The Complete Lack of Yaadon ki Baraat

Ian Fleming wrote "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action." Not for dustedoff and me, however. Our acquaintance goes back to 2000 when both of us wrote for a then-popular webzine. Years later, I landed up on her blog through very convoluted means, only to discover she's the same person I'd corresponded with off and on almost a decade earlier. 

The coincidences didn't stop there. For some odd reason, we have been writing on identical subjects, sometimes simultaneously. We have published posts which has had the other person commenting that they had thought of a similar theme / review the previous night. We have published lists of songs only to find that the other has published a review of the film from which the songs were taken. Or vice versa. We have been guilty of submitting the videos of the same songs on others' blogs - somewhere, our trajectories meet, part, meet again. We have also incurred a fair bit of teasing on that account. We have been called twins, soul sisters, and probably a whole lot of other things that we do not know about. (Thankfully!)

So, we thought, why fight it? Why not embrace our similarities of thought and action?

Yet, that wasn't enough for us, fans as we were of Hindi films and its tropes. In the best traditions of Hindi film scripts, we needed to have something linking us, physically. Tattoos (the most common identifying factor) were out, since I have a dread of needles and a very low threshold for pain. We did have the same wooden salad fork and spoon to wave around if necessary, only dustedoff's mother threw their pair out. So, what could we do? pacifist, a long-time blog reader of dustedoff's suggested we wave chaku-churis around the streets of Delhi (or Massachusetts) but dustedoff didn't think that would work. So, when Harvey suggested we should have a song, we jumped at the suggestion. It was as hoary a tradition in Hindi films as tattoos (and a darn sight less painful). 

Bingo!

Now, who would write the song for us? I'm very bad at poetry, and by extension, lyrics. So, I looked around me for inspiration. A-ha! I did have a resident poet. My husband. He had even written a couple of laments that I'd posted on this blog before. So I did the the only thing I could. As punishment for lamenting so much, I asked him to write a song for us. (Actually, dustedoff suggested that I commission my husband to write a song, but it sounds better this way.) It's been more than three weeks since I originally asked and he kept putting it off (work interferes with all important things in life), until I gave him a deadline on Tuesday [I want it now!). I got it. :)]

 "It's the best I could come up with under the deadlines," he said; but I think it's a pretty good best. I have this strange feeling that he's missed his true calling, but he says he likes engineering. Peculiar chap.

Because Harvey had so much to do with us adopting a song as our means of identification, he will be pleased to know that his fame will soon be spread far and wide.

And now, we are all set to be separated, dustedoff and I (only after we learn the song by rote, though. Anyone want to help us set this to music?)

Therefore, without much ado, let's move on to:

The complete lack of Yaadon ki Baraat a.k.a. 'Our Song'.

We are two soul sisters, our thoughts are so similar
If we weren't quite strangers, we'd be so familiar
With each other. Neighbours separated by an ocean,
two continents, some rivers, and so forth...
One born in the south, the other in the north.

Refrain: Sister, Sister
         Do you remember
         anything at all?
         How we never,

         ever

         played together...
         No, no, not at all.      

We followed our families around, never meeting each other
Each resigned to the wanderlust of our peripatetic fathers
But we knew that the other existed, separated as we were at birth
Though we weren't born together, each existed on this earth.

Refrain: Sister, Sister
         Do you remember
         anything at all?
         How we never,
         ever

         played together...
         No, no, not at all.

We have caught glimpses of each other through exchanged words
A shared interest in movies, some of them absurd...
Old Hindi films and wide-eyed heroines,
those bombshells as explosive as tri-nitro-toluene

Refrain: Sister, Sister,
         Do you remember
         anything at all?
         How we never,
         ever

         played together...
         No, no, not at all.

We write on topics that are sometimes identical
We find our thoughts are so coincidental
We don't look like each other, how would we know?
We've never met but we know that we know
We are different somehow.

Refrain: Sister, Sister,
         Do you remember
         anything at all?
         How we never,
         ever 

         played together...
         No, no, not at all.

At some point no doubt, we are fated to meet
We shall know each other perhaps, by the arch of our brow
Or the shoes on our feet.
Or will it be by this song that we sing , this marvellous refrain
We composed it together, we hope not in vain.

Refrain: Sister, Sister,
         Do you remember
         anything at all?
         How we never,
         ever

         played together...
         No, no, not at all.

There is a villain in this piece who is apparently called harvey
Who has threatened to put an end to this harmoneeee...
He is the good banker 'harvey the third'
Who likes his cocktails, (shaken not stirred)
His appearance will be denoted by a D minor chord
He will provide banknotes by the hoard
To split up this soul sisterly business
And continue to soldier on as His Sole Crustiness...

He does not like duos or trios or twins
He believes in the singleness of hims
But his efforts will come to nought and fail
So let us sing our song and enjoy  cider ale.

Refrain: Sister, Sister,
         Do you remember
         anything at all?
         How we never,
         ever

         played together...
         No, no, not at all.

         But 'tis the season to be jolly
         Fa la la la la la la la
         Let us now jump on harvey
         Fa la la la la la la la ...

©Sadanand Warrier 2011

(I hope Lalitha is happy I have taken her complaint to heart - and NOT published another film review. After all, I do not want to be responsible for the Jairam household not getting their dosas or getting stuck with dirty dishes, do I?)