Jawl Phoring ~ A drop of nostalgic love

Something about the song occurred to me the other day (in the shower, of course). It starts off with ‘tui’, the most familiar form of the Bengali second person pronoun. Then it goes full sonnet-one-thirty by juxtaposing ‘Aladdin’ with ‘magazines’, and so on. The song is romantic and homely, and the lady with the glass is clearly enjoying it. Then comes the chorus, roughly translated here [I don’t own this song or the film or any of its associated intellectual property]:

you watch the video, you’ll see the part where the protagonist’s love life is depicted. The prelude to intimacy is a joke. The entirety of this relationship that we see is something to be literally laughed at. This woman’s life wasn’t happy. Call it societal brainwashing or what you will, she must have felt that she was in a loving relationship because it conformed to her expectations of what a modern, upper-middle-class relationship should be like. Like the ‘poets’ describing their love in the paltriest terms they know, rather than the most hyperbolic, she has placed her affections in the container that she felt she ought to – by the end of the film, we are inclined to think she never felt as strongly about her fiance as she wanted to think she did, and neither did the man about her. Her suicide would have been as ridiculous as it is revealed to be in her conversation with the sex worker. She never felt strongly, and fooled herself into thinking that she did, to the point where she almost killed herself in despair.

Jawl Phoring is the outline of our diminished love lives. What appears to be a sincere love song is a farce, just as the lady’s relationship is a feeble bond made to look perfect. The opening of the film is not ironic for being happy – intentionally or not, it is ironic in its own purpose. Under the bright lights and the singing is petty, mundane misery, and the rest of the film is a journey from the underground fiesta to the real sunshine outside.

I can take your morning dreams

And snap your kites at dusk;

I can give you pins of light;

I can give you days of spring;

Find me a grasshopper

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