Tag Archives: Shalimar Bagh

Ten of my favourite songs picturized at Mughal sites

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This blog post was inspired by an Instagram post by one of my favourite handles of all the social media channels I follow: Mad Mughal Memes, an absolutely delightful account that manages to combine informativeness with fun and often totally loony humour (my type, in case you don’t know that yet). Some time back, Mad Mughal Memes did a post in which they listed, with screenshots, some ten or so songs from Hindi films that were picturized at the Taj Mahal. Unlike me, of course, they weren’t constrained by a time period, so they had songs from very recently as well. Some songs (a very few) I was familiar with; others I had never heard of.

But it provoked a thought: why not a post on songs picturized at Mughal monuments? After all, it’s not just the Taj (though that, I agree, is the Mughal monument to beat all others). There are also forts, mosques—and gardens. Many of them very scenic, a perfect setting for a song.

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Ten songs picturized in famous gardens

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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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Mughal charbaghs: some trivia, some basics

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The most common form of the Mughal garden is the ‘charbagh’, so named because it consisted of a four-sided garden, with two streams of water running perpendicular to each other. Supposedly a representation of Paradise, this garden concept was originally Persian and made its way to India with Babar, when he began to rule in Agra.

The Nishat Bagh, in Srinagar, laid out in 1632 by Asaf Khan, the brother of the Empress Noorjahan.

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Ten of my favourite ‘Kashmir songs’

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Some of you may have noticed my recent hiatus. Some of you may even know the reason for that—a trip to Kashmir (or, to be more specific, Srinagar). I lived in Srinagar for 3 years, beginning with when I was about 9 years old. I loved Srinagar. It was a beautiful place, and the beauty of it changed with the seasons: from the golds and reds of the chinars in autumn to the billowy white of winter (winter also meant teeth-chattering cold and long power cuts and occasionally no water, but never mind). From the masses of narcissi and daffodils, and the flowering fruit trees in spring, to the gardens bursting with poppies, roses and pansies in summer.

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