DIL KI GIRAH KHOL DO-TRANSLATED

Another classic song in a waltz setting composed by Shankar Jaikishan from that mesmerising psychological thriller, Raat Aur Din. It's all about unfolding all the layers of the heart, letting go of fears and inhibitions and taking life head on. Can't find a good enough video though I remember Nargis was not her best looks-wise, this being her last movie. But there was a very dashing young Feroze Khan waltzing with her. It's a great song to just listen to on a silent night as this. The crickets making that sound outside. The arch shaped moon hangs like a silver swing for imaginative flights of fantasy. Darkness is not the absence of light, but an opportunity to feel 'touch' without the distraction of 'sight'. Ha ha now before I let my loony crab mind go berserk, let's just move to Lata's songs with Manna Dey as I think I am already done with her best ones with Rafi. Nargis looked ok. She had put on a lot of weight by then. Nothing compared to her earlier Raj Kapoor movies but yes, it was a woman's role not a girl's. Hats off to these women who defied to be put into yardsticks measured only by a 24 inch waist or a size zero. In their own elegant, understated yet confident way, these movies and actresses were more progressive and liberated than the ones being churned out today where women are given little to offer than cameras gazing over bare mid-riffs, perfect abs and bossoms with little clue about what goes inside a woman's mind.


A translation of this sublime song by Shailendra. Pardon a few poetic liberties:

Open the knots of your heart,
And all the layers that keep us apart.
Don’t stay quiet, come along.
For God’s sake let’s sing a song.
We are not strangers anymore, you see.
Oh! Come, come close to me.

Let the hearts meet this instance.
Let all constraints pass.
Let all chasms and distance
Drown in this glass.
I will smile into your eyes happily
If you promise to smile back at me.

We are no more ‘you and me’ it seems.
We have become something else.
Lost in the sparkling realm of dreams
We dance to these enchanting bells.
We need not ask anyone for direction
And may not tell them our destination.

Tomorrow someone may ask us
What happened to you yesterday?
Our hearts instruct us to move on thus.
Let us not look back today.
Let’s not call or try to find
people who are left far behind.

But do open the knots of your heart
And all the layers that keep us apart.
We are not strangers anymore, you see.
Oh come, come close to me…