Tag Archives: My Love

Mukesh in Ten Moods

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Today is the birth centenary of one of Hindi film music’s greats: Mukesh Chand Mathur was born on July 22, 1923, in Delhi. In a far too short lifetime (he died in 1976, before his fifty-third birthday) Mukesh sang playback for many of Hindi cinema’s most popular songs. He was Raj Kapoor’s ‘voice’, known and loved not just in India but in countries far and wide, from the Soviet Union to Turkey.

Introduced to the film industry by Motilal, who was a relative, Mukesh’s first hit song ended up being for Motilal himself: Dil jalta hai toh jalne de in Pehli Nazar (1945). He had already debuted four years earlier, with the song Dil hi bujha hua toh from Nirdosh (1941), the film which also marked Mukesh’s debut as an actor.

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Ten of my favourite Shashi Kapoor songs

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Of the three Kapoor brothers—Raj, Shammi and Shashi—Shashi Kapoor is the one who falls in the middle when it comes to my personal preferences. Raj Kapoor I tend to not like (except in the occasional film now and then, like Chori-Chori or Teesri Kasam). Shammi Kapoor I am nuts about and will gladly watch in just about any film from his heyday. And Shashi Kapoor—well, he did act in some films I don’t like at all (Bombay Talkie, Benazir, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Aa Gale Lag Jaa, Raja Sahib…), but he also acted in some of my favourite films. In Prem Patra, for instance. And Waqt. And Pyaar Kiye Jaa. And my guilty pleasure, Sharmeelee.

He was wonderfully handsome in a boyish sort of way, he was a versatile actor (compare, for instance, his hot-headed young Hindu radical of Dharmputra with the madcap of Pyaar Kiye Jaa), he was extremely watchable. (And, to his credit—or his wife, Jennifer Kendall’s?—remained relatively well-preserved until quite late. Of the three brothers, Shashi had the longest innings as a believable leading man, all the way from the start of the 60s to the early 80s).

Shashi Kapoor

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