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

Posts Tagged ‘Rafi


This article is written by Sudhir, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.

Om Prakash holds a special position amongst the comedy / character artists in the Hindi film world. Hailing from Jammu (born 1919), he started his acting career on stage. Then after a brief stint at the All India Radio in Lahore, he got his first major break in the movies in early 1940s, with the famous producer director DS Pancholi. He did some movies in Lahore, including Daasi, Dhamki, and Aayee Bahaar. After partition, he moved to Bombay. In a career that lasted a little over five decades, he is credited with acting in 300 plus films. Om Prakash has always held out on his own even in the presence of many leading lights of their times, having worked with the three great actors of 50s and 60s, down to working with Big B in the 1980s. And his repertoire is not limited to small, comedy roles only. He has a fair share of pivotal roles that he played in many movies during his career; in fact the success of many movies is attributed to his roles, viz. Chupke Chupke, Julie, Sharaabi, Namak Halaal, Gopi, Sadhu aur Shaitaan, Annadata, Buddha Mil Gaya etc.
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It is a song that I have heard many a times right from my younger days, and I in fact had noted down the lyrics of this song in a diary that I used to maintain in 1970s. This diary had lyrics of songs noted down by me from radio as well as scorecards of test matches (noted down through radio commentary) that India played those days. 🙂
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This evergreen song from “Jab Pyaar Kisi Se Hota Hai”(1961) wears multiple hats. The song is a multiple version song in the sense that this song is sung independently by two singer, viz Rafi in one version and Lata in another version. The song can be called the title song as well as theme song. The male version of the song is rail song as well.
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These are are days of consumerism where people have mind boggling variety of materials to choose from. It is difficult to imagine today that Indian shops till 1970s wore spartan looks and they hardly had anything to offer. People got “phoren” goods from abroad and flaunted them proudly. And smuggling (bringing items without paying the exorbitant taxes) was a flourishing business.
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I have recently come across a song from a movie called “Daanaa Paani” (1953). Hardly any information is available about this movie and the brief information available about this movie is faithfully reproduced in all sites. The information being, this movie had Bharat Bhushan, Meena Kumari and Shashi Kapoor in it. When one does maths, Shashi Kapoor must be all of 14 years old at the time this movie was released. So it is not as if he was carrying the movie on his shoulders.
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Most songs discussed in this blog are movie songs which were included in the movie when that movie was released. But there are some cases in which songs, even though they were recorded as part of the movie ended up getting excluded from the movie for one reason or the other. In some cases, the movie makers decided to exclude the song, in some cases, censors ordered the exclusion of the song, and in one case, this was done one week after the movie was released !
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I just realised two facts. One fact is that the hair of leading ladies in Hindi movies play an important part in Hindi movies, especially in songs. when the Hero needs to sing a song in praise of her, what are the things about her that he can mention? He will sing about her face- likening it to Chaand(Moon), he will sing about her eyes, likening them to deep lakes. Another important body part that find much mention in the paens that hero sings for the lady are her hairs, which are called “zulf” in Hindi song parlance and they are often likened to Ghata (viz black rain bearing clouds). Heroine being compared to moon,lakes, cloud ! Hindi movie lyricists must have paid enough attention in their geography classes, it would seem to me, at least when these geographical topics were being discussed.
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