In the 17 years this blog has been in existence, I’ve created song lists for a large number of music directors: OP Nayyar, Madan Mohan, Naushad, Ravi, SD Burman… but somehow, I had never got around to creating a Salil Chowdhury song list. I realized this lacuna some years back, but then, realizing that Salil’s birth centenary was in 2025, I told myself I’d plan a list to mark that. I could not ignore Salil, who has long been one of my favourite music directors.
Some months back, I published a song list on songs that mention a city/town, Tier 2 or below, in India: Bikaner, Bareilly, Nainital, Agra… and when I was going over that list, it struck me that there were also songs that focussed on India’s metropolises, the Tier 1 cities. India has six metropolitan cities: Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, and every now and then, they find a mention in a song. Bombay, by virtue of being the hub of the Hindi film industry, probably leads the pack when it comes to metro city songs; but there are others too (though I must admit I haven’t found any songs, at least from old films, that mention Bengaluru/Bangalore).
When I create song lists, I always include only songs form films that I’ve watched. This is a rule I’ve imposed on myself, and it’s something that’s drawn questions, sometimes even accusatory. Why would I do that? I am asked.
Besides the fact that this is my blog (and so I get to govern it!), I have usually responded to that question by saying that some songs are best known in context.
Some songs. In fact, not very many. Most Hindi film songs—whether romantic, or depressed, or philosophical (or whatever other emotion)—are almost invariably neatly stitched together with the picturization. What’s happening onscreen is what’s echoed in the song.
Not always, though. There are a few songs where the song’s lyrics, or the picturization, are deceptive. If you don’t know the context, you may well end up interpreting the song as something very different from how it appears in the film.
Many years ago, on this blog, I’d posted a list of boat songs. Boats happen to be fairly popular ‘platforms’ (so to say) for songs. For philosophical songs, for romantic songs, for songs of everything from despair to hope. There are songs on motorboats, on rafts, on rowboats and shikaras and whatnot. Many of Hindi cinema’s most famous songs from before the 70s were boat songs.
Much rarer, though, have been ship songs. Ships, after all, aren’t usually a part of most narratives (they’re less easily accessible, plus of course require a greater outlay on the part of whoever’s financing the film). Shipboard songs, I’ve realized, fall into a few fairly specific brackets. Either the singer(s) is/are employed on board a ship (as naval officers, deck hands, even pirates), or they are wealthy people travelling overseas. The latter, especially, became a more common theme in the late 1960s, when several films had a cruise as an important part of the storyline, invariably as a setting for a blossoming romance.
I must begin this list with a disclaimer regarding that title: no, not really small town. However, a title that went ‘Tier 2 and Below Cities’ would be just too clunky. So give me some leeway here.
When I was watching Sapan Suhaane a few months back, the one song that really stayed with me was Naam mera Nimmo muqaam Ludhiana. Not only because it’s so catchy and Helen is so vivacious, but also because of the words. Why Ludhiana, I wondered. Was Shailendra thinking of Sahir when he wrote the lyrics of this song? Or did Ludhiana just seem to fit the metre and the rhyme scheme well? (It does, and really well).
That thought led to another: all the other songs that, like this one, also refer to the smaller towns of India. The really big cities—the metropolitan agglomerations like Bombay (a particular favourite, of course, given that the Hindi film industry is based there and most films have Bombay as a setting) or Delhi or even Kolkata—have plenty of references to them in song. But the smaller cities, the towns: they are rather more elusive. Not, however, completely missing. And that was what I set out to find: songs that mention smaller cities and towns (not the metros).
In 2018, for World Book Day, I compiled a post on Hindi film characters depicted with books. I had not meant it to be the first part of a series of posts; not at all. It had taken me a good bit of effort, many days of trawling through films, much research, to come up with those ten books on that list. To be honest, besides those ten books, those ten characters, I couldn’t think of any other Hindi film characters I’d seen with books.
I don’t know how it is with you, but I have noticed one thing about myself: as soon as I’ve done a post on some theme (or even thought of one), I keep noticing that theme again and again in films I watch. After 2018, I found myself spotting books in several old films I watched. Enough to enable me to post a follow-up list: ten other books.
And now another ten. As I’ve done for the other book lists I’ve made, these are all from films I’ve seen, and (barring one film, Dil Daulat Duniya, 1972), from before the 1970s. I’ve made an exception for Dil Daulat Duniya because (like—say, Sharmeelee—it has a very 60s look and feel to it, and is anyway on the cusp of the decade). These ten books are all real books, and can be bought online even today; I’ve provided links to buy, wherever possible.
RIP, Manoj Kumar.
The first week of April has seen two major actors of the film world pass away. Hollywood great Val Kilmer (whom I actually always associate with The Saint, though most others probably think Batman and Jim Morrison of the Doors), on April 1st; and on April 4th, Manoj Kumar. Kilmer, though I’ve watched several of his films, isn’t part of my timeline when it comes to blogging; but Manoj Kumar certainly is.
Many years ago, a blog reader with whom I had some differences, and who never seemed to be in agreement with me, parted ways with my blog. As she departed, it was with the scathing comment that I chose the most outlandish and weird of themes for my song lists. Unfortunately (or fortunately? I cannot decide) comments like that only serve to make me want to prove how unwarranted the remark is. In this case, by showing the reader that she “ain’t seen nothin’ yet”, as they say. If you thought I chose weird themes, you don’t known what a weird theme is. The weirdest is yet to come.
… and this is it. The germ of this idea was planted in my mind when I was doing research for another weirdly-themed list: my recording studio songs list. Several of the songs that feature people singing in recording studios also show the other side: people listening in, an audience tuned in to a radio or a television. As I’d watched song after song on my longlist and then my shortlist, I’d noticed that several songs weren’t just played on radios, but on record players, on gramophones. That had to be a separate list, I decided.
Late February and early March are, to me, the best season in the Delhi NCR area. Our (alas all too brief) spring is a lovely time: cool, the sunshine just right, the breeze pleasant—and flowers all round. In our housing society, spring is especially exuberant because the local Residents’ Welfare Association invests heavily in our society gardens: this time of the year, every path, every patch of grass, is lined with flowerbeds crowded with petunias, daisies, hollyhocks, stock, pansies, snapdragons… I could go on and on. It’s a riot of colour and fragrance.
And bhanwras. The carpenter bee, glossy and black and so easily visible, is everywhere right now, sipping at the hollyhocks and the dahlias in particular (in our society’s garden). Its size and its blackness makes the bhanwra look a little intimidating, but the males (which are aggressive) don’t have stingers and so cannot really harm you, and the females (which do have stingers) will generally sting only in retaliation if you disturb them. Usually, if all you’re doing is standing by and admiring one getting its nectar from a flower, they’ll leave you alone.
This blog post was inspired by an Instagram post by one of my favourite handles of all the social media channels I follow: Mad Mughal Memes, an absolutely delightful account that manages to combine informativeness with fun and often totally loony humour (my type, in case you don’t know that yet). Some time back, Mad Mughal Memes did a post in which they listed, with screenshots, some ten or so songs from Hindi films that were picturized at the Taj Mahal. Unlike me, of course, they weren’t constrained by a time period, so they had songs from very recently as well. Some songs (a very few) I was familiar with; others I had never heard of.
But it provoked a thought: why not a post on songs picturized at Mughal monuments? After all, it’s not just the Taj (though that, I agree, is the Mughal monument to beat all others). There are also forts, mosques—and gardens. Many of them very scenic, a perfect setting for a song.
Dustedoff 