Kunal Desai | desaikunald@gmail.com “A girl should be two things: Who and what she wants.” Said, Coco Chanel. Perhaps the very basic need of any human is its identity and for a woman in a field dominated by men is nothing but her identity. Film Music is also one such domain wherein conventionally, most men...
Arun Puranik | arun.puranik@gmail.com One still thinks of the Parsi riots that happened roughly 75 years ago while discussing Imperial Cinema. The first Bombay Talkies film, "Jawani ki Hawa", by Himanshu Roy, was released on September 16th, 1935, at Imperial. Devika Rani, the movie's main character, is a pretty young woman who doesn't want to...
Atul Merchant 'Jatayu' | merchatul@gmail.com Excerpts from the E-Novella Cinemaghar’ 1969 was a year of great significance. Apollo 11 landed on the moon with Armstrong as the first person to step on the moon. The year was significant for Bollywood too. Rajesh Khanna, father-son Burmans with the Yodeling of Kishore Kumar broke all the Box...
K V Ramesh | kvr4060@gmail.com If one were to look at the sheer volume of work of Shakti Samanta, we would be astounded by the high quality of songs in his films. And what songs they were; memorable is an understatement to describe the sheer high quality of output, leave alone the commercial successes. Shakti...
Bipin R Pandit | panditbipin@yahoo.com Shamsherraj Kapoor was the second son of the legendary Prithviraj Kapoor. While his father was a hugely respected theatre and film actor, his elder brother, Raj Kapoor, was an established superstar. But as luck would have it, almost all of Shammi Kapoor’s initial movies flopped—there must have been seven to...
I hold my breath, As I look up to its majesty. The stars are bright, And they fill me with gaiety. Behold, I see a star, one shining star Which pierces the night with its wondrous light? I see a star, one shining star, Brilliant, bold and bright. These lines truly amplify the Legendary Music Composer S D Burman, whose gleam still continues...
K V Ramesh | kvr4060@gmail.com Mainstream Hindi cinema, popularly called Bollywood, always has its stereotyped larger-than-life characters. The “hero” and heroine were usually “whiter than white”, while the villains were blacker than black. Nothing in between. The stories were largely formulaic with occasional flashes of innovation. That changed mainly in the late 1960s and through...
Some years ago, I was lamenting the general "lack of interest in today's younger generation in old classic Hindi film music" to a friend. She countered, "no; my children listen to the music of the 70s and so on". I said, "that's because you are a singer yourself ". She countered", no. They called me up...
Apni kahani Chhod jaa, kuch to nishani chhod jaa, Kaun jaye is or, tu phir aaye na aaye Mausam beeta jaaye Mausam Beeta jaaye... , The rousing song, set to the tune of a Soviet Red Army March Polyushko Polye orchestrated by Salil Choudhary, seemed to be a perfect metaphor for Bimal Roy’s film making style that...
