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

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In the blog, Sudhir Jee sometimes describes me as Ranchiwala Gaanewaala.

I have spent the formative years of my life in Ranchi. But when I think about it now, I find that the last time I visited Ranchi was in 1991 ! So it has been 28 years since I lost touch with Ranchi ! More than a quarter of a century !

I would dearly love to go to Ranchi and relive my memories of that place. It will be an emotional, sentimental and nostalgic visit whenever I go there.

But do I have to actually go there to relive the memories of that place ? Now a days it is possible to try and relive those memories online as well. So, I tried to see if I could relive some of my memories through online technologies.

My father was a railwayman who joined Railways in 1958, before I was born. He was posted in Ranchi. Initially he lived here and there in rented accomodations and finally he got a railway quarter in Ranchi railway colony in 1964. He retained this quarter till 1992. It was vacated after he retired.

So, this small quarter in Ranchi was my base for more than a quarter of a century. Of course, I had left Ranchi in 1983 to pursue Engineering (in Railways itself).

I studied upto class V in one school. It only had classes upto V, so later I was admitted to another school from where I passed my matriculation in 1978. Then I joined college. So these were the three places where I went to study while at Ranchi.

On searching online, I found a few photographs of Ranchi Railway station and I noticed that the main building of Ranchi Railway station was virtually unchanged from what it was in 1970s.

I fired up google earth and zeroed it in to Ranchi Railway station. On zooming it in, I began to see many familiar locations. On North of the Railway station, there was a playground. It was Railway sports ground, now called SERSA (South Eastern Railway Sports Association) stadium. Till 1970s, it was an open field where buffaloes used to roam all around. When I used to commute between my home and school on foot, I would take this route (via the sports ground) while returning. In case some football matches were going on in the evening, I would stop and start watching the football match, postponing my return to home. 🙂

One Railway inter departmental football tournament was held during december 1974 and its final was played on 1 january 1975. There was a good crowd to watch the final, and naturally I too was there. The team that I was supporting (it was the team belonging to my father’s department) played well, but the opposition team, despite being outclassed on the field, managed to emerge winners, much to my disappointment. The teams were awarded by the Chief Guest and his wife. I wondered why he was the chief guest. Much later I came to know that he was the chief guest because he was the boss of Adra Division (Ranchi Railway station was under Adra division). His designation was Division Superintendent. Now this designation is changed to Divisional Railway Manager. The gentleman who was the DS was from the same service to which I would belong more than one decade later. I met that gentleman, named S M Bhargava much later in 1990s when I was posted in Secunderabad and he was settled there after retirement.

On google earth, I could also locate my school where I studied upto matriculation. This school has since been relocated to another far off place and it has been converted as an Ashram. The locals opposed this move, but the school authorities succeeded in converting it into an Ashram. On zooming the place, I could locate my erstwhile school (now an ashram). I could see the place which used to be our playground within the school, where we would play during lunch break.

Likewise, I was able to locate my earlier school and also my college on google earth.

What about locating my quarter ?

I zoomed in to the area south of Railway Station. I got disillusioned and disappointed because the area appeared totally unfamiliar. So what has happened. Has the Railway colony been totally changed and rendered unrecognisable ? I felt despondent and thought that a major part of my younger days has been robbed off.

Then I braced myself, and began to look again. This time I began to look with more concentration and this time I started to recognise places. Then I zeroed in to a place which had to be my quarter which was my base for 28 years. I compared it with other landmark. I became more and more convinced that this is indeed the place. I could recognise the other landmarks as well.

The quarter indicated with hand was my place.
When I looked at adjacent quarters, I recalled the persons who stayed in those quarters. I also located the river (Harmu River) that flowed may be 200 metres from the quarter.

What about my neighbours in the colony ? Can I locate some of them online. Likewise, what about my school mates, college mates ? Is it possible to locate someone.

I realised that locating the neighbours would be a tall order. I knew them mostly by their nicknames, not by their actual names. And in most cases, I was not even aware about thei names.

I decided that my best (and only) bet was to locate Josephs. Mr Joseph lived on the quarter adjacent to our quarter. He was a Railway driver. In one of my nostalgia pieces, I have mentioned that some of my neighbourhood kid used to have the best quality hoop made out of steam locomotive piston rings. I was talking about the Joseph kids.

How do I locate these Joseph Kids ? The one kid in my age group was known to us by his nickname of Chikkoo. But what was his real name ? I wrecked my brain, and remembered that his “school” name was Christopher. So I looked for Christopher Joseph on facebook. I located one, who had mentioned that he lived at Ranchi. I remembered that the Joseph’s had bought plot near the railway colony and had built their home there as Mr Joseph was nearing retirement in early 1990s. So it made sense that Christopher Joseph, the eldest available son would inherit that home after his father and would stay there.

But the facebook page contained little information and not even any DP. But when I looked at his facebook friends, I came across one person called Eugene Joseph. This person had his photograph in his facebook page. This person was unmistakably Eugene Joseph, the younger brother of Christopher Joseph. He was born in february 1966 in their railway quarter and the young neighbourhood kids including me were allowed to see the newborn brother of Chikkoo on that very day. He was named Eugene. Kids had difficulty pronouncing the name and they called him “Engine”. Later their younger brother was born and he was named Ashley. Obviously this name too was difficult to pronounce for kids and he was promptly renamed Asli by the kids. 🙂 The kids were like that. I recall that they had trouble pronouncing a kid called Shakeel and they would call him “cycle”. 🙂

I tried to locate some more neighbourhood kids but drew a blank mainly because I was not aware of their formal names.

What about locating my school mates and college mates by the same method ? I had tried that in the past and I was able to locate a school kid called Shyamal Kumar Dey. We were in the same class in school and later on both of us got admitted to St Xavier’s college, Ranchi in 1978. His facebook page mentioned that he had done Engineering from West Bengal and had then joined a PSU. He was incidentally posted in Ranchi itself which was the HQ of his PSU.

In 2018, when I first located him on facebook, I sent him an email message. He did not respond. Perhaps he could not remember me or may be he did not consider me worthy of responding.

What about someone from college, apart from Shyamal Dey ? I could locate one.

St Xavier’s college, Ranchi admitted only the “brightest” students where brightness was judged by marks obtained in the matriculation examination. The Bihar Board topper among girls, who had achieved fourth rank overall in the state was a resident of Ranchi and she had also joined St Xavier’s college. The students were divided into two sections, viz section A and B. Each section had batches. All girls were in the same batch. Some boys were also in that batch. I was among the boys who were in the batch alongwith girls. Needless to say that boys of other batches envied the boys of this batch. 🙂 Personally I think that most boys of this batch were quite simple and “bhondoo”, Amol Palekar type. 🙂 I do not recall interacting much with any of those girls. Once while doing chemistry practicals, I by fluke had produced a perfect bead while doing borax bead test. The instructor showed this bead to all including the girls telling them that it was created by one among them. 🙂

More than one decade later, I was in Delhi, as part of my probation as a Railway probationer. We were doing parliamentary training, where we would attend a three day seminar on how parliament functions. On one day we were also taken to Parliament to watch how it functioned. We saw Parliament hall from visitor’s gallery and watched the then PM V P Singh replying to some parliamentary question.

The parliamentary training batch had members of two other services in addition to Railways. The participants had their names written in front of them. I found the name of a lady participant matching the name by which we knew her in our college. It was unmistakably the same lady. Her surname differed which was only to be expected because she must have been married by that time.

Next day I mustered enough courage to approach her and talked to her. It turned out that she was indeed the same lady. She informed me that she had married an IAS officer who was then posted as an ADC to the Governor of that state.

That was nearly three decades ago. While searching for my college time mates, I came across the name of this lady once again. I found that considerable information was available on her online. Her husband had reached the top viz had become Principal Secretary of that state. They had two sons and one of them was an IAS officer as well. So this class mate of mine, who was the topper among girls in matriculation examination of Bihar that year was doing very well in her life. I felt happy for her.

I tried to locate some people, but drew a blank. I think that I need to physically go to Ranchi and visit the familiar landmarks, including the place where I stayed and try to find some old acquaintances who may actually be staying in Ranchi even today. That I suppose would be a tall order. Most people may have been staying elsewhere by now.

Ranchi itself has changed considerably, as I have been informed by those who are more current with developments in Ranchi. I was able to locate a few relatives of mine who were settled in Ranchi but they were too young for me to find much in common with them. I tried to locate their parents instead but they were not on facebook. In one of my posts on Binaca Geetmala 1971 finals, I have mentioned my Mama with whom I was going to Ranchi but had an unscheduled night halt in another town. I could locate his children on facebook but not the mama himself. Those kids were not even born by that time. The mama himself was not on facebook.

When I thought of a song to accompany my reminiscences about Ranchi, I was very clear about the movie the song was to be from. The movie had to be “Hip Hip Hurray”(1984). One clear reason is that the story of this movie takes place in Ranchi ! So, it is a perfect movie for my purpose.

“Hip Hip Hurray” (1984) was produced by Manmohan Shetty and Pradeep Uppoor. It was the debut movie of Prakash Jha as a movie director. The movie had Raj Kiran, Deepti Nawal, Deepa Rani, Nikhil Bhagat, Shafi Inamdar etc in it.

I would have saved my effort by quoting the story of this movie from wikipedia or imdb, but the story as contained in these sites are horrible. So I have provided my own summary of the story here:

Sandeep Chaudhary (Raj Kiran), a resident of Mumbai is a computer science and Electronics Engineering graduate as well as a sports enthusiast. After his graduation, he appears for some job interviews, including one interview for a multinational computer company (called IDM 🙂 ). The people taking interview on behalf of the company seem to be totally clueless about computers going by the kind of questions he ask (more seriously, it is a reflection on the dialogue writer’s lack of knowledge of computers. Our venerable Gulzar is the dialogue writer.)
He has a smart and pretty career minded and fast life loving girl friend Uma(Deepa Rani).

While Sandeep Chaudhary is waiting for offer from IDM, which is likely to take three months, his uncle asks him to use this time fruitfully by joining as a sports teacher in a school at Ranchi whose principal is known to him.

So Sandeep Chaudhary boards a train and arrives Ranchi Railway station. He takes a rickshaw and reaches the school. The school Jamnadas school (a fictional school-scenes of this school were shot in Vikas Vidyalaya and Bishop Westcott Boys’ School in Ranchi ) is full of incompetent and careless teachers as well as disinterested, disillusioned and indisciplined students.

School teachers there ask him -” Mr Chaudhary, Bambai ke kis school mein padhaate thhe aap ?”
Sandeep Chaudhary- “jee main engineer hoon. computer science aur electronics mein”.

Hindi teacher- “electric mein hain ? Aap electrician hain. To khel kood mein kahaan se aa gaye?”

Hindi teacher gives his gyan- “Khel kood se is desh ki pragati sambhav hai kya. Ab aap hi bataaiye. Hamaare desh ke jo bhi mahaan neta thhe.
Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Subhash, Guru Nanak, Kabir aur kaun sa footbaal ya hockey khela karte thhe ye log ?”

Sandeep Chaudhary tries to bring discipline in the sports field and is met with resistance by students, led by the rouge student Raghu (Nikhil Bhagat). Raghu, who has failed four years in a row in the same class is a school bully and he has a teenager’s crush on lady teacher Miss Anuradha Roy (Deepti Nawal).

It is clear that the ambitions and temperaments of Sandeep Chaudhary and his fiancee do not match. With Sandeep Chaudhary in Ranchi and not in habit of keeping in touch with his near and dear ones through letters (the usual way of keeping in touch those days), Uma writes to him that there was little point continuing this relation and they should part ways. And she wishes him best of luck for future.

Sandeep Chaudhary decides to build a school team despite resistance from all concerned, viz teachers, students as well as parents. He presses on regardless. The experience of the first football match is disastrous though, because the school team loses 0-12. Sports teacher of the other team (played by Shafi Inamdar) mocks him- “aapko sport teacher kisne bana diya Mr Chaudhary ?”

Sandeep Chaudhary renews his efforts to built a stronger team. He gradually wins over those good players (led by Raghu) who had kept away from playing the earlier match. Gradually, all of them except Raghu join in. Raghu, who thus finds himself isolated does not like it and he retaliates by attacking Sandeep Chaudhary. And he then falsely implicates Sandeep Chaudhary of roughing him up. This lie gets busted because of the evidences provided to the Principal by Miss Anuradha Roy, who herself is a victim of stalking by Raghu. The Principal decides to expel Raghu from school. But Sandeep Chaudhary intervenes and prevents his expulsion. A chastened Raghu grudgingly falls in line and starts practicing with the football team.

The students practice with great motivation, waking up early in the morning and reporting at the sports field for practice. There are murmurs of resistance though. Parents of one Kid prohibits their son from participating in football citing his poor academics as the reason. Sandeep Chaudhary goes and meets them to try and persuade them.

“pichhle saal wo ek baar fail kar chuka hai.”- mother of the boy states.

“lekin, pichhle saal to koi games nahin thha hamaare school mein.”- Sandeep Chaudhary points out.
“toh tum kya kehna chaahte ho. Football khelne se uska maths aur science theek ho jaayega.”- is the sarcastic retort by the father.

“No Sir. Mere kehne ka matlab hai games mein hissa na lene ka matlab zaroori nahin hota hai ki padhaai achchi ho jaati ho. Haan ye zaroor hota hai ki bachche jo school se bhaage rahte hain unka school mein dil lagne lagta hai. Aur phir, rahi baat maths aur science ki main Inder se pehle hi kah chuka hoon main usey tuition khud doonga na.”- Sandeep Chaudhary tells the father.

The father mocks him-“Come on, it is not football. Main physics, chemistry aur chemistry ki baat kar raha hoon.”

“I know sir, Main electronics aur computer science mein graduate hoon.”- Sandeep Chaudhary breaks this information to the stunned parents who look at each other in bemusement.

The rematch takes place with the team that had won the last time by 12-0 margin. This time the enthusiasm is palpable not only among the players and students, but among teachers as well. The match begins, with the opposite team coach Shafi Inamdar as dismissive of his opponents as earlier.

The match begins, and by halftime the team is down 0-2. Will history repeat itself ?

The tide slowly begins to turn in the second half. The team pulls one goal back, and then the second one two. In the dying minutes, Raghu, after a dodging a few defenders as well as the goal keeper puts the ball into the net.

The school secures a memorable and first ever win over their arch rival school. The whole school fraternity is overjoyed.

Sandeep Chaudhary receives a letter which is the job offer from IDM. He is naturally happy, but the happiness is naturally tempered.

Miss Anuradha Roy goes to meet Sandeep Chaudhary. He is still asleep, the attendant opening the door explains.

Miss Roy goes to the bedroom-“Sandeep, pata hai saadhe saat baj rahe hain. Janaab abhi tak bistar mein pade hain. Chalo uthho. Naha dho lo. Thanda lagta hai to paani garm kar deti hoon.” She proceeds to leave the bedroom.

“Anu, idhar aao”- Sandeep Chaudhary beckons him, still lying in bed.

Anu goes to him.
“Mujhse shaadi karogi”- he pops the question.
“nahin”- pat comes the reply, there is absolutely no connection between verbal language and body language.
“badmaash!”-remarks Sandeep Chaudhary so the deal is finalised.

A party is held to celebrate the win. Teachers as well as players are invited. The students wonder if the sports culture that he inclucated in the school was ephemeral. Will the school sports go back to its previous days ? Raghu offers to take up the responsibility of sports in the school and vows to return as a sports teacher to the school after passing out from the school.

The movie ends with Sandeep leaving the school premises for the station.

This movie was the debut movie of Prakash Jha as a director. And this movie is like scoring a century on debut. It is a movie that I have fallen in love with. What is there not to like and love in this movie.

1. The story is set in Ranchi.
2. The characters are totally real life and believable.
3. I was in the right age group as well as temperament to totally identify with the hero.
4. The movie is inspirational.
5. It is a different film. It is a film about sports.

Unlike usual movies, this movie does not have the usual formula based songs- a love song, a separation song, a cabarat etc. My guess is that the director did not want any songs in it but later on compromised and had some songs playing in the background. I find that the first two songs (that I shortlisted to go with this writeup) are both picturised almost in identical manner. It is as if the same picturisation was used for both songs.

I have finally decided to go with the first song. This song is movie opening song. The song plays in the background as Sandeep Chaudhary and his girl friend Uma go around places in Bombay.

The song is sung by Yesudas. Gulzar is the lyricist. Music is composed by Vanraj Bhatia.

With this song, “Hip Hip Hurray” (1984) makes its debut in the blog. Though I can hardly sit through movies these days, it is one movie that has the ability to hold my attention. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who is interested in watching good well made movies.

Going by the casting, the lady, who plays the fiancee of Raj Kiran is Deepa Rani. She looked quite impressive. I wonder why she failed to have a long innings in movie world.

Another impressive character was Raghu, played by Nikhil Bhagat. He too vanished from movies after this impressive role. 31 years later, he reappeared in “Tamasha”(2015), this time playing the role of Deepika Padukone’s father. Unlike others, Nikhil Bhagat was not enamoured of showbiz so he decided to concentrate on business. He has a business of leather goods. He was persuaded to come back to films by Imtiaz Ali, the director of “Tamasha”(2015) who had watched “Hip Hip Hurrray” (1984) during its time and who was suitably impressed with the movie as well as the actor.

I hope that the lady Deepa Rani too resurfaces some time in future, like Nikhil Bhagat.

Today (19 july 2019) marks eleven years of continued existence for this blog. Over fifteen thousand one hundred songs have been covered in the blog during the 4018 days of existence, which means that the blog has been buzzing with activity, covering songs at the rate of just under four songs daily. We have run up some impressive statistics associated with the songs covered in the blog. But more important that the numbers is the fact that the blog has given rise to a musical bandwagon, and a close knit team of music lovers who have gradually become close friends, online as well as offline.

I have loved this eleven year long journey. I have grown up considerably as a human being thanks to my interaction with so many like minded individuals during this musical journey.

I take this opportunity to thank one and all for their continued support, encouragement, contributions etc. May this association go on and on.

Audio

Video

Song-Ek subah ek mod par (Hip Hip Hurray)(1984) Singer-Yesudas, Lyrics-Gulzar, MD-Vanraj Bhatia

Lyrics

ek subah
ek mod par
maine kahaa
usey rok kar
ek subah ek mod par
maine kahaa usey rok kar
haath badhaa ae zindagi
aankh milaa ke baat kar
haath badhaa ae zindagi
aankh milaa ke baat kar

roz tere jeene ke liye
ek subah mujhe mil jaati hai
roz tere jeene ke liye
ek subah mujhe mil jaati hai
murjhaati hai
koyi shaam agar to
raat koyi khil jaati hai
main roz subah tak aataa hoon
aur roz shuroo karta hoon safar
haath badhaa ae zindagi
aankh milaa ke baat kar

tere hazaaron chehron mein
ek chehraa hai mujhse miltaa hai
tere hazaaron chehron mein
ek chehraa hai mujhse miltaa hai
aankhon kaa rang bhi
ek saa hai
aawaaz kaa ang bhi miltaa hai
sach poochho to ham do judwaan hain
tu shaam meri main teri sahar
haath badhaa ae zindagi
aankh milaa ke baat kar
ek subah ek mod par
maine kahaa usey rok kar
haath badhaa ae zindagi
aankh milaa ke baat kar
haath badhaa ae zindagi
aankh milaa ke baat kar
ek subah
ek mod par
maine kahaa
usey rok kar
maine kahaa
usey rok kar
maine kahaa
usey rok kar