Guest article by Shalan Lal as Part II of the Remembrance Tribute to Meena Kapoor (c. 1930 – 23 November 2017)
(Shalan Lal wrote a comprehensive post on Meena Kapoor on her first death anniversary 23 November 2018. I didn’t know that she was planning to write a second part too. She sent me the Part II of her Remembrance Tribute a few days before 23 November 2019, but by that time I was committed to post some date-specific articles in the calendar year 2019. As such, this has spilled over in the new calendar year. But Shalan Lal has been very understanding, her only request was that I do not use the editor’s guillotine liberally. In deference to her hard work and deep research, I have retained the entire article as it is, which gives the readers a lot of information about the films, their star cast and other related facts. She also gives a very good idea about Baburao Patel and his celebrated journal ‘Filmindia’. Thanks a lot Shalan for your exhaustive post. – AK)
“Here’s, looking at you, my listeners, from the heaven above!”
Meena Kapoor’s playback singing appeared in about eighty Hindi films. Then again, more films are discovered by the film buffs and connoisseurs as the time passes by. My efforts here are to cover them annually with ten films each year.
On 23 November 2018, i.e. her first death anniversary I wrote a tribute Part I covering the first ten films in which Meena Kapoor sang as a playback singer, films up to 1947 although I used her film song in the film Pardesi (1957) to point out that she had equal talent that Lata had during fifties and before.
In the second part I cover her ten more films until the end of the decade of the forties of the Bollywood. In this part I touch the Indian filmy culture, aka mahaul, giving information about the greatest Indian film magazine called Filmindia which created information and entertainment as the part of the Indian film-world along with some interesting information about Suraiya who was a singing actor and contemporary of Meena Kapoor.
The numbers attached to the films are the continuation of the films from the previous tribute.