Tag Archives: Aarti

Ten of my favourite bhanwra songs

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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.

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Ten of my favourite Pradeep Kumar songs

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This post is ten days late. January 4, 2025 marked the 100th birth anniversary of an actor who, in an industry dominated by Punjabis, was one of just a handful of Bengali leading men. And, unlike—say, Biwasjit or Joy Mukherjee—to have a respectably long innings as an actor, playing lead roles right through the 50s and 60s, and then continuing as a character actor up to the last years of the 1900s. Impressive.

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Lata Mangeshkar: Ten Solos, Ten Composers – Part 2

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When Lata Mangeshkar passed away earlier this month, I wrote a tribute post in which I listed ten songs, all solos, that Lata had sung for ten different composers. Naturally—given Lata’s record number of songs—there were many, many songs and many composers that didn’t get covered in the list. Blog readers helpfully suggested other great songs that could have been part of the list, or which they especially liked; some wondered why I had not listed this song or that. Or why so-and-so composer had not been included.

Even when I had been compiling that post, I’d been thinking, there really ought to be a sequel to this. A post, at least, to include some of the other great music directors for whom Lata sang some exceptional songs. As well as the music directors who may not have been very famous, but who were nevertheless very talented.

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Songs for Our Times

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I have been watching with increasing despair and sorrow these past few months as India has teetered on the brink of disharmony and violence, hoping against hope that it was just a passing phase. There were moments when I felt things were looking up, for instance, when people of other faiths—not just Muslims—came together at Shaheen Bagh and elsewhere to oppose CAA and NRC. There were times I told myself it was getting better, that India was essentially secular, and that divisive forces would eventually be defeated.

Then the Delhi carnage happened. Many were killed, even more injured. Property was destroyed, people were forced to flee their homes. Curfew was clamped. We mourned. Not just for the dead, but for the way the hydra-headed monster of hatred, bigotry and violence had again reared its head.

I have lived in Delhi for most of my life, and to see the city burning like that—if only virtually, since I now live in Noida and don’t need to go to Delhi often—was heartbreaking. My Twitter and Facebook feeds were flooded with horrifying photos and articles, and I despaired, wondering where humanity had gone.

And then the heartwarming bits of news began trickling in: the gurudwaras which announced that their doors were open to victims of the violence, irrespective of faith; the Hindus who staunchly protected Muslim neighbours; the Muslims who formed a chain around a temple, the Sikh who risked his own life to ferry Muslim neighbours to safety, again and again and again… each piece brought with it new hope. Yes, humanity will triumph, I thought. This too shall pass.

This week’s blog post, I thought, merited a list. A list of songs that call for peace and communal harmony. Songs that remind us that hatred and violence go nowhere, and that religion is supposed to make you a better person, not an evil, angry one.

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Ten of my favourite Roshan songs

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Sometime last month, I discovered that one of my favourite music directors would have celebrated his birthday centenary this year. Born Roshanlal Nagrath on July 14, 1917, in Gujranwala (now in Pakistan), Roshan played the esraj for All India Radio, Delhi for about 10 years (during which he also composed music for various programmes) before moving to Bombay to try his luck in the world of cinema. Roshan’s career as a music director took off fairly soon afterwards, with the resounding success of the score of Baawre Nain (1950); he went on to compose music for over 50 films until his death in 1967.

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