Tag Archives: Apni toh har aah ek toofaan hai

Shailendra in Ten Moods

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One of Hindi cinema’s leading lyricists, and a stalwart poet in his own right (I cannot resist wondering if that shouldn’t be “in his own left”, given Shailendra’s socialist leanings!), Shailendra was born on this day a hundred years ago. I have written about him before, in this post to mark an earlier one of his birthdays. But, since I like Shailendra’s poetry so much, I could not let his birth centenary pass without a post dedicated to him. A list of Shailendra’s songs, therefore, that are in ten different moods. And, so that this post isn’t a repeat, even in a small way, of my earlier Shailendra post, none of the songs here are from my earlier post.

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Ten of my favourite train songs

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Continuing with my plan to link every post to the previous one… well, what next? (Harvey: you were close when it came to guessing!)
My last post, North-West Frontier, was set mostly in a train – and that too a train in the Indian subcontinent. So it seemed appropriate to do a list of my favourite songs set in what seems to have been one of Hindi cinema’s much-loved settings. From this lovely old song by Pankaj Mullick (thank you, AK, for introducing me to that), to newer songs – from Teri hai zameen teri aasmaan, to the much later Chhaiya chhaiya.

But: I’m restricting myself to pre-70s songs, and those too from films I’ve seen. What’s more, these are songs where the person on whom the song is picturised is on the train throughout the song. That’s why, no Mere sapnon ki raani kab aayegi tu (for me, that’s a jeep song; I’ll do it in another post) and no Jab pyaar kisi se hota hai.

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