Six Things About The Song “Chaand Baaliyan”

How many songs have you heard, and have loved instantly due to the lilting tune and had a blast grooving to and haven’t bothered about the lyrics and the intent at all? I do this all the time. I love catchy, lilting and dance numbers from Hindi films and generally whatever is trending that I chance upon on the Radio or on Reels on Instagram. 

I don’t like running too much so I make sure my playlist is upbeat, catchy, rhythmic, mostly filled with Hindi songs and sometimes the trendy Punjaabi or even a ‘dapungatu’ style Tamil movie song in the dance genre. It’s only when I am running to the rhythmic beats of a song on a sweltering Chennai morning when the lyrics come clearly and settle with me and I realize, all these seemingly different, unique from one another songs have some basic principles which run through them. When I started listening to Chaand Baaliyan by Aditya, beyond the Reels of Instagram, full blown on my Youtube playlist, I figured there are six things unique to any such song which catches the fancy of the ‘blink-and-you-miss’ attention level of the audience of today: 

• Beats – the beats are always what makes or breaks a song, especially on the hum-ability quotient for an amateur non-blessed-singer. The beats are so catchy that they will ‘beat’ you senseless into not listening to the text of the song, so much so that you might miss the sub-text and you will only be humming it without thought and sometimes without comprehending the intent.
• Music – Beautiful composition apart from the beats. This usually transports you to a land of the familiar, of comfort, of softness, or your association with innocence – music does have that power. Art, here music, generally has the power to compel, and any such popular song usually has a very good music composition which has the power of transportation and makes you associate the song with earlier positive memories. 
• Lyrics – Often if not always about a girl, either jilting, about to jilt or having had jilted the person singing the song. Go back and listen to every song you love and that borders on sweet-romantic-song-about-rejection or persuasion. Chaand baaliyan begins with ‘these Chhand baaliyan earrings of yours along with the abuses on your lips’, now it’s such a beautiful song that no one thinks deeper about why does this girl have abuses on her lips? I sat back and thought some more. This brings me to the next point.
• Sympathy – There is an inherent sympathy seeking nature woven in such songs, where you start cheering for the singer/author without thinking if the subject of the song even likes the author/singer. You want them to unite, at the cost of the fact that the author gives you some deeply disturbing details which shouldn’t evoke any sympathy. See for yourself: 

“Yeh Teri Chand Baliyan

Hai Honṭhon Pe Yeh Gaaliyan

Sochne Ka Mauka Na Diya Haaye

Main Toh Tere Pichhe Ho Liya

Suit Paṭiala Tera

Jutti Amritsari Aa

Dil Kamzor Hai Mera

Mukk Jaaṇe Nakhre Tere

Mera Ishq Nahio Mukkna

Pakka Hai Promise Jaṭṭ Da

Lade Naino Ke Peche Oho

Tu Door Se Mujhko Khainche Aaha

Lade Naino Ke Peche Haan Ji

Tu Door Se Mujhko Khainche Oho

Ḍor Tu Patang Main Tera Haaye

Main Toh Teri Chhat Pe Ja Gira

Main Toh Tere Pichhe Ho Liya”

Here (in the excerpt) the boy / man is telling ‘You didn’t give me a chance to think, and I was compelled to be behind you.’ He continues to say, ‘Your Patilaya suit and Amritsari jootis were responsible for my heart becoming weak. I know your drama (?) my love won’t deter, this is the promise of a Jatt. Fighting from behind your eyes, you keep drawing me from afar, like a kite you keep tugging at me; as a result I came and fell on your terrace, so I started following you.’ I don’t need to go into every line thereafter because each line is an entire exercise of blame-shifting (quite romantically if I may add) for every inexcusable act the singer/author wants to indulge in. 

• Love and Infatuation – The inevitable inter-changeability of these two words which are meant to be very different words, and are supposed to demonstrate very distinct emotions, but are always used in such songs without much thought. 

• Repetition – This is not just for Chaand Baaliyan, there are so many such songs that we hum and sing without digging deeper into the meaning of it, and all of them are super popular. Don’t get me wrong, I love singing this song and so many such songs, but makes me wonder how for decades, we have normalised such songs. I’ll give you some an example with an excerpt from “Galti se mistake” (from Jagga Jasoos) says:

“Jhatka zara sa mehsoos hua ek

Life ki gaadi ne kass ke maara break

Ho raha hai kyu confuse mere dil

Mashwara mera tu aazma ke dekh

Yehi umar hai karle

Galti se mistake”

Where the singer is saying ‘this is the age, make a mistake by error’ of course prefixing it with the usual trope of the above list of Beat, Music, Lyrics, Sympathy, Infatuation interchangeably used as Love and then Repeat!  

Next time when you start humming a song, repeatedly hear the same music on Reels, keep an eye out, do they tick any of the points listed above? If they do, I am not asking you to change the song, just think would you like to be the subject of the song though?  Will that be your mouthpiece/narrative for your trendiest Reels on Instagram? 

By Senjuti Das roy

Senjuti is a lawyer by profession and loves telling stories. Her stories primarily originate from experience, observation, and a fair amount of luck. She loves to share her stories as anecdotes. She has so far lived in six cities in four countries and feels that’s the reason she has never had a dearth of anecdotes. She can be contacted at senjuti.das@gmail.com.