Belated Birthday Wishes to Dharmendra

My ten favourite Dharmendra songs

Dharmendra had his birthday on 8^th 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…

 

R.I.P Dev Anand

My ten favourite Dev jodis

I got the news at fellow blogger Madhu’s site about Dev Anand’s sad demise. I just couldn’t believe it. The tag of ever-green hero suited him so well, that one thought that he was immortal. Just two days back, I wrote at Greta’s blog that Dev’s films from the 50s and 60s hardly let one down.
Dev was a good actor dominating the film industry for three decades. He had his own school of natural acting which endeared him to the masses as well as the critics. He remained for most part true to his genre of a slick urban hero, but he was versatile as far as the different fields of film production was concerned. He was producer, director, actor and once even a singer!

Dev, I think, must have had the most number of female co-stars in the history of the Hindi film industry. He acted with many new faces but also with established actresses. And he looked good with everyone of them. Here is to Dev and his female co-stars

 

Happy Birthday Mala Sinha!

My ten favourite Mala Sinha songs

Mala Sinha is an actress, who shaped Hindi film history in the late 50s and 60s with her portrayal of diverse roles, which ranged from a princess to a fisher-woman, from a spy to a blind flower-girl. In my childhood, I saw  her a lot in the Chitrahaar and Chhaaya Geet programmes and also in the Sunday evening film. We children, used to make fun of her quite often, but were also in awe of her all the same. Even now, although she makes me laugh unwittingly at times, I do have a soft corner for her and a big one at that!

Choosing songs from her films was not easy. That is why put in some rules
a) One song pro film
b) Only solo songs
c) Songs to which she lip syncs, i.e. no background songs

Madhu, here is to your Mala Sinha, tujhko rakhe ram, tujhko allah rakhe

 

Hello… !

My Ten Favourite Telephone Songs From Hindi Films

The research for the fruit expose has been needing me to call lots of people on phone. This lead me to the idea of making a telephone song list. Okay, I didn’t come up with it in the last few days, but have been collecting them over the last few months. And the fact that, that I love Jalte hai jiske liye just drove me to make this list. Not all of the songs are sung completely on the telephone. Some just start with it and end up with the characters cavorting around the trees, but telephone songs they are.

So, give me a ring!

 

Chatri na khol…

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’?

 

Chandaa re…

My ten favourite moon songs

Tomorrow is full moon and we all know what it does … ahem…, to the lovers. No wonder that the moon features in so many songs. It also has different roles in it. The moon is at times the messenger, at times it is an intruder, sometimes it is a catalyst or also be addressed as the beloved him or herself. It can be different things, but one thing is for sure, it doesn’t leave the lovers cold and nor it does me.
The moon songs genre belongs to one of my favourites. There are so many songs with chaand in it, that it is really very difficult to choose ten. So I had to use the following criteria:
1. The songs have to blatantly call out to the moon.
2. Not included are comparisons with moon (so, no chaudhvin ka chaand ho),
3. nor indirect allusions to the moon (no o jaanewale chaand…),
4. nor mere confirmation of its presence (no chaand akela jaye sakhi ri),
5. nor be a lullaby (no chandaa o chandaa kisne churayi).

So here are my favourite 10 ‘chaand’ songs (in chronological order) from Hindi cinema.

 

Musings on Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa

The Story

The plot of Pyaasa though unique, lends heavily from two sources. One which is quite evident is Saratchandra Chatterji’s Devdas and the other is the story of Jesus Christ.

 

Pyaasa (1957)

When I first saw Pyaasa, I must have been eleven or twelve years old. Well, in fact, I didn’t get to watch it because 1. I had a exam the next day, 2. I had a splitting headache. The end result was I couldn’t watch the film, except for a few glimpses from behind the curtain, I didn’t learn, my headache didn’t get cured. Huge failure on all fronts! When I was 19 or so it was aired again on DD at midnight or something. This time I could watch it and I was floored!