Chaudhvin ka chand, ya Aaftab ho?


SUHANI RAAT AND CHAUDHVIN KA CHAND
Mashup performed by Aakash Gandhi [ft Jonita Gandhi and Studiounplugged]

SUHANI RAAT
Suhani raat dhal chuki, na jaane tum kab aaoge
The beautiful night has slipped away, don't know when you will come.

Suhani raat dhal chuki, na jaane tum kab aaoge
The beautiful night has slipped away, don't know when you will come.
Jahan ki rut badal chuki, na jaane tum kab aaoge
Throughout the world the seasons have changed, don't know when you will come.

Suhani raat dhal chuki, na jaane tum kab aaoge
The beautiful night has slipped away, don't know when you will come.

Nazaarein apni mastiyaan dikha dikhaake so gaye
The sights have shown their beautiful effects and are gone now
Sitaarein apni roshni luta lutaake so gaye
The stars shone and now are no more.

Suhani raat dhal chuki, na jaane tum kab aaoge
The beautiful night has slipped away, don't know when you will come.
Jahan ki rut badal chuki, na jaane tum kab aaoge
Throughout the world the seasons have changed, don't know when you will come.

CHAUDHVIN KA CHAND
Chaudhvin ka chand ho, ya aaftaab ho
Are you the full moon, or the dazzling sun?
Jo bhi ho tum Khuda ki kasam, laajawab ho
Whatever you may be, I swear to God, you are beyond compare!
Chaudhvin ka chand ho?
Are you the full moon?

Zulfein hain jaise kaandhon pe baadal jhuke hue
Your hair is like a soft cloud kissing your shoulders
Aankhen hain jaisi mey ke peyaale bhare hue
Your eyes are like two goblets
Masti hai jis mein pyar ki, tum woh sharaab ho
And you are the wine that fills them with a zest for love.

Chaudhvin ka chand ho, ya aaftaab ho
Are you the full moon, or the sun?
Jo bhi ho tum Khuda ki kasam, laajawab ho
Whatever you may be, I swear to God, you are beyond compare!

Mohammed Rafi sang the original songs: Suhani Raat and Chaudhvin Ka Chand
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A Note From The Gull



Listening to this haunting mashup tonight, I am writing through this terrible sadness that I am feeling. When I first listened to this soulful performance, I heard my conversation with my country. These words, "Suhani raat dhal chuki, na jaane tum kab aaoge" and "Chaudhvin ka chand ho, ya aaftaab ho " are now never far from my lips and I find myself spontaneously saying them softly to myself as I go about my daily activities.

For me, three states are expressed in this beautiful remake:

1. Love and desire.

Jo bhi ho tum Khuda ki kasam, laajawab ho | Whatever you may be, I swear to God, you are beyond compare!

2. Anxious, lingering, persistent hope.

Suhani raat dhal chuki, na jaane tum kab aaoge | The beautiful night has slipped away, don't know when you will come.

3. An undercurrent of growing despair that that hope may not be realised.

The painful possibility that the "don't know when you will come" will be replaced with, "You never came. My heart is broken."

I have always felt these for my country. I feel these with Dr. Wayne Kublalsingh. The two, the man and my country, are one and the same for me.  For over two months many of us who are still capable of paying attention for more than three seconds have been inspired, embarrassed, challenged, disturbed, frustrated, threatened and outed by this man, the one who some have callously named "the human reptile."

I believe instead, that Dr. Wayne Kublalsingh is The ProtoTrinbagonian and only time will tell if he is one of the last of a trial breed on the verge of extinction or a viable precursor of what is to come. I prefer to hope that like a lance, he is opening the way and leading our advance. Roman Catholic priest, Father Clyde Harvey, suggests that it may not be that we are losing our soul as a nation but that at this moment in time, we, our leaders included, are being offered the precious opportunity to create it for the first time.

Like Father Harvey advises, we have to look beyond personalities. They, like the thousand and one upsets which have had our heads spinning over the past few years, not to mention what went before, are only symptoms, just pustules on the back of the beast, the same beast to which many of us have been furtively throwing scraps under the dinner table. They are symptoms being used as distractions, symptoms labelled disease to condemn us to an infinity of applying and reapplying plasters to societal sores that predictably continue to weep profusely. They are symptoms which confound and enervate, unsettle and exhaust, to dumb down this country with punishing, mindless dissembling...not a day of peace, not a day of intelligence, not a day of hope that isn't doomed to betrayal. I am beside myself with exhaustion and I am just a witness from afar.

To borrow the title of Neil Bissoondath's novel, there is a casual brutality about the way in which we regard and treat each other in this country.  Others have given much thought to explaining why this is so but I have no time tonight.  WE have no time. There will come a day of darkness when the hearts of the conscious will be even more broken than they are today. They will not dare to ask themselves the question: What could we have done? because the answer in all its clarity will come when it is too late. On that day, those who still have the capacity to recognise loss and to mourn it will say:

Sitaarein apni roshni luta lutaake so gaye | The stars shone and now are gone.

"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare

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