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Atul Song-A-Day 10K Song Milestone Celebrations –51
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Recently, we were introducing the contributors of the blog in the run up to the 10,000th song. These introductions turned out to be a big hit with the readers of the blog. Some regulars (who have joined in late) specifically requested for the introduction of some of the contributors who were not introduced till then.

The 10,000th song has been posted and most introductions have been done and dusted, with some of the introductions getting posted after the 10,000th post.

One introduction is still not yet done, though. The regulars will know whose introduction it is. Sudhir Kapur ji is not yet formally introduced as part of the 10k celebrations. He has contributed so much to the blog and I have so much to say about him that I had to keep defering this introduction as I kept remembering more and more things to say about him.

So, here it is finally – an introduction to Sudhir Kapur, one of the major pillars of the blog.

Sudhir Kapur made his first comment in the writeup of the song Duniya mein logon ko dhokha kabhi ho jaata hai (Apna Desh)(1972). His comments, made on 18 october 2010 made my day. He wrote:

Atul ji,
When I reached this web site some days back, in one of my searches for a song, I was thrilled at finding the treasure trove contained herein. The amount of effort to research, pull together the lyrics, and add the interesting commentary on each song verily reflects your deep love and devotion to this wonderful art form (that sadly has vanished from the Hindi movies in recent decades). Your effort is worth my respect and love, for I am also a devout fan of the music of the early decades when the classical, semi-classical and the melodious was the actual music that formed the life of Hindi movies, (and was not yet called Bollywood).

Your comments in this post, regarding the age and the frame of mind on seeing Hindi movies, jell so well with my own emotions on having seen movies as a child and a teenager, and even now as I see some of these classics again. This post brought back to life all those emotions of my childhood and teenage, and I thank you for that.

I am an avid collector my self, and I have a huge collection (audio in mp3 format) approximating to 15,000 plus songs, compiled from various sources on the net, including conversions from my own huge collection of music cassettes that I have been hoarding since a teenager. I am currently working to compile this collection into a data base complete with all info about each song, and I am about 30% complete with this task.

Web sites like yours are an encouragement, a hope, and a vision that this wonderful legacy will not be lost to oblivion.

With heartfelt thanks for your efforts, and the love for this music that shines through it, and a warm emotional handshake in thought. Please let me know if I can be of any help with your research, I would be delighted to contribute.

Sincere and appreciative regards
Sudhir
(New Delhi, India)

My reply was

Thanks a lot for your words of encouragements, Mr Sudhir. As you are an avid collector of songs, of course you can be of great use to us while we look for rare songs here.

In the beginning, he offered comments on the songs being posted in the blog. It was after six months that he began to send lyrics in the blog. The first lyrics sent by him was for the song parwaanon se preet seekh len (Bilwamangal)(1954) which appeared on the blog on 1 february 2011.

In a couple of months time, he turned a guest poster as well from April 2011.

From may 2011, a major exercise was undertaken in the blog, when it was decided to post all the K L Saigal songs that were available. We began to discuss one K L Saigal song daily like how SLBC discusses one K L Saigal song daily in their “puraani filmon ke geet” programme. This led to an unofficial series of articles on K L Saigal, beginning from end of may 2011 and it ended on 18 september 2011 when the last available K L Saigal song was discussed. The songs in this series were discussed by me as well as by him.

It was during this series that we got the first glimpse of Sudhir ji’s prowess in translating complex Urdu words and phrases into easily understandable terms for the benefit of non Urdu speakers (and that included most of Hindi speakers as well) 🙂 His articles, full with translations, interpretations of the lyrics, research on the genesis of the songs etc were the stuff that can earn people PhD in many Universities. Many complex and rare K L Saigal songs became accessible and understandable to lay music lovers for the first time thanks to Sudhir ji’s efforts.

Those four months of 2011 were heady days for the blog when I would wait for a K L Saigal writeup in my inbox in the morning which would be prepared by Sudhir ji by literarily burning midnight oil, which would then get published first thing in the morning. In a matter of four months, all the K L Saigal songs got covered and then Sudhir ji as well as I began to suffer from withdrawal symptoms for some time because we began to miss those days of working with a missionary zeal, attempting to meet our daily targets. 🙂 Here is an account of what it took to produce the series of K L Saigal songs, in the words of Sudhir ji.

Greta (Memsaab), in her comments to one of these articles mentioned that she was preserving the articles of Sudhir ji as they were a big help for her in her bid to learn Hindi/ Urdu. With her inimitable sense of humour she mentioned that she particularly enjoyed learning the colourful Urdu words meant to describe the act of drinking wine. 🙂

It was in March 2012 that I found myself visiting Delhi for a two days meeting there on 15 and 16 march. I saw a golden opportunity to meet Sudhir ji and I e mailed him just before I was to embark on my journey. I immediately received the reply in which Sudhir ji welcomed me to Delhi and asked about my travel plans.

I attended my meeting throughout the day on 15 march and it was decided in consultation with Sudhir ji that I would meet up with him in the evening. My day long official meeting was over and all the participants were invited to dinner at a Delhi hotel, but I was obviously not interested in that. I have much better things to do during that time, I told everyone who was interested in listening.

I informed my address to Sudhir ji and he said that he knew the place and he would be there in 15 minutes time.

I was waiting in a hired taxi which was driven by a young driver interested in music. I had told him about my music site and I informed him that I was waiting for a likeminded music lover who was arriving to meet me. After 15 minutes I looked out but could not find any vehicle that may have arrived. I asked the driver to go and find out. He came and reported that he could only see one vehicle located some 30 metres away and could that be the vehicle of my visitor ?

I went towards the vehicle and found a gentleman coming out of the vehicle. I tend to introduce myself using my initials rather than the first name and that is what I instinctly did, but then realised that I am not known to bloggers by my initials but by my first name and then I told him that I was Atul.

Sudhir ji, in his article on our first meeting has mentioned that

I simply walked over to him and hugged him. I am sure he must have been taken by surprise, because for a moment I could feel he did not know how to respond. 🙂 🙂

I will not say that I was caught unawares. Come to think of it, it is the most natural and satisfying action to perform when you meet someone for the first time whom you have known for quite some time. I was subjected to similar hugs at the hands of Asterix and Raja when they had come to meet me on october 2010. How else do you react on such occasions. 🙂

We read so many horror stories of people who pose as something different online and they turn out to be something entirely different in flesh. But like in case of Raja and asterix, I found Sudhir ji to be exactly what I had visualised him to be based on my earlier online interactions with him. So that way, all the music lovers we have in this blog are WYTIWYG (what you think is what you get) compliant. 🙂

All the music lovers that I have met so far are kind , generous, knowledgeable, unassuming- in short persons you immediately feel comfortable with, and Sudhir ji fitted this bill perfectly.

Without losing any time. we got talking as if catching up on lost time making use of every minute while he drove towards his residence.

He lives in a residential colony and I was vaguely aware of having read about this colony sometime in the distant past. When I later checked up, I realised that I had read about this colony in Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s autobiography. Harivanshrai Bachchan had mentioned that he was allotted a plot in this New Delhi colony meant for journalists but he was unable to build a home on this land. Much later, when his son Amitabh Bachchan became a movie star, his financial woes were over for all times and a house was finally constructed on this plot. This house is known as Amitabh Bachchan’s house among the residents of the colony now, though neither he nor his family members have ever stayed in this residence.

Sudhir ji’s late father was a journalist in the Hindustan Times group and that is how he came to live in this colony, which was originally meant to be a colony for journalists.

Sudhir ji lives on the first floor of his two storey residence which is full of music and movie related items, viz CD, DVD, records, cassettes, tapes, books, equipments to convert music and video from one format to other etc etc. All the stuff is neatly arranged and he can quickly get you any item that you are looking for. Such vast and systematically organised collection is something that is to be seen to be believed. Personally I can only dream to be this organised.

He keeps adding to his collection and he continuously receives new stock from various sources.

Almost every music related publication is available with him. I saw books on Kishore Kumar, Hemant Kumar etc that had full details, including the list of all songs sung by these artists in all the languages. The venerable HFGK (all the volumes) are also available, of course. Moreover, he had hosted Harmandir Singh Hamraj and Nalin Shah just a few months back and he had a treasure of invaluable information about the experiences of Hamraj ji during his arduous attempts to collect information from various sources.

We briefly got down to the ground floor at dinner time. Sudhir ji’s mother stays at the ground floor. She was quite amused with the tales of my pets. “A cat peacefully co existing with two dogs ! It must be Ram Rajya at your home !” She exclaimed.

Back on the first floor, we continued discussing matters concerning music. It was approaching midnight when we finally reluctantly called it a day after some six hours and he dropped me back to the place from where he had picked me.

Next day I wrote about my meeting with Sudhir ji in this article. Sudhir ji wrote about this meeting in this article. Both these articles incidentally went rather unnoticed. 🙂

I have met him several times since then, at approximately three months interval, and the routine would remain same. So one can say that I met him in all seasons, viz. Spring, summer, rain and winter. When I went to meet him in the winter season in january 2013, he made considerable fuss about getting me protected against Delhi’s chilly winter, declaring that I was not protected enough. So he did not rest till I began to resemble an eskimo. 😉

On one occasion, I found him going elsewhere first and not towards his residence with me. We are going to meet AK ji, he explained. We went to the building of a Central Government Ministry, entered the chamber of the top man in the ministry and held a two hours long discussion on music. Just like that ! And it was during this meeting that it was revealed that AK and I were from the same alma mater as far as our engineering studies were concerned. So it was sort of like family members reuniting after years- a staple diet of Manmohan Desai and Nasir Hussain movies. 🙂

I also got to meet Bakshish Singh, after we were proceeding towards Sudhir ji’s residence after our meeting with Ak ji. Bakshish Singh is a great music lover who has a vast collection of music and movies of all sorts which he carries with him in the form of a 1 TB portable hard disk. He readily shares his collection with interested persons. In fact he leaves his hard disk to interested persons, to be collected later after the interested person has copied whatever he wanted to copy from the disk.

I got to meet AK and Bakshish Singh once more during my subsequent visits to Delhi.

Sudhir ji has developed a vast network of acquintances and that enables him to keep in touch with developments in the HFM field so to say. He is always on the lookout for rare songs as yet unavailable. He keeps telling that a large number of songs are yet to become available online.

As for his interactions with bloggers, he has met/ talked/ interacted with a lot of them. He has met Harmandir Singh Hamraj, Nalin Shah, Surjit Singh, AK, Bakshish Singh etc. Among the contributors of this blog, he has met me, Peevesie and Peevesie’s mom etc. He has talked to Memsaab, Khyati Bhatt, Lalitha etc and has been in online communication with many others, including several contributors of this blog.

Once I received a call from Sudhir Ji. He had a visitor from US and he wanted me to talk to her. Listening to her voice, I could instinctively tell that I was talking to Vijaylaxmi, the legendary SLBC announcer of 1970s and 1980s. To talk to a legendary radio announcer and getting praised by her for the blog was a memorable experience for me.

Sudhir ji is a regular participant and organiser of music related programmes, mostly in Delhi. For instance, he actively figured in the organisation of a seminar on the occasion of Hindi Cinema’s 100 year during 2013 where movie historian Mr Nalin Shah gave his presentation.

He, alongwith Shikha Vohra (daughter of Anil Biswas) appeared in a Doordarshan programme dedicated to the memory of Mukesh in 2012. Details of this programme is available in this writeup.

Sudhir Ji, alongwith AK ji once met Mubarak Begam and the two were mightily relieved to find out that she was not as bad off as was being made out in the news articles at that time.

Sudhir ji is an active participant in the meetings of Delhi based music lovers. The previous month’s meeting was held at the residence of a neighbour of Sudhir ji and this month’s meeting (that may have taken place by now) was scheduled to be held in Sudhir Ji’s residence. We await a report on this meeting.

Amazingly, for a man of such contacts and networking, Sudhir ji is averse to Facebook and he does not have a facebook account as of now to the best of my knowledge. 🙂

Two long running series of posts of Sudhir ji in the blog are “Voice of Mukesh” and “Colours of love”. “Voice of Mukesh” series is plugging the gaps for Mukesh songs by discovering as yet unavailable Mukesh songs and also posting as yet undiscussed Mukesh songs. With close to 680 Mukesh songs already discussed, the day is not far off when Mukesh, like his idol K L Saigal will have all his songs covered in the blog.

Sudhir ji recently took my postal address and later enquired whether I had received any parcel. I said no, not yet. Then he gave me the phone number of the courier company whose staff had arrived at my address on 19th july 2014 only to find me away (I was away at Nagpur on that day). I called up the courier company, took their address and reached there to claim the parcel. I found a huge packet weighing a few tons. I brought it home and unwrapped it. I found that the packet contained five huge volumes of HFGK. It was the idea of Mr Arunkumar Deshmukh to present me all the volumes of HFGK on the occasion of the blog reaching 10k mark and Sudhir ji was entrusted with the task of sending the gift to me to coincide with the day the blog was supposed to reach the magic five figure mark. Now I have been mentioning HFGK quite often, but owning HFGK is an altogether different feeling and now I feel far more empowered when it comes to discussing HFM, especially from obscure movies. I am extremely thankful to the duo for presenting this invaluable gift to me. I felt like a kid who received a toy that he always wanted, and that feeling has not yet worn out even now. I recall that Khyati Bhatt had felt the same way when she was delived HFGK a few months back by Sudhir Ji. So she would know exactly how I must have felt on receiving the set of HFGK. 🙂

On this occasion, here is a lovely song from “Shaukeen”(1982). The song is sung by Kishore Kumar. Yogesh is the lyricist. Music is composed by R D Burman. Lyrics of this song were sent to me by Avinash Scrapwala.

With this article, the 50th article in the series, we finally come to a close of our 10k celebration articles. This series was very well received by the readers of this blog. I , as well as other introducers enjoyed introducing the contributors of this blog. Hopefully, this has enabled the readers to get to know the contributors that much more.

Audio

Video – 1 (Opening movie song)

Video – 2

Song-Jab bhi koi kangna boley (Shaukeen)(1982) Singer-Kishore Kumar, Lyrics-Yogesh, MD-R D Burman

Lyrics(Provided by Avinash Scrapwala)

Hmm hmm
Hmm hmm hmm

jab bhi koi kangnaa boley
paayal chhanak jaaye ae
soyee soyee dil ki dhadkan
sulag sulag jaaye
karoon jatan laakh magar man
machal machal jaaye
machal machal jaaye
jab bhi koi kangnaa boley
paayal chhanak jaaye ae ae
soyee soyee dil ki dhadkan
sulag sulag jaaye
karoon jatan laakh magar man
machal machal jaaye
machal machal jaaye
jab bhi koi kanganaa boley

chhalak gaye rang jahaan par
ulajh gaye nainaa re nainaa
ulajh gaye nainaa
chhalak gaye rang jahaan par
ulajh gaye nainaa re nainaa
ulajh gaye nainaa
paaye nahin man banjaaraa
kahin bhi ye chainaa re chainaa
kahin bhi ye chainaa
mere man ki pyaas adhoori
mujhe bhatkaaye
jab bhi koi kangnaa boley
paayal chhanak jaaye ae ae
jab bhi koi kangnaa boley

kali kali jhoome re bhanwraaa
agan pe jal jaaye patangaa
agan pe jal jaaye
kali kali jhoome re bhanwraaa
agan pe jal jaaye patangaa
agan pe jal jaaye
chandaa ko chakor nihaare
isi mein sukh paaye re paaye ae
isi mein sukh paaye
jeevan se ye ras ka bandhan
toda nahin jaaye ae
jab bhi koi kangnaa boley
paayal chhanak jaaye ae ae
soyee soyee dil ki dhadkan
sulag sulag jaaye
karoon jatan laakh magar man
machal machal jaaye
machal machal jaaye
jab bhi koi kangnaa boley

———————————————————
Hindi script lyrics (Provided by Avinash Scrapwala)
———————————————————

हम् हम्
हम् हम् हम्

जब भी कोई कंगना बोले
पायल छनक जाए ए
सोयी सोयी दिल कि धडकन
सुलग सुलग जाए
करूँ जतन लाख मगर मन
मचल मचल जाए
मचल मचल जाए

जब भी कोई कंगना बोले
पायल छनक जाए ए ए
सोयी सोयी दिल कि धडकन
सुलग सुलग जाए
करूँ जतन लाख मगर मन
मचल मचल जाए
मचल मचल जाए ए
जब भी कोई कंगना बोले

झलक गए रंग जहाँ पर
उलझ गए नैना रे नैना
उलझ गए नैना
झलक गए रंग जहाँ पर
उलझ गए नैना रे नैना
उलझ गए नैना
पाए नहीं मन बंजारा
कहीं भी ये चैना रे चैना
कहीं भी ये चैना
मेरे मन कि प्यास अधूरी
मुझे भटकाए
जब भी कोई कंगना बोले
पायल छनक जाए ए ए ए
जब भी कोई कंगना बोले

कली कली झूमे रे भंवरा
अगन पे जल जाए पतंगा
अगन पे जल जाए
कली कली झूमे रे भंवरा
अगन पे जल जाए पतंगा
अगन पे जल जाए
चंदा कों चकोर निहारे
इसी में सुख पाए रे पाए ए
इसी में सुख पाए
जीवन से ये रस का बंधन
तोड़ा नहीं जाए ए

जब भी कोई कंगना बोले
पायल छनक जाए ए ए
सोयी सोयी दिल कि धडकन
सुलग सुलग जाए
करूँ जतन लाख मगर मन
मचल मचल जाए
मचल मचल जाए
जब भी कोई कंगना बोले