Wednesday 16 January 2013

Friday, 20 May 2011


The Foreign Star, "Bhindeshi Tara". Timetravel with Timeless Music....(lyrics & English translation)


"Ohhhh"... yes that was the exact expression  i had today.. while returning home from work.

It was quite an interesting ponder session or should i say flashback. Its quite funny that certain music can send you to time travel.

I was driving back home while i came across trafficjam, ugh no big dealio these days if You're living in city. At first i thought okay another 5 minutes halt.

5 minutes turned to 10 minutes, 10 turned to 15.. The whole situation was making my mood for the weekend absolutely cranky.

I needed something to change this whole negative state of mind, so i switched off the FM & turned on my stereo.

Now it was quite awhile since I've listened to Stereo in the car. The choice has been always FM.

Then this song plays - a sudden 180 degree change of my mood. I listened the song & then again i go back & played it, and then again i played it...

So here's the song which literally translates to "Foreign Star".


Here is the bengali lyrics of this song, I've tried to translate it below for those who doesn't understand Bengali. Its such a beautiful song. Thats the least i could do.

Bhindeshi Tara
--------------------
Amar bhindeshi tara akaa rateri akashe
Tumi bajale aktara amar chilekotahr pashe
Thik shondhe namar mukhe
Tomar naam dhore keu daake
Mukh lukiye kaar buke tomar golpo bolo kaake
Amar raat jaga tara tomar onno parae bari
Amar bhoy pawa chehara ami adote anari

Amar akaash dekha ghuri kichu mitthe bahaduri
Amar chokh bedhe dao alo dao shanto shitol pati
Tumi mayer moto bhalo ami aklati poth haati

Amar bichiri ak tara tumi nao na kotah kaan e
Tomar kisher ato tara
Rasta paar hobe shabdhane

Tomar gaye lagena dhulo
Amar dumutho chal chulo
Rakho shorir haat e jodi aar jol makho dui haat e
Pls ghum hoye jao chokhe amar mon kharaper rat e

Amar raat jaga tara amar akash choya bari
Ami paina chute tomay amar akla laage bhari.


Please let me know, if somebody come up with better translation, I'd be happy to be corrected. =)

Here's my attempt to translate the song:

My foreign star...
Alone in the night sky
You played the ektara (an instrument with 1 string)
Right next to my house
Just before sunset
Someone calls out your name
On whose chest do you hide your face
Whom do you tell your tale?
My sleepless star
Your house is in another neighbourhood
My scared face
I am nothing but a fool

I look at the sky
With false pride.
Close my eyes with light
Give me a peaceful, soothing mat
You are as good as a mother
But I travel all alone
My ektara is out of tune
And you don't listen to a word I say
What is your hurry
Watch your steps while crossing the road.

The dust don't touch you
The two morsels of food on my plate
Place your hands on my body
And smear your hands with water
Please become the sleep in my eyes
On my depressed night
My sleepless star, your sky touching house
I cannot reach you, I feel so lonely all alone.

That's it - simple. Yet deep.

Then the traffic started to move on. But i have long since not bothered to keep track of time, i guess that is what it feels like to time travel.=) Don't know how Marty Mcfly felt Lol.

A few moment of traffic jam & then you are confronted with such a timeless melody.

Anyway, i hope you listen to it and enjoy as much as i did. You can even go to my Youtube Channel & listen to it there. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1M7Jf8LJvE


You can also check my New Bengali Facts Channel on Youtube
WatDaFacts

So long, Adios.

Back To Childhood

Keeping the room clean

If you are a guy and been asked to clean the room its like asking a girl her age. Anyway one afternoon i was told to clean my room and i had no choice but to do it. Now cleaning a room that hasn't been touched for years was a monumental task. I couldn't even figure out where to start. I opened my old dusty cupboard and empty packets of Gold Flake cigarettes fell out. The strangest thing was that my long-forgotten cupboard kept yielding one memory after another. I ran into a lot of stuff from my school that had got lost in decade gone by. I started thinking of all those wonderful days. And that is when it hit me. Down the memory lane that leads to the wonderful times of school and college.


Wonderful years

Flashback

I still remember how Y2K was all the rage then. Only a handful of us had computers, yet everyone was worried how the virus would affect the machines. Nostradamus had apparently predicted that the world would end; but thankfully neither did Y2K cause stir nor was Nostradamus right.

We dint have Facebook then but we did have ICQ. One line none of us from that 'era' can ever forget is 'ASL (age/sex/location) please', when meeting someone new on ICQ. We had atrociously funny sounding email ids -- therockrulez@hotmail.com, dude_am@indya.com and the like and even funnier names in the 'chat rooms'. You couldn't Google but had to go to altavista.com or approach Mr Jeeves for any queries and clarifications.

You still had to call a girl on her landline and muster all the courage to askfor her. the only place you could hang out at was Wimpy's or McD and one still stayed away from the solitary Coffee Day. One had to stand in a long queue to buy tickets for Mission Impossible 2.

TV still played The Wonder Years and The Crystal Maze and the world seemed far smarter minus the Saas-bahu soaps and the stupid reality shows.

You still find the time to read book in the evenings and play cricket in your 'gully' on Sundays. 'Canada Dry' was the only source to get high and sweet, candy cigarettes were puffed at most of the times.

VSNL ensured porn still loaded one byte at a time and VCDs were all the rage. Hulk Hogan was perpetually rank one on all the 'Trump Cards' and Cameron Diaz from The Mask was in every puberty-hitting youngsters' dreams. The only operating system we knew was Windows 98.

Anyone with a printer was treated with respect and the World Book Encyclopedia was the only source of information for projects. Hero Pen with the original Chinese nib was still preferred over the brash new 'Pilot' pen.

Azharuddin was still our captain and Jadeja and Robin Singh were two pinch hitters. Venkatesh Prasad was the only one with the balls to mess with the Pakis and we still lost all the test matches. And I definitely cannot miss out wearing a 'color' dress to school on your birthday and distributing Eclairs to everyone. I could go on and on. But i guess you get the drift.

As i cleaned my room, I ran into my long forgotten collection of Diamond comics. Gosh, how i used to love those comics (nerdy i know). I distinctively remember the first time I was ever caught by the teacher in class. She caught me because I wasn't looking at the blackboard. I was looking down. This was in the 4th standard. I was caught because I was reading a Comic book.


I guess some of us might hate to admit it now but every one of us have read a comic book at some point or the other in our childhood. Even thought it would really uncool to talk about 'Chacha Chaudhury' now, he was the coolest character we knew in junior school. Before there was cartoon network, before Swat Cats took over, there was Uncle Scrooge on Doordarshan and there was Diamond Comics.

I remember how summer holidays would be the time when mum would pack us all in a train and take us to visit granny far, far away. The best part would be the train journey where one would spend hours reading comics and waiting excitedly for the next big station to buy the latest series of the Chacha Chaudhury comics. You'd be lost in the magical world of Chacha Chaudhury, Saboo, Dhamaka Singh, Chachi, Lambu Motu, Billu and Pinky.

I guess diamond comics have long been forgotten but they will always remain with us in our memories and will always remind us of times when things were simpler, when we get up at 7a.m on Sundays to catch Talespin and Junglebook later on DD. When we wouldn't worry about deadlines, meetings, Facebook and everything else that our lives have become today. We would only worry about when the next Diamond comics would be out. Thank you Cartoonist Pran the creator of Chacha Chaudhury for the loving memories. :)