Tag Archives: Shaheed

Shaheed (1948)

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RIP, Kamini Kaushal. Ms Kaushal, probably the oldest of Hindi cinema stars still living, passed away at the age of 98 on November 14, 2025.

Over the years I’ve been blogging, I’ve seen one after the other of some of my favourite stars pass out of our lives: Shammi Kapoor, Sadhana, Dilip Kumar, Kumkum… but with Kamini Kaushal, I have to admit to a somewhat pronounced sense of loss. Not because she was a particular favourite of mine (though I admitted to being quite impressed with her acting when I watched Biraj Bahu some months back). But because with her passing, the door seems to have shut firmly on those who heralded the start of the Golden Age in Hindi cinema.

Anyhow, a tribute seemed in order. A tribute to Kamini Kaushal, and to a film that I’ve been meaning to watch for a while now.

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It’s what you wear: Ten songs about attire

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Every now and then a blog reader makes a request for a song list. Some I find interesting enough (and challenging enough) to decide to take up.

This is one such: songs that make a mention of a particular garment. A blog reader, an avid participant in antakshari, made this request, having first told me that he found my blog a very good resource for coming up with songs to fit just about any theme. Would I do a song list on items of attire, please? I had already published a list on dupattas/chunaris/odhnis, but beyond that, offhand, I could think of only a handful of other pieces of clothing that had been celebrated in song. It took a good bit of time, effort, and research to dredge up others.

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Ten of my favourite Prem Dhawan songs

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This post is a little late. It was the birth centenary of Hindi film lyricist, composer, and choreographer Prem Dhawan earlier this year (he was born on June 13, 1923, in Ambala), but what with one thing and another, I just couldn’t find the time to work on this post back then. Anyway, better late than never, I guess. And Prem Dhawan was one person I did want to write about on this blog, because he is one of those rare individuals who didn’t merely excel in one realm of the film industry; he was rather more of a polymath than most.

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Lata Mangeshkar: Ten Solos, Ten Composers – Part 4

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Last year, when Lata Mangeshkar passed away, I did a series of posts featuring songs she’d sung for different composers. This post, the fourth and final one, had been lying waiting to be published for the past several months.

I began the first list as a tribute to Lata when she passed away, but that, I realized, was too little; there were too many very talented composers, too many wonderful songs, which had perforce been left out of that list. I therefore ended up making another list. And then another.

Here, I cover ten more composers, most of them unfortunately either forgotten now or never really given their due. But, as can be seen (or heard?) by this list, they were not short of talent. These ten solos are all, as always, from pre-1970s Hindi films that I’ve seen. Plus, these songs do not overlap with the very first Lata Mangeshkar post I had published on this blog, here.

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Ten of my favourite ‘imprisoned singer’ songs

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No, this song list isn’t the result of a dear relative landing up in jail or anything of the sort. It just popped into my head one day when I was looking up a song on Youtube and saw Lapak-jhapak in the side panel. It occurred to me: Hindi cinema has its fair share of people who are in prison, at times in really dire straits (not the case with Lapak-jhapak, where David’s character is really quite comfortable), but still being able to summon up the energy to sing. As a character writes in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Why do tired people sing?… Too tired to do anything else. Maybe that’s the case with film characters in prison: lots of time on their hands and too depressed to do anything else.

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Ten of my favourite songs featuring colours

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Happy Holi!


I don’t celebrate Holi—ever since I was a little girl, I’ve had a horror of being wet and dirty, and come Holi, I used to insist on locking myself in. I was in good company; though my father was obliged to go and play Holi with his colleagues, Mummy and my sister were as intent on staying clean as I was. Come Holi, we’d happily feast on gujiyas and whatever other goodies came our way, but pichkaris, gulaal, and the rest? No, thank you.

Not so with Hindi cinema, where Holi has been a big thing all along: the perfect situation for displays of affection, camaraderie, general love towards one and all. And I don’t think I have ever seen Holi depicted in a film without there being an accompanying song. That was what I’d first thought I’d do to mark Holi on this blog: a post of Holi songs. Then, looking back at the number of non-Holi songs that are about colours, I thought, Let’s give it a twist. Let’s talk about blue and pink and green and yellow. Let’s talk sky and trees and eyes and whatnot. Neeli aankhein, peeli sarson. Hariyali aur raasta.

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Ten of my favourite percussion instrument songs

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Continuing with an on-and-off series of song lists featuring—in the picturisation—various types of musical instruments. This began with my post on women pianists, followed much later by a post on male pianists, and then a post on songs that featured string instruments. It’s time, I decided, to try and compile a list of good songs that feature another important category of musical instruments: percussion instruments.

Drum on!

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Ten of my favourite ‘classic poem’ songs

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Several weeks back, a two-day festival called Dilli ka Apna Utsav was organised in Delhi. As part of the festivities was a heritage walk led by my sister, Swapna Liddle. This walk took us to buildings and landmarks associated with the poetry spawned in Delhi: famous venues for mushairas (like the Ghaziuddin Madarsa and the Haveli Razi-un-Nissa Begum), or places which were once residences, even if only briefly, of famous poets (Ahaat Kaale Sahib, Zeenat Mahal, Ghalib’s Haveli).

What connection does all of this have to Hindi cinema? Just that it got me thinking of the links between Hindi film songs and classic poets. I can’t think of too many classic poets (except Mirza Ghalib and Meera Bai) who have been made the central characters of Hindi films, but the works of famous poets crop up every now and then in Hindi film songs. Sometimes in their entirety, and very well-known, too (as in most of the songs of the Bharat Bhushan-starrer Mirza Ghalib).

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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 Mahendra Kapoor songs

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A little over a month ago, when I reviewed Humraaz, one thing (among the many) that I liked about the film was the music, one of the few soundtracks dominated by Mahendra Kapoor. Praise for Mahendra Kapoor drew mixed reactions: he’s underrated, he shouts, he’s good only for Punjabi songs, he’s versatile… therefore, this post, on Mr Kapoor’s birthday, to celebrate one of Hindi cinema’s uncelebrated singers. Born on January 9th, 1934, Mahendra Kapoor recorded (supposedly) more than 25,000 songs and is believed to be the first Indian singer to have recorded a song in English.


Anyway, without further ado, my top ten list of Mahendra Kapoor’s songs. All from 50’s and 60’s films that I’ve seen, and (to make it a little more interesting for myself) no two songs from the same film. These are in no particular order.

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