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.

 

Look, who’s here!

My ten favourite kaun aayaa songs

I’m sure it must have happened to you as well. Sometimes you meet a person and the mere presence of this man/woman makes you feel good. You need not talk about overtly intelligent topics. You might not laugh heartily, but just being in the presence of that particular person makes you feel wonderful. It makes you feel as if you have experienced inner growth. Few days back, I again had such an experience, where I was left wondering: What was that? I was so elated, that I posted the song yeh aaj meri zindagi me kaun aa gaya on a forum I frequent, which gave me the idea for this post.

Unlike my last experience, the encounters making the characters of Hindi film exclaim “yeh kaun aayaa” are mostly of romantic nature. Some feel that spring has come, while others feel the moon has risen. Everybody has his or her own of exclaiming and rejoicing in this emotion. I personally think that a good song can convey more than the words themselves. So, enjoy my ten favourite kaun aayaa songs and tell me about yours.

 

This Singing Business

• Seeing no new post from me on my blog, my readers got concerned about it. Pacifist just couldn’t tolerate this utter neglect and came again to my rescue. thank you, dear Pacifist. This is her third post on this blog and with it she is showing her business acumen. Bravo, Pacifist! More power to the small businessmen and -women!

  Pacifist’s choice of 10 songs of small business

Thank you Harvey. I’m quite pleased at having this opportunity of posting 10 songs on a subject I have often thought about. People selling stuff, doing business. It was a wonderful time of economic opportunity, letting the small fish survive. Today they have been eaten up by the big fish. I don’t mean to imply that they all sold stuff in the filmi manner, but sell, they did.
So in memory of those small dying/dead businesses, here are 10 such songs.

I do have more than 10 songs with a different product being sung and sold, but I’m such a sucker for melody, tunes which are pleasing to my ears that I left some and took some even though the product got repeated. Boot Polish was one such, Tel Maalish another 🙂

 

Panzar

My ten favourite songs from Gulzar-Pancham collaboration

Though the pair R.D. Burman – Gulzar is very popular and famous. They might have done at the most a one and half dozen films together as composer-lyricist team. Nevertheless their partnership was very fruitful. Pancham admitted that working with Gulzar brought the best in him though at times the work together was very complicated.
Preparing this list was a pleasant though a very weary process for me. I have lost count how many times I included and rejected the songs. None of the songs here were in the original list except for dhanno ki aankhon me.
So to make matters at least a little bit easy for me, I set up the following rules:
1. The song must be from a film.
2. The film must have had a proper release in the cinema halls.

 

Anokhe Bhol!

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.

 

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).

 

Look! It Is A Bungalow!

My ten favourite bangala (bungalow) songs

A dream of one’s own house/cottage in the suburbs has been and is the motor of many middle class households all over the world. Maybe it is the security it offers or the need for privacy, to have a garden and the cosy life which one associates with it and thus to achieve ultimate goal of every human being to be happy. If one really ‘achieves’ all these things with the acquisition of this cosy house is secondary. I think the dream in itself the best part of it.

Like many of the dreams and aspirations of the common man (whoever or whatever he/she is), even this aspect has not been neglected in the Hindi film songs. Here are my favourites!

 

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.

 

Happy Birthday Nutan!

My ten favourite Nutan romantic-duets

Comes 4^th of June and it is Nutan’s birth anniversary again and also that of bollwood deewana and Richard’S sister. It is turning fast into a tradition to celebrate Nutan’s birthday on this blog. This is her third birthday here. Last year I listed my favourite solo songs of hers. This year it is the turn of duets.

As usual I have taken only one duet per film. What really surprised me was that in her three most famous films, Seema [1955], Sujata [1959] and Bandini [1963], she doesn’t have any duets with her love interest! They are also missing in her Nagina [1951] and Hum Log [1951].
Well, here are my favourite Nutan duets. Enjoy them!

 

Pacifist’s ten favourite mad-cap songs

You all know Pacifist. She has been a loyal follower of this blog since its conception. While corresponding with her for the quiz, I happened to ask her if she would like to do a guest post for the blog and she kindly agreed. The topic of her debut post must reflect her opinion about me. If that is true, I won’t defend myself, because it is true. Thank you, dear Pacifist for this post. I am sure the readers will enjoy this post as much as we did.

Thank you Harvey for inviting me to write a guest post on your popular blog. I feel quite overwhelmed. Being no writer the safest topic that came to mind was the 10 favourites 
Not that I had to think about the subject, one’s always toying with this or that idea. I had a few in mind already. So here are my 10 favourite funny songs.
The most important point (LOL, point reminds me of Kelerk) was not to fall into the trap of – drunken songs, comedian songs, men dressed as women songs, though I have one of each, but will explain why they were chosen in spite of it.

I have selected songs which made me go *hehe* or *snort* or outright *guffaw* at some particular moment in the song. *just smiles*were excluded. Some have funny lyrics or are slapstick , but what is common is they are all madcap songs – some more than the other.
*No just smiles* leads me to the next point or even a ‘Disclaimer’.
Sense of humour varies from person to person so these songs may not raise even a smile on the faces of some listening to them, who might wonder what was wrong with me 