My 10 favourite Madan Mohan-Asha Bhosle songs
When one thinks of Madan Mohan, one invariably thinks of Lata Mangeshkar. Their cooperation has brought out many a gem, but his partnership with the younger Mangeshkar sister still remains in the shadow of the bigger tree. Here I have listed some of my favourite songs resulting from this collaboration.
I have included only her solo numbers in this list. Enjoy!
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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. Read the rest of this entry »
My ten favourite Dharmendra songs
Dharmendra had his birthday on 8th December, but unfortunately it was shadowed by Dev Anand’s demise. Happy belated Birthday, Dharmendra!
So much has been written about Dharmendra’s good looks. What shall I add to it? When I think of his fine appearance, the song that comes to my mind is:
chaand aahen bharega (the moon will sigh)
phool dil tham lenge (the flowers will clasp their hearts)
husn ki baat chali to (when the talk is of good looks)
sab tera naam lenge (your name will be mentioned)
What I find enchanting about him is his dazzling smile. When he smiles it has an assurance of ‘everything will be fine’ and one just melts away. He was not only good looks; he also made some splendid movies, till he went into the kutte-kaminey mode.
Choosing songs from his films was not easy, since many good songs by Mohd. Rafi have picturised on him. So to make things easier for me I had to put in some rules
a) One song pro film
b) Only solo songs
c) Songs to which he lip syncs, i.e. no background songs,that is why pal pal dil ke paas from Blackmail [1973] is conspicuous by its absence.
After the correction by Samir, I’ll put another clause:
d) Songs, where he is not “in Rakhee’s imagination, or just floating around”, that is why pal pal dil ke paas from Blackmail [1973] is conspicuous by its absence. 😉
Ten favourite Dharmendra songs is not a very original post. Sunehriyaadein and Greta have also done a similar post some time ago. Here is my take on it. So, here we go…
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).
Hidden umbrella passions in ten Hindi film songs
Umbrellophily, a phenomenon not spoken sung about in the Hindi film industry. The author of these lines like many other fans of Hindi film songs was not aware of this shocking fact either. During his search for a list of his 10 favourite umbrella songs (since rain-song lists have been beaten to death), he stumbled over this taboo topic in the Hindi cinema. While he was searching, he could unearth only three songs, which mention an umbrella and two-thirds of them were not even melodious. Why this step-motherly treatment towards this ‘protector against rain’?
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