Shahu Modak, Manhar Desai, and Secularism in Old Hindi Cinema

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Some time back, I was standing at the gate of our housing society, waiting for my daughter’s school bus to arrive. A neighbour, the mother of one of my daughter’s classmates, began complaining about the poor standard (according to her) of teaching in the school, which is Christian mission-run. Her contention was that teachers who aren’t qualified, or don’t really excel, are allowed to stay on in the school simply because they’re Christian. “You see them in the school photos,” she said. “All converts, you can see by their faces.”

I pointed out gently that most Christians in India (or actually, across the world) have been converted, at some time or the other, either in their own lifetimes or through their ancestors.

“No, no, that’s not what I mean,” she said. “I mean people who have been given incentives by missionaries to convert. I have lived in South India, I have seen a lot of this.” She must have seen the look on my face, and she hurried to clarify. “You can tell they’re converts, because of their mixed names.”

“I have a mixed name,” I said. Madhulika Liddle.

And then, I think, the penny dropped. So far, she had forgotten, perhaps, that I am Christian.

She blustered. “Of course, of course. But not you. I mean people who look perfectly normal but are Christian.”

“Normal? So Christians are not normal?”

By which time the school bus had arrived and I think both of us were relieved to have an end to what had become an awkward conversation.

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Amardeep (1958)

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Given that I am a fan of mid-1950s-early 1960s Dev Anand, and that this film also stars Vyjyanthimala (whom I like a lot), it should come as no surprise that I’ve had this film bookmarked for several years now. Somehow it kept getting ignored, until some weeks back, when I discovered that Amardeep was a remake of the 1956 Tamil film Amara Deepam (starring Shivaji Ganesan, Savitri, and Padmini). And that Amara Deepam was based on Random Harvest.

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Thank You, Jeeves! (1936)

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What I didn’t like about this film:

Yes, I am breaking with tradition: this is not going to be the usual type of blog post format I use for film reviews on Dustedoff. For the simple reason that this travesty of a film doesn’t deserve that much time and effort.

So, what I didn’t like:

The mockery they’ve made of a Wodehouse story. Writers Joseph Hoffman and Stephen Gross, and director Arthur Greville Collins, give credit to Wodehouse but all that remains in the film that is even vaguely connected to Wodehouse and his style are the two main characters: Bertie Wooster (David Niven) and his gentleman’s gentleman, Jeeves (Arthur Treacher). Nothing else, not the elements of the story, not the language, not the story, is anything like the Jeeves-and-Wooster stories.

The characters are insipid. Wooster isn’t a chump; Jeeves is. In fact, Jeeves is such a moron, he doesn’t even realize he’s literally on the edge of something big. He is distinguished only by that stiff upper lip; no brilliant brains, no coming up with genius schemes to haul the young master out of the mulligatawny. In fact, when Jeeves eventually does come to Bertie’s help, it’s with fists flying. It’s Jeeves’s fighting skills, not his brainpower, that comes in use here.

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Ten of my Favourite Suman Kalyanpur Songs

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In May, I posted a tribute to Asha Bhonsle, and Anu remarked that ‘with her passing, an era has ended’. A comment I agreed with, but to which blog reader Pratick Mukherjee replied by saying that we still have Suman Kalyanpur and Sudha Malhotra.

And sadly, we do not have Suman Kalyanpur any more: she passed away on May 31, 2026, at the age of 89. An immensely talented singer, and one who proved her worth in one song after the other, but who remains underrated, often unfairly compared to Lata Mangeshkar. Even though their voices, I think, were very similar—but Lata was a colossus no-one could really beat.

That, however, is a debate for elsewhere, and for another time. For now, I want to focus on Suman Kalyanpur, and to celebrate her work in ten songs. I had dithered over whether I should focus on ten duets or ten solos, and then decided to not restrict myself, because my favourite Suman Kalyanpur songs include both duets as well as solos.

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Aarzoo (1965)

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A couple of months back, my sister Swapna was invited to head a quiz team at a pub quiz (Jai Arjun Singh, who was also there, wrote about it here). Telling me about the quiz later, Swapna mentioned that there was one question that even Jai didn’t know. In Aarzoo, which place in Delhi does Rajendra Kumar’s character say he belongs to?

Nobody could answer that question. But the answer is Okhla Village.

… which sort of struck a chord with me, because till we shifted from Delhi to Noida, my husband and I had spent many years living very close to Okhla. And Noida, in case you weren’t aware of this, is actually an acronym for New Okhla Industrial Development Authority. Okhla follows us around. Or we refuse to really move away from Okhla.

This incident reminded me, though, that I have never reviewed Aarzoo on this blog, though I’ve watched the film at least twice. Time to amend that, I decided.

Newly-minted medical graduate Gopal (Rajendra Kumar) and his neighbour Ramesh (Feroze Khan) have been best friends since their childhood. Gopal’s younger sister Sarla (Nazima) and his widowed mother (Achla Sachdev) regard Ramesh pretty much the same as Gopal: a member of the family, a brother/son just as Gopal is.

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Asha Bhonsle: Ten Duets, Ten Co-Singers: Part 2

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When I posted this list  of ten Asha duets last week, the plan had not been to post a follow-up list as well. But then, blog readers began commenting on the post, and several of them posted songs that I really like, with playback singers I hadn’t mentioned. After all, when you’re doing a list of just ten songs, the tendency—and I admit I succumbed to this temptation—is to include your favourite songs. All the duets with Rafi, Kishore, Mukesh, et al, featured there. And those songs with these singers that didn’t actually get listed, I at least made it a point to mention.

Even when I’d posted that list, I was ruing the fact that I had still not got around to writing about Asha’s songs with, say, her sister Usha Mangeshkar. There were, in addition, a few rare songs with relatively little-known singers, too, that I had had in mind, but hadn’t written about.

So many good songs on the back burner. I decided a Part 2 was in order. So here it is. Ten duets sung by Asha Bhonsle with a fellow singer who wasn’t listed in the earlier post. As always, these songs are all from pre-1970s Hindi films that I’ve seen. These are in no particular order.

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Ten Singers, Ten Duets: The Timelessness of Asha Bhonsle

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(Apologies for the hiatus, the result of a series of unavoidable circumstances). 

Last month, when I posted a solos list as a tribute to Asha Bhonsle, a couple of blog readers asked me if I would be posting one (or more) follow-up posts. After all when Lata Mangeshkar passed away, I ended up publishing five posts, a total of fifty songs showcasing the solos Lata had sung with fifty different music directors or music director pairs. Surely Asha merited something similar? Yes, indeed she does, but I personally think Asha’s most stunning solos were sung for a handful of composers like OP Nayyar and SD Burman during the 1950s and 60s. She did sing songs for a wide range of music directors, but I find a lot of those songs relatively forgettable.

I decided therefore to focus this post on another aspect of Asha’s career: her duets: Romantic, funny, flirtatious, poignant—and so much more. Songs where her voice merged with that of a co-singer to create magic.

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Ten Composers, Ten Solos: The Magic of Asha Bhonsle

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I know I am late. Asha Bhonsle passed away, at the age of 92, on April 12. Within a couple of hours of the news of her death, there were tributes cropping up all across the net. Song lists, essays, memories, some misplaced attempts to jump on the bandwagon even if one wasn’t too sure what the fuss was about.

I am late, yes. I have to admit I was a little benumbed—Asha has always been one of my very favourite singers (dare I be an iconoclast and admit that I liked her more than Lata?). But more than that, she symbolized for me an older, sweeter time: an era of kinder films, gentler films, of sublime music and innocence. Asha was the last of the stalwarts, the last one standing of those who had created the magic of the 50s and 60s.

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Raahi (1952)

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This was a film I watched by way of tribute to Nalini Jaywant earlier this year. I had initially not planned to review it, but there were several points about Raahi that I found unusual enough to make me decide it needed to be documented.

I first heard about Raahi on Anitaji’s blog, where she mentioned that it was based on Mulk Raj Anand’s novel Two Leaves and a Bud—which is where one of the songs of the film, Ek kali aur do pattiyaan, draws its inspiration. Anitaji had included this song in a list of songs picturized in tea gardens, and it intrigued me. The story, set in a tea garden where friction between the workers and a heartless, predictably colonial (money-minded, racist, contemptuous) management causes problems, sounded like something that might merit watching.

Raahi begins on a country road in Assam in 1945. A Britisher (S Michael) going by in a jeep loses his temper at Ramesh (Dev Anand), who’s walking in the middle of the road.

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Ashwamedham (1967)

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My go-to expert for opinions on old Malayalam and Tamil cinema is Anu. Some years back, I’d been complaining to Anu about how so few old films from the South are available with English subtitles, but then I found a bunch of them on Jio HotStar. Anu asked which ones I’d found, and then was kind enough to give me her opinion on the films. About Ashwamedham, she wrote: “Ashwamedham deals with the social attitudes towards leprosy patients. Fabulous performances, especially from Sathyan. If you want to see the then-reigning triad of Malayalam actors from that age – Sathyan, Prem Nazir and Madhu – this is the film to watch.”

That sounded good, so why not watch (finally!)?

The film begins in the home of Keshavan (PJ Antony), whose wife Laxmi (Santha Devi) is expecting her tenth child. She’s quite sick of the whole thing and had been wanting to get surgery done to prevent her getting pregnant again, but Keshavan had refused. Now she’s pregnant again, and very upset about it. Already they have lost three children; already they have four daughters whom they need to marry off… the strain, both financial as well as emotional (not to mention physical, on Laxmi) is tremendous.

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