Dil Se: Love, Fantasy and Negotiation in Hindi Film Songs

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Interventions International Journal of Postcolonial Studies

ISSN: 1369-801X (Print) 1469-929X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/riij20

Rita Kothari & Apurva Shah

To cite this article: Rita Kothari & Apurva Shah (2017): Dil Se: Love, Fantasy and Negotiation in Hindi Film Songs, Interventions, DOI: 10.1080/1369801X.2017.1294101 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2017.1294101

Published online: 10 Mar 2017.

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Download by: [Indian Institute of Tech - Gandhinagar] Date: 12 March 2017, At: 22:02 DIL SE: LOVE, FANTASY AND NEGOTIATION IN HINDI FILM SONGS

Rita Kotharia and Apurva Shahb aIndian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, India; bAntarnad Foundation, Ahmedabad, India ...... This essay deals with the semantic and semiotic field of dil (heart) in Hindi film songs. Dil, as one of the most recurring motifs in Hindi film songs, provides a censorship layered and dynamic view into the way self and non-self are both constituted by dil and reflected in language. As a trope, dil draws from poetic traditions and metaphors of Persian and Urdu, frequently overlain by other conventions heart and idioms of love in South Asia. Besides locating the unspoken and spoken love conventions of dil, we also underscore specific psychoanalytic meanings of “self” and argue that dil is the site both of desire and denial; an alternative romance but culturally acceptable possibility of romance and a transferred epithet sexuality under watchful eyes. society symbolic ......

Dil and duniya

Songs from films, filled with yearning and romance, move between generations, radios and cellpones, celluloid and television screens and come to 1 1 Illustrating this fact rest, sometimes, forever and ever, in memories of South Asia. This may is difficult for its very have exceptions, but then which rule does not? Our attention is arrested by obviousness to a South Asian. For the seething desire of songs, their ubiquity in everyday life and forms of instance, senior internal and external regulations that make direct and upfront expressions citizens’ clubs in the of romance difficult. Somewhere, between these two seemingly contradictory city of Ahmedabad positions, is the dil or “heart”–an overfamiliar trope in Hindi film songs, to regularly organize Hindi songs and which we return. Meanwhile, through 2014 and 2015, when this essay was karaoke evenings to conceptualized and written, a series of “events” ensued following the encourage their aged victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Indian general elections of May members and their fi children and 2014. Conservative and revivalist Hindutva groups, whose af liation with grandchildren to the ruling party was obvious (although not easy), periodically campaigned participate. Their for a maintenance of traditional Indian (read “Hindu”) practices. These experience shows them that this is the were manifested in vicious campaigns against interreligious marriage, which only form of activity dubbed Hindu–Muslim romance as “love-jihad”, and attempts to “bring common to several back” Christians and Muslims into the fold of Hinduism through the generations in India, much-discussed ghar-wapsi (home-return). The repression and disapproval even though the choice of songs may of individual choices of love, romance, marriage or religion, by self-pro- vary. claimed custodians of culture, in the interest of a larger family, community 2 2 For the or nation is not a new phenomenon in South Asia. However, one particular ramifications of this instance in this series drew our attention and it serves as a symbolic snapshot on gender, and also in the context of for the conversation we are about to undertake. subsequent On the eve of Valentine’s Day on 14 February 2015, copies of several discussions of pamphlets were distributed outside educational institutions in the city of coupleness and Ahmedabad (see Figure 1). Later, we found some of them on the Internet as romantic love, see Menon (2012). well. The semiotic and textual signification of these pamphlets is alluring and complex; many aspects beg for discussion. However, the purpose of this recent, visual, cultural–political message at the beginning of this essay is simply to foreground disapproval of romantic love in a regulating society, a phenomenon so quotidian as to escape notice. Francesca Orsini mentions that although romantic love – using either the English term or its Indian equivalent, prem – became an established ideal by the beginning of the twentieth century, the patriarchal system has made few allowances for it or the emer- gence of the modern couple (2006, 33). The substitution of Valentine’s Day with Parents’ Worship Day in the pamphlet above zones in on one of the deepest anxieties in South Asia: the supplanting of the family with the selfish- ness of the couple. The use of the Sanskrit words “Matr[u] DevoBhava” and “Pitr[u]DevoBhava”, followed by an English translation, is a conscious linguistic strategy to establish both the cultural continuity and antiquity of DIL SE ...... 3 Rita Kothari and Apurva Shah

Figure 1. Self-styled Godman Asaram Bapu's advice to the youth to treat Valentine’s Day as Parents Day.

this goal. Whether this was always the case, or how this can be reconciled with erotic literature and sculpture from ancient India, is a different and historical discussion. Another pamphlet (not reproduced here) points to coupleness (illustrated in western and shadowy figures) as an affliction in a non-Indian context, beckoning the reader to be more religious, responsible and “Indian” by focusing more upon the needs of the “parents” (read “family”) than the selfish interests of the individual. In the traditional Indian joint family, any intimacy (e.g. a romantic love relationship) between newlyweds is a major destabilizing factor. As Kakar and Kakar (2007) state, “the new bride constitutes a very real threat to the unity of the larger family” (59). The threat is generated by her sexuality and her resultant ability to entice the groom into a privileged, exclusive relationship. Such a relationship dis- tracts the man from his duties as a son, a brother, a nephew, an uncle, etc. For the woman, the consequences are even more extensive. Not only is it a dis- traction from her manifold duties as the bahu (daughter-in-law), it also improves her status within the family significantly This, in turn, would have a series of consequences, not the least of which would be the weakening of ...... interventions 4

the bond between their future child and her – a diminishing of the “maternal enthrallment” which Kakar and Kakar believe is central to the character of Indian men and India. A variety of traditions have been set up to guard against this danger, including that of arranged marriages. At this point it is important to underscore the rhetoric rather than the reality of this perceived “opposition” between individual and society, and the sim- plistic perception of arranged marriage as an anachronism. Given the context of a certain class and education, it is possible to see a complex inter- marrying of a western idea of romance and the family unit, as evident in Majumdar’s(2009) scholarship on Bengal in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thus, we do not wish to make too ﬁne a point of the dis- cursive “opposition”. However, we do wish to draw the reader’s attention to the generation of a symbolic language in an environment that regulates (even when it does not prohibit) romance. The Hindi cinema industry, often referred to as Bollywood, is its natural habitation.

Aims and scope

Constituted by a gamut of stock images and emotion, the symbolic language of Hindi cinema, especially in its songs, lives and relives through repetition. The banality of stock expressions and repetitions can easily obscure the meanings that become sedimented into the songs and shape the contours of feeling and expression. Our attention, for instance, is arrested by the polysemiotic nature of dil (heart) – an integral part of the symbolic language of love and romance in Hindi cinema, especially its songs. The dil is also sometimes set in opposition to regulating entities such as duniya (world) or log (community).

These tensions, usually narrativized as a clash between love and the family, between romantic aspirations and the duty of loyalty to the kin (or to the nation), have been at the heart of modern novels and ﬁlms dealing with love. (Orsini 2006,33–4)

3 A popular parlour Any player of the song-game Antakshari3 will know that Hindi film songs game in India in which one group has are made up of stock words such as ishq, pyaar, prem, mohabbat, dil, etc. In to sing at least one mnemonic ways the use of one stock word brings forth from memory many verse of a song that other songs, and the chain continues. Players often feel relief with words starts with the such as dil because it helps recall an inexhaustible list of songs. Dil is arguably consonant or vowel 4 with which the other one of the most commonly used nouns in Hindi lyrics. While words such as group’s song ended. pyaar, prem, mohabbat and ishq and their relationship with the English 4 A detailed website equivalent “love” form part of a larger understanding of love and romance on Hindi lyrics – (www.hindilyrics.net, in South Asia (Dwyer 2006, 292 3), dil remains unnoticed despite its ubiquity. As scholars situated in the diverse disciplines of literature and DIL SE ...... 5 Rita Kothari and Apurva Shah accessed 15 May translation on the one hand, and psychoanalysis on the other, we pay atten- 2015) throws up a tion to the linguistic and psychological aspects of dil, and demonstrate the result of 20,900 for the word dil,as intertwining of words and selves that both hide and reveal desire. This opposed to 7,100 for essay deals with the semantic and semiotic field of dil in Hindi film songs. It pyaar, 3,610 for ishq examines dil in relation to what Dwyer (2006) calls “discourses of the inti- and 3,290 for ” fi mohabbat. mate (289). Dil, as one of the most recurring motifs in Hindi lm songs, provides a layered and dynamic view into the way self and non-self are both 5 5 There are other constituted by and reflected in language. As such it is only natural that ways of tracking dil. matters of the heart such as love and romance would have reference to the For instance, the 6 musical cues it is heart, which is not in itself a uniquely Hindi song or South Asian phenom- accompanied with enon. As Sudhir Kakar suggests: may throw light on its imagined relation Love and the lyrical impulse of its narration are indeed universal, one of the few con- with the body or the legitimacy of dil as a stants left in a world that makes a fetish of cultural relativism. Erotic passion, with seat of experience. love’s tender discoveries, sudden torments and consuming desires, is one of the last Through the various bastions of our common humanity. stages of political and cultural economy in However, if we subscribe to the premise that modes of experiencing and expressing India, we may be able emotions are constructed in specific and cultural ways; it is possible to see that to detect a transition “heart” and “dil” may have only a linguistic commensurability.7 (Kakar 2009, 62) from a socialist dil that wanted very little compared to the As a trope, dil draws from poetic traditions and metaphors of Persian and consumerist one. Urdu, frequently overlain by other conventions and idioms of love in South Similarly, a Asia (Orsini 2006). The conditions under which the unspoken is spoken comparative perspective on dil and through the dil is a legacy of a society and of poetic conventions with specific hriday or jigar (both psychoanalytic meanings of “self”. Dil, we argue, is a site of desire and is sim- synonymous with dil) ultaneously intimate and external, that is, extimate. Through a combination could have also led to richer meanings. of linguistic, cultural and psychological perspectives, we posit that dil in While we footnote Hindi film songs is the site of negotiation, an alternative possibility of other possibilities, expression, a transferred epithet that serves situations where desires lack given our own strengths and legitimacy. disciplinary training, we have chosen to focus on the Melodies, meanings and memories linguistic/literary and The pervasive influence of songs in shaping expectations of romance is mani- psychological ’ perspectives and how fest in now-parodic, now-earnest fashion in Hindi cinema s own self-referen- they intertwine. tial memory. For instance, the linguistically inadequate bridge between the 6 The linguistic and Northern and Southern protagonists in the film Ek Duke Ke Liya (1981) is conceptual history of fi the heart is poignantly and comically attempted by a song made up of lm titles. The fascinating. At one parodic songs in Chashme Buddhoor (1981) or Kahin Pyaar Na Ho Jayee point, it was eaten (2000) hint at the simultaneous seriousness and mnemonic presence of ritualistically, both to Hindi film songs. The film Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015) captures the banal ...... interventions 6

“incorporate” the and accidental nature of love in an Indian joint family, a possibility forged in dead person and to no small measure by songs heard, remembered, recorded and relayed. The deny their loss. Initially, any body normative idea of romance created through years of images and songs part served this stands sharply in contrast to the ever-present feudal family.8 A cursory function. But soon glance at the titles of song collections on Youtube and commercially sold the heart came to symbolize the life anthologies shows how there are songs for every occasion. This is as true of force, probably Hindi film songs as it is of Bangla or Malayalam (we have restricted ourselves because sometimes it to the former). Songs play a dual role, serving as metaphors, but also as tem- would still be beating plates that construct emotions in specific Shah Rukh Khan or Rajesh Khanna during the dissection of the victim. This ways. They function both as products and processes in aid of romance. was then integrated ’ into Christianity s In a society that is deeply hierarchical, with caste and class barriers which are not concept of Eucharist, which was easy to cross even by the god of love Kama, the dream is one of love unimpeded ritualistically eaten to by the shackles of family obligations and duties towards the old and all the other compensate for the keepers of society’s traditions. Bollywood movies are thus not a guide to Indian mar- eating of a red, somewhat heart- riage but a doorway into the universal dream of love; what they offer are not role shaped fruit (apple). models for the young but romantic nostalgia for the freshness of love’s vision to From these origins, men and women of all ages. (Kakar and Kakar 2007,62–3) the heart continued to acquire more and more meanings – As synecdochic connections to films and the worlds they represent, songs

opening of the heart, provide a view into the enduring relation couples have with the fantasy of offering it, knowing another world. Songs are companions of joy and sorrow, repositories that it, etc. And then science stripped the provide something for every occasion. heart of all its The film lyric is part of a spectrum that includes folksongs, poetry, bhajans mystique and (devotional songs), etc., dispelling effectively any perceived binary between meanings and eventually reduced it the secular and religious (Booth 2000; Orsini 2006; Kakar and Kakar to a mere pump. The 2007). Discussing the traditions of love in South Asia, Orsini states: surplus of significations became The main repertoires in which notions, emotions and stories of love developed in the preserve of poets and songwriters. The South Asia are four: the Sanskrit and Prakrit repertoire centring on shringara last three decades [romantic/erotic love] and kama [sexual desire] and comprising epics, lyrics, plays, have seen a small but collections of stories and treatises on philosophy, conduct (including sexual growing number of scientists getting conduct) and medicine; the oral repertoire of folk epics, tales and songs; the involved in the study Perso-Arabic repertoire centring on love expressed as ishq and muhabbat, compris- “ of energy ing religious injunctions, Sufi poems and interpretations, worldly texts on ethics and cordiology” and they believe that, not only conduct, poetic romances (masnavis), eulogies (qasida) and lyrics (ghazal), and does the heart feel, it stories of adventure and chivalry; and the repertoire of devotional bhakti poetry also thinks, contains and philosophy. To these must be added the modern repertoires of prem and stored information, “love”.(2006,4–5) helps regulate immunity and communicates with As scholars based in India and its diaspora, as observers of things “Indian”, other hearts. For we proceed from the established view that Hindi films (and particularly further details and songs) play a profound role in the fashioning of the self. Songs in particular DIL SE ...... 7 Rita Kothari and Apurva Shah references, see travel faster and widely, and their recall allows, to the diaspora, a synoptic Doueihi (1997) and view of the past that resists becoming the past (Gopal and Moorti 2008; Goodwin (2001). 7 It is beyond the Beaster-Jones 2009). scope of this essay to Scholarship on Hindi cinema has predominantly focused on the narrative, compare the use of although historically it is the “song and dance” sequence that has been the the word “heart” in western pop music bone of contention for those who dismiss Hindi cinema. Emerging scholarship with the use of the on Hindi film songs attempts to underscore the importance of this apparently word dil in Hindi film peripheral episode in a narrative. A substantial body of literature in film songs. But a very brief studies today addresses the Hindi film song, with divergent views on its and unscientific survey of the use of relationship (or lack of it, as some argue) with the narrative. It is important the word “heart” in to delineate at this point the terms of the debate. From a summary dismissal recent popular of songs as being mere digressions with a tenuous relationship to the Hindi English songs fi revealed that, while it lm narrative, to a serious consideration of music traditions that constitute shares many Hindi songs, the range of views is wide. An example of the former view is character traits with that of Sarkar (1975), who believes “the most irritating aspect about the dil, it generally lacks fi ” the extimacy. song in the Hindi lm is its sheer irrelevance (107). At the other extreme, 8 Prasad (2002) Morcom (2007) has outlined in great detail the complex relationship that argues the dominant Hindi songs have with the films that contain them, a relationship that has his- narrative form, the torical, commercial, popular and stylistic elements. feudal family romance, wishes to Although there are different views on what might be the meaning of the fi prevent the interruption that songs create in the lm narrative, there is, on the whole, “invention of the little disagreement on that fact that there is an interruption (Skillman 1988; couple”, a secession from the joint family Ray 2005; Bhattacharya 2009). The question is what purpose does this inter- and traditional ruption serve? Gehlawat (2010) believes authority. the bifurcation of the filmic text allows for the Bollywood song and dance to transcend and dissolve the synthesis of the homogenized Hollywood musical form and, in the process, consistently break out of the hermetic universe imposed on it by others. (42)

He considers the song and dance to be both modernist (deconstructions for the purpose of critique) and postmodernist (fragmented and pastiches) (47). There are some dissenting voices to the idea that all song-and-dance sequences are interruptions. For instance, Beeman (1981) and Akhtar and Choksi (2005) argue the song-and-dance sequences do not form an interruption, at least for the Indian audience. Beeman (1981) contends that the songs are an “inseparable element” in Indian ﬁlms and that they are always meant to be heard and that they play a role similar to other cine- matic elements. “For Indian spectators the psychological distance between speech and songs is considerably narrower than for western audiences” (83). He traces this legacy to the history of Indian theatre, which has always tightly integrated music, song and dance, in both its sacred and secular versions...... interventions 8

Sangita Gopal and Biswarup Sen suggest:

Song–dance performs two crucial sets of tasks on behalf of the filmic text: first, it creates an “outside” for the filmic text – providing both a context for the film as well as linking to other cultural practices, and second, it acts as an instrument for building interiority and subjectivity, for projecting models of the individual self. (Gopal and Sen 2008, 150)

Dudrah (2006) has a more inclusive view: “The Bollywood musical numbers can operate both at the levels of narrative and spectacle” (Original emphasis, 49). “Song sequences can also operate on a metaphorical level, enabling a step beyond the story … songs allow ideological exposition outside the narrative, turning subtext into text” (Original emphasis, 50). We agree with this broader, more inclusive view, but with a somewhat different emphasis.

Evading and embracing the erotic

Many scholars (Sarkar 1975; Barnouuw and Krishnaswamy 1980; Skillman 1988; Gokulsing and Dissanayake 1998; Booth 2000; Gopalan 2002; Dwyer 2006; Gopal and Sen 2008) have pointed out how traditional Bolly- wood song lyrics and the visuals of songs and song-and-dance sequences allow for a less direct and often symbolic expression of the erotic that still skirts the physical but would nevertheless be unacceptable in the main filmic narrative. Skillman (1988) writes about how the censor board of India, post-Independence (1947), created strict regulations around physical 9 In the context of contact between the sexes on the screen.9 To compensate, she says, “the pro- control and … regulation, states ducers developed an overly suggestive body language and used songs as Mazarella (2013), vehicles for such expressions” (153). She adds that this overt expression of censorship is as much the erotic is tolerated because of the “veil of song” (153). about making Apart from the relationship with the narrative, many scholars have also meanings as suppressing them. made astute observations on what happens in the visual representation of “Sex is always the erotic in the song. For instance, Gopalan (2002) draws attention to the ” political (10). The constraints of sexuality even among snow-peaked mountains and exotic general view that censorship in India is locations. When lovers pull away without kissing, or we as audience know a colonial relic, and in they did, but as such they did not – an interesting consensual moment of its origins it meant truth and fiction in a society that maintains protocols of behaviour – it is a merely to suppress “ ” “ seditious behaviour moment, she says, of coitus interruptus (37). In Kiss or tell? Declaring but has turned into a love in Hindi films”, Dwyer (2006) discusses at length the visual codes of postcolonial love in Hindi cinema that compensate for the declaration of love. Quoting controller of Prasad (2002), she states, “He argues that the kiss demarcates the zone of DIL SE ...... 9 Rita Kothari and Apurva Shah sexuality, makes privacy that is forbidden under the feudal scopic regime upheld by the Mazarella question cinema” (Dwyer 2006, 295). the implicit – ontological claim that We wish to shift the terms of discussion from the visual to the verbal from sex and politics refer articulation of fantasy and desires through snow-capped mountains and cos- to entirely distinct tumes, to words invoked for expressing and hiding desire. Sarkar (1975) has kinds of objects. written about how it is easier to please the censors (and perhaps the general public) if a girl, instead of saying “I love you”, “warbles on through endless miles of footage on the subject of dil [heart] and mohabbat [love] and the like” (106). We agree that it is useful to see dil also as part of the larger signification of eroticism and its containment in the Hindi cinema world.

Antecedents and poetic traditions

The word dil, as also a range of other words frequently used in Hindi ﬁlm song lyrics, such as chand (moon), ishq, mohabbat, deewana (lover), etc., owes its origins to the Urdu lyric, which in turn is a legacy of the premodern Perso- 10 Premodern Perso- Arabic idiom of love.10 Hindi cinema or song is a shorthand and contestable Arabic understandings of nomenclature for a highly hybrid heritage of linguistic and rhetorical tra-

love loom large in ditions (Kesavan 1994; Trivedi 2006; Kothari 2011). However, of the many South Asian influences of folk, classical, devotional and jazz music, Urdu poetry, and traditions and other vernacular kinds that shaped what is loosely known as the Hindi film imagination. Even today, words like ishq song, the role of Urdu poetry may perhaps be the most profound. Kesavan or mohabbat are (1994) notes that “Hindi film has been fashioned out of the rhetorical and those most demotic resources of Urdu” (246). commonly used in the northern part of the The linguistic repertoire and metaphors, as usual, came with contours of subcontinent to experience, in this case ones in which love is never entirely individual or indicate romantic private, and more often than not, is unrequited. For instance, a lyricist like feelings, and a large part of the stock of Shakeel Badayuni was a poet of mushaira (poetic symposium), and hence metaphors still in use the familiar language of romance came to him with specific codes of to describe the secrecy. It is also easy to trace the influence of the stock metaphors in many experience of love of his contemporaries like Sahir Ludhianvi, Indeevar and Anand Bakshi. comes from the genres of this Faruqi (2006) explicates the spoken and unspoken Urdu love poetry of the extremely rich eighteenth century and shows how conventions of love were forged out of an repertoire, which assumption that its pursuit was neither completely private nor individual. The entered South Asia fi with the Ghaznavids presence of an audience, a meh l (public gathering), the feudal family, duniya in the eleventh (world) and log (community) remind us of confessions of love in “the midst of century and gradually many”. This may also explain, suggests Faruqi, the dual nature of meaning in spanned local – “ ” versions in the Urdu poetry a part that deals with what is it about? and another with vernaculars “what does it mean?” The duality needed to be maintained in conditions throughout North where the ghazal, for instance, had to be recited at mushairas and public gatherings and desire had to be communicated in oblique terms because, as ...... interventions 10

India (see Orsini a well-known Urdu expression goes, deewaron ke bhikaan hote hain (the 2006, 15). walls also have ears). The beloved may or may not be known to the audience and ambiguity about their identity and also honour had to be maintained even as earnest and fervent longing was expressed. It would not be far-fetched to see how some of the best-known lyricists (mentioned earlier) associated with Hindi songs, especially in the period from the 1940s to the 1970s, as well as Urdu literature, may have inherited, in small or great measure, the conventions Faruqi mentions. Meanwhile, it is only natural to ask, as does Orsini (2006), “How did the valorization of love in Perso-Urdu poetry coexist with a patriarchal society that placed family honour above individual desires, dis- couraged individual initiative in matters of marriage and kept the sexes largely segregated?” (22). It was through the symbolic language of love that mobilized in its service the gaze, the message, the silence, the song and a range of visual and verbal codes that continue to persist in love discourses 11 11 For instance, in an even today. insightful paper, In an interview by Harneet Singh (Indian Express, April 19, 2015) with a Taylor (2002) draws attention to “nazar” new crop of lyricists in Hindi cinema, two things come over quite clearly: or “gaze” as a mode the enduring inﬂuence of older poets/lyricists such as the aforementioned, of expressing desire, and the pressure to move away from them and forge a more accessible and the climax of a typical market-friendly song. The four interviewed lyricists mention how much deli- Bollywood song– dance routine. Dwyer cacy and complexity lay in the earlier songs, and how occasionally they have (2006) points to a had to replace a difﬁcult Urdu word with a simpler one. Nonetheless, the range of visual cues foundations constructed by lyricists who also happened to be accomplished such as the rain, snow-peaked Urdu poets have had far-reaching effects even on the generation of lyricists mountains and the who write today. Lyricists like Gulzar, Javed Akhtar and Irshad Kamil con- wet saree as some of tinue to write with some of the conventions discussed above. the more iconic tropes of passion.

The protean dil

The terrain of dil in Hindi ﬁlm songs is a slippery one. It eludes summarization by being too many things at the same time. It is a container of love and desire, but it can also contain the beloved or God, and crucially, be the seat of secrets. And yet it itself is contained within the body of the subject and/or the beloved. It is something tangible, measurable, locatable and all-too-fragile – it is frequently broken, even fragmented. Yet, it is an abstract entity that is exchanged freely between lovers. It is bi-gendered – linguistically masculine, it often takes on distinctly feminine characteristics. The dil is restless, infantile, even insane, clearly outside the control of the subject. At the same time, it is controlled – by the lover. It can represent the emotional centre of the subject, the locus of desire, the entire subject or even, paradoxically, the thinking or questioning subject that splits it. Dil is also the site of negotiation for lovers, and the DIL SE ...... 11 Rita Kothari and Apurva Shah

site for their love to take a stance against the society at large. We will illustrate some of the above using popular melodies. The ﬁgure of speech called transferred epithet, taught to English school stu- dents how a property associated with the self is transferred to another object for poetic effect. Dil is a recurring epithet upon which both the desires and responsibilities of the self are transferred. Take this song, for instance:

Yeh/dil/na/hota/bechara (Had this heart not been so desolate) kadam/na/hote/aawara (Had [the] steps not been so wayward) to/khubsurat/koi/apna/humsafar/hota (It would have been possible then to have a beautiful companion)

The speaker chooses to refer to a lonely heart as if it were another person, and steps (again, without a subject position) that are wayward. Had such conditions of both loneliness and promiscuity (implied in the aawara/kadam, or wayward steps) not obtained, it would have been possible to have a beautiful companion. It would seem that the blame for the absence of a beloved rests upon the heart and steps, but given the absence of an “I”, they cannot be blamed enough. The lines also permit the possibility of reading in a reverse fashion, that is to say: had there been a beautiful companion, the

heart would not have suffered desolation nor the feet waywardness. The responsibility ambiguously accepted in the ﬁrst reading is shed away in the second reading, implicating the body and heart (and not the speaker) in matters of promiscuity. Dil is the seat of secrecy; it whispers its secrets to the speaker who talks about dil as if it were another person altogether. The speaker “shares” the secret with his beloved as an(other) person’s truth. Mere/dil/mein/aaj/kya/ hai; tu/kahe/ to/ main/bata /dun comes to mind as one of the best-known songs from the 1970s: “I could, if you wish, tell you what is on my heart today”. In the triad of the speaking self, body and heart, who is ultimately the one feeling and who is the one expressing it? The song elaborates on the wishes of the heart: Teri/zulf/phir/sanwaroon/ teri/maang/phir/sajadoon. The words “to caress your hair again, to adorn your hair with vermillion again” are both sexual and euphemistic, referring to a consummation and remarriage that the speaker wishes with the widowed beloved. But who is the one wanting to caress the hair? Is this reported speech with an elliptical subject so that zulf/phir/sawanroon (to caress your hair) is the heart’s desire but merely reported by the speaker? Or has the heart emboldened the speaker to say this on its behalf? The structure of self split across the speaking “I” and the desiring subject as represented by the secretive dil is not unique to this song. A similar split across the self/body and dil is evident in Yeh/dil /tum/ bin kahin/lagta/nahin,/hum/kya/karein: “It is difﬁcult for this heart to attach to anything, since you are not around”. This song from the 1970s is a popular ...... interventions 12

duet, and provides a good example of the multiple significations of dil. The female voice expressing love and separation is followed by a male voice: Lute/dil/mein/diya/jalta/nahin/hum/kya/karein. The male voice expresses the inability of a desolate house-like heart to light another flame, or to put it literally, to find love again. The recurring refrain hum/kya/karein (what can I/we do?) absolves both the desire and responsibility from the individual self which now rest squarely upon the dil. But if dil is outside of the self, where exactly is this desire located? Who is the one feeling the desire? A series of verbs suggestive of arousal, pining, longing, feeling restive or lonely attach themselves to dil and it is possible to see some of the roots going back to Urdu poetry. See the lines below by Jaleel Manikpuri:

Aap/pehlu/mein/baithein/to/sambhaal/kar/baithein (When you sit next to me, do be careful) Dil-e-betaab/ko/aadat/hai/machal/jaane/ki (Restless heart has a tendency to ﬁdget)

Once again, language allows for a missing subject so that the speaker can distance himself from the action ascribed to dil. Does dil here act as a substitute for an unconscious phallic–aggressive desire? It does make a certain temerity

of expression possible for both men and women. For instance, this song from 1973:

Betaab/dil /ki/tamanna/yahi/hai (The restless heart wishes this alone) Tumhein/chaheng/tumhein/pujenge (To love you, to worship you) Tumhein/apna/khuda/banayenge (To make you my God)

It would be tempting to read a gendered meaning into what appears in the above as testimony to ultimate submission and self-effacement rather than a full-throated sexual desire. However, as mentioned earlier, the blurring of the devotional and romantic is integral to expressions of love in South Asia and a part of its symbolic language. Another well-known song that illustrates this blurring most powerfully (albeit without using dil, for it is conceived as a bhajan, a devotional song, by a female devotee) is Aaj/sajan/ more/ ang/laga/ lo/ janam/safal/ho/jaye, hriday/ki/peeda/prem/ki/agni/ sab/ sheetal/ho/jaye (Please embrace me today my love [so that] my life is fulfilled; heart’s agony and love’s fire calm down). One of the multiple strands stemming out of the discussion on dil is a perception that dil is constant and authentic in a world of temptation and tran- sience. Having to contend (as the Indian subcontinent did) with flows of different cultures, the body is left with the mark of such colonial encounters; dil, on the other hand, is uncontaminated. The famous song below, used quite DIL SE ...... 13 Rita Kothari and Apurva Shah

often by cinema studies scholars as an example of national–cosmopolitan imagination, supports this argument:

Mera/joota/hai/Japani,/yeh/patloon/Inglistani (My shoes, they are Japanese, and my trousers English) Sar/pe/laal/topi/Roosi/phir/bhi/dil/hai/Hindustani (The cap I wear is Russian, but the heart is Indian)

If dil is authentic and steadfast, a view invoked even in diasporic ﬁlms that advocate an incorruptible inner core, it is also fragile, brittle and wavering. By itself, heartbreak is a common and clichéd metaphor for betrayal in love. In Hindi songs it is often set up in opposition to a more powerful adversary, such as social class:

Chaandi/ki/deewar/na/todi, pyar/bhara/dil/tod/diya (You could not break the walls of wealth, instead you chose to break my heart)

A broken heart, or tuta/huya/dil, is the death-knell, making life pointless, as in jab dil/hee/ tut gaya/ hum/ jeeke/kya/karenge (When the heart is broken, why should I live?). Hence, the lover warns his beloved, chudi/nahin/yeh/mera/dil/

hai, dekho/dekho/tute/na (This is not a bangle, but my heart, make sure it doesn’t break). The fragility of the heart and the danger of its breaking at the hands of a merciless beloved is a recurring theme in Perso-Arabic style poetry in South Asia. See Daag Dehlvi’s couplet below:

Tumhara/dil/mere/ dil/ke/barabar/ho/nahin/sakta (Your heart cannot be like mine) Woh/sheesha/ho/nahin/sakta/yeh/pathar/ho/nahin/sakta (Yours cannot become glass, nor can mine turn into stone)

The ﬁnality of presumable essences of male and female heart sometimes makes an oblique appearance, unlike the couplet above. We believe that the splitting of the self into a speaking “I” and desiring dil and the temerity as well as control of expression that is produced by this rhetorical effect may be seen as a common theme regardless of gender. That is not to say that dil is never gendered.There are several instances of engendered dil/s in Hindi ﬁlm songs. For instance, dil as an object that can be given away, stolen, sold, bartered, etc., may appear far more as a theme in female songs. An entreaty such as the one below is but one example:

Chura/liya/hai/tumne/jo/dil/ko, nazar/nahin/chura/na/sanam (Now that you have stolen my heart, don’t steal the glance away) ...... interventions 14

Or an offer such as the following:

Dil/cheez/kya/hai/aap/meri/jaan/lijiye (What price the heart, take my life away if you will)

Or a more blatant invitation:

Yun/to/premi/pachattar/humare (As such numerous lovers seek me) Leja/tukar/satattar/ishaare (You can be the next one to make gestures) Dil/mera … muft/ka (Go on then, my heart sells for free)

The self-effacing dil peeping through female songs notwithstanding, we should be cautious by not overemphasizing this, for dil is polysemic and protean. It assumes many forms, shapes and meanings, depending upon the circumstances. It can be a receptacle for divine grace (dil/ek/mandir/hai – The heart is a temple) or an alcove (dil/ke/jharokhe/mein/tuj/ko/bitha/kar) and so on. It can be stolen from both men and women, and, like a naughty child, it can hide itself unbeknownst to the owner/parent. For instance, in this well-known song from 1990:

Koi/aaye/zara/dhoondh/ke/laaye (Someone please go and fetch)

Na/jaane/kahaan/dil/kho/gaya (I don’t know where I have lost my heart)

In its restlessness the heart is beyond control, as the popular expression in much Hindi ﬁlm dialogue goes: dil/par/ kissi/ka/zor/nahin (no one has power over the heart). One of the most common elements for making a compound word with dil is bekaraar (without rest). Songs such as bekaraar/dil/tu/ gaaye/jaa (Pining heart, keep on singing) or Afsana/likh/rahin/hun/dil-e- bekraar/ki (I am writing the story of the pining heart), or those that suggest insanity of the dil in dil/deewana /bin /sajnake (The heart is crazy without [my] lover) and dil/ to/ pagal/hai (The heart is foolish), are much too numerous to cite here, but all these instances add up to make the heart unreliable, infant-like, passionate and recalcitrant. Once again, the separation of heart from the head/body/self may be platitudinous, but it being a child and the locus for desire begs for attention. Is dil then an erogenous zone, or a conscious and transgressive social agency that serves as counterpoint to a regulating society? Is dil a symbolic and rhetorical device for hiding love, or a convenient proxy for expressing one? A clever and controversial songs of the 1990s shows the inseparability of these questions, by asking the following:

Choli/ke/peechhe/kya/hai, choli/ke/peeche? (What lies behind the blouse, behind the blouse?) DIL SE ...... 15 Rita Kothari and Apurva Shah

Set in current and more sexually expressive times (at least in popular media), post-liberalization, the answer that it is dil (not the breast) that lies behind the blouse (choli) both confirms and critiques the sexual gaze (Mazarella 2013). It invokes a stock metaphor of the choli for hiding, but also another stock metaphor of the dil for the possibility of revealing. On one hand, there is the feeling of shame and guilt which is evoked by the personal knowledge of our sexua- lized thinking. On the other hand, the fact that this is kept personal, and we are not outed, brings a sense of relief. At a deeper level, there is an unconscious conflation, a condensation, of the dil and the breast which heightens both the anxiety from the shame and guilt and the pleasure from the release of sexual energy. In a personal communication with one of the authors, the film critic Nasreen Munni Kabeer suggested the idea of romance has changed, and taken with it the poetic restraint and beauty of Urdu that characterized earlier songs. It may also be worth asking at this point whether after what Mazarella (2013, 160) calls “the quotidian eruptions of obscenity” in films and advertising, dil can continue being a significant trope in Hindi film songs. The lyricist Varun Grover (Indian Express, April 19, 2015) states: “Today, writers don’t use words like dil and jigar (literally, the liver, usually used poetically as the heart), jaanam [lover] because they have ” become clichéd . Or when they do, dil may appear with its characteristic adaptability to new circumstances signalled in vernacular vocabulary, but its signification as split self has perhaps receded. It may continue to be the voice, the agency, the arbiter of desires. The lines below from the 1998 film Ghulaam are telling:

Haan/bhi/karta/naa/bhi/karta/dil/mera/deewana (My crazy hearts says yes and it says no too) Dil/bhi/saala/party/badle/kaisa/hai/zamaana (The rascal heart also changes alle- giances [like Indian politicians] what has this world come to) Phone/laga/tu/apne/dil/ko/zara (Call your heart, please) Confuse/karta/hai/aur/kya (It confuses, what else)

Discussion

We have attempted to demonstrate that the semantic ﬁeld of dil in Hindi song lyrics is a complex terrain. A verbal artefact on the face of things, it provides a proxy region of experiencing and expressing passion and sexuality that are overtly not available in a ﬁlm narrative. In this, dil joins a range of other signals that scholars have drawn attention to. We believe that dil and its attendant modes of expression and circumvention provide both a linguistic and non-linguistic continuity. And yet, unlike the bulk of previous scholarship ...... interventions 16

that establishes the escapist and subversive nature of Hindi film songs to a regulated narrative, we believe that the region of the dil persists in several paradoxical ways. It is an escape, but also an acknowledgement of constraint. 12 12 The anatomical It remains within bounds even as it strives to be free. Its very expression fact that the heart is stimulates its prohibitions, as evidenced by the need for it to be a “secret”, “ ” bound , contained fi fi by the rib cage, we its fragility, the anxiety signi ed by modi ers such as restless and lonely. It believe, plays into is an unresolved zone, and therefore perhaps the persistence of desire that this. imbues all quotidian experiences in South Asia. The paradox that is central to this discourse of the dil is also evident in the way that dil is both a child and a part of the adult self – rebellious and subversive, untamed and non- serious. Perhaps what is most paradoxical, and most unique, about dil is how it is both the container and the contained and it gets situated in a space that is both “I” and “not-I”, outside and inside. Commenting on how the most intimate of spaces feels alien, the French psychoanalyst Lacan (1992, 139) coined the term “extimate”, combining the terms “intimate” and “external”. Extimate is not the opposite of intimate. Rather, it highlights the alien nature of what is the most intimate to us. Our dil, our heart, our desires, our most intense emotions should be, are, the most intimate part of us. And yet, listening to these songs, there is always a sense that they are not completely ours, that “ ” they have been given over to our lover who controls them, or that the songs lean outwards, sharing and hiding secrets, being both intimate and revealing. Thus, dil is an extimate object in these songs, appropriately so if the desires it expresses are both contained and constrained by the Other. Even the song-and-dance sequences themselves have an extimate character vis-à-vis the film – as noted above, and as commented on by Gopal and Sen (2008), they are a part of the narrative and yet interrupt it and feel alien to it. There are still questions about dil that nag us, but given the scope of our discussion we can only leave them open for future research. For instance, what we say of dil may not apply to all songs of all periods in Hindi cinema. Given how fertile and promiscuous this code has been, its range has varied from being a proxy self to an empty signifier in word play such as dil-e-disco. From being rebellious against a regulating society in the past, we know that dil has already shown collaboration with acquisitive and consumerist times: in a Pepsi commercial, for instance, this heart asks for more (Yeh/dil/maange more) with striking assurance. Its signification in times of risqué expressions of sexuality of the kind Mazarella (2013) discusses is different. It was the voice of an understated hesitant romance, accompanied with gentle melody. It can now be accompanied with more strident tunes and banal verbs such as “catch kiya/dil” (Caught the heart) or “saree/ke /fall /saa/kabhi /match kiya/dil” (Matched the heart with the border of the saree). However, it would be premature to conclude unequivocally on what appear as shifting significations of dil. Its use persists in new and old forms, DIL SE ...... 17 Rita Kothari and Apurva Shah

every now and then surprising us with both its jadedness and its delicacy. We believe that ideas of love and romance outside sanctioned circles of caste and class continue to be regulatory, keeping the legitimacy of dil alive. Moreover, language can only be partially accessible and external. It is in that spirit that this discussion admits of provisionality, as such matters of the heart are best known to the heart.

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