The Melodious Music

 The morning of March 14, as is typical of the rangpanchami/dhulwad festivities, will begin with a blast of blaring music as it is an absolutely public festival, truly for/of/by the people. The typical songs (and there are many more) that will be played full volume will be the Ranbir Kapoor-Deepika Padukone starrer "balam pichkari" alternating with the Rajesh Khanna-Mumtaz version of "Jay Jay Shiv Shankar" and the "Aaj na chodenge" featuring Rajesh Khanna yet again. Of course, who, and how, can miss the "rang barse" or "hori khelat Raghubira" in the unique Bacchan baritone, right?

Sure for most people, it is a festival of colours, of getting high, and of openly licensed flirting. These songs feed in to this unique combo of the Hori mood, right? 

Would you know, however, that these are dumbed down versions of the 'cheez' of the 'hori', a quasi-classical form of the Hindustani classical music. May be, there are similar forms in the South Indian music, too. In the Hindustani music, one could say, I suppose, with 'hori' begins the singing of the semi-classical modes such as 'kajari', 'chaiti', et al, which reflect the shift in seasons, and the change in the climate, and, hence in the mood, in the very feel.

Up North, such 'baithk-s' would be in full swing. In Pune itself, I think, Devaki Pandit recently ended her classical music programme with a 'hori'. In other words, this is 'the' festival of colours, of music, and of Bollywood dance as well as of Katthak, right? Does that mean this festival merely satiates the senses?

I do not think so at all. Well, in places like Vrindawan or in Pushkar, it is celebrated as a mode of the Radha-Krishna togetherness. Their union, too, has deeper philosophical and religious significance, right?

The obvious interpretation is that Radha-Krishna signify the body and the soul respectively. So the festival means celebrating this bond. In fact, I read an extended metaphor kind of explanation of this togetherness.

It seems the sixteen thousand 'naris' with whom Lord Krishna plays 'hori' are actually all the 'nadi's' in our body.  If Krishna is the heart, Radha- Radha continuously and fast repeated sounds as 'dha-ra-dha-ra' which would then be the normal flow of blood necessary for a balanced existence.

One can continue to explicate the extended metaphor in multiple ways such as Vasudev as the head, Yashoda as the backbone, et al. So it must have been explicated , and in depth, I suppose.

Festivals, in other words, can be analysed as  rooted in the agrarian-rural economic structures or in the ideational-cultural modes. Looked at either way, they signify a return to roots, so very necessary for a full(filled) existence!

Pratima@The deep surface structures, as Noam Chomsky, the great linguist-cultural analyst argued, are universal, and matter much more than the variations at the level of the surface structures/strictures.