Lucky Lips?

Or is it the eyes? Or is it the voice? Or the promise of Bohemia, perhaps? Or that feel-good,sunshine factor? Or is it my mediocrity? The cloistered tramp in me? What makes Lucky Ali so very special? So special that even now those songs, first heard on noodled magnetic tapes and a cranky music player, seem to touch something deep down? Readers, for this moment of insanity, I grant you entry into my world. The world that WAS. The world that COULD HAVE BEEN. The world that has been taken. Even as I take quantum plunges backwards (and I feel that am cut out for a MBA class!), join me. As WB Yeats once said, and a Steven Spielberg once made famous; 'Come Away O Human Child, To the Waters and the Wild..........'.

My first memories of the droopy-brown-melancholy-eyed, seemingly happy-go-lucky (no puns,please) guy was with that cult number from Sunoh. Back then, I was in the eighth, was a serious flunker, managed regular detentions and that dreaded Guardian-call (Indian, or do I say Benagali, version of a PT tete-a-tete), religiously followed a now obsolete Phantom 2030 (was an animation show, where the skull-faced Ghost was all gizmoish, and his archenemy was a freckled, cat-cuddling guy---DD2, every Thursday, 5:00 pm), never had a crush (and wasn't sure of my sexuality and morality either--- I almost fell in love with a girl from within the family), played football in the rains, missed the school-bus (and it was always while coming back from school), was used to listening no Hindi pop (what with no Euphoria and Silk Route yet), and believed that friends are forever.

And then suddenly there was a man strumming something like a guitar (til date I have not figured out the name of that stringed do) atop the Step Pyramid, striking visuals of sand and the sun, no girls in leotards or glossed up flesh (yuck), no lyrics resembling the local meat-shop (there was no quintessential dil, jigar, aankh, chehra in Lucky-world), and most important, an underlying 'I don't care if the world thinks I am a dud as a singer' attitude. As for the last part, a lot of vocalists should take a bow in front of Lucky for giving them that courage (though mostly misplaced). Whatever, even as I was droning off, Lucky Ali swept away the music awards that year, always accepted the awards in denims if I remember properly, talked of his first wife Masooma (her maiden name was Megan I believe, and she was from New Zealand) with unfailing buddy-warmth, and came to Kolkata to sing in Xavotsav (December 1996). And here is an excerpt from that interview, recalled from moribund grey cells,and translated from Bengali:

On his childhood:

'I never knew Mehmood the comedian was my father. My teachers used to point at me and refrred to me as his son They expected me to act funny, as they thought it ran in my blood. Once in an airport, my father had come to receive me. And I pointed to him and exclaimed, "Look it's Memood the famous comic actor!!"'

On some random boyhood memories:

'Long back, I lost a sock from a pair. A few days dug out the missing one. I had a coffee-mug. Someone used to mark it with lipstick so that I do not lose it. I hopped schools.

On the song he would choose as his best:

'The one that remains to be sung.'

Forgive me for this arbitrary piece of drivel, but this was just to reemphasise the wanderboy in that boy, that caught up with me, and I am sure with a lot of middle-class middlebenchers who tread the middle path, and are now nearly middle-aged, stuck in the middle layer of status, society and hard-earned 'serendipity'.

Next ride for this troubador was in the 'Fifty Years of Independence' bandwagon. Colgate, Doordarshan and Mani Shankar (the man with those beautiful Vande Mataram snippets and credited with the video of Maa Tujhe Salaam) teamed up to rope in popular artists and weave a dream album called Meri Jaan Hindustaan. Honestly, I do not recall any other number from that album, except the Anjani Raahon Mein one from Lucky. If someone would delve deep, those days, just before the News at 9:00 pm on DD1, there used to be a five-minute interval, in which short features on a wide variety of stuff, ranging from National Unity (not the Mile Sur Mera Tumhara), to Anti-AIDS, to National Literacy Drive used to be aired. And if you were lucky enough, you would see the video of Anjani Raahon Mein. And with no cable-TV in my home (thanks Maa for not bowing to my histrionics, your act helped me be a grad at the least), and no accompanying music channles as a rsult, I would wait for that five-minute window. The song, and the video, with all their simplistic lyrics and visuals and sounds, weaved magic on me. Especially the Wo Jheelmeelati Aankhen....... part that always made me want to go away, just so as to come back. Strangely enough, this song gave me visions of Kohima, the place where my father used to work from, the place that was my summer vacation retreat, the place which gave me a taste for pork, the place that initiated me to wood-smokes, mists swirling down on my palms, Bryan Adams playing on a lonely, silent night. I would literally have dreams of this song playing and me lost in the hills, looking for my father, and I would wake up crying. This happened a lot, and somehow, even now, this song helps me break free from my 'I am a single parent child' attitude. I feel closer to my father, much closer than when we are face to face, shouting, cursing, walking away. Somehow this song helps me broker peace with myself.


Contd.....................