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.

 

Dancing Grace

Ten of my favourite Waheeda Rehman songs
Waheeda Rehman! Just spelling out that name conjures a vision of great beauty for me. Beauty yes, but not coquette, not of a siren, very down to earth beauty, which radiates warmth. A smile, which brightens up your day. Grace, which mesmerises you. Eyes so expressive, that they could show a whole kaleidoscope of emotions and of a depth that one could lose oneself in it. An ethereal beauty! You would say how do a down-to-earth and ethereal go together. Well, that is what Waheeda Rehman is all about. Bringing together contradictions like truth always is. And truth is beautiful and divine. No wonder Guru Dutt sings and describes her a chaudhvin ka chaand (the full moon) in the film by the same name.

There was and is more to Waheeda than her beauty. A versatile actress, she proved her acting prowess again and again in different films. She showed their highs and lows, their dark and brighter sides, but what she gave them all was a human quality. A vulnerability, which made them connect to you. It might be the street smart hooker of Pyaasa or the career-oriented Rosie of Guide or the repentant Shanta waiting for her husband in Phagun. You could relate to all of them. You might not agree with them, but you could empathise with them.

Choosing ten songs from her films was not easy. Thus I laid some criteria for choosing them.
a. The film must have her in a main role.
b. It must be a solo song
c. Waheeda must be lip-syncing to the song.
Dustedoff and Sunehriyaadein have already published a post of their favourite Waheeda Rehman songs and Anu of her favourite Waheeda roles. This post began as a comment at Sunehriyaadein’s post. Over the years it has changed indeed! Enjoy!

 

The Tragedienne

My ten favourite Meena Kumari songs

Meena Kumari, a face, which launched thousand tragic films. A thousand might be a bit of exaggeration, but she alone on her star-power helped tragic films to great success. In the 50s and even in the frolicking, colourful 60s, people would flock the cinema halls (to different degrees) to see her suffer. She was also an adept comedienne, in which she also excelled and was quite successful as seen in Magroor [1950], Miss Mary [1957], Azaad [1955] and Kohinoor [1960].

Meena Kumari at a certain time in my childhood played a big role in shaping the image of women in my psyche. Exposed to a slew of films, where she played a neglected wife, a suffering daughter-in-law, a sacrificing daughter, a caring sister-in-law, a protective sister or ‘simply’ a tormented woman between two men, she moulded an image of women being forever doomed to suffer at the hands of men in life. It is true that even other leading ladies like Mala Sinha (Anpadh) or Nutan (Khandan, Chhota Bhai) played such roles but it was as if they were impersonating Meena Kumari in these films. Meena Kumari remained always the original and the one to which others had to match to.
The presence of strong, independent and liberal women in my family and surroundings though would rectify the image in my mind; Meena Kumari would nevertheless always remain special.

On 31^st March it was her 41^st death anniversary. To commemorate it here are ten of my favourite songs filmed on her.

 

Inspire!

Arunji, whose anecdotes and memories of the good old times we adore and whose filmi knowledge, we admire, springs in the arena once again to fill up the empty time space here. Thank you Arunji! Without much ado, I pass the mike to him.

Arunkumar Deshmukh’s ten favourite inspired song-pairs

EK DIL DO JAANE- EK TUNE DO GAANE

The other day I was reading a book in my Drawing Room,when I heard my college going grandson telling a small boy,” you don’t know,but in our times,things were not like this…”
I smiled. Every generation thinks that their times were better that the present one.

I wondered whether if I tell today’s children that in my college days,Petrol was costing only  5 Rupees a Gallon (around 3.7 Litres) or that a car driver could be hired on a salary of Rs.150 pm, will they believe it ? We never believed when our elders told us that Gold was bought by them at  10 Rs. a Tola (about 11.4 Gms.),because at the time of my marriage Gold was costing 150 rupees per Tola(about 11.4 gms).Today when Gold has crossed the barrier of rs.30000 for just 10 gms,these stories look like Arabian Night stories,indeed !!

Sometimes I keep thinking if old times were better or the present times are better.I have not been able to come to any conclusion so far.

 

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 🙂

 

Nanda’s Eight Voices

Today, on the occasion of Nanda’s birthday, here is a different kind of post; Nanda and her eight different voices. If you were a leading actress in the 60s and 70s, like Nanda, you could spend your entire career without having had lip-synced to anybody but Lata and Asha’s voice. Since Lata had that tiff with Rafi, it could be possible that Suman Kalyanpur also lent her voice to you in a duet with him. Thus, it is amazing to see that Nanda moved her lips to eight singers in her short career.

Today is also Madhu-Dustedoff’s birthday. So here is to both of your birthdays!!

 

In Remembrance, Nalini Jaywant

My ten favourite Nalini Jaywant solo songs

If I ask my niece who is Nalini Jaywant, she will most probably say that she must be one of my innumerable aunts. In fact, I do have a distant aunt with the name of Nalini. But the actress Nalini Jaywant seems to have faded into oblivion. When one reads discussions on Hindi film actresses of the 50s, her name hardly appears. Maybe the reason is her self-imposed exile, otherwise it is hard to understand, why she should disappear from public memory. In her heydays she was considered the most beautiful actress and as a talented actress by her colleagues.

She started her career in her teenage years, playing sister (the title role) to Sheikh Mukhtar in Mehboob Khan’s Bahen [1941], where she sang all her songs in her own voice.. Her films in the 40s were nothing to write home about, till she made a splash with Anokha Pyar [1948] as the all-sacrificing part of the triangle, showing Dilip Kumar once again between two strong ladies, the other being Nargis. After that there was no looking back for her, acting in hit films like Samadhi, Naubahar, Rahi [1952], Shikast, Munimji, Nastik and Kala Pani. Like many of her contemporaries she couldn’t carry her success streak into the 60s and retired from the silver screen. She appeared only in two films in the 80s Bandish [1980] and Nastik [1983].

More detailed writing on her career can be found at Upperstall and by Shishir Krishna Sharma on his blog. The first and last photo in this post are from his collection. Thank you Shishirji for the loan!
Here are my ten favourite solo songs of this beautiful and talented actress. Enjoy!

 

Mohan ki Asha

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!

 

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).