O jee dheere dheere
Posted on: September 10, 2014
This article is written by Mahesh Mamadapur, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.
Mathura ka peda, Mysore pak, Agra ka petha, Dharwad peda, Gokak karadant, Lonawala chikki etc. are famous sweets associated with certain towns and cities.
The city of Belgaum too is known for a very famous sweet called kunda. Its origin according to most sources dates back to about 64 years ago when a Rajasthani by name Gajanan Mithaiwale belonging to a Purohit family once over boiled milk which turned into a dark brown paste. Not willing to waste and throw it, (read “marwadi”) he experimented by mixing it with “khoa” which is essentially a milk paste used in most sweets and sugar to dilute. The resulting product was a sweet dish which tasted different and was quite delicious. Not knowing what to name his new discovery, he uttered “kunda”. Since then this product is being prepared by most of the sweet making families for commercial sale.
Belgaum is strategically located exactly mid-way between Bangalore and Mumbai. Obviously, it’s a mandatory stop for all the buses plying between the two metropolises. The hotels and restaurants are always equipped with readymade packs of kunda which sell like hot cakes. The shops at railways station and bus stands are always having stacks of packets ready for disbursement as people travelling to nearby cities like Bijapur, Hubli Dharwad etc. find it very convenient to carry the famous sweet. Also, most of the south indian restaurants in the city serve this dish on small plates with 8-10 teaspoons which can be had as a dessert course after lunch and dinner.
The two prominent brand names belong to Camp Purohit and Atul Purohit. But of late there are dozens and dozens of Purohits with all sort of abbreviated name combinations selling the sweet.
I can now see many “how to make kunda” recipe instructions on the net. It remembers me of a cartoon which I read and saw many years back. The cartoon involved a lady returning a recipe book to the librarian saying” here is another book to be kept under the fiction section”. I really don’t know how it tastes when prepared by reading instructions and experimenting.
One of the main drawbacks of this sweet is that it tends to get stale quite quickly especially when kept packed. This is common for all milk based products, but is all the more true for kunda because of the process involved in its preparation. The manufactures have now come up with a new concept of selling the sweet in tin containers and tetra packs with a shelf life of about 6 months. I have gifted this form of kunda to many of my friends but have not tasted it myself as we always prefer the freshly prepared dish.
With all these kunda memories of my city, I now have the task of selecting a sweet song for this post. A cheerful song involving the contributions of Ghulam Mohammed, Shakeel Badayuni, Lata Mangeshkar and onscreen presence of Madhubala dancing with her famous crooked smile looks syrupy. This song is from Pardes released in 1950.
The film starred Rehman, Madhubala, Karan Dewan, Jayant, Shakuntala Paranjpye, Chanchal, Mukri, Cuckoo, Jagdish Sethi, Surendra etc and was directed by M. Sadiq.
Audio
Video
Song-O ji dheere dheere (Pardes)(1950) Singer-Lata, Lyrics-Shakeel Badayuni, MD-Ghulam Mohammad
Lyrics
o ji dheere dheere
o ji haule haule
angna mein aaja piya
o ji dheere dheere
o ji hauley hauley
angna mein aaja piya
o ji dheere dheere
o ji hauley hauley aa
o o o o
geet anokhe lekar
aayi jawaani mori
aayi jawaani mori
sun le na koi ae dil
gaaye ja chori chori
gaaye ja chori chori
o o o
jab ban mein koyal boley ae
sun mera dole jiya
to sun mera dole jiya
o ji dheere dheere
o ji hauley hauley
angna mein aaja piya
o ji dheere dheere
o ji hauley hauley aa
o o o o o
raat rangeeli aayi
din bhi suhaana aaya
din bhi suhaana aaya
sabke zamaane beete
mera zamaana aaya
mera zamaana aaya
o o o
jab nainon se dil haara
jag maine jeet liya
to jag maine jeet liya
o ji dheere dheere
o ji hauley hauley
angna mein aaja piya
o ji dheere dheere
o ji hauley hauley aa
2 Responses to "O jee dheere dheere"
September 10, 2014 at 3:16 pm
Thank you very much, Mahesh ji, for a very sweet song.
I never had the good luck to taste Kunda so far but am now eager to savour it whenever I get a chance to visit that side.
Avadh Lal
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Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
September 10, 2014 at 11:11 am
Thank you Mahesh ji
for this interesting,informative post. And “Kunda” is my favourite sweet too….
regards
Prakash
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