Phir mile sur mera tumhara

I remember when I was a kid; we did not have Television set in our house. Every Saturday and Sunday we used to go to my aunt’s house to watch movies in Doordarshan. On that time there wasn’t any cable channel available. After few years DD Metro came into picture, then one by one different cable channels came into market. In those days main attractions in TV were Ramayana, Mahabharata kind of serials. There was no commercial break in between movies. All the advertisements happened to be shown before start of the movies. Still people used to watch those commercials. In those days, each and every advertisement was great and touchy. “Hamara bajaj”, “Shan se bolo chal mere Luna”, “Gold Spot the zing thing!!”, “Mera Hamam” and many more. Along with these some non commercial advertisement were also getting broadcasted from State or Central Govt. The best among them was “Mile Sur Mera Tumhara” It was an audio visual which contained with a song in 14 different regional languages. Lyrics were pretty simple, a four liner message in different languages. It says about unity in diversity. The great singers and musicians of that era were involved in this 5:30 min long video. Along with them, famous people from bollywood, Sports, Literature field were also appeared in this. In this less than 6 minutes clip one could see the whole India our country, could feel our culture, and could learn our heritage. Yes the video was that rich. The message of brotherly hoods what they wanted to convey, was successfully conveyed.
This audio visual came in 1988-89. In 90’s many more other cable channels came into picture and we started to forget the old channels and old shows. But thanks to Internet and YouTube, this video again came into lime light along with some other old shows. This time the response was wider, it reached to more people, and it touched more hearts than the first time. With the increasing popularity of this video people started thinking on the line of business and decided to re make “Mile Sur Mile Tumhara”. The same production team started working for it and finally launched the new Video.
I started watching this video with mixed feelings. I was not sure if it’s going to worth or not. After the whole 18 min video I asked myself “What a crap is this?” It is no where near to the old one. In the new one, they are able to gather more famous musicians and film stars but they failed to create the essence. The secret of success in the old was there in its lyrics, but in the new they caped the lyrics their try to change the sur made the song worse.

If you see the casting of this video you can find every success people from bollywood appeared in this. The Khans, the Bacchans, Ranbir Kapoor, Shreya Ghosal, Shaan, Sonu Nigam, Alka Yagnik, Shankar Mahadeban, Juhi Chawla, Priyanka Chopra, Shilpa Shetty, oscar winner Rehman, Grammy winner Anushka Shankar …the list is long. But believe me Sharukh Khan with a same old and monotonous pose of stretching hand singing Mile Sur Mera Tumhara, Deepika Padukan’s appearance with short dress, Shankar Ehsan Loy’s performance on dessert, Sonu Nigam playing with the melody of the song, Ameer Khan’s “kya bolti tu” remix, nothing could able to touch my heart. Shivamani playing with weird musical instruments can portrait his personal excellence but that wasn’t required here. Presence of the current bollywood glamour queens Aishwariya, Deepika, Priyanka, Shilpa was just for endorsing the song, nothing more than that. Here the people and performance in the song just had overridden the cause of the song. Everybody is there in the song, but I couldn’t see the Unity in diversity in it.
In the old one Amitabh, Jitendra and Mithun, the hit trio of that time appeared together but their singing with putting hands on each others shoulder was more touchy and meaningful than their stardom.
Still this song will be a hit because it will easily win the heart of fan clubs of each of the celebrity’s. This is nothing but a well planned fully commercial music video which is made to be popular and this doesn’t deal with any message or anything else. However the stage was all set to have something special which can unify us again. In the context of all the separatist issues like Maoism, telangana, Alfa, Ulfa, RSS, MNS, racism, terrorism, this song could represent our values, our ethics. It could show us the path of a better India, but it failed to do so. 10 years down the line this song will not be there as a single entity. Kisi ka sur kise se milte huye nahi dikhega.