The Meaning of Rangeela Re

Uniqueness. Outer and inner.

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

This song is the opening scene of the 1995 hit film Rangeela (Colorful). It features its lead, Urmila Matondkar, in an iconic dance sequence. You can watch this song sung by Asha Bhonsle and written by Mehboob here and the full movie with subtitles here. A link to the lyrics of the song and (an admittedly rough) translation is here.

This song explores the idea of “uniqueness” on various levels. “Ho ja rangeela re” is an exhortation to become colorful and could be read as boldly expressing our true colors.

On the surface level, it is about the idea of uniqueness as “significance.” It’s about what sets us apart and makes us significant in the eyes of the world. The song makes reference to this on the level of material achievement, fame, recognition and interpersonal contribution. “Bade bade naam mein apna bhi naam-o-nishaan toh ho.” (May we leave a mark among the great names of the world, may our name be among them). Urmila plays a backup dancer who wants to make it as an actress. There’s a great scene where she and her co-dancers are bemoaning the antics of the lead actress’s diva mom on set. Urmila’s objection is not just that she came to the shoot but may not get paid because of the diva mom’s shutting down production. Urmila says “we don’t just come to set for that, we want to learn acting and dance too. We want to become somebody.”

It’s an incredible scene, really. Urmila’s entire character is bursting with vitality. She wants to “become somebody.” She wants to express herself. She wants significance. She’s earnest. She’s eager. She is delighted in the journey of it all. She’s oozing sensuality, aliveness, joy. There’s not a spot of cynicism in her soul. She’s both fully sensual and fully innocent at the same time, a synthesis that seems hard to achieve by thinking about it, but also seems the most obvious and natural way to live.

Now this idea of uniqueness still involves the surface level significance of the ego. It is to be “special” in the eyes of the world. It is technically competitive. It involves being seen by others. Even in this though, Urmila’s interpretation and Rangeela’s interpretation is a deeply innocent one, less about being seen by others even and more about expressing how one already feels seen by themselves.

However the songs goes on and the final verse really gets into laying out a type of “universal uniqueness” i.e. a type of uniqueness that is available to everyone and fundamentally non-competitive in its conception.

She says people are “looking for their destiny” by neurotic rumination (maathe pe - in their “foreheads”), by fortune telling and astrology (haathon mein - “in their hands”), and by flights of fancy (chand ya taaron mein - in the “moon or the stars”), instead of looking “within themselves” (khud mein). Khud is technically the “self” but it is distinct from the obsessive neurotic mind referenced earlier. Based on Persian poetry where “khod” is used fairly often for the Self, the word “heart” wouldn’t be far off from how to think about it.

So on this level, Urmila is singing about our looking for our destinies out in the world. We are in thrall of the maya of this world and are constantly trying to figure out what sets us apart, what makes us important, what makes us significant, what makes us useful, what will make us rich, what will get us rewarded with money and fame and attention and admiration. She says we are in the world, but we don’t know the art of living in it. It is the first axiom put forth by all religious and spiritual traditions. This is the fall of man from the kingdom of heaven, it is the avatara of the atma into samsara. This is the primary reason religion exists. This is the primordial quest that represents the thrust of all spiritual seeking. Mehboob is saying, through Urmila’s delightful frolicking on the top of a moving car, that we live in the world, but we don’t know how.

So on this level, she talks about a uniqueness that is not just on the surface level - what sets us apart in the world. The radical assertion here is that we must look inside first and know our uniqueness, the way in which we already are our unrepeatable selves. The outside world, the seeking of “kismat” is misguided without first “knowing oneself.” And how does one know oneself? This is left unsaid except by every religion, philosophy and spiritual tradition in the world. But the song gives us a starting point, a hint that we start by looking inward and trusting ourselves. “Khud pe bhi humko yaqeen ho” - may we trust ourselves. And ultimately as we go forth, the song says as long as we understand ourselves, the path of life gets easier, lighter, smoother. Life flows. And the world becomes ours (dono haathon mein jahaan ho).

What a way to live! Exhilarated, fulfilled, driven by our grasp of who we really are and an inner dance with ourselves. A way of embodying the vitality that it is to be a human being in this world. On the one hand it feels unfair that most people who listen to Rangeela Re will never pay attention to all that it is saying here because of its catchiness and performance. On the other hand, it is a fitting miracle, that some of the greatest spiritual truths can be innocuously encapsulated as a sacred secret at the heart of one of the most delightful songs to emerge out of Bollywood in the last several decades. It is even more fitting that the expression of this truth is not in hoary proclamation or analytical formalisms but in the simple, embodied, sensuous joy of dance that is this song.