Memories of another day...

Jahan Ara, released in 1964, says movie lore, ran for just a few days at a theatre and then was sheepishly taken off. It was also a time for Raj Kapoor’s opus Mera Naam Joker to go quietly into the night. But then came the mega hits! Sholay, Seeta Aur Geeta and a host of others!

From Sadhna’s fringe-cut to Sharmila Tagore’s `nest’, sprayed-in-place to Dev Anand’s fetching puff in Guide, there were many trends and many followers. Heroines had a big say in how they were dressed. Saira Bano brought in the short (below the knee, above the ankle) sari in Shagird (1967), but then equal claim was staked on the design by Asha Parekh’s saree in Baharon Ke Sapne later that year!

We had  cool heroes who smoked, be it the dapper Dev Anand’s philosphical turn with a cigarette lighter in Hum Dono where he put his ghosts to rest with, Har fikr ko dhuen mein udaata chala gaya or Ashok Kumar, tapping a cigarette forever or smoking his pipe, clad in a dressing gown!

Villains cut a fine figure too. Be it Pran or baddies like Madan Puri who often wore striped crew cuts. Almost every film had a staple,  dheeshoom-dheeshoom climax atop huge drums. Fringe characters sometimes stole the thunder from lead characters.  Mehmood and Johnny Walker were habitual scene stealers, as were Manorama and Tun Tun. Helen and Aruna Irani outsizzled the heroine whenever they shook a leg. We did not know then that in the future the heroine herself would perform these item numbers!

 Past perfect

Those were innocent times and women did not model for lingerie ads. The ads were usually artistes’ sketches. But with Sharmila Tagore (in 1967’s An Evening in Paris), leading ladies discovered that it was okay to be seductive.  

Every heroine worth her stardom however wanted to be a Lux model. In fact, that was an endorsement of your star status.

It was the age of romance when cinematographers like Fardoon Irani, Jal Mistry, Dwarka Divecha and VK Murthy, took lingering, flattering close ups of the heroines, specially in dramatic scenes or romantic songs.

In 1966, fans went into a tizzy when Dilip kumar and Saira Banu decided to wed. He was 44. She was just 22. But there was more excitement in store. In the late 60s, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi got the Beatles into India and Pandit Ravi Shankar became an international music icon. This was also the time when punk music brushed against urban India’s cherished beliefs and core values.

It was a time when you didn’t need to be rich to afford a Walkman, something infra-dig today, but a personal stereo in the late 1970s? And with that sound? Bravo, Sony!
It was cool to wear bell-bottoms and sideburns. Today we look back and miss those defunct fashions and brands and also large helpings of Polson Butter. And sing under our breath, jingles like, Sirf ek Saridon, aur sardard se aaraam!

 It was Alyque Padamsee who steered the advertising trends. And Lalita ji, became  the mascot of middle-class India.

And remember the Doordarshan of the 60s and 70s? It was black-and-white and many shades of grey. On Chitrahaar days in Delhi and Chhaya Geet days in Mumbai, we would all gaze at the TV, and wait for the ‘still’ to go away and the film songs to begin. And if there was a transmission glitch, another ‘still’was brought on to say,  Rukaawat ke liye khed hai!

On Sunday evenings, we could not believe our luck that we could watch a movie, sitting at home!

In the middle of things, we had the elegant Salma Sultan reading the news on and on from 1967 to…hold your breath, 1997! We had the Binaca Geet Mala on Wednesday nights and Ameen Sayani was a cult voice.

In retrospect, nostalgia is like a grammar lesson. You find the present always tense and the past always perfect!

(The author is a film music historian and has  penned two books, Yesterday’s Melodies,  Today’s Memories,  and Musical Moments from Hindi Films)