WHEN MY KOLAVERI DAY?

There is a Book called ‘The Bible’. There is a book called ‘The Koran’. And, there are these two books called ‘The Ramayana’ and ‘The Mahabharata’.

Has anyone heard about them?

There was a man called Siddhartha. There was a man called Alexander. There was a man called Lincoln. And, here, a man called Gandhi.

Has anyone heard about them?

There was a film by the name ‘The Ten Commandments’. There was a film by the name ‘Ben Hur’. There was a film by the name ‘The Sound of Music’. And, here, there was this film by the name, ‘Moughle-Azam’ . And then, there was one more. They called it - ‘Sholay’.

Has anyone heard about them?

The Bible has survived more than two thousand years. ‘The Ramayana’ and ‘The Mahabharata’ - much more than that… ‘The Koran’, maybe, slightly less.

Siddhartha and Alexander were born hundreds of years before Jesus Christ did. Lincoln lived much before Gandhi did. ‘The Ten Commandments’ was released years before our ‘Sholay’ did.

Very often, I wonder: How did they survive so long? How did the makers of these products promote them? Yes, I have read the ‘Acts of the Apostles’… Yes, I have read about the years of wandering of Gautama Buddha and his faithful ‘Anandas’… I have read about the relentless campaign the Great Alexander pursued to conquer the whole world… I know, very, very well, how shrewdly my hero, Gandhi, sold himself through his out-of-the-box weapons.

I also wonder: How many years Valmiki must have taken to chronicle his epic? What technology Cecil B. DeMille must have used to divide the Red Sea in his Magnum Opus? I wonder: Was it YouTube or Face book that made Sholay so famous, Lincoln’s Gettysburg address so immortal?

Last night, a friend of mine was passionately telling me this. “You need to be more visible,” he hammered into my skull. “Even a local fisherwoman is on Face book and you are not.” He kept recounting to me about how some of his friends had put their work on YouTube and Face book and how many ‘hits’ they had received… and how it had helped them to promote themselves professionally.

I did not argue with this dear friend of mine.

He was right.

You can’t light your lamp and hide it under a bushel,” Christ had said,

“Raise it high… Place it there on the high stand…

Only then will it spread its light.”

I knew, a good product and good packaging (marketing) alone sold.

I knew, some rules had to be respected

in order to win some games. So, my friend was right…

I need to be more visible: I need YouTube and Face book… to show the world what I have created… how good it is… and, how good I am.

But, after my friend had left, I, once again, began to wonder: Who wrote my nursery Rhyme: ‘Bah, Bah Black Sheep’? Who wrote the story ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’? Who wrote my Konkani folk song ‘Ge, Ge, Ge Re… Ge Re Saaiba’? Who kept the legend of Akbar and Birbal alive? Who sold the Malgudi Days’? Who carried the essay ‘The Message to Garcia’? Who did ‘The Acres of Diamonds’?

I remembered the heart-melting Christmas fable of O’ Henry… ‘The Gift of the Magi’, Charles Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’. I remembered Leo Tolstoy’s ‘God Sees the Truth, But Waits’. Shakespeare came to haunt me: Wow, his ‘Romeo Juliet’, ‘Julius Caesar’, ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Macbeth’. Oedipus’s tragic tale came to life, all over again, last night… so did the rise and fall of the invincible hero of Trojan War, Achilles.

I wondered: Through which ‘Tube’ and through which ‘Book’ were these classics sold? What has kept their legends alive, even now?

I got goose bumps when my mind rolled back into the sublime land of ‘Shakuntala’. Kalidasa wrote it… a sage; just a sage. Even if one argues that, in those days, there were some benevolent Kings to patronize and promote these sages, I would still counter-argue that those Kings were no fools to sell ‘cheap’ stuff. ‘Shakuntala’ was a stuff of substance. Once-in-eons stuff… No, it couldn’t have been simply sold by a wealthy King… And, even if he did, to survive so long – and so fresh – ‘Shakuntala’ had to be a real, real gold! I felt like shouting: “Come on, Chetan Bhagat, you do it.” “You try, Salman Rushdie.”

Many years ago, when Aamir Khan and Rani Mukerjee made us hum: ‘Aye… Aati kya Khandala’, there was no YouTube or Face book. Many called the song crazy, silly and even sacrilegious. Anyway, we hummed along… It made us smile… and who cared whether it would be hummed by children – yes, one thousand years hence?

And, now, this overnight sensation called – ‘Why this Kolaveri di’! “What is the magic? What is the secret?”

yo boys i am singing song

soup song

flop song

why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di

why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di
rhythm correct

why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di
maintain this

why this kolaveri..di

distance la moon-u moon-u

moon-u color-u white-u

white background night-u nigth-u

night-u color-u black-u

why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di

why this kolaveri kolaveri kolaveri di

“Such silly stuff, yet, such insane success”… Every one raves about it… even the priests in the temple; even the eunuchs at the signals!

Every one sings - Pa pa pa paan!

Now, who did it?

YouTube did it.

Face book did it.

You did it… I did it.

Just a second back, I checked. 22,608,092 hits! Still counting, every second, every breath!

“I wish I were two pegs down,” a man told me, last night, while he was blasting it out on his cell. He wanted to dance!

I loved what this man said. “He is so happy,” I smiled.

I wondered again: How nice yaar! How nice! How easy to become ‘Great’, overnight!

Then, something hit me like a stone: “Fool, wake up! Write your silly stuff… Leave the ‘Tube’ and the ‘Face’ alone. Just write.” I could feel the effect on my mind as it shook me well with further ‘hits’: “ Maybe, like Kahlil Gibran, some might love you - your silly stuff - many, many years after you are gone. This day is yours, seize it. Carpe Diem! Seize the day! Live like a King in your own kingdom. Let the other kingdoms go… Let the tomorrow go… Let this day be your day, your Kolaveri day!”

I said, “Amen.”

So be it!

GERALD D'CUNHA

THANKS:

The brilliant images used in this Post are by Ashok Ahuja. He is a professional Photographer and a very dear friend of mine. He is also one of the founder members of The Dawn Club, and, along with his gifted-artist wife, Sudha, has been helping me, and the Club, right from its inception.