Music and Lyrics have always been the refuge of love, dreams and heartbreak, whether it be Einstein “I live my daydreams in music,” Kerouac “The only truth is music,” or Huxley “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” They have the power to touch our hearts, minds and souls unequivocally. Its melody is just as potent as its lyrics that weave a story, a telling, a feverish will to express that which cannot be expressed otherwise.
We come across characters, myths, political issues, personal dilemma, heartbreaks, unrequited love and pure existential crises. They often influence our thoughts as well as echo them, and in doing so, as Maya Angelou so succinctly put it, “I could crawl into space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”
2020 has been a hard pill to swallow. We have all had ample time to reflect, reminisce and often reiterate old memories and old songs that we have grown up with. It has also given us time and space to reevaluate how our hearing of them has changed in the past few decades.
An urge to reply to Anjan Dutta’s “2441139” and “Bobby Roy” was one that struck a chord. Listening to the story of Bela Bose in the early 2000s versus now, makes it sound rife with insecurities, accusations and assumptions made by a struggling young middle-class man. You can hear his refrain as powerfully today as it was 22 years ago.
It is strange how we never really think about the other side of the story, much like the propaganda and gossip we immerse ourselves into, we quite spontaneously draw conclusions based on our own prejudices and selective perceptions that conveniently fit our narrative. According to several interviews, we know Anjan Dutta has based a lot of his characters on real people, himself then a struggling middle-class artist. “2441139” is a young man’s ardent pleas on the telephone to his beloved, telling her that he has found a job and can finally marry her, only to be met with silence on the other end. As heart-wrenching as his words, the inexpressible silence of Bela Bose is an example of misrepresentation and misunderstanding of women in similar positions of struggle.
If we can imagine her reply, we could perhaps understand that the struggle of a young middle-class woman is just as pertinent. We forget her helplessness as opposed to his urgency.
Time is significant in both cases, or lack thereof. In a patriarchal framework, time is linear and time is money. A woman’s worth is still defined by the culture and relationships they are committed to in society. Although a certain fraction of women have been able to break free from this “feminine mystique,” as Gloria Steinman calls it, the large majority still has to deal with its harsh realities. Thousands of Bela Bose still have no voice when it comes to marrying the right partner at the right time. Fear of her fading beauty and ticking biological clock sums her up in a gender role that she embodies despite her ambitions and her personal choices, she lacks ample agency to marry whom she pleases, when she pleases.
Anjan Dutta’s “Bobby Roy” is another example of a man’s pleas to and assumptions about his beloved, not to leave him behind, presuming that her success is due to sexual favours (not her hard work), and has aspirations for a rich husband (not her own ambition to meet her own material needs). Her silence doesn’t necessarily mean guilt and her late nights don’t necessarily mean shame.
The patriarchal overtones are dangerous, to say the least, if not offensive. An ambitious man working late nights with his superiors would not raise the same set of questions. Rather he would be seen as hardworking, determined and praised for achieving his goals. According to Antoninus, “A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions,” but as Adichie has said, “We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much.”
It is bad enough that a woman has to face and deal with unsolicited advances and discrimination in the workplace, but to be misjudged by someone she loves is not only a stab in the back but also twisting it with resolve. “Debolina” and “Mala” are no exception. Money and class distinction seem to be the man’s insecurities and assumptions about the women; however, it should be noted that these differentiations are made by the capitalist patriarchal society, or the families of those in question, not by these women.
Equating a woman’s silence with being complicit is simplistic and judgmental. Shifting the burden of blame squarely on the one you love, despite their social standing, is escapism, lack of foresight and understanding. Love should be perceptive, not minimalistic, even in music and lyrics.