit two historical characters belonging to two regions and backgrounds with an imaginary friendship and written to suit the situation. These raw words simply eclipse the so called rich and powerful Europeans at that time. It could not have been done by any other except Chandra Bose who lives and loves to write songs for the common man.

If I describe all the sentences, it may be boring to the people. But I will explain some meanings to give the taste of it. But to understand the full depth and the deeper meaning, each and every sentence to be understood in toto. For example first sentence in the text tells “ A bull jumping into the dusts of agricultural field “, next one “ Doing Stick fight, the age old Indian skill for protection wearing the old footwear which makes typical noise “ and “ Mixing Red Sorghum ( a type of millet that was widely eaten by poor before independence ) roti with mirchi powder “ demonstrates the guts of rural India in those times in front of three piece suit wearing Europeans proud of their heritage and culture belittling Indians treating them as animal like.

After hearing this song I recall an eternal Telugu Kavitha written by Mahakavi Sri Sri in his all-time great book “ Mahaprasthanam” using the words like Puppy, Match stick, Soap piece, Door piece, aarti plate , bread piece etc. In this he tells that no word or material is unsuitable for writing and only the creativity and emotional intelligence of the writer matters. Similarly, another great singer               Sri S P Balasubramaniam who sang more than 50000 songs in 16 different languages and an undisputed number one for three decades in three different languages: Telugu, Kannada and Tamil never sang a single song without understanding the meaning and never misspelt a single word. He was giving credit for the success of any song to the writer, music director, singers, director, story writer only in that order and choreographer and actors for the visual effects.

That is the importance of lyrics. Inculcate interest in literature, lyrics, language to preserve the culture, diversity, unity, nation, world and orderly living of mankind.

 

SARASWATHI – GODDESS OF GYAN

 

Tomorrow, we are celebrating Saraswathi Puja. Saraswathi is worshipped as “Goddess of Gyan “. Nowadays, we are teaching our children that she is a “Goddess of Education “. This is mainly due to transformation of society and perception of the society about education. We reduced the value of education from path to knowledge to path to livelihood. We are more bothered about comfortable and well settled life. Accordingly, knowledge and Gyan have taken a back seat and success in examinations and interviews are a priority. Education is a steppingstone to reach the ultimate aim of Gyan (Much more than knowledge perceived by us). Due to this we are making our gods also into stones rather than the knowing the real purpose behind Bhakti and worship.

In our locality, one religious teacher was explaining the meaning of all familiar story of Tiger and Cow. One person in the crowd raised a doubt whether tiger will agree for cow to leave to feed her calf even if it begs for it. The teacher did not mock at him. Instead, he appreciated the person for being attentive and thinking about the story rather than listening, agreeing and simply ignoring the moral. Then the teacher asked him whether he is believing that tiger and cow will actually speak, talk and negotiate with each other when they come face to face. If he believes that, then believing other things is very easy. The essence of that answer is if you start questioning from the beginning to end, you will understand the triviality of this questioning and the main aim of the importance of speaking the truth. That is why Indian philosophy never discouraged questioning and in fact all Upanishads are the results of debate between different people of all genders, castes and professionals. Nobel  Laurette Amartya Sen also writes in his famous book “Argumentative Indian” that in India an atheist is born the day god is born and no Galileo was ever poisoned in India like western countries for questioning the traditional beliefs. At the same time, we should not start debating whether this Sri Lanka or Ram Setu or Kurukshetra are same as described in great epics  Ramayana and Mahabharat. Instead of that we should try to understand the messages they convey to the whole world.

Another great interpretation of education and gyan are explained by the two verses written by great telugu poet Pothana in Bhagavatham . These verses are conveyed through Prahlad to his father Hiranyakasipa when he was asked by him how the learning is  going on in grukul and what he learnt. For the first question he answers that he was taught well by gurus and he read many shastras and apart from that he read many things and in one sentence he read all the intricacies in learning. For the second question he answers that hands,legs,eyes,mind,head,ears,the tongue which are used for the service and praise of god are only can be called as such. The first one is education and second one is gyan and the synthesis of both only can create a scientistlike Kalam or Jagadish Chandra Bose or a politician like A B Vajpayee or P V Narasimha Rao or an industrialst like N R Narayana Murthy or Ratan Tata or a bureaucrat like T N Seshan and a judge like P N Bhagawathi