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News |  27 Jan 2010 15:24 |  By chiragsutar

'Phir Mile Sur' fails to strike a chord

MUMBAI: Looks like the new version of the iconic anthem Mile Sur Mera Tumhara has failed to strike a chord with the Aam Junta. This time, with the 'sur' completely out of tune, the new song has revoked reactions from various quarters through social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. Apparently, majority of the reactions on the web are angst ridden.    

For those who don't know, the new song, 'Phir Mile Sur' is made by the same team of Aarti and Kailash Surendranath (directors) who had also worked on the 1988 version 'Mile Sur Mera Tumhara' that featured greats like Pt. Bhimsen Joshi among many others. The music department of the new version was handled by Louis Banks - the jazz pianist who had also worked on the original song. While the old song was produced by DD, the new version is produced by Zoom one of popular channel that airs Bollywood content. But what could have possibly gone wrong?

Apparently, the song features too many Bollywood stars - and many on the various social networking sites questioned if newbies like Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor even deserved to be in the iconic song. A sarcastic comment read, "Some sense prevailed with Phir Mile Sur makers that they didn't include Katrina Kaif, a foreigner. However one was surprised not to see her." 

Twitter users wrote, "Keeping up with the current Btown trend, Phir Mile Sur recruits celeb kids. Without Sachin, APJ Abdul Kalam, Leander Paes, Vishwanathan Anand, Sania Mirza, Ratan Tata, Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara is incomplete.... And Thumbs down for the Phir Mile Sur team – ethically they should re-do the whole thing with an apology."

The reasons for panning the new version are many - but one of the main reasons remained 'bollywoodising the iconic anthem' so much that the message of national integration just doesn't come through. While some felt Phir mile sur was still decent – others felt comparing it with the older version was unfair. Phir mile sur is not that bad, I feel its natural to like the old one more because its one among our childhood memories,... a Twitter user wrote. However, there was one common sentiment coming from all the quarters, and that was â€?bollywood hogged all the limelight'  

A Facebook user expressed his opinion on this point, Only actors are not just the torch bearers of Modern India. There are so many people who should have been featured have been ignored – Not even a patch on the earlier one, this video was really such a let down." 

Ironically, people and politics were ignored, and sportsmen were added as an afterthought. The feedback on the networking sites also suggested that popular personalities from the world of sports like hockey and cricket were missing. Though the new video is more than 10 minute long, it wasn't half as good as the original (which was only around six minutes). Besides this, social networking users have pointed out that there were many glitches even on the technical front - bad audio-video syncing and editing being one of them 

Unlike the old video, which was a treat from start to end, unfortunately, the new version has its highlights only in bits. Among the well-caputred personalities are tabla prodigy Ustad Zakir Hussain, percussionists Sivamani, Dr. Yesudas and punjabi singer -actor Gurdas Mann. Among the actors,  Salman Khan's sign language moment with the deaf and dumb children was quite applauded, but Shah Rukh Khan was panned for his trademark 'with arms wide open stunt' while Aamir Khan's 'Khandala preposition' didn't go down too well. The inclusion of armed forces towards the end was a good change, but that doesn't really change the opinion of the majority of the web users 

With the web users (read youths) pointing out finer nuances and pro's and con's of the new song, the producers should probably look out for suggestions from the web world the next time they plan to do re-do something as iconic as this? Maybe, Yes.

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