[Reader-list] Parday mein rahnay do, parda na uthao

[Shivam Vij]

Let me know what you think of this, and where I can get it published.
 

Parda jo uth gaya to....

 

By Shivam Vij

Lucknow / 3 May 2004        

 

Have you guys seen the new Times of India ad on TV? The one with ‘Pardey mein rahney do,,,’ as the soundtrack. So what if I hate TOI, I love the ad! The ad pokes fun at the Hindustan Times, but I am no fan of HT either. Both are crap. But the ad is awesome!

Now that I am a student of literature, and analysis is my middle name, let me critically analyse the ad, without using critical jargon. Take this as a JAM session without a time limit.

It is interesting that a print publication needs to advertise on TV, including news channels. This is not the first time this is happening, but the fact that even the largest selling English daily needs to do it, is most interesting. And TV channels advertise in papers too. Clearly, media planners understand how TV and print are media not mutually exclusive, as some would have us believe. For years we’ve been warned about the impending death of print in the face of the onslaught of 24 hours live news. But this hasn’t happened, because even the market-driven TOI — if you still read it — has more depth than all your new channels put together. The news bulletin gives you a feel of ‘this is happening in the world, NOW!’ whereas the newspaper gives you a sense of ‘this happened yesterday, of course, but do you know what it means?’ Long after the cable TV revolution began, we find that TV, print and the new media (the internet) are all inextricable parts of urban discourse (sorry, the last
 phrase is academia-de-hyperbola.) This sense of melange of all media in urban life is communicated excellently by this TOI ad.

The song begins with a Basanti-like nubile village lass entering the waiting room of a railway station, merrily playing with her knotted hair to the tune of ‘Parday mein rahnay do, parda na uthao, parda jo uth gaya to...’ The ‘parda’ or curtain has several meanings. Most directly, it refers to the newspaper that a ‘suited-booted’ (excuse Indian English, sir ji) urbane man is reading. The newspaper is a ‘parda’ for it hides the man’s face, the all-important marker of sexual appeal — or the lack of it. The girl is eager to see the man’s face. The newspaper’s masthead reads “BeHind Times”, in a typeface similar to the one used by the Hindustan Times.

There has of late been a huge imbroglio about circulation figures between the two papers in the Delhi market. This is not an ordinary circulation war, because here the battle is over (mis)interpreting the circulation results released by a couple of circulation audit agencies, whose integrities and methodologies are now under the scanner. Both papers allege each other of trying to hide the truth — the ‘truth’ that you sell less than I do. This is the allegorical (sorry!) meaning of “Parday mein rahnay do” as used by the TOI ad.

When the parda is indeed lifted, the man’s face is betrayed, and it’s a comic looking ugly face, a stereotype. This is the reality behind the parda, revealed when the song reaches its crescendo: parda jo uth gaya to...! Shocked by the reality, the Basanti-like village lass (the TOI’s advertiser) sees the face behind BeHind Times, and unable to take in the shock, she trips over a heap of goods and disturbs the harmony of pigeons there. As pigeons fly away, the noise distracts another suited-booted gentleman from reading The Times of India. He sees Basanti fallen on the ground, takes the initiative of lending her a helping hand to get up. She dramatically removes the feathers stuck on her lips, and is bowled over by the polished-looking urbane, handsome man, who seems to be walking straight out of a suiting-booting ad. The two walk out, awesome twosome, of the waiting room, Basanti flinging her knotted hair. A voiceover says in Bambayya Hindi: “Dhoka nai khanay ka, Times of India
 padhnay ka!”

That India’s most popular English daily has to employ such an advertisement is interesting for the history of the English language in India. English has trickled down to villages; even rickshaw pullers in Delhi are comfortable with English words in their vocabulary. And those who were once snobbish about the asset of the English language that they possessed, are now useful only for a call centre in Gurgaon. Hindi on the other hand, has found confidence over time, partly because of the stupendous success of Hindi-speaking professionals in the media. As large masses remain Hindi-speaking, they assert themselves as media consumers. Hindi news channels are watched in Basti and Bahraich, NDTV 24X7 is not. As I write this, I can see the TOI ad again in Aaj Tak, commercially the most successful news channel, the TV news equivalent of the saas-bahu soaps. English daily, ‘vernacular’ TV, Urdu lyrics, retro music, Bambayya Hindi, railway platform, men reading English papers, falling for
 Basanti... there’s a great sense of melange again, the happy Hindustanis of urban India in the new century are game for both Hindi and English, both languages an inextricable part of our urban experience, both negotiating with each other, and coming to a resolution (closure?) in a TV ad. 

All those debates about ‘vernacular’ and ‘babu English’ and ‘rashtra bhasha’ have suddenly disappeared. All the theorists of ‘postcolonialism’ and such things are rather bewildered at how Indians are so much at ease with their post-colonial selves. (And a British columnist said Lagaan was an example of how Indians still lack in confidence, they must defeat the white in fantasy. Silly boy, we were just having fun, didn’t you see the yuppies outside PVR mimicking the firangs in Lagaan? Humko dugna lagaan mangta!)

But it is not just the multiplicity of media, language and culture that today’s India is at ease with, but also sexuality. The TOI ad again is reflective of this new-found (neo-?) confidence. 



No longer does one hear of makers of Hindi cinema having troubles with the almighty ‘censor board’ over scenes found ‘obscene’. Baring the body like never before, one movie doing it more than the other, parallels a slow but steady sexual revolution in urban India. Both have happened hand-in-hand, as is always the case with popular cinema. Indian audiences are now ‘ready’ for it, one filmmaker condescended to say in an interview. But in fact the filmmaker has matured too.

There was a time — and my mind locates the time in the fifties and the sixties — when repressed sexuality, in both society and cinema, manifested itself primarily in the songs. ‘Pyar kiya to darna kya?’ was an outrageously bold statement in Mughal-e-Azam. ‘Dil cheez kya hai aap meri jaan lijiye’ in Umrao Jaan bears the burden of love-and-death: unattained, unconsummated love leading to suicidal tendencies. Such songs often reach their crescendo in a sudden orgasmic manner. It is to this ethos and genre that ‘Parday mein rahnay do’ (sung by Asha Bhosle in the 1968 film Shikar) belongs, even though it is somewhat more playful and less melancholic than the above examples. For the characters of these films, making sexual choices is forbidden, indeed criminal. But it is the man who faces social disapproval in wanting to marry the woman he loves. In both Mughal-e-Azam and Umrao Jaan, this happens because the man is a rajah, a nawab, an aristocrat, who wants to achieve union with the fallen
 woman, the courtesan, through marriage.

In the TOI ad, however, it is Basanti who is ogling at the men, and making a choice between them. (Practitioners of feminist discourses shed occasional tears of sympathy for the Times of India.) The song in the background is craftily employed to impart the retro effect, taking a swipe at cinema where society would make characters ‘hide’ their sexuality beHind the curtain. We are now a nation not afraid of making fun of its contemporary self or its past. We have the ability to be irreverent towards ourselves.

Whether or not India is shining is under a national referendum called general elections. But twenty first century India is definitely confident of itself, which is different from the smugness of Nehruvian India. Parda uth gaya hai, the curtain has been raised. Yeah Allah!

Postscript: So will this advertisement affect consumer psyche? Of course. Does this ad make me change my views on The Times of India? Of course not, the Times has prostituted news by selling editorial space. Does this talk of a confident India mean I’m aligned with the BJP’s ‘India Shining’ campaign? Not at all.

shivamvij at ststephens.edu

 



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