Tag Archives: Manek Premchand

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

Posted on by

22

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.

Continue reading →

Book Review: Manek Premchand’s ‘Director’s Chair: Hindi Cinema’s Golden Age’

Posted on by

19

Amongst all the many books on Hindi cinema I’ve read over the years, most have been about actors, or (rather more occasionally) composers, singers, or even lyricists. Biographies, autobiographies, analytical insights into their work. Meena Kumari, Balraj Sahni, Asha Bhonsle, Rajesh Khanna, Ashok Kumar, SD Burman, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Sahir Ludhianvi, Helen, Lata Mangeshkar, Dev Anand, and many others. By contrast with these, I can count on the tips of my fingers the number of books I’ve read about directors. Hrishikesh Mukherjee (by Jai Arjun Singh), Basu Chatterji (by Anirudha Bhattacharjee) and Nasir Hussain (by Akshay Manwani); even an autobiography by Kidar Sharma. But other than that?  Not too many. Or none that I’ve read (though, I will admit, I am yet to read both Nasreen Munni Kabir’s and Sathya Saran’s books on Guru Dutt).

I was keen, therefore, to read Manek Premchand’s ‘Director’s Chair: Hindi Cinema’s Golden Age’ when its publisher, Blue Pencil Publishing, offered to send me a complimentary copy. I am of the firm belief that a director plays a huge role in making a film what it is: yes, everybody plays their part, but how so many disparate elements are brought together, how the sum becomes greater than its parts, is up to the director.

Continue reading →

Book Review: Manek Premchand’s ‘Majrooh Sultanpuri: The Poet for All Reasons’

Posted on by

13

Three years ago, celebrating lyricist Majrooh Sultanpuri’s birth centenary on my blog, I wrote that it was a tough ask to select just ten songs from the more than two thousand that he wrote in the course of a film career that spanned a whopping five decades.

For a blog post, restricted (admittedly by its writer) to just ten songs, that can be a challenge; but it is also a challenge for a full-length book to do justice to a colossus of the size and stature of Majrooh. It’s not even as if, when discussing Majrooh, one could get away with just talking about the songs he wrote for Hindi cinema: to be able to portray, with any veracity, not just the poetry of Majrooh but also his personality, the man he was, the work he did, how he thought—all of this requires a lot of research, a lot of organization and careful planning.

Manek Premchand’s Majrooh Sultanpuri: The Poet for All Reasons (Blue Pencil Publishers, 2021) is an ambitious project, an attempt to capture, within the pages of a book, the life and career of one of Hindi cinema music’s greatest personalities.  

Continue reading →