”Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata” and other songs from Naatak’s Toba Tek Singh - The Musical

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"At the stroke of the midnight hour" on 15th August 1947, British India was divided into two independent and self-governing countries of India and Pakistan. As the two countries awoke to "life and freedom" nearly 15 million people found themselves displaced as the states of Punjab and Bengal were partitioned strictly on the basis of religion. Among the many stories written on the partition, like "Amritsar Aa Gaya Hai" featured in Episode 23, Saadat Hasan Manto's Toba Tek Singh is considered one of the most poignant. Naatak staged its musical based on this story in 2017. In this episode we present songs from this musical.

The songs open "Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata"a five-stanza hymn in Bengali, composed and scored by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore in 1911. The National Anthem of India has been adapted from the first stanza of this hymn.

The track "Joint Anthems" while situational - it appears in the musical when the inhabitants of the mental hospital, the subject of the story, are indoctrinated into their respective countries - presents a unique never before heard version of the anthems sung together.

The songs also feature "Taraana-e-Pakistan", the national anthem of Pakistan, "Aadha hi chahiye" (We want only half) a song about the partition and many others.
Music Director: Nachiketa Yakkundi, RSV School of Music
Vocalists: Nachiketa Yakkundi, Sharvari Dixit, Anitha Dixit, Anindita Mukherjee, Amit Shenoy
Tabla: Ashish Tare and Ajay Sundar Raj
Harmonium: Himanshu Koshe
Dholak: Kashyap Parab

Written and Directed by Sujit Saraf

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