Stitch Meditations , 7th July 2024

Music has been an integral part of my life, be it playing the piano or singing. I gave up the piano when the instrument I had was too old to be tuned and the piano tuner also died.  At this point I was past 50. 

And returned to singing (after some 30 years) which I had given up to pursue the piano. While I’m doing crochet - working on the ‘Patterns in Being’ project, I try and do some riyaaz. With the tanpura to keep sur now an app, I can do this quite easily, though not as often as my teacher would like me to. This is a ghazal she suggested I learn. I recorded it to share with her as my last class was missed. It’s far from perfect. I start off, off-key and the high notes are still a challenge, but it’s a WIP, just like my crochet project. 

https://youtu.be/Lvq6Ii6a6iA?si=ot_ibSpoHtwWJuck

As I sang, pondered on the lyrics and popularity of this ghazal, a 6mm aluminium crochet hook weaving the fabric - of a pattern I used to make a lovely silk scarf from my younger sister’s recent birthday. Having constructed a 7ft long one the pattern should have been second nature, but using two threads instead of one didn’t permit the usual flow. This too added to my reflections on stitch and the song.

The lyrics of which were written by Fayaz Hashmi, a 20th century Pakistani poet and songwriter who also worked in the Indian film industry.  The music was composed by Sohail Rana and the song was popularized by classical vocalist, Habib Wali Mohmmad who also sang it as playback singer for a Pakistani film ‘Badal aur Bijli, in 1973. 

The profoundly romantic and soul piercing lyrics expressing the pain of unrequited love and longing for a beloved, combined with a heart stirring melody creates an emotional listening experience, and has inspired many artistes to add it to their repertoire. My favourite rendition is by Farida  Khanum  (1993) whose vocals evoke the intensity of yearning that’s real and palpable.  I remember hearing it for the first time and feeling a familiar tug of the longing the poetics evoke. 

And don’t we all? I mean isn’t that why the lyrics appeal to so many?

Making me wonder if somewhere our idea of love and romance has become associated with longing, that which we cannot have. The unattainable, the challenge which brings us to a state of pathos. Pushing us into the depths of being, rising up like the phoenix from the ashes of disappointment. Like moth to flame, unrequited love can become an addictive pattern that challenges the being, its growth. 

Often, when I think of the verses that Swami Parmahansa wrote and sang during satsangs and which have become part of the Sadhna of his devotees, I find this same sense of longing for the idea of God, for what is attainable but ever so briefly or through rigour and intense discipline. Or always just beyond one’s reach. Saint poets like Lala, Andal and Mahadeviakka also spoke of pain, rigour and strife, as the ways into the soul of our being.

Yet, the world judges those that seek but do not find. That strive but fail. Often shaming each other. Even as our most romantics hero’s are Heer and Ranjha, Romeo and Juliet and even Rumi’s profound poetry comes from his separation from Shams. A pattern of social acceptance seems to be to reject the idea of longing even as it’s what’s embedded in our psyche. 

The old Hindi film songs, which I so love. That era of poetry in film that made the songs so memorable and singable, are also more about longing, more than love itself. The bitter-sweetness of parting, waiting to be re-united and that ilk. It’s almost as if we are programmed to fail to achieve the desired, because the journey is probably more exciting, hopeful, poignant than the destination. Which in the context of human love is inevitably a huge disappointment. 

And we cope with heartbreak to realise we were never really broken, but being opened up to explore horizons of being, beyond our imagination. And, these songs remind us of that journey, that longing, the hope - that romance of being which is never quite fulfilled through another, if at all. 

With these words 

“Waqt ke qaid mein, zindagi hai magar 

Chand ghadiyaan yehi hai jo aazad hai 

Inko khokar mere jaan-e-jaana, umr bhar 

na taraste raho. Aaj jaane ki zid na karo” the poet almost suggests that the beloved leave, for otherwise who would yearn so sweetly for him/or her…..

This post is in continuum of the previous one 

http://gopikanathstitchjournal.blogspot.com/2024/05/stitch-meditations-on-being-patterns.html