On Hindi film music

A great Hindi film song (there are thousands) stands on its own strength – words, music, voice. Some songs work their magic because they fit the situation in the film perfectly, and enhance the story-telling. Sometimes a song works because it is picturized on an actor that you adore and he or she does a terrific job on screen, with the song.

But there’s another reason why some songs are simply emblazoned in gold in your mind. It’s when they set off memories that are intensely personal. The song then becomes a part of the documentation of your life as you grew up. And that’s why Hindi film music is many things to many people. Many of us grew up with a ‘radiogram’ in the living room and the saucy new entrant, the transistor radio, in our bedrooms (to be kept on even whilst studying for exams), Binaca Geetmala, EP records that gave you just four precious songs from a film or LPs that gave you the whole lot, sometimes with an intriguing bit of dialogue just before the song (Zindagi bhi ek nasha hai dost, glug-glug-glug – Dev Anand saying the words and pouring himself a drink in Guide, before Din dhal jaye hai, raat na aaye.)

These songs became part of our lives, like family photo albums. Every family has their own ‘geetmala’ in that sense. A unique set of songs that became family favourites, or marked some event or period, or were best sung by a particular uncle. In this way they become inextricably woven into family lore. And that’s why the story of any Indian family can be told via a selection of songs that served as markers to the family’s life and times.

In our family, in the sixties and seventies, my brother would come home with those little ‘song books’ that you could buy outside the theatre after a film. He had stacks of them, and these would be consulted for when a song was being prepared for a musical evening at home or up on the terrace, under a Kojagiri Poornima moon under a Bombay sky.

Of those, Manna Dey’s Kasme vaday pyar wafa sab, baatey hai, baton ka kya was one that he sang like a charm. What with the full moon, the musing words, the somber, delicate melody, magic happened. But that was not what we remembered for decades after that, so much as what that magical rendition of the song did to an Aunty family friend. She simply fell in love for the rest of that evening. A mother of three teenagers herself, she was swept off her feet by the song and the 21-year-old singer, my brother. That evening, she had eyes only for him, coquettishly asked him to fetch her water, and generally doing the eyelid batting and flirting that we younger kids, in our brutal 11-13 year-old way, found hugely funny and absurd. (At 11, an Aunty of 38 is a Very Old Person with no right whatsoever to feeling a flutter in the heart.) It became something of a family joke, till one day we were asked to just stop it, and never make reference to it again!

Some songs, you heard a family member sing often, well before you heard the actual song. My father, with his rich KL Saigal voice, would sing Janay woh kaisay, log thay jinse…from Pyasa. Only years later did I see the original, complete with Guru Dutt’s brooding presence. That was lovely too, but it was my father’s song first. The same goes for Poochon na hamay hum unke liye…kya, kya nazaarane laye hai. When I first heard Asha singing it on radio, it was a shock – hey she’s singing my mother’s song!

A whole bunch of songs are recorded in my mind as nostalgic-for-India songs. Sung by my parents and a clump of Indian friends, nostalgic for home in 1970s Singapore, even today those songs take me instantly to musical evenings in that country – it’s a terrific form of time travel. Rahi matwale, tum ched ik baar, man ka sitar, janay kaisay chori chori aiye hai bahar, chedo man ka sitar…they sang robustly together, with each one taking turns at different verses. That song’s a Singapore snap-shot in my head.

The Kagaz ke Phool great Waqt ney kiya, kya haseen sitam – will forever be the song that my sister had to sing under duress. Made to perform in sulky adolescence in front of people, she would regularly sing it (very well, really) and stamp out of the room upon completion in a flood of tears. Move over Waheeda and Guru Dutt, that song’s got my sister’s name written on it.
A shy and nervous cousin coaxed to sing at a family get together once began to softly sing Har tukda meray dil ka, deta hai duaahi. He started with the first two words and Champi, their family dog, raised her head and howled. Much tittering, shushing, and the cousin was asked to start again. Again the first two words, and the dog raised its head and moaned in wolf-like woe. A couple more attempts, and that was that. That song thereafter became known as Champi’s song. The cousin never sang again.

Then there was O Sajana, barakha bahar ayi…the Sadhana song that for some reason caused me to burst into tears, as a 2-year-old. My parents would try it out to show people, and I would obligingly cry copiously on cue. To date, it’s known in our family as ‘radaycha gana’ – the crying song. Yesterday it came on on the radio at 11 at night during Bela key Phool – and I nearly cried on cue then too; it was like stumbling on a very old and precious family album.