Arunji has been a loyal follower of this blog and has always been very much encouraging with his comments and suggestions. This is his second post 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 as usual makes this post more dear to me. Thank you Arunji!
Arunkumar Deshmukh’s ten favourite songs with “interesting” lyrics
Words like ‘Dumbak dumba’ or ‘chidi chapata ‘ or Ding dong etc always attracted me in Hindi songs. In the early 50s I was an avid listener of Radio Ceylon. They used to have a weekly programme of ‘ Anokhe Bol ‘ for 15 minutes. I waited thru the week for this programme. it was my favourite programme. Songs played in this programme had odd words in it and those songs haunted me for the entire week till the next programme, when next set of songs took over.
From my early childhood i was very fond of seeing films and enjoying its music. We were in Hyderabad State. This being a Muslim ruled state; there were many peculiar things in those days. For example, in most Theatres, there used to be a class called “ZANANA “(Ladies Only). This was like a balcony. It was meant for those Burkha-clad Muslim women who wanted to see the films, without being seen by the men folk. A huge cloth curtain was dividing the Zanana Class and the rest of the Theatre. A She-male or a He-female (I don’t know which! ) was appointed with the exclusive duty of removing the huge curtain once the film started and closing it before or as soon as the Interval or the end of the film, so that the women could see the film and still not get exposed to the prying eyes of the men folk in the theatre.
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Tags: Aawaz, Ajit, Aka baaka chidi chadaka, Asha, Asha Bhosale, Ashok Kumar, Aye Ichak Beechak Churr, Aziz Kashmiri, Bawre Nain, Bhagwan Sinha, Bimal Roy, C Ramchandra, chhupa chhupi agad bagad, Cuckoo, Denewala Jab bhi deta, dev anand, Dhitang Dhitang bole, Dholak, Do Bigha Zameen, Eena Meena Dika, Ek Do Teen, Ek Thi Ladki, Funtoosh, geeta bali, Gupchup gupchup pyar Karen, Halla Gulla Layilla, Haryala sawan aaya, Hemant Kumar, Hyderabad State, k. n. singh, Kidar Sharma, Kishore Kumar, Lara Lappa, Lata, Majnu, Manna Dey, Meena Kumari, Meena Shorey, Mehmood, Nimmi, Prem Dhawan, Rafi, Raj Kapoor, Rajendra Krishna, Roshan, S. D. Burman, Sahir Ludhiyanvi, Sailesh Mukherjee, Salil Chaudhary, Sandhya Mukherjee, Satish Batra, Savera, Sazaa, Shailendra, Shamshad Begum, Sheila Ramani, Shyamsunder, Vinod, Vyjayantimala, Zanana Class
The first time I saw Jaal was in the mid-80s during the assembly polls for Maharashtra. It didn’t leave much of an impression on me. And after the somewhat disappointment with Baaz, I wasn’t expecting much from Jaal. The review on Upperstall gave me a little hope. But, wow, wow, was quite impressed with the end result. Maybe it is just good not to have any expectations (Expectations reduce Joy!).
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Tags: Christians, dev anand, fishermen, geeta bali, Goa, guru dutt, Jaal, Jaal film review, k. n. singh, Poornima, Ram Singh, S. D. Burman, smuggling, V. K. Murthy
I was looking forward to this movie for lots of reasons. It is Guru Dutt’s first movie as a full-fledged actor. Geeta Bali. Having read the review on Upperstall by The Third Man, I thought Guru Dutt and a swashbuckler movie combo had to bring forward a super hybrid danshoo film. Furthermore, although the film has a patriotic theme, I can’t recollect that the movie was ever screened on DD.
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Tags: baaz, baaz film review, geeta bali, guru dutt, hawk, hindi film, k. n. singh, kuldip kaur, malabar, portuguese, ruby myers
It all started with Dev Anand-K. N. Singh pairing. They starred together in so many films like Baazi, Funtoosh, C.I.D and quite often in similar roles, that I thought I’ve to get this straight and watch all the movies with them. Thus to start right at the beginning I watched Baazi!
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Tags: baazi, baazi film review, dev anand, geeta bali, guru dutt, k. n. singh, kalpana kartik, krishan dewan, murthy, navketan, raj khosla, zohra sehgal
From my early childhood i was very fond of seeing films and enjoying its music. We were in Hyderabad State. This being a Muslim ruled state; there were many peculiar things in those days. For example, in most Theatres, there used to be a class called “ZANANA “(Ladies Only). This was like a balcony. It was meant for those Burkha-clad Muslim women who wanted to see the films, without being seen by the men folk. A huge cloth curtain was dividing the Zanana Class and the rest of the Theatre. A She-male or a He-female (I don’t know which! ) was appointed with the exclusive duty of removing the huge curtain once the film started and closing it before or as soon as the Interval or the end of the film, so that the women could see the film and still not get exposed to the prying eyes of the men folk in the theatre.
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