Guest article by DP Rangan
(We celebrated Holi sometime back. This is the season of romance and love, when the flowers bloom, there is music in the stream of rivulets and rustling of leaves, and the hearts of even old people are aflutter with desire. There is a folk proverb to describe this: ‘फागुन में बुढ़वा देवर लागे’. (This has nothing to do with the guest author DP Rangan’s age though.) Mr Rangan is deeply romantic, but absolutely clean; he has taken additional precaution to start this post with the evolutionary anthropology of love.
Our films are generally love stories full of songs and dances. The Bollywood hero and heroine hid in the bushes and ran around trees; when they were bashful, flowers swayed and kissed each other. In another type of love, towards the end, the woman applied the dust of her devata’s feet to her parted hair and installed the deity in the mandir of her heart. We lapped these songs. I was not surprised when I got a suggestion to write on ‘love songs’. I was hesitant because every second song was a love song, and some of the ‘romances’ made me cringe.
I find on SOY that when I am not able to fulfil the readers’ request, by some telepathy someone offers to fill up the gap. Mr Rangan is now in his 80’s, but he has the energy of an eighteen-year old. He is the most prolific guest author, having written 28 articles for SOY. Here he comes up with another exhaustive article on the commonest theme of Bollywood songs. Thank you Mr Rangan for this interesting piece. – AK)
Human beings were the last to emerge in the evolutionary process which commenced with unicell organisms progressing to multi-cell and more complicated forms of life over aeons. Initially humans were living as a hunter-gatherer society following their prey. Invention of agriculture about 12000 years ago was a great step in progress. It enabled them to stay rooted in a region and stabilise their lives. Their numbers grew into an organised society. Endowed with cognitive abilities, they developed skills as painting on rocks of which there are plenty of evidence discovered by archaeologists. To celebrate important occasions in their lives, community get together was born with activities as dancing.
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We are all aware of the drug problem in Bollywood, thanks to the media which went into frenzy at some NCB raids at rave parties and the homes of some celebrities. There was a lot of moralising about the decadent lifestyle of our role models. Bollywood in turn was surprised at the hullaballoo and their response was, Guys! Grow up to the new social reality. Everyone does party drugs, which have been legalised in many countries. And Hey lawmakers and enforcement agencies! Remove them from the list of banned substances. 
Even a very keen follower of film music would it find it difficult to list the music arrangers and instrument players beyond a few, more by luck than design, handpicked popular names. When radio was the major source of listening to the film songs, one possible reason that music arrangers and instrument players hardly got any mention when the song was played was that for each song such a list would probably take more time than possibly the actual paying time of the song, typically recorded on one side of a 78-RPM shellac record. By the time FM radio listening generation came in, this genre of supporting music was confined to pre-programmed database of ‘digitally generated’ sounds of digital or electronic instruments. So, when the music director himself was becoming more of an assembler, it would be surprising if any other support sources would have got some mention. 
Let us jump back in time, a favourite concept in very many scientific novels/films (e.g. Back to the Future, a Hollywood movie) and position ourselves before Hotel Rialto, London on the 18th July 1952. It is a gathering of distinguished guests from England, India, Indonesia etc. Nimmi is part of the entourage along with Mehboob Khan, producer of the movie Aan. The premiere of the movie in its English version named The Savage Princess is being held. It is the first Indian film to be made in full colour and shown abroad. A few days later a reception was well attended by film personalities from Hollywood too. Dazzled by the charm of Nimmi, four producers from Hollywood, including Cecil B. De Mille offered her roles in their future ventures. Nimmi refused it. Errol Flynn, a leading Hollywood actor, sought the hand of Nimmi to plant a kiss in the traditional western style. Taken aback, Nimmi declined it stating that she was an Indian girl and such practices were foreign to her culture. As usual paparazzi were buzzing among the guests. Next day came headlines in many papers – ‘Nimmi the Unkissed Girl of India’. This was stated by Nimmi herself in an 
In one of my earlier posts on lyricists, I had stated that with the advent of talkies from 1931 in India, the triumvirate of music director, singer and lyricist constituted a major element of film production. It has continued to be so till date, but with a progressive decline in quality over years, particularly in the twenty first century.
You might recall some songs picturised on Harindranath Chattopadhyay, who always looked over 80, or on the patriarch of three generations Prithviraj Kapoor, and several such songs on an ever-old Om Prakash or David. Coming to the next generation, most songs were picturised on adult romantic lovers. As for children, they had an important place in our films as in our lives, and you can reel off dozens of songs picturised on them in our films. It is another matter that barring a few songs like Naani teri morni ko mor le gaye, baaki jo bacha tha kaale chor le gaye, or Lakdi ki kaathi, kaathi pe ghoda, most of the children songs made them mouth mature philosophies. A popular soap on Sony TV, currently on air, is centred around a 6-year child who, like a 60 year old strategist, untangles the mess, removes her mother’s confusion and helps her in defeating the gang of vamps and villains in the family. Bollywood took Wordsworth’s poetic expression, “The Child is Father of the Man”, literally, and gave it a new meaning altogether. 
The year 1943 was like 1944 in many respects. Kismet became a cult hit for its novel theme; it also happened to have outstanding music by Anil Biswas. Anil Biswas also gave some excellent music in Hamari Baat. Naushad didn’t have a Rattan (1944) exactly, but he gave music to three films – Namaste, Kanoon and Sanjog – and all the three celebrated silver jubilees. Towering above all these, KL Saigal, Khursheed-starrer Tansen became a musical masterpiece, composed by Khemchand Prakash. Ram Rajya, composed by Shankar Rao Vyas had some songs which have acquired iconic status. New Theatres maintained their quality with Kashinath (Pankaj Mullick) and Wapas (RC Boral). There were several others making a mark, such as Kamal Dasgupta, Shyam Sundar, Pt. Govind Ram, Vasant Desai and Rafiq Ghaznavi. For lovers of music of the vintage era, these are familiar names and they have acquired a place in the Roll of Honour.
