Bollywood and Bhajans: The
Soundtrack of My Indian Childhood
Geeta Sadashivan
To this day, at 6 am, I sometimes hear the
opening melody from the All India Radio channel in
my head. That tune was played on the violin atdawn
and sounded something like this:“DRRRRRRRRN-
NNNNNNGGGG . . . Sor-reeeeeeee Where are youuu,
where are youuuuuuu, O where are youuuuuuuu . . .
DRRRRRRRRNNNNGGGG . . . .”
As the day wore on, Bollywood film songs
playing on radios accompanied us everywhere. I
knew the lyrics to hundreds of film songs, and I cer-
tainly wasn’t the only one. In fact, there was a popu-
lar game called Antaakshari (“The Last Syllable”) in
which one person would start off singing a song, and
stop at a particular point. The next person would
have to start a new song based on the last syllable
of that line. Re-enacting the songs was also a popu-
lar pastime. Three of us—the neighbors’ son named
Kumar, my brother, and I—played the “re-enacting
songs” game very often. Being the only girl, I was al-
ways the female lead. I have a blurry memory of one
specific song—“Tum Bin” from the movie, Pyar Ka
Mausam. I remember Kumar told me to lean against
a window and look sad while he sang it. (I probably
did a good job—given Kumar’s singing skills, looking
sad was a piece of cake!)
Singing—or a form of it—continued in
school. Studying mostly consisted of memorization
(in other words, chanting) which goes deep in Indi-
an culture. One chant was for the teacher’s entrance.
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He/she would come in and we would all go, in unison:
“gudMORningTEECHURRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”
Fourth grade was when chanting blossomed into its
full, thousand-petalled, lotus-like glory: we had to
memorize all the multiplication tables from 1
through 10! This meant 50+ students yelling, for in-
stance:
Three THRRREEEEZARR NINE!
Three FOREZARR TWELL!
Three FIEZARR FITTEEN!!
etc.
I was very quick at memorization, so guess who
stood at the front of the class, leading the chant?
Yeah, me—but also Abhijeet, a silly twit who couldn’t
remember the multiplication tables for nuts, but he
was the teacher’s son, so . . . whatever.
Chanting also came into play in grades 7-10,
when we had to take Sanskrit. The classes were
mostly basic vocabulary and translation, with a big
portion of time going into repeating chants from the
ancient epics and the Bhagvad Gita. I still remember
learning this particular question-in-verse put by the
warrior, Arjuna, to the god, Krishna. It goes, in the
original Sanskrit:
Sthitha pragyasya kaa bhaashaa
Samadhisthasya Keshava;
Sthithadheehee kim prabhaashetha
Kim vaapyetha vrajetha kim.