Maaeri.

Aadisht's post brought me to the video of a song I absolutely love: Maaeri.

The song, when it plays in my car, plays at an extremely high volume. Because I love it. Because I will scream, Maaeri aap hi hansdi, Maaeri aap hi rondi, maaeri yaad vo yaad vo aayeri. And I will stop and listen when it slows down. Euphoria's Palash Sen has a fundoo voice, but it's not the voice that gets me. It's the music. It's so ephemerally hindustani. And so bloody powerful it makes stop and ask myself why I am where I am.

But I'd never seen the video. So I did.

And I loved it. See it before you read further. I loved it more for it's context than the story line which is the standard ole lovers forced to get separated, woman gets the arranged marriage, man gets the song, and then walks in next woman. Somewhat like the song in Munna Bhai MBBS. Not much of an ishstory.

But the context of the video is brilliant. It's like going home. The trains. The fields and mud roads. The sitting on bags in a railway station and singing - heck I'm not much of a singer but I can do that clapping thing quite well. The woman carrying flowers or something on her head. The one rupee coin run over by a train. The sound of the train chugging along, and the smell of the air when you wake up in the morning and stick your head out the door.

And the background - right through the video, there's faded action in the background. Man fights with TT. Vociferous hand raising on the platform. People walking, leaving tractors behind. A man warming his hands on a makeshift fire. The sugarcane laden cart, the girls running around a tree, TT colliding with sleeping man, the punjabi dad getting miffed about man's hand on daughters shoulder (that scene is crafted brilliantly), and the casual juxtaposition of a woman with a Shiva photo. And the hariyali all around.

You can just about smell it.

Or I've been a city boy too long.

Either ways, I miss the country. I miss walking on empty streets. I ache for the sugarcane - standing in the courtyard and ripping cane with your teeth while the juices spill all over your face and you get poked by the strands of cane.
Watching while a train whizzes past the fields.
The thrill of standing in the doorway with your hands on the iron rails outside...and stretching forward.

I miss it all. And it took a music video to show me that. Grr.