Walking to the United Nations complex this week is like sauntering through the Disney of global diplomacy. Cadences of global languages at once clash with and snuggle into one another within a two-mile radius of the U.N. building.
Although the predominant influence is English, one does hear a great deal of French and Spanish. On closer attention you hear Mandarin and Arabic. Lower down is the auditory jumble, although I was very pleasantly surprised to hear one of my favorite ways to say hello— the musical “Habari Gani?” (How are you or what’s the news?) in Swahili. That was followed by an equally rhythmic “Mazuri Sana.” (Very well/fine).
I think the U.N. Secretary-General should consider opening the General Assembly with this charmer from the 1966 film “Yeh raat Fir Na Ayegi’ composed by the redoubtable O P Nayyar, sung by Asha Bhosle and Minu Purushottam and written by S H Bihari.
What is lovely about this song is that the greeting ‘Habari Gani” and its response “Mazuri Sana” replace the original Hindi lyrics so perfectly. Let the performers from the stage ask to the audience full of global heads of states “Habari Gani?” the same way the song says “Huzoor-e-wala” and the audience can reply in unison “Mazuri Sana.” What better way to kick off a fractious General Assembly?
