Over 50 years later, the opening scene of the song “Dum Maro Dum” from Haré Rama Haré Krishna is still one of the most glorious moments in Indian film history. The song awoke to a world that John Lennon proposed in “Imagine” – released the same year – a world without borders and violence, a world of diversity and dreams.
The year is 1971. The camera zooms out to a clay chillum, in the hands of a shaggy-haired white man. He takes a puff from the pipe. Then, as if the “hit” has evoked a higher musical power, Bhupinder Singh’s psychedelic guitar riff kicks in. A chilling synth revs up in the background. Then, that quick-fire, head-nodding drumbeat. A groovy baseline. The chillum is passed from one white man to another. The camera zooms and moves, placing us at a large hippie congregation, featuring a diverse crowd of extras with long hair, clad in loose shirts and headbands. Some boast psychedelic prints on their shirts, some use the iconography of South Asian culture that The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix had borrowed in the late 60s, and some are in simple earthly whites – an ode to Mother Earth and Flower Power. Thick smoke hovers in the air. Eyes are glazed. A couple embrace in a passionate French kiss. Bottles of alcohol are passed around. Someone sits in a corner, mushing together a little more maal, perhaps to fill the next pipe.
And then, there she is: Zeenat Aman, the heart of this epicurean shindig. The young actress lip-syncs along to the first words of the song, sung in the playback by Asha Bhosle. A wisp of smoke exits out of her pursed lips. “Dum maro dummmmmmm….”
Take another hit.
Released nearly 15 years before the NDPS Act, Haré Rama Haré Krishna brought the hippie movement of the time back to the culture that had inspired it. The film pitted Dev Anand – one of the biggest stars of his time – alongside the newcomer Aman, as the two portray siblings separated in childhood. Much of the film is based in Kathmandu, Nepal, where Anand’s character (Prashant) goes in search of Aman’s Jasbir (or “Janice”). The main drama is held in the foreground of the international Haré Krishna Movement, with global smuggling rings and commentary on the impact of “Western” culture on South Asian youth.
Dev Anand wrote, directed, and produced Haré Rama Haré Krishna, but it was the 20-year-old Aman – in her breakthrough role as pot-smoking, heavy-drinking, broken-hearted hippie – who stole the show, winning the Filmfare Best Supporting Actress Award that year. The film is a sort of morality tale with an anti-drug message. But one look at Aman – clad in red, decorated with yellow marigolds, as she sings and sways with a sense of jouissance – and one could be forgiven for momentarily interpreting the moment as a celebration of youthful ananda.
Produced and composed by RD Burman, “Dum Maro Dum” was the best possible auditory substitute for a blissful marijuana high, a little disco, a little rock, and a lot of soul. Its intentions as a cannabis anthem couldn’t be clearer, as the chorus goes:
Dum maro dum
Mit Jaaye gham
Bolo sub-aur-shyaam
Haré Krishna Haré Rama.
it’s also the natural result of being stoned, of sorrows being erased. Take another hit, and say the names of your preferred almighties – in this case, both avatars of Vishnu.
Men and women continue to sway side to side as the song progresses, with more hits from the chillum, more smoke permeating the atmosphere. Then, Bhosale sings the track’s most haunting lyrics, posed in the form of four rhetorical questions:
Duniya ne humko diya kya?
Duniya se hamne liya kya?
Hum sabki parvah karein kyon?
Sabne hamara kiya kya?
Masked by the upbeat production, the lyrics are a desperate, existential call for rebellion. A fuck you to the rest of the world. All that we need is to keep praising the gods – and the next hit.
Decades later, “Dum Maro Dum” continues to have a cultural impact. The song has been sampled and covered by artists around the world. The most direct homage came in the 2011 film Dum Maaro Dum, about a cop (Abhishek Bachchan) tasked to bring down the drug cartels in Goa (now, the “dums” are for cocaine, not cannabis).
The film’s song “Mit Jaaye Gham (Dum Maaro Dum)” samples Burman’s original, remixed as an ‘item number” to a quicker, coked-up beat, with this generation’s starlet Deepika Padukone swaying to the song on the screen.
Meanwhile back in the 70s, in the far corner of the world, the Indo-Caribbean diaspora was experimenting with mindbending fusions of Indian folk, Bhojpuri, Caribbean calypso, soca, and Bollywood, all together to create the “chutney” genre. Several chutney songs were written as odes to ganja; the cultural affinity for cannabis, and the term “ganja” itself, crossed the oceans with the Indian diaspora who were taken as indentured labourers by the British authorities to the Caribbean islands in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, settling across Trinidad, Jamaica, Guyana, Suriname, and more. Some of the popular chutney tracks of this time include “Chilam Chilam” by Rasika Dindial and Ravi B, “Marijuana” by Mookraj Sahadeo, and “Ganjawala” by Ravi B and Karma the Band.
In India, cannabis and cinema continued to have a casual, merry relationship. In the 1974 film Aap Ki Kasam, the characters played by Rajesh Khanna and Mumtaz visit a Shiva temple to pray for the birth of a child. Then, things take a turn for the wackiest possible outcome, as the two – under the influence of bhang – break into a memorable garden dance party around a bunch of other extras (presumably intoxicated) to the hit song, “Jai Jai Shiv Shankar”. In the voice of Kishore Kumar, the song begins:
Hey Jai Jai Shiv Shankar
Kaanta lage na kankar
Ki pyaala tere naam ka piya
In the name of love, or in the name of god? Either way, we know what the pyaala (goblet) is filled with.
In 1980, Amitabh Bachchan danced around to “Rang Barse” from Silsila, after his character had a little shot of bhang. In 1985, RD Burman and Asha Bhosle – a magical pairing of producer and vocalist – reunited for another cannabis-infused track, “Bhang Jamaye Rang Jara Sa”, for the film Shiva Ka Insaaf (Shiva’s Justice), starring Jackie Shroff as a desi swashbuckling Zorro. There’s the film Koyla (1997), where Madhuri Dixit lip-syncs to the song, “Bhang Ke Nashe Mein Kho Gaye Hum” (I’m lost in the intoxication of bhang) while inexplicably dancing on a hillside with a dozen children.
More recently, Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone danced to the track “Balam Pichkari”
from the film Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (2013). Somewhere in Parvati Valley, Padukone’s character Naina – who had thus far been portrayed in the film as a stereotypically bookish and conservative girl – is now immersed in the intoxicating blend of love and bhang. She jumps carefree into the throes of a Holi celebration. She is now sexualised: glasses off, hair open, with gyrating hips on display. Sung by Shalmali Kholgade, the first verse goes:
Itna maza kyun aa raha hai?
Tune hawa mein bhang milaya?
Dugna nasha, kyun ho raha hai?
Aankhon se meetha tune khilaya?
From Aman in Haré Rama Haré Krishna to Padukone in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, there is a clear line of insinuation that ties cannabis with both religious festivity and freedom of mind, an “unlocking” of one’s inhibitions which could be as much a spiritual experience as it is a romantic one.
In “Dum Maro Dum”, as Aman and her troupe of friends continue to sway along, the film’s hero, Prashant (Dev Anand) soon enters the scene, wearing a lugubrious expression on his face. The psychedelic tune is replaced by the solemn hymn “Dekho Toh Deewanon”, a song imploring the congregation to change their ways, to read the scripture, and not take Rama’s name in vain. It’s a bucket of cold water over the hot-blooded carnival. The party is over.
But nothing could stop “Dum Maro Dum” from becoming a youth anthem for the generation – and a song that continues to connect with every successive generation which feels alienated by society. Duniya ne humko diya kya?
It’s bewildering to consider how much has changed in India’s cultural zeitgeist – as represented by our mammoth movie industry – since the early 70s. And how much, perhaps, remains the same. While bhang continues to enjoy almost nonpartisan spiritual and social acceptance, the other preparations of the cannabis plant – ganja, charas – are illegal. Even as the portrayal of bhang in Indian cinema is excused as a fun, frolicsome celebration – festive in the name of Shiva – the use of ganja/charas is used as a political tool to villainize some of the biggest names in the same entertainment industry.
There’s a thin line between spirituality and sin.
Excerpted with permission from Ananda: An Exploration of Cannabis in India, Karan Madhok, Aleph Book Company.
