Those Days Shall Never Return

I happened to listen a Marathi song sung by Pandit Hridaynath Mangeshkar, the genius brother of Mangeshkar sisters. Its opening stanza is “Gele te Din Gele” which means “those days are gone now forever”.

The song is written by Bhavanishankar Pandit and music composed by the great Marathi music director Shrinivas Khale. It is so soulful song that it hooked me to it and I have listened it a number of times.

The quality of the poetry and music shows how rich the Marathi music has been. The song combines two phenomenon in the world of humans: transience of the life and love between two humans which begins in the youth.

This is in the end and hindsight always takes us to the old days and the things we did in the past. We always become nostalgic about them.

For example, in the present song, the poet’s lover laments that those days in which he and his beloved collected different kinds of flowers from the trees and vines and showered on each other. How in those days, they hoisted a swing on the branch of a tree and together sat in it and swayed and enjoyed the world around. Those days are now long gone.

Then there were goblets of different colored crystals with beautiful intricate designs carved on them, filled with the cool sherbets and drinks and they drank endlessly from them. Those days are gone now.

The song is in Marathi language which though is not my mother tongue. I can follow it because we have been in Mumbai for so many years. In my workplace there are some local colleagues and I many a times listen to them talking. I many a times ask them the meaning of some words.

The language is derived from Sanskrit and is very much evolved. But there is simply no need to know the meaning, just close your eyes and listen to the soulful voice.

There is a video on the you tube in which the person who has uploaded it has very beautifully written the lyrics and translated it into English language.

Another song harking back and longing for the carefree childhood is on the similar lines was sung by Kishor Kumar. It ran as “Koi Lauta de mere bite hue din”.

“Let someone return back my childhood”.