3rd Anniversary Quiz Answers

Thank you dear friends, readers, participants and lovers of the quiz and the blog!
Thank you for the overwhelming response! It was also nice to see you, Lomo and Andi, who put their annual appearance at the birthday celebrations. Good to know, that you are there somewhere in the background. Maybe this is also a good opportunity to thank all the dear readers, who read the posts but can’t respond. THANK YOU everybody for all the support, love and affection you shower on me and the blog.

It was great fun for me to put the quiz together, but what was difficult, was to give points. In fact most of the participants gave all the answers right. There were only small technical mistakes, like forgetting to name a singer or the film name explicitly. So the points scored show rather my stringency, or shall we say tight-fistedness in giving points, rather than the participants’ knowledge of the songs.

Nobody got the answer to the 20 points question. What’s more, some also attempted to solve it. In fact, I would have been really surprised if anybody had got it right. Who would keep the statistics of this blog? 🙂
Maybe I should have framed the question properly. My mistake!

Sunehriyaadein had the best go at that question and her answer had me in splits for hours. With her kind permission I’m sharing it here.

 

Arunkumar Deshmukh’s 10 favourite cycle songs

Arunji has been a loyal follower of this blog and has always been very much encouraging. With this post he makes his debut here on this blog in the role of an author. It is an honour for me that he agreed to do this post. His personal reminiscences makes this post more dear to me. Now, without much ado I give the microphone to him.

It is said, that Indian Films represent the life in India. There is, however, a section of people who believe that the society emulates what is shown in films. So, what is the truth?

When the Talkie came to India and films were made, only one thought was there in the minds of the producers and that was to make films based on Mythological and Historical stories.
This went on for first 5-6 years, but then film makers realised that people will like their films if they could relate their lives with it. So, films based on stories with village background, the caste system, dowry, the moneylender and the farmers were made. These became popular. The urban and the city viewer who was educated were looking for something different. Thus, films were made on love stories set in cities and bigger towns.

Those days middle class was growing in India by leaps and bounds and these were the people, who could spend the money. Now these were the people the films were aimed at.
In the 40s and 50s, the most common transportation vehicle was CYCLE. Almost everybody knew how to ride a cycle. Few people had cars and motorcycles had not yet become popular. Scooters were yet unknown.

I remember, I got my first Cycle when I was in school. My school was 3-4 miles far and I used the cycle to go to school in the morning and to go to friends in the evening. There were many cycles on the road and there was a Traffic rule that every cycle must have a Lamp on the Cycle’s handle as a caution to other vehicles. These lamps were kerosene and Cotton-batti lamps in the night. Sometimes, the lamps got extinguished due to wind. Unaware of this, the police used to catch us. On hearing our plea about the lamp, wind etc, the police would touch the glass of the lamp. if it was still warm, we were let out with a warning only. This was the life in late 40s and early 50s, when I was in Hyderabad State.

It was natural that now cycles too should feature in films. Imaginative Directors used cycles for the heroes when they chased the heroines and for the heroines when they went on a picnic with sahelis. In many films, the village affluents would be shown as cycle owners and the city people using it for moving about.

Up to the 70s, cycles were part of many films. Slowly, cycles were replaced by scooters, Mopeds and motor cycles in films and by 80s, it was only cars and fancy Mobikes for the heroes. Poor cycles were reduced to be shown, only used by the doodhwalla bhaiyyas (milk-men).