Sahir - The Morning Of Hope Will Come!

It was either "Rangoli" or a similar program on Indian TV channel, Doordarshan, where I first heard Sahir Ludhianvi's timeless creation "Woh Subaah Kabhi To Aaayegi", roughly meaning "The Morning Will Arrive Some Day". The topic here is to look back at this classic piece of writing and spend some thoughts on the underlying concept of universal hope. Based on the classic novel "Crime and Punishment", a movie by the name "Phir Subaah Hogi" was made in India and the song was used in it.

Sahir was a deep social thinker. His worldview was clear – he was driven by the idea of equity mixed with hope, justice, and progress. All his works bear a stamp of humanity, tolerance, social justice and social benevolence. Penning this song was not that difficult in that case!

Let us start the journey with the first few lines of the poem. The poet starts by declaring that all the past decades have been nothing but dark. Darkness symbolizes frustration. He thinks all the past decades have had nothing but dark nights! All the clouds that were floating around were filled with sorrow and pain. Here he plays with the reader's emotion. He hits them with pain and then unleashes all the hopes by saying the night was just an Aanchal (a black cover) that will wither away one day. He is certain that the cloud is surely going to melt away. A happy wave of ocean is just about to reach the shore. The sky and the earth are soon to be found dancing and singing. The poet spends a few sub-texts in gloomy context and then quickly switches over to the other end where he offers us hope and love.

                 Sahir was a great believer of human strength. He knew the potential of humanity, however, he also knew how it could remain subdued for years. All men and all women are living in despair is what he quotes next. All men and all women are drinking poisonous toxic from exploitation everyday. But the venom ends there, the pious drink is waiting for them; the good days are just about to come, the hunger, the thirst, the poverty, the nightmare, the desolation is soon going to end. Once again, a steady drive into the territory of unhappiness, failure, heart-breaks and then suddenly the scenery changes. The nicer, happier, brighter emotions peep and pop out. Once again, the optimistic poet emerges in his own stylish way. The hope in the last lines is infinite and it is meant to solve all problems of humanity.

                  Sahir was a great critic of hypocrisy. He was also a staunch opponent of favoritism, opportunism, nepotism and bigoted outlooks. Hopes had values in his eyes, much more values than any other materialistic elements to be seen around. But the value is hard to estimate, and the value takes time to be calculated. He says, today the man and the woman are valueless, they are probably just numbers. He says, maybe the earth on which the man and the woman live has a value, the air he or she takes in has a value, and, of course, the resources they utilize, however minuscule those might be, have distinct values. But the man and the woman do not have a value. He stops there, perhaps, a pause occurs to him. He says, the money will not be able to value humanity, perhaps, humanity will value money one day. On that day, only on that day, the new dawn will usher!

                    The morning, the dawn, the "Subaah" is like a door that opens horizon, and enhances vision. The great poet of the previous century assures us all that if one door closes, several open up. If some among the newly opened doors close again, it is still possible to make use of the remaining opened ones. It is also proper to hope that the newly closed ones might re-open or even some more new ones might open up. In fact, even if all the open doors close, there is still a hope that something fruitful can be done inside the four walls of the closed room. The hope, the morning can still arrive!

                      Original version of the immortal song!

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