A song for foodies

Photo by Barun Ghosh on Unsplash

For decades I have been addicted to browsing through books, focusing more on classic, traditional literature in Hindi, Brajbhasha, Awadhi etc, that could be presented musically. I can say without hesitation that I have almost never been disappointed. Sometimes trawling through pages and pages can be tedious and nothing really seems to be suitable for a musical adaptation. But then on other occasions, you read a few lines, break into a smile and in my case, the smile turns quickly into an ear- to-ear grin, and soon, you have the the printed words on the page of a book metamorphosing into a composition to be sung and relished.

Let me now confess to another of my addictions, namely, food :). While I can no longer claim to have thirty-two sweet teeth after a couple of extractions, I can still display an enthusiasm for food that the fitness buffs among us might find scary or disgusting. But if truth be told, I most definitely belong to the the khaanaa-gaanaa species.

Imagine my utter delight when on one of my trawling expeditions some years ago, I found this lovely folk-song from the Braj region -

Raja Janak karein jyonaar jatan se hare hare, jatan se parso ri,

राजा जनक करैं ज्योनार जतन से हरे हरे, जतन से परसो री ………….

For the record, here is a list of food items mentioned in the song:

Verse 1: poori, bedmi, khastaa, papad, kachri, dahibada, chutney, sonth, achaar.

Verse 2: mathri, mattha, sem, dalmoth, anaanaas, rasbhari, shareefa, kela, aam, anaar

Verse 3: malpua, imarti, rabdi, khurma, khurchan, laddoo, peda, makkhan mishridaar

Verse 4: thandai, sherbet, kaanji with boondi, doodh with boora and malai

Verse 4: paan, supari

Accompanying me on this culinary journey are my wonderful foodie colleagues Aneesh Pradhan on the tabla, Siddharth Padiyar on dholak, and Sudhir Nayak on the harmonium. Recorded during the lock down, each of us recorded in different cities, me in Delhi using a sound card at home, while the others in Mumbai were recorded individually by my wonderful student Shantanu Herlekar. The mixing and mastering are by another foodie colleague of many talents and skills, Nitin Joshi.

I had just the delicious lyrics but no notation for the song to suggest how it might have been sung in the past. I have tried to reconstruct it in a form that could perhaps be acceptable as a folk song, but if anyone wishes to differ, perhaps they could focus on the mouthwatering lyrics and forgive me ?