Out of the many elements for which one could criticise the song, it’s the orange outfit worn by Padukone, which features for about 15 seconds towards the end, that has caused a furore.
The song lacks originality and has lazy lyrics. Musically, it is indefensible
Written by Suanshu Khurana
New Delhi | Updated: December 18, 2022 7:50:32 am
In no Urdu or Hindi dictionary is “sharifi” a word. Its forced usage to mean “modesty”, to me, is one of the most obvious issues with the recently released song, “Besharam rang” from the Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone-starrer Pathaan. This is besides the lacklustre tune composed by Vishal-Sheykhar and the pedestrian choreography by the otherwise talented Vaibhavi Merchant. There isn’t even an interesting hook to latch on to. This is a song without any earwormy qualities, that could have been easily ignored or forgotten.
But this is India, and we live in the volatile world of social media which follows the playbook of chaos. Out of the many elements for which one could criticise the song, it’s the orange outfit worn by Padukone, which features for about 15 seconds towards the end, that has caused a furore. Outrage has been generated by those who consider the colour saffron to be a part of their cultural legacy and not just a fall fashion favourite hue.
Padukone’s swimsuit is orange and so “Hindu sentiments are being hurt”. Also, what’s bothering many is the use of the term “Besharam rang”, based on the inaccurate understanding that the song is using this term to describe saffron. That particular line from the song means “the world hasn’t seen my true colours”. “It’s a metaphor for the immodesty of the heart, like ‘Badtameez dil‘, a phrase by lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya.”
Many have called for banning the song, while there are also calls to correct the clothes worn in the song, even as effigies of Padukone and Khan were burnt by activists in Indore. In the meantime, Amit Malviya of the BJP took a dig at Mamata Banerjee and tweeted, “At the Kolkata Film Festival, Mamata Banerjee asked Arijit Singh to sing one of his favourites and he chose ‘Rang de tu mohe gerua…’ It was an evening of realisations. From Mr Bachchan to Arijit, who reminded Mamata Banerjee, in her backyard, that the future of Bengal is saffron…”
In response to Malviya, TMC leader Riju Dutta put out a video of union minister Smriti Irani from 1998, in which she is seen walking the swimsuit round of a beauty contest in what he describes as a “bhagwa” outfit.
Many on social media then went to the depths of the internet to find the Akshay Kumar song, “Hare ram, hare krishna” from Bhool Bhulaiyya (2007) where he is seen in saffron robes along with scantily-clad women, also in saffron robes. Others put up a photograph of Kangana Ranaut drinking while clad in an orange outfit in a scene from her film Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015), perhaps thinking “We’ve got them with this one”. It just kept getting worse, with people pulling out the rape scene in Bhrashtachaar (1989) where a politician (played by Anupam Kher) is seen attempting to rape a girl (Shilpa Shirodkar) dressed in a yellowish-orange sari. Or is it tangerine? To those engaged in this online back-and-forth, it doesn’t matter. Whatever suits their purpose will do.
The right thing to do here is to defend “Besharam rang” and the makers of Pathaan, even though the content one is defending is lousy. And it is, after all, just a song. One may have a problem with its quality — its lack of originality, lazy lyrics or even the fact that it sticks to a worn-out template already used by the same combination of director Siddharth Anand, composer duo Vishal-Sheykhar, singer Shilpa Rao and lyricist Kumaar in “Ghungroo” (War, 2019). This song was a play on “Mohe aayi na jag se laaj” sung by Salma Agha in Param Dharam (1987) and later popularised by Anup Jalota as a bhajan and many others in the past. What needs to be understood, however, is that those involved in the making of “Besharam rang” most likely did not factor in the connotations of the colour saffron or that dressing Padukone in an outfit of that colour would create a ludicrous controversy.
Also, saffron is just a colour. Colours do not come with religion. The associations with varied things are just manmade metaphors rearing their heads from the dark chambers of our minds.
suanshu.khurana@expressindia.com