Small Town India in Ten Songs

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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).

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Point and Line (1958)

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In the original Japanese, Ten to Sen. The English title is also often translated as Points and Lines, which was how I originally saw it being referred to.

In a cinema that—at least to the outside eye—seems to be dominated by the works of directors like Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu, films that are rather more ‘pure entertainment’ tend to get overlooked. The amusing yet insightful little look at childhood, Ohayo (1959), for example; or this classic noir, a police procedural that revolves around trains: their schedules, their stations, their networks… and how they (along with a ferry and various aeroplane routes) might have been instrumental in helping a murderer pull off a crime.

The story begins on a bleak and deserted seashore, where two dead bodies have been found. The cops from the Fukuoka Police Department have come to investigate, and seem to have reached a consensus that this is a case of a double suicide: everything points to it. A man and a woman, her head sweetly pillowed on his arm, lying stretched out beside each other. The police doctor comes to the conclusion that they’ve died of cyanide poisoning.

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Mela (1948)

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I have never really wanted to watch this film, the main reason behind that being a long-ago comment by my father, saying that it was a ‘serious’ film. Which meant, basically, that you shouldn’t expect a happy ending. Whatever may happen before that—starry-eyed romance, good songs, even some humour—is all the light-heartedness you could hope for. When tragedy came, it would pile up.

Mela (which I ended up watching mostly for the songs, and partly because I like both Dilip Kumar as well as Nargis) gets off to a bad start, because it begins with gloom and doom. Mohan (Dilip Kumar), old and sad-looking, is released from prison after what seems to be a long, long time in jail. He goes out into the wide world, and walking along, comes across someone singing Yeh zindagi ke mele, while—in the background—crowds of happy, laughing people throng a fair, whirling about on carousels, milling about stalls, enjoying themselves.

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Hindi Film Characters with Books, Part 3

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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.

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Kabuliwala (1957)

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This is a film I’ve been meaning to watch for a long time now—ever since someone told me that the 1961 Balraj Sahni Kabuliwala (in Hindi) wasn’t a patch on the Bengali version, directed by Tapan Sinha and starring Chhabi Biswas as the eponymous Afghan. I was reminded of it again last year when, for Tapan Sinha’s birth centenary celebrations, Anu (from Conversations over Chai) wrote this wonderful review of the film.

Then, some time back, I began reading 100 Indian Stories (edited by AJ Thomas, published by Aleph Book Company, 2025)—and one of the very first stories in the collection was Rabindranath Tagore’s classic The Kabuliwala.

I figured it was about time I watched Tapan Sinha’s take on the story.

The story begins with scenes (no dialogue, only somewhat sonorous singing in what seems to be Pashto) in rural Afghanistan. Peaks loom high above the valley, a train of camels moves rhythmically along a narrow mountain, and we see Rahmat (Chhabi Biswas) hard at work, but taking out time now and then to play with his little daughter, whom he’s obviously deeply devoted to.

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Ten of my favourite Manoj Kumar Songs

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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.

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Ten of my favourite ‘record player’ songs

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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.

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Charley’s Aunt (1941)

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Two young men in Victorian England, eager to propose to their respective girlfriends, fix up a lunch date with the ladies, expecting that the aunt of one of the young men will oblige as a chaperone for the girls. However, the aunt, who has just arrived in England from Brazil, is called away elsewhere and sends a wire pleading her inability to come. Desperate, the young men seek a substitute as chaperone—and pick a friend of theirs, who then ends up spending the day juggling costumes, personas, and more.

That is the gist of Charley’s Aunt, a three-act play written by Brandon Thomas and first performed onstage in 1892. It’s a play I’d heard about often enough, but only got around to reading a couple of years back—and once I’d read it, I wanted to watch at least one cinematic adaptation of it (and yes, there are plenty of adaptations, including silent films as well as films in various languages, ranging from English to German to Arabic, the last-named in a couple of Egyptian versions of the film). Luckily enough, the best-known English adaptation of Charley’s Aunt, starring American comic actor Jack Benny in the lead role, is available even on YouTube (here).

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Book Review: Manek Premchand’s ‘And the Music Lives On’

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In the past couple of years, I’ve read two books by Manek Premchand—Director’s Chair, and his biography of Majrooh Sultanpuri—so when he offered to send me a copy of his latest book, And the Music Lives On, I leaped at the opportunity to read yet another Premchand.

The cover of this book gives a fair indication of what And the Music Lives On is all about: those stills from Mughal-e-Azam, Awara, Guide, Madhumati, Memsahib and Dilli ka Thug are a clear pointer to the films and the era Premchand writes about here, an era in Hindi cinema’s history that may be long past, but whose music lives on.

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Meera (1947)

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I am not a one for mythologicals or devotionals.

If you go through the list of Hindi films I’ve reviewed in the sixteen years this blog has been in existence, you’ll probably only find a handful of films that fit the bill (offhand, I can only think of Mahabharat, though in Telugu, I’ve also reviewed the excellent Maya Bazaar and in Tamil, Karnan). I have watched more than that, but nearly all I have found to be so ho-hum, I couldn’t be bothered to review them.

The story of Krishnabhakt Meera, wife of Bhojraj, was not one I expected to be any different. A woman, so completely devoted to the deity she has chosen to worship that she gives up everything, down to her husband and the kingdom of which she is queen, in order to go to Vrindavan to fall at Krishna’s feet… I was quite certain this film would be a hard slog. There was only one reason I wanted to watch it, and that was MS Subbulakshmi, who played Meera. I knew that Meera had originally been made in Tamil (in 1945), and was later (in 1947) dubbed in Hindi, with some scenes being reshot. MS Subbulakshmi, of course, given her stature as one of the greatest vocalists the Indian subcontinent has ever produced, sang all the songs.

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