NEPALI SONG LYRIC SERIAL NUMBER
In the manually-entered records of Radio Nepal, the track’s serial number is 26 and the cartridge/tape number is 846.
The exact date of its recording is not available, although it is widely believed that the year was 1969. “It.exists in all parts of the world in some form or the other… Susanna has a Resham Firiri in it.” Origin storyįor a song so famous, its origins are rather fuzzy. “It has a universal tune,” said Mukhaerjee of the Kolkata band Fiddler’s Green. In 2018, Germany’s Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra gave the number a classical touch with a performance by its 47-member ensemble. From Japanese singer Aoi Sano’s lively rendition to South Korean musician Narsha’s soulful fusion to India’s Arko Mukhaerjee reggae-style version, Resham Firiri has travelled from culture to culture with consummate ease. Resham Firiri’s popularity extends not only in Nepal, India (mainly Darjeeling, Sikkim and Assam) and Bhutan, where the language is spoken by millions, but throughout the globe. But that hasn’t stopped it from becoming the most famous Nepali song. It resists all rational interpretations and confounds any consensus on its meaning. Written in nonsense verse, Resham Firiri is an incongruous mesh of absurd expressions, non-sequiturs and incoherent images.
What follows in the story mirrors the real-life experiences of non-Nepali speakers when they ask someone to translate the lyrics of Resham Firiri: a mix of laughter, disbelief and disappointment.
NEPALI SONG LYRIC DRIVER
Even when travelling in the “cushioned unity” of an over-crowded shared taxi, he asks the driver to play the song and requests his fellow passengers to translate it.
Much like D’Cunha, one of Shrestha’s characters, Straun, a European tourist travelling from Nepal to Sikkim, is captivated by Resham Firiri and wants to hear it in “all the recesses of its founding environment”. “I knew the lyrics but had never questioned it.” His attempts at translating it for D’Cunha inspired an important passage in his novella Open and Shut Case. “It was an ingrained melody,” he said in an email interview. The request stumped Shrestha, although the Sydney-based author had grown up with the Nepali folk number. So enamoured was D’Cunha that during a jeep ride through the mountains, she asked her friend and host Chetan Raj Shrestha to translate it for her. “It got stuck in my head, and I wanted to hear it everywhere.” “It was such a catchy tune, and it seemed to be omnipresent,” recalled D’Cunha, a Mumbai-based film programmer. The “immensely hummable” tune put her in “a skippy, joyous mood” every time, even though all she could catch was the refrain Resham Firiri, Resham Firiri. When Deepti D’Cunha was on her maiden visit to Sikkim in 2011, she found herself being chased by a song everywhere.
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