Ten songs picturized in famous gardens

Not too long back, I went on a trip to Kasauli, in Himachal Pradesh. It was a brief, pleasant little jaunt, and on the way back, I suggested that we stop—since it was on the way, in any case—at Pinjore Gardens. Later, back home and settled in, I posted some photos and wrote about the Pinjore Gardens on Facebook, and the post prompted fellow blogger Ava to remind me that several songs had actually been shot in the Pinjore Gardens.

That led me to think: it’s not just the Pinjore Gardens, but several other well-known gardens, that have been the settings for various songs. Some gardens—the ones in Kashmir, notably—are almost instantly recognizable, thanks to those distinct mountains and the towering chinar trees. Others are a little less obvious, but they are, too, quite obviously not just a set, not just a well-aimed, well-timed shot of flowerbeds in spring.

Here, then, are ten songs that have been picturized in well-known gardens. To make the challenge less of a sitter for myself, I added one rule: no two songs should be shot in the same garden. As always, these are all from pre-70s films that I’ve seen, and are listed in no particular order.

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Ten of my favourite ‘Give us a hug’ songs

The other day, I was thinking about some of those songs that end up featuring on every other list I make. Songs that are perennial favourites of mine, because they are those rare combinations of brilliant music and equally brilliant lyrics, singing, picturisation—everything. Songs like Aage bhi jaane na tu, Yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaaye toh kya hai, and Lag jaa gale ke phir yeh.

Lag jaa gale ke phir yeh made a thought pop into my mind: that a fair number of Hindi songs are an invitation to be hugged. That might seem fairly innocuous, but in the good old days of nodding flowers and birds putting their beaks together onscreen, an embrace was a daring enough statement: it meant you did love someone; you weren’t being frivolous. No heroine (or hero, even) worth their salt actually hugged anybody—in a romantic way—other than the love of their life. So telling someone to come on and give you a hug meant you were serious (even if the way it was said—as it is in some of the songs in this list—in a light-hearted way).

Give us a hug, now...

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