Aajana Dil Hai Deewana - Memories

After around ten minutes of staring at a blank page and still not getting any ideas for a new post, I decided to do some no-particular-reason- web- browsing.

'Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani' reviews, posters caught my attention and brought back some memories.

Well, nothing to do with the film or with Ranbir or Deepika for that matter. Just the title. Rather, just one word in the title 'Deewani'.

It happened when I was around nine years old. My maternal grandfather had expired and all my mother's siblings and their children had gathered at my uncle's house for the obsequies.

A lady lived next door with her husband and two daughters. My cousins and I used to go to her place for playing. She used to do sweet things like just calling her daughters aside , giving them some snacks and specifically instructing them not to waste them sharing it with the monsters from next door. Well it was perfectly audible to us and at that age a little bit of innocence was still intact I suppose and so we did not give it any importance.

That was the time when Hassan Jahangir's 'Hawa Hawa E Hawa ' song had been a super hit all over India. The same album had a song 'Aajana Dil Hai Deewana'

One day while playing, my cousin and I started singing this song. This lady's second daughter had just enrolled for Hindi classes and God knows what her honorable Hindi teacher taught her.

She retorted 'Hey you two, you think I dont know Hindi? I know what Deewana means. Deewana means payithiyam (word in Tamil for mad) right?'

At that point in time, my only Hindi teachers were the great heroes and heroines of Bollywood. I knew that 'Deewana, Parvana, Mastana' kept coming in every song churned out along with 'Pyaar' and 'Ishq', but did not really have a clue about their meaning.

"What? Mad? No WAY!  Mother promise" I responded.

"No, I know. My saar has taught me. Deewana means mad. You both are calling me mad ?"

Thats when the beings inside us with red skin and two horns got excited and we both started singing that song as loud as possible. I dont recollect what she had done earlier to annoy us that we absolutely enjoyed teasing her. With a villainous laughter we continued "Aajana Dil Hai Deewana, roke chaahe lakh zamaana, kehdo naa yai dil hai deewana, ta da ta ta ta ta da da ta ta". The last musical notes, we uttered with amazing musicality.

"Do you know what super song this is? This is the latest hit" one of us bragged to the poor girl whose Hindi was restricted to the pure Hindi lessons of her sir and she had not seen any Bollywood movie till then.

She was almost on the verge of tears and the two of us started singing with all the more frenzy.

"Wait, I will go tell my mommy" she threatened. " Sollikko (Go ahead and tell)" we replied nonchalantly and continued our rendition. I think we even did a jiggle or two in rhythm to our tune.

Once satisfied that she was fuming with anger and brimming with tears we returned home. Well, the lady did follow very soon with "You have these brats that you call children at home. You know what they did? They are coming to my house and making fun of my daughter with some Hindi song. It seems they kept calling her a lunatic"

Our parents were already grief stricken due to the death in the family and they were in no mood to question the authenticity of the baseless accusation against us. Do I need to say that we were grounded? 

"Aajaana Dil Hai Deewana" :D