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Friday, July 11, 2008

KhanDahar bataate haiN kee imaarat kabhee buland thee

Film : Khoya Khoya Chand
Year of release : 2007
Spoken by : Shyamol Mukherjee (Vinay Pathak)
Spoken to : Audience (as narrator)

This is a famous proverb, often quoted in the form

khaNDar bataa rahe haiN imaarat buland thii

खंडर बता रहे हैं इमारत बुलन्द थी

It means that the ruins indicate that the building was once robust. Sometimes you look at ruins of a five hundred year old building and feel that inspite of the time that has elapsed there is still a robustness to the structure. It makes you wonder, how strong it must have been when it was made. I look at Zohra Sehgal (the only saving grace of the movie Saawariyaa) and feel that if she is like this at 96, what would she be like in her youth. I would certainly say in her case

ख़ंडहर बता रहे हैं इमारत बुलन्द थी

Though it does seem rude to refer to an old person as ‘khanDahar’. And hence, this very line can be used in a pejorative way as well.

In this movie, Shyamol as the narrator is narrating the entire film in flashback. He is referring to the protagonist – Zafar Ali Naqvi’s (Shiney Ahuja) patriarchal home in Lucknow. He tries to convey that once, their family was a respected family – with a palatial house and a lot of money. But now hardly anything is left of it. A situation which forces Zafar to migrate to Mumbai in search of livelihood. So if you every come to a situation where you find the vestiges of a fine organization/person which indicate that the organization/person would have been glorious in it’s prime, you can use the above line. Or use the variant that Shyamol uses

खंडहर बताते हैं कि इमारत कभी बुलन्द थी

2 comments:

  1. हिन्दी फिल्मों के बेहतरीन वर्तालाप के बारे में अंग्रेजी में चिट्ठा :-)

    हिन्दी में भी इसके बारे में क्यों नहीं लिखते।

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  2. उन्मुक्त साहब

    हिन्दी फ़िल्मों के बारे मे हिन्दी चिट्ठे तो बहुत हैं मगर हिन्दी फ़िल्म सम्वाद के बारे मे अंग्रेज़ी में लिखना उनके प्रसार के लिये मुझे ज़्यादा उपयुक्त लगा.

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