A collaboration between two old friends, actor Manoj Bajpayee and director Anubhav Sinha has resulted in this foot-tapping Bhojpuri Rap that you don’t want to miss!
Song- Bambai Main Ka Ba
Singer and Performer – Manoj Bajpayee
Lyrics – Dr Sagar
Video Director – Anubhav Sinha
English Lyrics – Sankarshan Thakur
Music – Anurag Saikia
News Footage Courtesy – Barkha Dutt (Mojo)
Music Label – T Series
CFO (Benaras Media Works) – Dhrub Kumar Dubey
Executive producer – Sagar Ravindra Shirgaonkar
Associate Director- Vikhyaat Deepak Sareen
DOP – Soumik Mukherjee
Production Designer- Nikhil Kovale
Music Produced & Design by – Prasanna Suresh & Anurag Saikia
Costume stylist – Vishakha Kullarwar
Line Producer- Durgesh Daddhich
Post Production Superviser – Suraj Nair
Stills – Bobby Sachdev
Hair stylist – Bobby Rao / Sachin Jadhav
Make up – Mita Vaswani
Di Studio – Visualbirds Studios
Di Colorist – Ankit Mali
Ethnic Percussion – Pratap Rath
Bass – Abhinav Bora
Nagara / Bhor Taal – Kontilou
Studios Recorded Phat Box Studio by – Rupjit Das,
Euphony Studio by – Partha P Das
Mixed & Mastered by – Bhaskar Sarma Euphony Studio
Marketing Director – Trigger Max
Publicity Design – Math
Visual Promotions – Trigger Happy
English Lyrics –
So what is it?
What is it?
Just what is it about this Bombay?
What is it about Bombay
That I slumber in a carrier
When back home I have more than a mere acre
What is it about Bombay?
That I must live my life in this loop
Of oil and salt and shampoo
My palms I dip in the earth
And my heart, it turns all green
Oh my soul it’s still back there
In that hot meal of my dream
Oh what is about Bombay?
So what is it?
How I wish I’d spend my days
Amidst my farms and orchards, my yard
But here I am yoked to ways helpless and hard
So what is it ……
Here I am
A security sentry
Doubling up on duty
Each day I waste and fray
Like a wicker lamp that burns away
Oh who must have such will to bear
The biting of mosquitoes
Who would want oh tell me
To be rent by nerves, oh who does
Between village and town of mine
I lie a bit bewildered
To feed two tummies no more
To Bombay I have wandered
So what is it….
Just what is it ….
Milk and ghee and butter sugar candy
It’s what’s plenty back there
But here one must make do
With snack and bread, what else’s there?
But work there isn’t where I come from
And no jobs to be had
Look how they herd and drive us
Like sheep and goat, it’s bad
If only there was an earning
Would’ve made my home my heaven
Why ever leave if that place rocked
To arrive here and then get knocked
So what is it……
And who’s here to share this grief
And this helplessness, what a life!
A year it’s been, a year
Away from the darling wife
And who is it that’s dumped us
In the grip of these compulsions
That even my chit of a darling girl
I can’t under-arm mine clasp and whirl
The elders, mai and babu
The pond and dale all lost
Who shall I open unto this heart
That lies all broken upon itself, what a cost?
So what is it …..
Blade and knife and rake and plough
There’s also pick and axe
And a length of home, a brood of keepers
I too have a kingdom, let me wax
Scrapers tall that these hands built
They all go kissing the sky
Here I am under this shanty roof
And it leaks, oh my my
Oh come and see you city lads
What a stampede all this is
Our lives, they are trussed and pressed
Come see what a hen coop this is
So what it is…
We toiled and toiled us two
We rolled the soil us two
And on a leg we stood
A month of rain, us two
But a tuppence that didn’t earn
For all the labour, all the toil
And for little things we yet yearn
The ways of the bit city
I pray I can’t divine
All the time they snap and scold
But tell not what fault it is of mine
So what is it…..
Those hands that hold the rules and law
Those hands they drip of blood
Those hands, those hands
Those hands are hands of flaw
Oh reckon among such folks
The gulfs that exist
Between the high and the low
Little the Constitution can even do
But to scrape and bow
Better that life
Lived close to daughter and to son
There’s neither a fair school close
Nor a hospital for a dose
So what is it…..