Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs

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Blog 10-Year Challenge (2010-2020) – Song No. 89
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This date 29 october 2020 is a different kind of blog ten year challenge. It was on this day ten years ago that I met Raja face to face in Nagpur where I was based at that time. All these days I was under the impression that the meeting had taken place recently, but no, time has sprinted away faster than Usain Bolt, and TEN years have elapsed after that memorable evening. .

For those who came in late, I was a member of a by now defunct cricket forum called Pakcricbuzz under the ID of squarecut. I used to discuss cricket of 1970s in that forum. One fine day, this new member called Raja joined and he started commenting on my posts exclaiming that he was in the same age group and he too had similar memories about cricket of 1970s. I initially thought that he was a Pakistani with surname of Raja (like Wasim Raja and Rameez Raja) but later I found that he was an Indian.

After a few days, I stumbled upon “introduction” section of that forum, where I found discussion about a new cricket forum by an Indian poster. I visited that forum called cricforum. That was in may 2005. It was quite an inactive forum at that time, but I felt comfortable there mainly because it was a forum of Indians. Two weeks later, I found that same person Raja also joining cricforum. Soon the forum began to buzz with great activity.

The forum had moderators and administrators based in Europe and USA and they needed an India based moderator. So I was made an moderator there and an announcement was made that “Atul Bhai is our new moderator.” Members of the forum congratulated me, and that included Raja too. So your name is Atul, he stated. My ID was squarecut and so it was this announcement that made Raja aware about my name.

This forum did not just discuss cricket, it discussed other topics as well, and people there had a unique kind of sense of humour which was described there as “muppetry”. Whenever India lost in cricket, which was quite often, members would roast Indian cricketers in posts that were scathing and at the same time quite funny. Then there was this person Ravi, the owner of the site, who would write hard hitting reviews of Hindi movies that were great fun to read. This person Ravi incidentally has written a guest post in this blog as well. This article gives us some idea about his sense of humour. Even I have covered him in the blog in one article on his pet-a wolf dog. I rate this article as one of the most satisfying articles written by me.

Some music lovers there began to discuss music under a subsection called Geetmala. There music loving members would write articles on a music theme. I wrote a few articles, on themes like Railway songs in Hindi movies. Others such as Raja also came up with his own theme.

It was during late 2007 and early 2008 that I was exposed to the concept of blogging. I opened a blog on blogspot platform where I started writing similar theme based articles. I wrote 50 long articles there which did not get the kind of traffic that I expected. Soon enough, I discovered wordpress platform, which I found far more easy for blogging. It was on this platform that I began to write my comments of Hindi film songs, taking up one song at a time. And soon enough, this became my main blog.

When I informed others about my blogs, some of them visited them and left notes of encouragement. Raja’s comments were especially prized ones for me, because he wrote long and elaborate comments that served as just the kind of encouragement that any budding blogger/ poster needs.

As mentioned earlier, Raja and I were members of cricforum. Raja actually met a few regulars of that forum, including Ravi, the owner of that forum. So Raja was already into “gangouts” of cricforum. Incidentally, this term “Gangout” is coined by Raja. So far this term has not found its way into Dictioneries and it is found only in this blog.

Raja was based in Holland and he would regularly visit India to meet his family members. By 2010, Raja too had become a moderator and subsequently an administrator in that forum. I too had become an adminisrator. During october 2010, Raja was planning to visit India, and another administrator called Asterix too was planning to visit India. This person Asterix was Nagpur based, and he saw a good opportunity for a get together at Nagpur. He invited a few members to come visit Nagpur. Raja was the one who agreed. So Raja boarded a train from Bangalore and arrived at Nagpur on 28 October 2010. He was recived at the Nagpur station by Asterix who took him to his home to stay with him. Raja, in those pre whatsapp days posted his status in cricforum- “Arrived Nagpur. Feeling happy. Looking forward to meet Atul.”

At Nagpur, I lived in Railway locality (called Mount Road)close to Old Vidarbha Cricket stadium. This stadium had hosted international matches till a few years ago, before the bigger stadium at Jamtha came up. I lived alone, while my wife and daughter lived across the Maharashra MP border 250 KM away. I had a very good internet connection (provided by Railways) and I also had inverter connection. So I was connected on internet round the clock even if it was raining outside and power was off. No wonder I was at my most productive as a blogger those days.

Raja, asterix and another person (Asterix’s relative) arrived at my home in the evening. I received a bear hug from Asterix. The two of us were so like minded in cricketing matters (including our “love” for Bangladeshi cricket. 🙂 ) in the forum.

After some cricket discussion, the two of them expressed their interest in my blogging process. So I took them to the room that I had earmarked for this purpose. This small room had a laptop on a computer table. When I look back at it now, I realise that I used to note down the lyrics directly from the computer. I did not use headphone or external speakers those days. Later I began to use headphones and that helped a lot. But using headphones was not yet started by me and I relied on listening to the tinny voice emanatng from the laptop. That laptop was a 2007 model, with windows XP in it.

The blog by that time had 3154 posts, a far cry from the current tally of over 16000 writeups. Many blog concepts, now taken for granted had not yet evolved. Even guest posts were in their infancy. Raja, the first guest poster in the blog had written his (and blog’s) first guest post on 26 june 2010 (blog post number 2565). Raja’s most recent guest post was the writeup for 3000^th song of the blog- on 20 september 2010. It was his 31^st guest post in the blog. 31 guest posts in less than three months- Raja was in a rich vein of writing form those days. 🙂

My collection of video CDs, audio CDs etc were strewn all over the place which I showed them as my musical collection. I can never arrange them systematically, no matter how half heartedly I try. 🙂 I also tried to bluff telling them that what was visible was only a part of my collection. 🙂

I had one thing with me that was quite a prized possession though. It was a diary of 1974, that I got hold of in 1975. In that diary I noted down lyrics of songs written from radio. I needed to listen to a song a few times before I could get the full lyrics right. It had about 200 plus song lyrics. That diary was also the place where I would note down scores of test matches played those days. I showed them the score card of the Port of Spain test where India scored 406/4 in the fourth innings to win the test. Raja was suitably impressed with that diary.

We spent an hour and half or so at my place. Those days we did not have cameras on mobile phones. People carried handycams. Raja had brought one such handycam. I had asked a couple of my staff to be present. One of them took our photos which Raja later put up on our cricket forum.

After one hour and half or so, we went to a nearby restaurant for dinner. Asterix, a native of Nagpur knew various places in Nagpur quite well. Our discussion continued during that time as well. Raja told us that he had watched the movie “Akeli Mat Jaiyyo”(1963) with very high expectations but he felt badly let down. 🙂 Raja has subsequently learnt to keep his expectations low while watching Hindi movies. 🙂

While discussing musical matters and bloggers, we discussed Greta (Memsaab) and her blog. Raja mentioned that Greta’s birthday fell a few days ago. We also discussed the fact that her birthday fell so close to that of Shammi Kapoor that she was a big fan of.

Those were the days when the blog followed the concept of “farmaish”. Farmaish page was a popular page of the blog. Raja himself was a big farmaish sender. Raja had sent lots of farmaishes in the blog farmaish page. I asked him for a farmaisdh face to face- easily the first such farnmaish for the blog. Raja chose the song “Baar baar din ye aaye” and dedicated it to Greta. :).

After dinner, Raja and Asterix dropped me back at my place at about 10:45 PM or so and thus ended a memorable evening / night for me.

Next day, I posted that article on Raja’s farmaish where I described this meeting in brief. This aricle received several comments including that of Raja as well.

Raja in his comment to this post wrote:-

As Atul says, the two of us finally managed to meet each other. It was really memorable for me too. I have long admired Atul’s witty comments, not just on this blog but also on our cricket forum. He has these one-liners that I call Atulisms. ??

We had a very nice time together. Atul walked me through the process he goes through to post songs on his blog. We discussed other stuff too – including a diary he used to maintain way back in 1976, with handwritten cricket scorecards and Hindi film songs. Those were pre-internet days, so every piece of info we could gather from any source was very valuable. Indeed Atul and I can relate to a lot of things – I used to also maintain cricket statistics in this manner. 🙂 🙂

Over dinner, Atul asked me for a song farmaish “on the spot”. This birthday song was fresh in my mind – I remember searching for it a few days earlier on his blog and not finding it. It is my favourite birthday song – I love Rafi’s voice in this, I love the picturisation, I love the lyrics.

I did not expect Atul to turn this around so quickly on the blog. Thanks a lot, Atul.

Four years later, I described this visit in more detail during the run up to our 10K post, when I wrote about Raja in this post. There I have quoted what Raja wrote about this visit in cricforum. Here are his reminiscences:-

I came over from Bangalore to Nagpur to meet Asterix and Atul.
I first met Asterix on the 28th evening (he picked me up from the station).
We then arranged to meet Atul the following evening (Friday – 29th).

We went over to Atul’s place. Very nice place – Atul has people at his beck and call for his household work. * jealous *

Anyway, it was a very memorable experience.

Already meeting Asterix the previous evening was a great feeling – and now meeting Atul also was just amazing.
We discussed a lot of stuff – mostly about CF of course. And about Atul’s song blog.

Asterix and Atul also expressed concern about the increasing dominance of Bangladesh on the cricket scene and how it could impact minnows like BCCI who are in the same group in the World Cup. ?? Personally I think they were more concerned about the impact on a certain cricket forum. ??

Atul then showed us how he builds up his song blog – from a blog owner’s perspective.
It was fascinating.

We also got to see some of his VCD collection. More than 150 VCDs – most of them old (forgotten) Hindi movies. These provide the raw material for his song blog to a large extent. And I am informed by Atul that this is only a part of his collection – he has much more.

The evening was already going very well – but then it went many notches higher for me when Atul showed us something else.
This really brought tears (of nostalgia) to my eyes.

He showed us a diary that he used to maintain in 1976.

In those days, he used to write down cricket scorecards of various matches going on at that time.
Seeing the names of Gavaskar, Gaekwad, Vishwanath – written in Atul’s handwriting – really made me remember those days.

I got into a major nostalgia session – Asterix cut me short (like he often does ?? ), suggesting that we could continue the discussion over dinner. ??
(Actually we had another friend with us – not a CF person – and Asterix, understandably, did not want him to get bored).

In this diary, Atul also used to write down Hindi songs. Movie, singers, music directors – and full lyrics. As much as he could capture at that time from radio. Remember these were pre-Internet days, these were days when you really had to search and hunt for info that is readily available nowadays. You had to listen to a song umpteen times before you could get it right.

I think this passion is what has now morphed into Atul’s blog. Different times, new technology – but same, burning passion.

We then went out for dinner. By then it was a little late – we dropped Atul back at his place and returned to Asterix’s place (where I was staying), with very fond memories of our meeting.

Thank you, Atul. It was a very memorable evening. 29th October 2010.

I can barely believe that ten years have past since that memorable evening. It is true. We all, as well as the blog, are ten years older since that day.

In a way, it is a different kind of Blog Ten Year Challenge. I posted a song from a movie that day. Let me post another song from the same movie ten years later.

Following songs were covered in the blog ten years ago on this date (29 october 2010):-

Out of two eligible movies for Blog Ten Year Challenge today, the first movie “Jalpari”(1952) has already been taken up earlier in the day. So that leaves us with “Bachpan”(1963) as the other eligible movie.

“Bachpan”(1963) was directed by Nazar for New Panchratan pictures, Bombay. This “social” movie had Menka Irani, Saleem, Manorama, David, Daisy Irani, Bhudo Advani etc in it.

The movie had seven songs in it. Three songs have been covered in the past. Iconic Rafi song Mujhe tumse muhabbat hai magar main keh nahin saktaa was discussed on the blog on this day ten year ago.

The remaining four songs are lesser known songs. Some are even unavailable. Out of the available songs, the song under discussion shines on its own merit and deserves to be better known among music lovers. This song is sung by Suman Kalyanpur. Hasrat Jaipuri is the lyricist. Music is composed by Sardar Malik.

Only the audio of this song is available. I request our knowledgeable readers to throw light on the picturisatiuon of this song. The song is an ideal song to be listened to at night. It is a song that firmly belongs to the league of what I call “Chhaayaageet” songs.

Song-Mere naina mad ke pyaale (Bachpan)(1963) Singer-Suman Kalyanpur, Lyrics-Hasrat Jaipuri, MD-Sardar Malik

Lyrics(Provided by Prakashchandra)

Mere naina mad ke pyaale
Mere naina mad ke pyaale
koi aaj dil sabhaale
koi aaj dil sabhaale
main jahaan jahaan se guzri
wahin ho gaye ujaale
Mere naina mad ke pyaale

jo nazar milaaye mujh se
wohi hosh apne khoye
wohi hosh apne khoye
jise dekh loon main hans ke
wo khushi se mera hoye
wo khushi se mera hoye
use badh ke baandh le phir
mere gesu kaale kaale
mere naina mad ke pyaale
koi aaj dil sambhaale
main jahaan jahaan se guzri
wahin ho gaye ujaale
mere naina mad ke pyaale

bujhe dil ko roshni de
mere tan ke ujle saaye
mere tan ke ujle saaye
ke huyi shama jo raushan
to patange ghir ke aaye
to patange ghir ke aaye
ke amar rahenge mar kar
mujhe pyaar karne waale
mere naina mad ke pyaale
koi aaj dil sambhaale
main jahaan jahaan se guzri
wahin ho gaye ujaale
mere naina mad ke pyaale