Hindi film’s Cupid: Poonam Saxena on the bhawara, or bumblebee

Bhanwara Bada Nadan Hai (The Bumblee Bee is Very Innocent) is probably the best-known (and arguably the best) “bhanwara” song in Hindi cinema.

PREMIUM

In this composition from the 1962 film Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, sung by Asha Bhosle with a beautiful and saucy Waheeda Rehman on screen, the bhanwara is a guest of the garden, hovering briefly over a blooming bud before flying away to the next one.

Why was I reminded of the bhanwara all of a sudden? Well, because the bumblebee is facing a hard time around the world. The US Fish and Wildlife Service announced last year that the American bumblebee, whose population had plummeted by about 90% over 20 years, may warrant inclusion under the country’s Endangered Species Act.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Bumblebee Specialist Group, set up to assess the status of species worldwide, has found that distribution is shrinking in India too. The culprits are the tragic but familiar bouquet of urbanisation, land-use changes and deforestation. In this case, added factors include a decline in floral resources (essentially, fewer flowers in the bumblebee’s ecosystems) and threats from pests and pathogens.

When was the last time you encountered a bumblebee? Chances are it was in a song rather than a garden.

In Hindi cinema and poetry, the bumblebee or bhanwara is a symbol of love, but a love that is often fickle. It is irresistibly drawn to the bud in real life; hence the romantic imagery. It is soon sated with nectar and moves on; hence the associated fickleness.

The erotic image of a bee hovering at a bud and then flitting away, appears over and over in our films. The buzzing sound of the bumblebee, made by its vibrating flight muscles, appears more often than we even realise; it is the literal translation of “gunjan” and “gungunana”.

This buzzing of the bhanwara, particularly in springtime, is portrayed as a maddening sound, driving lovers into ecstasies of restless yearning.

There are enough “bhanwara” songs to form a kind of sub-genre of romantic and erotic Hindi-film music, dating all the way back to the 1940s. In the 1948 film Mela, Dilip Kumar (voiced by Mukesh) sings ardently to Nargis (Shamshad Begum): “Main bhanwra tu hai phool / Ye din mat bhool / Jawani laut ke aaye na (I’m a bumblebee, you a flower / Don’t forget these days / Youth, once it leaves, won’t return).”

Mela has a rural setting, so Dilip Kumar and Nargis are on a bullock cart. But in the 1971 Kal Aaj Aur Kal, Randhir Kapoor (voiced by Kishore Kumar) twirls Babita on a dance floor while singing: “Bhanware ki gunjan hai mera dil (My heart is like the buzzing of a bumblebee).”

Another favourite is the 1969 Aradhana number that goes: “Gun guna rahe hain bhanware / Khil rahi hai kali kali (The bumblebees are buzzing and humming / Every bud is in bloom)”, a sentiment that prompts Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore to frolic in a garden. (The song even features a bhanwara, flitting from flower to flower.)

More recently, there was the memorable song Bumbro in Mission Kashmir (2000), a reworking of a Kashmiri composition written in the 1950s by the poet Nadim, for an opera about a young girl from a peasant family. The song tells of the romance between a fickle bumblebee and a narcissus flower. (Bumblebees, incidentally, are found in particularly large numbers in the Lower Himalayas, including in Jammu and Kashmir, and feature prominently in folklore and folk music in the region.)

In a column last year, I’d written about Hindi-film clichés with deep, evocative roots. There is the one where a young man rushes home, saying: “Maa, main pass ho gaya!”, harking back to the days when a graduate degree was a rare thing to be celebrated (no matter what the score).

There’s the eternal image of an aged relative on a cot, coughing; the family alarmed and fast losing hope. This is a flashback to a time when tuberculosis was everywhere and incurable. (Why is a cough so alarming, I would think as a child, before I learnt of the connection.)

Hopefully, the bhanwara will not fade from our landscapes and our gardens, or become a mysterious stranger whose presence must be explained to the young ones.