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.

 

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 

 

Flower Power

Ten of my favourite flower songs

Blame it on dustedoff! Yeah, she asked me to do this post. And since I always do what I am asked to. Here it is.

Flowers and love go together. Flower codes abound as to what flower to send as secret message. In Hindi film songs, the flowers have been mostly used as similies or metaphors for the heroine. Gulabi hooth (rosy lips) being one of the common comparisons.

In my list I have again used some criteria to boil my list down to ten:
1. Songs with flowers used as adjectives have not been taken (so, no ‘gulabi aankhen jo teri dekhi’)
2. One different flower pro song (i.e. if I like two songs, both with rose in it more than the song with jasmine, than I had to choose between the two rose songs)
3. One song pro film (that was very easy)
4. When the name of the flower is the name of a character in the film, it has been rejected (so no ‘ghar jayegi, tar jayegi’

So here are my 10 favourite solo songs featuring ten different flowers.