In defence of today, writes Niranjan Iyengar

"There's a graveyard in Santacruz where Madhubala, Mohammed Rafi and Sahir Ludhianvi are buried. Madhubala's grave is made of marble, Rafisaab's is in granite and Sahir Ludhianvi's grave was so weak that it was just swept away after a few monsoons!"

I read these lines by poet-lyricist Nida Fazli in an interview a few years ago. He was speaking about the quality of language in our films and was illustrating with an acerbic example how words and wordsmiths are treated in films today. When I was a journalist in the early `90s I remember doing a story with lyricists and there too everyone lamented the growing use of slang in our songs. And a even decade before that, I remember coming home from school one day humming `Aap jaisa koi' from Qurbaani (1980) and my father asking me to stop singing the `inane' song, to which my grandfather who was in the same room reminded him how he (my father) came home singing equally stupid songs. And today, as a lyricist I keep getting asked the common question about the `deterioration' of words in our film songs. These incidents often make me wonder, what it is about popular culture that makes the previous generation feel that it's been `diluted'. Why do they always lament the present day art forms and accuse it of `dilution'?

All things evolve, change and amalgamate in accordance with what is happening in their environment. That's the law of nature. No art form exists independently and is a direct reflection of the society it is created in. As our world turns into a global village, languages will seep into one another, borrow and lend words, ideas and phrases to create a homogenized lexicon. If we hear the average language spoken around us, it is no longer the one that existed two decades ago. The advent of Internet changed the way we are inspired and now provides ideas across the globe at our fingertips. Isn't all of this bound to impact the way we think, write or create?

"What is passed of, today is too pedestrian and cannot be called art!" some purists may fume. But what exactly is `art'? To me art is man's way of freezing moments that impact him, for posterity. And for this purpose he or she uses forms such as painting, singing or poetry. Since the idea is also to share the thought with others it will have to reflect a language that is understood by many. Of course I don't endorse all the lyrics in every song released but I don't think it's fair to judge it either. We all know that anything that has meaning and depth will survive the test of time and will transcend from popular culture into the `classic' list while the rest will just serve their purpose as entertainers. Just as not every song from the `60s is a classic, not every song from the `90s and 2000s is inane!