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Politics dominates but unlike most books on political economy, this one is neither screechy nor preachy; in fact, it is quite an easy read

Note by note: The India story 1947-2017
Ankur Bhardwaj, Seema Chishti & Sushant Singh
Harper Collins
327 pages
Rs 499
 

First, a disclosure: Each of the three authors of Note by Note is known to this reviewer not just as a fellow journalist but also as a friend. This association makes the task of reviewing that much more difficult. The truth is the basic idea of the book is both simple and remarkable at once. The authors have looked back at the years of independent India and for each year attempted to choose a song, from among the movie songs released in that year, which captures the essence of that year (or is in stark contrast to the ground realities). The idea is intuitively brilliant and fun, but it has its limitations.

 
For one, the songs have to be from Hindi movies. Why only movies? For instance, one could expand the scope to privately released albums — across music genres — to capture that one song. In the introduction to the book, the authors explain: “The connection between Hindi film music and independent India’s evolution seems tenuous but a closer scrutiny shows that one is reflected in the other; on occasions, they even influence each other.” Still, non-Hindi speakers could justifiably ask why other languages were kept out; at least, there is an idea here for a second volume!
 
For that matter, why restrict yourself to “Indian” songs? What if a Pakistani poem, written in, say, the late 1960s, most aptly summarises what happened in India in, say, earlier in the present decade? Moreover, there is obviously a lot of room for debate whether the song chosen by the authors for a particular year was indeed the best choice. Furthermore, how does one decide what was the prevailing sentiment? How much weightage do you give to political upheavals and how much to a sporting achievement that might have proved to be a watershed not just for the future of that sport in India but also how Indians viewed themselves. 

 
But these are exactly the things that make this book click. You can pick any year at random and revisit, through the authors’ eyes, the events that shaped India’s mood, and then either nod in appreciation of their choice or frown at it. If you do the latter, there is a good chance you will find yourself immediately Googling for “Hindi film songs of the year” and trying to best the authors. This reviewer did it and thoroughly enjoyed it. In that sense, this is quite an engaging book. No chapter has more than two or three pages and the authors pack an eclectic array of information, not just about the events of that year but also the songs and the movies they belonged to, as well as the people involved in creating them.

 
Of course, politics dominates but unlike most books on political economy, this one is neither screechy nor preachy. It is, as the authors state, albeit slightly tongue-in-cheek, the ‘story of independent India, with the flavours of Hindi film music, “not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially”.’ So the song chosen for 1947, the year of Independence, is Shakeel Badayuni’s Afsana likh rahee hun dil-e-beqaraar ka; Ankhnon mein rang bhar ke tere intezaar ka from the movie Dard. For 1964, it is Kaifi Azmi’s Ho ke majboor mujhe usne bhulaaya hoga featuring Mohammed Rafi, Talat Mahmood, Manna Dey and Bhupinder from the tear-jerker war movie Haqeeqat as Indians, although two years removed,  reeled under their humiliating defeat on the eastern front and saw their formidable prime minister, Nehru, age almost overnight. For 1975, the year that saw Indira Gandhi suspend India’s democracy, which some celebrated as Anushashan Parv (a festival of discipline), the authors have chosen Gulzar’s Tere bina zindagi se koi shikwa to nahi … tere bina zindagi bhi lekin, zindagi to nahi — obviously alluding to the fact that while the economy seemed to do better and some politicians and businessmen approved of it, there was no meaning to the life that Indians led under Emergency.

 
It is hard not to pick a winner in such a book — it is almost like a game! This reviewer best likes the choice for the year 1990. It is not, and this may come as a surprise for those who know their Hindi film music or indeed were young at that time, from the blockbuster romantic album Aashiqui. Actually, far from the romantic travails of Aashiqui’s characters, the real world India was trudging through fire, both literally and metaphorically. Let’s take it from the top: In Kashmir, Hizbul Mujahideen declared in January that Hindus should leave the Valley; the slogan was “Ralive, tsaliv ya galive” (Convert to Islam, leave the place or perish) and it led to the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits and left a shameful blot on India’s credentials as a constitutional republic. The rest of the year saw more fires in the form of anti-Mandal Commission agitations; Rajiv Goswami, a young student immolating himself against caste-based reservations was another grim image. At such a time, the radical Hindu organisations, fronted by the Bharatiya Janata Party, chose to start a rath yatra to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya; this eventually led to the fall of V P Singh’s government. Internationally, oil prices doubled because of the Gulf War. India’s dependable ally and market, USSR, was facing an existential threat. India’s fiscal and current accounts were worsening by the day. As such, the choice of Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s Agneepath is quite apt. Unfortunately, most of these threats are still quite alive and Indians would do well to revisit Bachchan’s poem to feel inspired. Disclaimer: One of the authors of Note by Note, Ankur Bhardwaj, is a Business Standard employee.