One of Hindi cinema’s leading lyricists, and a stalwart poet in his own right (I cannot resist wondering if that shouldn’t be “in his own left”, given Shailendra’s socialist leanings!), Shailendra was born on this day a hundred years ago. I have written about him before, in this post to mark an earlier one of his birthdays. But, since I like Shailendra’s poetry so much, I could not let his birth centenary pass without a post dedicated to him. A list of Shailendra’s songs, therefore, that are in ten different moods. And, so that this post isn’t a repeat, even in a small way, of my earlier Shailendra post, none of the songs here are from my earlier post.
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Ten of my favourite Shankar-Jaikishan songs
When it comes to Hindi film composer duos, for me there’s none greater than Shankar-Jaikishan. By no means the first (Husnlal Bhagatram, for one, predated them) and definitely not the last (there have been many others, from Laxmikant Pyarelal and Kalyanji Anandji to more recent duos like Anand-Milind), Shankar Jaikishan were unparalleled in the sheer quality of their work. They composed some of Hindi cinema’s best-loved tunes, all the way from Westernized club songs to ghazals, from dreamy love songs to peppy folk numbers. Versatility, finesse, and that ability to appeal to the common janta, to have ordinary folk humming their tunes: these were some traits which set Shankar-Jaikishan apart.
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