Do you ever have a song, an idea, a storyline, or an image stuck in your head? And it just refuses to go away? For some time at least? I have this with music—it could be a song, an instrumental piece, a jingle, etc. This becomes my “now’”song, and the “nowness” (pardon my English here) could be for any length of time.
With August 15th just a couple of days away, desh bhakti of different types is in the air. Excited plans for an extended weekend vacation thanks to Independence Day and Id holiday in the bus; plastic and paper tricolour flags at traffic signals, shop windows dressed up in white, green and saffron; a sudden rise in the popularity of “desh bhakti geet” on TV and the radio… yes, its that time of the year. Even my customised YouTube page had Independence Day recommendations for me. One of them was D.K. Pattammal (1919-2009) singing the Jana Gana Mana:
D.K. Pattammal (DKP) would have been 28 when India attained Independence on in 1947. I wonder what it must have meant to her as a young, trailblazing musician. For someone who was well-known for her renditions of Mahakavi Bharatiyar’s nationalist songs, did she see the songs coming to life with India’s freedom
Maybe she did, for the joy and pride in singing the national anthem is so evident in the video that it would take a cynic or a real pessimist to not be moved by her expressions. For a change, I love the video more that the actual rendition of the song itself and it’s all because of DKP.
Happy Independence Day 🙂
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