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.

 

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.

 

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!!

 

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).

 

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!

 

Drunken Quiz and Clever Answers

First of all I would like to thank everybody for their good wishes to my/our blog on its birthday.
The quiz got a nice response. Shashi and Samir sent me the answers the very next day. They had some sophisticated techniques to get to the answers. Samir in his feedback to the quiz elaborated on it. Samir, would you be so kind to post it also in the comments section below? It is very enlightening!
Lalitha was very industrious and worked till the last hour and sent me her answer four hours back.
Totally eight persons sent me their answers and it was fun going through them. Lomo and Andi were new for me. They told me that they usually read my posts and the comments by the readers and that they enjoy it a lot and at times more the comments than the post itself (so says Andi).
Here are the scores
Archana = 128,5
Pacifist = 126
Shashi = 124
Samir = 106
Lomo = 100
Lalitha = 93
Andi = 93
Anu = 55
Congratulations Archana for scoring the most points and thanks to all participants! The email communication with you regarding the hints and clues was a source of great pleasure for me!

Well, here are the answers!

 

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

 

Aanewaalaa phal, jaanewaalaa hai… (The fruits, they come and go… )

Fruits! Delicious, luscious fruits! One would say everybody loves fruits. They are nutritious, taste good and are attractive for the eye. Well, they have to be, after all the plant wants it’s children to travel far and wide. Why then this step-motherly treatment to these fabulous creations of nature in Hindi film songs?

Fruits were and are associated with lust. Offering of the apple by Eve to Adam is often cited as an example of this partnership in sin. The Indian censors were very strict about this and only let small and insignificant fruits be sung about in the film songs. As you must have noticed in my post Fruit cake, even if they allowed some fruits to slip through, they saw to it that they had the ugliest melodies possible or it is was done indirectly like ambua ki dali (a mango branch) or beri ke neeche (below the jujube tree). Not the fruits themselves but the tree was in the focal point. Lots of lyricists still wrote lyrics mentioning the fruits of their taste or which suited the scene and occasion. All these attempts were brutally suppressed and the words changed beyond recognition.

During my stay in India in July, in London in August and the last week’s stay in the Black Forest, I could meet witnesses and activists in exile. They told me stories of suppression and oppression of artists and poets of the Bombay film industry by the censors. They told me stories of how works of art where mutilated on the grounds of decency and morality.

I can only write about ten such songs. After reading this article, you, my dear intelligent readers will surely see through many other songs, which we sing every day and have been racking our brains why a certain word doesn’t quite fit in.