Romance does it, simply…..

The golden age of Bollywood music had a different charm and class about it. Bereft of big ticket expenses like foreign locales, elaborate choreographic arrangements with hundreds of identically dressed clotheshorses dancing the exact same steps in the background, mouthing the exact same lines that the hero  for the heroine (or vice versa) with meaningful lyrics, melodious music and great vocals, the movies of the time had a far greater shelf life than the noisy, useless din that movies of these times raise invariably to attract eyeballs with a show of flesh (or certain tendons in hitherto hidden crypts of the anatomy) that fail to last even a few weeks.

Look at this amazing melody from more than half a century ago. https://youtu.be/ZG-m3EHwikA

The movie is Dilli ka thug (the name now belonging to a serial cougher, easily the most adept at double speak in India). Two of the most expressive faces in the industry belong to the lead pair of the movie: Nutan and Kishore Kumar.

Kishore Kumar is a con and petty cheat in Delhi who falls in love with Nutan who looks cut out for the job with her bewitching smile and amazing emotive abilities. She even appears in a swimsuit in one sequence and that swimsuit has enough fabric for the costumes of the next dozen movies of Deepika.

He moves to Mumbai and discovers Nutan once again. The plot has some crazy twists and turns, centred around the heroine’s uncle who is the lynchpin of a counterfeit drug racket that makes money at the expense of endangering people’s lives: sounds eerily like the mission statement of some big multinational pharmaceutical companies, doesn’t it? The villain has a horrible scarred face but wears a mask of respectability (pun intended) where he passes off as the heroine’s uncle calling himself Professor Amarnath (instead of his real face/name as Anantram) . Why is Nutan saddled with counterfeit drug making uncles? Happened in Anari as well, didn’t it? So the final denouement is in a plane where the villain makes the pilots lose consciousness and the heroine shoots her own uncle who’s now exposed by  the hero in an onboard fight. The scarface exposed, the one time petty thief actually manages to land the crippled plane and save everyone’s lives and also win the lady over. Don’t ask silly questions like “How does Kishore pull off the landing?” Or “How did Nutan manage to carry a firearm on board an aeroplane?”

The music is by Ravi and several wonderful songs. I love this one for the straightforward, simple romantic rendition of romance. Shailendra wrote amazing lyrics and Kishore Kumar and Asha Bhosle sound great together. In one place you’ll find lyrics credited mistakenly to Majrooh. https://youtu.be/ouNb2s33ioQ

Anyways a wonderful song , one that’s truly for all times.

Have a wonderful day ahead, folks. Enjoy your day. Stay healthy and happy

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