Pacifist’s Ek Gaon Ki Kahani (A village story)

Dear Pacifist has agreed once again to honour this blog with a post of hers. Thank you, Pacifist!

10 beautiful village songs

Poos ki sard raat thi…, chilchilati dhoop mein nange paon…, (it was a freezing winter night…, bare feet in the blistering heat…,) are phrases I associate Munshi Premchand with. Though we used the term chilchilati dhoop , poos ki raat was new. Village life in the north, as depicted in his novels, was very harsh as these two terms indicate. My interest in his novels branched into reading some of his short stories too, so when Harvey asked me to write a post I thought of Munshi Premchand and villages.

Now we all know that the village life as depicted in our films is nothing like the real thing, but some of the older films did manage to get some sort of realism, simplicity, though in some cases burdensome (Mother India). Whatever the case they always give me a feeling of being purified. Blame it on the pollution inducing contemporary films. Dilip Kumar, Balraj Sahni, even Raj Kumar made convincing villagers. The heroines all looked good enough. Not only that, but the folksy songs were great.

 

Ghunghat Ke Pat Khol… (Raise the veil and behold…)

My ten favourite hindi film bhajans

Hindi film bhajans are not my cup of tea. They are mostly preachy and weepy, and in worst cases, also very demanding. God give me this and god give me that, as if God is a servant to be ordered around. 😉 That is why I thought this will be any easy list to make. In fact dustedoff and I spoke about it some 2-3 years back.
While collecting songs for this list I did find some soulful music going with some good bhajans with content.
So as to boil the list down to 10, I had to make some rules. Well, in fact only one rule that the songs/bhajans must be sung by person(s) sitting/standing in front of an idol of a god or goddess (or something equivalent). Songs of wandering monks, ascetics or mendicants will constitute a separate list.

So, here is my list of 10 favourite Hindi film bhajans

 

Happy Birthday, Nutan!

My 10 favourite Nutan songs

Yesterday, June 4, was Nutan’s 75th birth anniversary. Nutan was a great actress and she was good-looking too. She had a career of 20 years in leading romantic roles and even in her third decade of her career, she got plump roles, which is quite uncommon in the Hindi film industry. In the 80s eventually she started taking up mother roles for leading heroes. And she did what in the 50s it seems was quite common, she worked even after getting married and childbirth.

Fellow-blogger and a big fan of Nutan, Yves, has put up a monument for Nutan. So if anybody wants to know more about her, just visit this. Bollywood deewana, who also shares his birthday with Nutan (Happy Birthday, Bolly Deewana!) has put up scans of an article with interviews of her relatives.

Nutan’s films were mostly with very good music, which makes choosing 10 songs a bit difficult. That is why the list is of solo songs only. Nutan herself had a beautiful singing voice though she never put it into practice for the films.

So here are my 10 favourite solo songs featuring Nutan (in chronological order).