Tag Archives: Dil thhaam chale hum aaj kidhar

Ten of my favourite Joy Mukherji songs

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Because my Ravi tribute was swiftly turning into a Joy Mukherji tribute – and because I thought Joy merited a tribute all his own – I decided to do a Joy Mukherji post. My intention had originally been to review a Joy Mukherji film – until I realised that I’d already reviewed all my favourite Joy starrers.

Joy Mukherji (Feb 24, 1939-Mar 9, 2012) was the son of Shashadhar Mukherji, one of the founders of Filmalaya. Filmalaya, therefore, was the company which launched Joy in the 1960 film Love in Simla (which also marked the debut of Sadhana). Of all the aspiring young actors who tried to emulate the vastly successful Shammi Kapoor in the 60s, the tall and handsome Joy Mukherji was probably the best at projecting some of the effervescence, the joie de vivre, and the sheer attractiveness that made up Shammi’s onscreen persona. Where Shammi danced up a storm with Aaja aaja main hoon pyaar tera, Joy was joy personified with Duniya paagal hai. While Shammi oozed romance with Ae gulbadan ae gulbadan, Joy was tender in O mere shaahekhubaan, seductive in Aa jaa re aa zara aa.

You will be missed, Joy. Sorely.


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Celebrating the Uncelebrated: Ten of my favourite songs by lesser-known composers

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This blog hosted a ‘Classic Bollywood Quiz’ a while back. In true film awards style (and we have pacifist to thank for this idea), everybody who submitted answers got a prize. The winner, Anoushka, got a tangible prize, and our runner-up, Anu Warrier, got the ‘dictate-a-list’ prize. For the others, I decided I’d dedicate one post each. This is the first of those posts; it’s dedicated to Karthik, who won the Just for the Heck of it Award (I assume full responsibility for that ghastly name; my creative juices had run dry by the time I got to naming this prize).

So, Karthik: this is for you, because though I’d thought vaguely that I’d do this list sometime, it was your suggestion (that comment on a long-ago post…) that spurred me on to get down to it. Enjoy!

Now, a few words about what this post entails. I’ve noticed that a lot of people, including those who do like old Hindi films and their music, tend to equate good music direction with the ‘greats’: Salil Choudhary, S D Burman, Shankar-Jaikishan, Madan Mohan, Roshan, O P Nayyar, Naushad… and so on. I did, too, till not too long ago. But a spate of watching some rather obscure films over the past decade or so has made me more aware of music directors who may not have made it big, but who certainly did not lack talent. In some cases, a couple of their songs became runaway hits. In some cases, the songs may not have been huge hits but are nevertheless very melodious.

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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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