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.

 

blind women songs

My ten favourite blind women songs

I got the idea for this post when I read Yves’ review of the Sparsh [1980]. Blind people abound in Hindi cinema mostly as some blind chachas (uncles) in slums or are poor sisters or mothers, for whose eye-operation the hero commits some crime. Then there are the female leads, who are blind, where the story follows one way or the other the plot of Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights. Of course there are stories, where the story follows a different path altogether. All the stories have one thing in common that mostly the curing of the blindness plays a central role in the story. Exceptions as usual confirm the rule.

In my post Mala Sinha song list, while commenting the song from Patanga. I wrote that the species of blind heroines became rare in the 80s. I didn’t know that they had become so abundant in the last decade. My favourites though, as you would guess, are not from the last decade but earlier. Well, here they are! Enjoy!

 

Happy Birthday Nanda!

My ten favourite Nanda songs

It is not only Nanda, who has birthday today (Jan. 8) but also fellow-blogger Madhu-Dustedoff. Happy Birthday to you as well, Madhu! Many of the films mentioned here in this post (and others) are linked to Madhu’s excellent reviews on her blog. Incidentally, Nanda is also one of Madhu’s favourite actresses, so it fits in quite well.

Nanda had a sweetness about her, which one hardly sees nowadays. She had something about her, which made men and women feel all protective about her. She was the girl-next-door of the 60s. Even the glamour of the later 60s didn’t affect this image. Unfortunately, such were also the roles, which came her way. Ittefaq changed it, but till then a new crop of actresses had arrived. All the same, just like she helped Shashi Kapoor’s career start, she helped through out her career other leading actors like Sanjeev Kumar, Sanjay Khan and Deb Mukherjee.

Now she lives away from the glamour of the Hindi film industry and still looking good. The last I heard of her was in August in Times of India gossip columns, where it was mentioned that she was a generous tip-giver. That is nice to hear, that she doesn’t live secluded somewhere unattended, but living and enjoying life. May she celebrate more such merry birthday celebrations!
The rules for choosing the songs were
a. solo songs
b. one song per film
and blah, blah, blah! 😉

 

Mr. & Mrs. 55 (1955)

It is so hard to decide if I like this film or not. The story is anti-feminist and traditionalist. But at the same time the director/story-writer’s take on “upper-class liberal reformers who seek to impose their ideology on society at large”, as Philip Lutgendorf  puts it, in the form of Abrar Alvi’s witty dialogues are simply great. It is simply difficult to have a single opinion on this movie. Dustedoff  has also provided a nice review of this movie on her blog.