Musical Shammi Kapoor

Photo credit: Indianexpress.com

Three years ago, I wrote an unexpected (and posthumous) tribute to Shammi Kapoor, a man who, in dark theatres and small television screens, had laughed and cried and danced and romanced various beautiful heroines across verdant hills and vales. He is the man who turned my wayward heart away from my first love, Amitabh Bachchan. (That was the slippery slope of cinematic infidelity, I'm afraid, since I fell for Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand in quick succession after that. Not to mention Cary Grant, Gregory Peck and James Stewart.) His films were filled with an innocence, a zest for life, and a sense of fun. Whatever else he was, or wasn't, he thoroughly enjoyed being on screen. And that enjoyment seeped out of the screen, both big and small, and infected the audience. He changed the face of the Hindi film hero. He was a winsome brat, a macho rebel, a debonair, and swaggering, lover.

Rafi Sings for Shammi Kapoor

Rafi Sings For Shammi Kapoor

Shammi Kapoor wouldn't be the Shammi Kapoor we all know and love if it hadn't been for the immense contribution of one man who was not only his dear friend, but almost came to be his alter-ego, his 'voice' - Mohammed Rafi. It is a contribution that the actor gratefully acknowledges even today. Rafisaab's range, his versatility, his ability to modulate his voice - these are all well-known attributes; but, as Shammi Kapoor himself says, Rafi added that 'little extra' to his songs for the actor. In fact, so attuned had the singer become to his image on screen that even when Shammi wasn't in the recording studios exhorting him to sing a particular line in a particular way, Rafisaab knew how he would want it done. 

The Masters: Majrooh Sultanpuri

01.10.1919 - 24-05.2000

My love for poetry, specifically Hindi poetry, was influenced by the Karnataka SSC Board, which had decided to make Hindi one of our 1^st language choices. This meant that apart from reading excellent Hindi literature, we were also introduced to some of Hindi poetry’s stalwarts – Mahadevi Varma, Sumitranandan Pant, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Suryakant Tripathi, Maithili Sharan Gupt, Harivanshrai Bachchan, as well as the dohas of Kabir, Mirabai, Surdas, etc.

Growing up with my film-crazy father also meant that film music was an integral part of my childhood. When I listen to songs, while it’s the melody that initially captures my attention, it’s the lyrics that keep me engrossed. The words have magic. They transport me to other worlds, touch an emotional core within me, and express what I feel but cannot say. 

But for all my love of words, there were very few lyricists whose work I could identify solely by listening to their words. Yet, I ‘knew’ them – through their verse, their words, the emotions they expressed so beautifully. And in some of those songs, surely, I had ‘met’, known and loved Majrooh Sultanpuri?

To the Movies Born

I have never been a great fan of Asha Parekh. I mean, she was pleasant enough, and starred in some rather decent 60s entertainers, traipsing over hill and vale, romancing some of the biggest heroes of her time, getting to lip sync to some memorable songs... I did enjoy her presence when I watched these films. However, I didn't miss her when she wasn't on screen, nor did I watch a contemporary actress and sigh, 'I wish Asha Parekh had done this role.' She was, well, rather bland – in my opinion – and I could take her or leave her without overthinking the issue.

So, on a recent sojourn to India, when I was buying my usual quota of books – I brought back a whole suitcase of them – I dithered over buying her autobiography. Was I really interested enough to want to know more about her? I wasn't sure. Yet, she was one of the most successful actresses of her time, responsible for many pleasant hours I spent at the cinema, and what's one more book, after all? Even if it had a rather weird title? I succumbed to temptation and bought it.

Was it worth it?

My Favourites: Love Songs

Okay, colour me grumpy, but I don't like Valentine's Day. Don't get me wrong - I am an absolute sucker for romance. I still get all wet-eyed and mushy when I read a good romance (no, Mills & Boon is not what I'm talking about; Georgette Heyer is more my style), I still feel 'awww' when I see a good romance on screen, and I am incurably romantic, even if cynical about it for myself. I just don't like a specific idea of 'luvvvv' pushed down my throat. 'True love'  and 'soulmate' make me want to barf. 

I don't want to be told 'I love you' at exactly 10 o'clock every day. I don't want my husband to buy me chocolates, overpriced red roses, or Valentine's Day cards. I absolutely don't want to pay exorbitant rates for a dinner in a restaurant. (Restaurants in my part of the world hike up their prices by at least 40% during this week.) Candlelight dinners are not very romantic - for me.  I like my food too much; I want to see what I am eating. 

As for my husband, I'm thinking back to our first wedding anniversary; let's see... 

We decided (hmm, I decided) to go out for dinner; on the way we ran into our neighbour, who whistled in appreciation when he saw me. (Thank you, Sachin!) My husband promptly offered to let him take me to dinner in his place. And no, he didn't buy me flowers either. In fact, I'm the one who sent my husband flowers on our first anniversary (much to my mother-in-law's amusement and my husband's embarrassment). And the waiter at the restaurant we went to took pity on me when he learnt it was our anniversary, and brought me a red rose. (True story!)

Romantic? Hah! 

My Favourites: Picnic Songs

I have a sad tale to relate. (All my recent tales seem to be sad.) My cup of woe is full to the brim, and in danger of overflowing. I mentioned in an earlier post how my laptop decided to give up its ghost while I was in India. Well, I've been attaching a keyboard and making do with it all this while. It is certainly not a 'laptop' any more, but it's sufficient unto the evil thereof, and hey, into each life some rain must fall, and all that tosh. (Besides, we need the rain; the North East is going through a drought.) 

But yesterday, I wrote a very good post (if I do say so myself) and was very pleased with myself indeed. Until, I hit 'Save', and pouf! the whole thing just vanished before my eyes. There was nothing I could do to bring it back; S tried his level best as well, but Blogger did not cough up the entrails. I tried to rewrite the post - after all, I'd just finished writing it, hadn't I? No luck. While I remembered the gist of the post, the words just didn't flow as well, and the writing seemed flat. I scrapped the post, nearly threw my busted laptop out of the window, vented to Dustedoff, and went to sleep in a huff. 

Dil Deke Dekho (1959)

1959

Directed by: Nasir Hussain

Music: Usha Khanna

Starring: Shammi Kapoor, Asha Parekh, Rajendranath, 

Sulochana, Sidhu

Dil Deke Dekho was Nasir Hussain's second movie after Tumsa Nahin Dekha. And while the plot is very similar to the latter movie (for a great review, go here), Asha Parekh in her debut role was a darn sight better than Ameeta in hers. Okay, that is a very subjective opinion, so all due apologies to Ameeta fans out there. :) This film also saw Usha Khanna debut as music director; it wasn't the greatest of debuts since four songs from the soundtrack were seen as 'lifts', but apart from 'Dilruba, meri Neeta' which was a direct lift from 'Diana' , I would say the others were *only* 'inspired'. 

I watched it originally for Shammi Kapoor because Asha Parekh also does not rank amongst my favourite actresses, but she did do a good job in this one. And she did look dashed pretty, which was mostly what was required of her. But subsequent viewings made me (almost) like her. The villain (Sidhu) impressed me; haven't seen him before or since, which is a shame. 

Twin Songs

Some time back, fellow-blogger AK of Songs of Yore emailed a comment that one of his readers, Harishchandra M. Salian, had made on his blog. Mr Salian had mentioned his fascination with what he called 'twin songs' - songs which follow one after the other in a film. AK suggested that perhaps I could do a post on the theme. *

My initial introduction to these type of songs was of course the dream sequence in Awara (more about that later). My father called it a 'double header' - the industry term for two separate songs that are picturised back-to-back, but which do not fit on one side of a 78 rpm record, so Song 1 would be on Side A while Song 1A would be on Side B. My next tryst with the same scenario was Megha re from Dil Deke Dekho. Then I watched Bobby and was caught by a similar sequence of songs. As I continued to watch Hindi films, I found that songs coming one immediately after the other was not as uncommon an occurrence as I'd initially thought. But that was as far as it remained - a thought filed away in some dark corner of my brain for no real purpose that I could fathom at the time.

Shammi Kapoor - Romantic Duets

Romance and Shammi Kapoor go hand in hand. Once he broke through to the big league with Tumsa Nahin Dekha, Shammi didn’t look back. It helped that the era was ripe for change; the privations of the decade following independence were a thing of the past. The nation-building exercise that a fledgling country just free of the yoke of its colonial masters demanded was replaced by the dreams and ambitions of a youthful demographic that wanted a little less reality and a little more romance and escapism. Enter a new breed of filmmakers who were excited about the changing landscape of the motion picture industry.

It was the moment Shammi had been waiting for, for many years. Grabbing the opportunity, he burst onto the scene with unbridled enthusiasm. He positioned himself as the youthful rebel, whose trademark bonhomie and loose-limbed grace became his calling card. He romanced his heroines through hills and valleys, fought villains who would try to claim his beloveds and/or his inheritance, and became the aspirational hero for the new generation.

Love Songs – Mohammed Rafi

Pic: Courtesy: Pinterest/Ravinder Singh Thakur

When Mohammed Rafi passed away on 31 July 1980, even the skies wept. The outpouring of grief that accompanied his funeral cortège was not just because of a legendary singer's untimely death, but because the man who died had been, above all, a good human being. The legacy that Rafi leaves behind is not only his immense body of work – which continue to enthral us – but also the shared memories, narrated by those who knew him well.
 

My Favourites: Sensuous Songs

I had meant to continue my Raj Kapoor series, just so I could convert fellow-blogger dustedoff into being an RK lover like me, but I haven't had the time to re-view the film I wanted to write about next. (Never mind, I shall persevere.) In the meantime, I was having a (heated) discussion with a friend about song picturisations today; and about how the meaning of the word 'erotic' or 'sensual' has changed from what it originally meant to being vulgar, raunchy, and in most cases, just involves getting the heroine wet.

Phir Wohi Dil Laya Hoon (1963)

Directed by: Nasir Hussain
Music: OP Nayyar
Lyrics: Majrooh Sultanpuri
Starring: Joy Mukherjee, Asha Parekh,
Veena, Wasti, Tabassum,
Rajendranath, Pran

Nasir Hussain’s films, even if predictable (he famously said that he came to Bombay with one story in his pocket) are fairly entertaining. Good looking leads, hill stations aplenty, and good music. In other words, just what you need to spend a couple of hours, destressing. So I sat down to watch Phir Wohi Dil Laaya Hoon – which could have been titled Dil Deke Dekho, or Tumsa Nahin Dekha. If it weren’t for the fact that this stars Joy Mukherjee (guitar in tow) and not Shammi Kapoor, you may not even realise the difference.

The Divas: Sadhana

I began this series, The Divas, with Sharmila Tagore, who I thought best epitomised the category - of actresses with talent who also knew how to package themselves to be a very important part of the sort of films that were being made during the period. The age of 'artistic' commercial cinema had begun to recede, and films were either completely 'commercial' or 'middle-of-the-road'. (Who makes these distinctions is not very clear, because well-made films are always a joy to watch, regardless of which genre they belonged.) But the diktats of commercial cinema needed heroines who were not only beautiful but could also be the stuff of which dreams are made - gossamer, ethereal, feminine - the perfect complement to the  'masculine' heroes who populated the fairy tales on screen. 

It is an unfortunate observation that this breed of actresses could have been interchanged without anyone being any the wiser. The roles were pretty much the same. Yet, in my opinion, the advantage of some of these actresses who I would categorise as 'Divas', lay in the fact that within the parameters of the roles they took on, one couldn't see any other. The fact that they could, and did, very often make those run-of-the-mill roles their own, plus move quite smoothly into the so-called 'artistic' cinema is perhaps what pushes these heroines to the 'Diva' category. 

My second heroine in this category is Sadhana Shivadasani. While I already had her in my list because she is one of my favourite 60s heroines, the impetus to write about her at this point came from Coolone, who is the second runner-up on my RK Quiz. The request was to write  'a blogpost on one of my most favourite actresses, Sadhana'. It is a request that I was more than glad to fulfil. So, Coolone, this one's for you. :)

My Favourites: 'Kaun Aaya?' Songs

Hindi films are full of rhetorical questions to which everyone, including the people asking those questions, know the answer, and I find them amusing. Sometime back, I wrote a post on what I called ‘Where are you?’ songs, in a bid to answer one such question. It struck me that there were a few other existential questions that need answers. One such question is ‘Kaun aaya?’ The answer is obvious, of course (and the characters on screen know who has stolen their heart, resided in their soul, made them laugh…), but they ask (sing) the questions anyway.  

Well, I thought it might make sense to explain these songs to my readers [patting my own halo] so I began my research, my quest for the rhetorical, the unanswerable, the inexplicable...

My Favourites: Heroes – 1 (40s-70s)

I had earlier made a list of favourite heroines from the 40s-70s, based on an idea that Ava of The Pink Bee had. At that time, I had mentally decided I would also do a 'favourite heroes' list, along the same lines. 

Like the heroines, the heroes from this period have given me hours of entertainment and enjoyment – an enjoyment, in fact, that continues, because I blog about films from that period (generally), and that gives me an excuse to keep watching their films. These are the actors with whom I grew up; they were my reference points for films. As with the heroines, many of these actors of my childhood (and my father's youth) have left us bereft. What lives on is their legacy, their body of work, their youth, middle age and even old age captured on crackly celluloid, and our love for them enshrined forever in our memories of them.

Shammi Kapoor - In Perpetual Motion

The late Shammi Kapoor loved to narrate an anecdote of how incensed he was with director Shakti Samanta because the latter had recorded Aasman se aaya farishta  from An Evening in Paris, in Shammi's absence. Shammi liked sitting in on the rehearsals and recordings of his songs, and had told Samanta to wait until he came back from one of his outdoor schedules. However, the recording theatre having already been booked, Samanta went ahead with the recording.

Faced with his angry hero, Samanta calmed him down by suggesting that Shammi hear the song before deciding whether to re-record the song or not. When he did, Shammi realised that there was not a single note that he would have wanted sung differently. When he asked Samanta how they managed it, the latter replied that before recording the song, Mohammed Rafi had enquired on whom it was to be picturised. When told it was on Shammi Kapoor, Rafisaab nodded quietly saying, 'Oh, Then, he will shake his head at this point; and move his hands and legs this way - that man doesn't know how to stand still! I'll have to sing it this way..." 

It is not just that Shammi Kapoor didn't know how to stand still; it is that he seemed to have an inordinate number of songs that were picturised in/on some mode of transport or the other. Last year, on this same date, I had done a post on Shammi Kapoor and various musical instruments. Now it is time to chronicle his trysts with travel, whether in vehicles or on animals. In any case, whether they moved or not, Shammi definitely did. 

The Lost Legacy

It is in darkened theatres across the various Indian cities that I lived in that I first became acquainted with films. There, sitting alone amidst many strangers, I lost myself in a world that was populated by good looking heroes and beautiful heroines, where love and conflict and revenge and drama all played out in three hours, usually with a very satisfying end – they all lived happily ever after. 

The ‘happily ever after’ was very important. One just didn’t get that satisfaction with ambiguous or outright sad endings. As you can see, my masala roots go very deep. By the time I entered my teens, television had entered our drawing rooms, and the beautiful people had moved out of the dark, musty theatres into our well-lit living spaces. They were still beautiful, their conflicts were still engaging, and coupled with songs by Mohammed Rafi or Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar or Asha Bhosle, we were sufficiently entertained for a few hours.  

Word Play: Shaam

Photo credit: imgkid.com

Many moons ago, I had begun a new category of themed lists. I titled it 'Word Play' and under that category, I began to list songs that began with a particular word. Going through my lists recently, I realised that that category has been woefully under-represented. In all these years, I've written just three posts - Raat, Piya and Chand, probably the most ubiquitous of 'words that occur frequently in Hindi films songs'.

The 'rules' for this category were frighteningly simple: the song had to begin with the chosen word. (At the most, the word could be the second one in the first line.) Preludes to songs didn't count. And two, it has to be the word itself, not its variations.

The advantage, of course, to doing so, was that the songs chosen under this rule were not restricted in terms of genre (they could be of love or heartbreak, meetings or separation, betrayal or helplessness...) or setting (urban, rural, or in-between). I didn't have to worry about the distinctions I make in my own mind, or about explaining those to my readers.

The Greats: Shammi Kapoor

Shamsher Raj Kapoor
21-10-1931 - 14-08-2011

I had meant to do this post some time, but never thought that I would be writing it as a posthumous tribute to an actor who has provided me with many hours of entertainment. Today, 14th August 2011, is truly the end of an era. While Shammi Kapoor may never have attained the heights of the ruling troika (Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor) his second arrival with Nasir Hussain's Tumsa Nahin Dekha was a whirlwind of fresh air.

The Legends: Mohammed Rafi

24.12.1924 - 31.07.1980

I have always maintained that I do not have a 'favourite' singer - male or female. I love songs, and which song I want to listen to, or which singer I like, depends on the moment and the mood I am in. In my post on Kishore Kumar, I responded to a comment about 'favourite singer' by saying "...when I hear Beqarar karke humein, Hemant Kumar is my favourite singer; when I hear Jinhe naaz Hind par, I love Mohammed Rafi; when I listen to Chalo ek baar phir se, I'm sure Mahendra Kapoor is my favourite singer. Yet there are so many many songs of Kishore's that I listen to, over and over and over again." That is equally true for female singers. But if I were forced to name a favourite singer, it would be, without any hesitation, Mohammed Rafi.