Today is World Environment Day

Javed Akhtar is one of the few genuine resident lyricists of the Hindustani film Industry (Gulzar and the adman Prasoon Joshi are the other two) who can sensibly conjure a thought to music. The rest are mere nursery rhymers.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan provided the much-needed fodder to the Indian music copycat club led by none other than the veteran lift-master Anu Maliik (pre-numerology – Annu Mallik). Now the Raja of naak-se-baaja Himesh Reshammaiya compares himself to the late great Ustaad. Do I even need to comment on that? “The agonizing moans of a freshly castrated donkey,” similarity is more striking.

Javed Saheb and the Ustaad got together for Sangam in the mid 1990s. Their number Afreen Afreen^ was one of the best renditions of the feminine beauty in contemporary Indian lyric. The Ustaad’s vocals pure bliss to tympanic membrane and the music video* sheer solace to the optical senses. Lisa Ray never looked better – the desert damsel. Desert. The oh so beautiful sand bouncing back the yellow rays of the parched sun. Those curvaceous sand dunes. That melody of the whistling wind.

I’ve never been to a desert, but the desert is coming closer home and we should do our bit. In nature things are best kept where they belong (Lisa can be an exception). The theme for the 2006 World Environment Day is “Deserts and Desertification,” and the slogan, “Don’t Desert Drylands!” Algeria is hosting this year’s event.

Desertification is about land degradation: the loss of the land’s biological productivity, caused by human-induced factors and climate change. It affects one third of the earth’s surface and over a billion people. Moreover, it has potentially devastating consequences in terms of social and economic costs.

Says a United Nations Environment Programme press release on 2006 World Environment Day. We should take care. After all there’s ‘Only one Earth.’

A few posters:

^Listen to the song [00:00:29 rm]
*Download the video [00:03:28 rm 1.44 MB]