Raat or Din Songs Series
I started this series on my Facebook group Yaad Kiya Dil Ne on 18 Aug 20. Since then, many other members have put up these songs. Here, I shall be giving you one of my own, per day.
This is the Song #11 in the series. I hope you liked Song #10 – Haay re woh din kyun na aaye.
Song #11
Listen to the pouring rain…
Theme-word: Let it rain all night long; Let my love for you go strong. As long as we’re together, Who cares about the weather?
The Joy of Listening
Here is what Wordsworth had to write about it in ‘Three Years She Grew By’:
The stars of midnight shall be dear,
To her; and she shall lean her ear,
In many a secret place;
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound,
Shall pass into her face.
It is really unfathomable. How much is it? We don’t know. However, one thing is certain: for those who discover it, the joy of listening is far more than that of talking.
Why ‘Listen to the pouring rain?
I knew that the song is by Jose Feliciano. I used to listen to it with great interest. Soon, it became almost similar to the devotion I had for Lyn and my song (by Bread) ‘Baby I’m a want you’.
However, much later than originally listening to the song I discovered why Jose Feliciano urged us to Listen and not See the pouring rain. He was born blind and is blind!
He was born on 10th Sep (yesterday) but in the year 1945 in Lares (Puerto Rico). By the age of three years he had picked up more than average interest in music. By the age of nine years he made his first public appearance.
“Feliciano’s knack for music became apparent when at 7, he taught himself to play the accordion. About two years later, when he was 9 years old, his father gave him his first guitar. He would play his guitar by himself in his room for up to 14 hours a day, and would learn by listening to 1950s rock and roll.”
Most of you would have heard his best-selling Christmas song: Feliz Navidad played around the world endlessly during the Holidays.
In the year 2011 he was awarded the Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Eleven years before that he was inducted in International Latin Music Hall of Fame.
The Song – The Lyrics
Jose Feliciano wrote the lyrics. In 2013 he was inducted into Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame:
Listen to the pouring rain
Listen to it pour
And with every drop of rain
You know I love you more
Let it rain all night long
Let my love for you go strong
As long as we’re together
Who cares about the weather?
Listen to the falling rain
Listen to it fall
And with every drop of rain
I can hear you call
Call my name right out loud
I can here above the clouds
And I’m here among the puddles
You and I together huddle
Listen to the falling rain
Listen to it fall
It’s raining
It’s pouring
The old man is snoring
Went to bed
And bumped his head
He couldn’t get up in the morning
Listen to the falling rain
Listen to the rain
My Own Poetry
If Jose Feliciano displayed very high imagination in his Listen to the pouring rain, I want you to gauge the imagination in my:
Journey Of A Raindrop
It arose from the sea,
As vapour,
Still not fully formed as a drop.
There was unbound excitement
At being born, created
A separate entity
Proud to be by itself
Rather than mixed in the salt of the sea.
As it took shape,
Amongst millions others,
It was conscious,
As do all of us
That it would be carried
By forces beyond its control
To far places and people
To lose its identity again when it’d fall.
“Where would fate take me?”
It mused as winds carried it landwards,
“Will I fall on a tree and hang
On to the leaves for dear life?”
“Or will I fall in a pot hole on the road
To be cursed by drivers and walkers alike?”
“Or worse, on a heap of rubbish,
Carrying stench in the air?”
“If I am lucky,
I may fall on the Ganesha idol
In a procession
But then, I shall be quickly
Back into where I was born and arose:
The vastness of the sea.
My friends and I may also fall in the milkman’s pot
And he’d rejoice for increased sale.”
“I have no choice
But, I don’t want to be part of a gutter.
God, I am small and feeble,
Be kind to me,
Let me be valued,
By myself and not
As part of the gang
Together called ‘rain’.”
The cloud that carried him,
Deposited him
On the cheek of a small child,
Naked and hungry,
On a street in Mumbai;
Where it mingled with a single tear
That shot from her eye
On the death of her mother in a bomb attack.
“God”, it said,
Let a hundred drops fall
To wash the sin of
What man has done to man.
But, they should never
Forget that single tear from her eye.
I don’t want to be born again
And again, and again, and again.”
Please enjoy: Listen to the pouring rain..
I hope you liked my choice of Song #11 in Raat or Din series.
Please await Song #12 – Ye nayan dare dare.
