A girl in yellow sitting by the lake on a deceptively dark night with a couple of earthen lamps on her pooja thali and a thousand flames in water. That was Neha’s introduction to Hindi film viewers with Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Kareeb more than a decade and a half ago. Great things were forecast. Alas! Like the proverbial flame of the humble deepak, she could not cope with the change in the direction of the wind. She flickered all too briefly, leaving behind just one lingering memory – “Chori chori jab nazren mili”, the Kumar Sanu-Sanjivani song picturised on her and Bobby Deol, another man who flattered to deceive.
Today as Diwali approaches and Delhi’s sidewalks accommodate the humble potter, the humbler sellers of these earthen lamps, one cannot but wonder about the relationship these little creations of clay have shared with many a poet. Not just in Kareeb , back in the 60s in Mamta , Hemant Kumar weaved such magic with “Chhupa lo yun dil mein pyar mera jaise mandir mein lau diye ki” that Lata Mangeshkar could at best be a fine foil. Much like the magic whipped up by Yesudas under the baton of Ravindra Jain who recently bade good bye to this world leaving us with memories of “Jab deep jale aana” in Chitchor . If Yesudas with Amol Palekar and Zarina Wahab sold us romance with “Jab deep jale”, the same diya aroused notions of piety when Jayaprada sang, “Pati parmeshwar ke siva”, a Karwa Chauth number with conspicuous sindoor, two dozen bangles, a nariyal and a diya in place. Diya for the single in Kareeb , diya for the devotee in Ganga Jamuna Saraswati .
In Delhi nobody lights ‘deep’ anymore, unless of course one is here on Diwali. Then the city of a hundred tombs comes alive with a thousand diyas, each more tempting than the other. Some arouse the poet in you, others the man in the poet. Either way, life is a beautiful poem with diyas lit up at every other window, illuminating every threshold, eliminating darkness.
All that is for the night with many rounds of joy. The day belongs to forever acquiescing potter, his face oft half covered with his turban, his dhoti crumpled and soiled; sitting on his haunches, moulding together a few lamps, placing the readied ones for the prospective buyers. Some pick up scores of them, a few children buy one or two. Any way, day passes somehow. Then comes the night. Time for a million celebrations.
