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Atul Song-A-Day 10K Song Milestone Celebrations – 35
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In our series of introduction posts, now we reach a very special person indeed ! Formally named Greta Kaemmer, she is known to us all as just Memsaab.
Today, when I take a pause and look back, I can clearly see one important turning points for the blog, which arrived thanks to Memsaab. The date was 29 november, 2008, when Greta discovered the song blog. She was kind enough to write an article about this blog in her blog titled- “I am in love”.
She wrote
NOVEMBER 29, 2008
I’m in love…
with this blog. Go there now. Be prepared to spend an entire day there (at least). It is chock full of beautiful Hindi film songs, from all eras, with links to YouTube and—best of all—the lyrics transliterated for us non-Hindi script readers, sometimes (early posts) accompanied by English translated lyrics also. It’s truly a labor of love by Atul and a must-see for anyone who enjoys filmi songs (and who reading this doesn’t?).Wah! wah! Atul! And he’s promised that he will start doing the English translations again too. So let’s make it worth his while!
Edited to add: In my enthusiasm I forgot to mention that he also has wide-ranging knowledge on singers, music directors, lyricists, film history and all kinds of other interesting tid-bits that he includes in his posts. Okay, I’m done. Go there now.
I feel extremely grateful to Greta for giving publicity to the blog. We all know what a celebrity can do to a product when he/she endorses it. Greta was that celebrity for this blog.
Her endorsement helped gain me the much needed traffic of visitors from her blog and elsewhere. Quite a few of these new visitors became regulars and later contributors and helped in taking the blog forward.
Not just these visitors, Greta herself was kind enough to become a regular visitor and a contributor to the blog. And her articles had interesting nuggets of information that once she could have dug up. It was through one of her articles that we became aware of the fact that Helen had a brother who also worked in Hindi movies. And she has the ability to observe so many things in a song that to most mortals may appear an otherwise unremarkable song.
Greta has championed the cause of the small time actors in a big way. So much so that lesser known dancers like Bela Bose, Laxmi Chhaaaya, Edwina etc are finally getting recognition mainly thanks to the efforts of Memsaab. I unabashedly admit that I was not aware of the names of many of these lesser known actors before I read about them in Memsaab’s blog.
Memsaab has shown us how to enjoy movies even when they seem to lack the ability to entertain us. Seen through the eyes of Memsaab, there is hardly any movie that does not seem entertaining. She is a perfect salesperson for Hindi movies (especially the B grade movies). I have found her reviews far more entertaining than the movies themselves. And once you read her reviews, they you become aware of the entertaining highlights of the movie. Much of these entertaining highlights may be less by design and more by chance though. And the fact that memsaab gets to watch many of these movies on DVD with dodgy sub titles provides a big source of hilarity for her as well as her readers.
“Nahin face” and “purdah lite” are two of the several terms that Memsaab has coined. She undertook an enormous task of making a list of lesser known actors alongwith their photographs. Thanks to this initiative, many of these lesser known actors have become known to the present generation of movie lovers for the first time.
Memsaab has been a frequent visitor to India. In one of her earlier visit, she participated as a special guest in a Filmy quiz programme called “Bollywood ka Boss” (shot in late 2007 and aired in 2008) and she actually replied every question correctly that the host Boman Irani threw at her.
She has developed some good contacts in Hindi movie industry. And thanks to them, she managed to fulfil a major aspiration that she had- viz meeting her idol Shammi Kapoor. In her subsequent visits she has met some more well known Bollywood personalities.
Her other favourite actors include names like Rajesh Khanna, Mumtaz, Dara Singh, Asha Parekh, Helen etc. Among oldtimers, she finds Chandramohan and Prithviraj Kapoor as irresistible. A series of articles appeared in an Hindi newspaper about Chandramohan and I sent her the translation of these articles.
Once I located a delightful B grade movie called “Smuggler” and sent it to her for her review. She was kind enough to review it in her own inimitable style.
Memsaab has been featured in a few Indian publications, such as this and this.
Many talented bloggers have rallied around her and have created some badly needed resources, viz DVDs of forgotten movies with proper sub titles (under the name of EDU productions). These have qualities that far exceed the “quality” offered by any official DVD retailers.
Memsaab has a great sense of humour (as can be seen from her articles). She has tremendous patience and open mindedness as can be seen in her willingness to learn and master an entirely alien art form belonging to a land halfway away from her country.
Another of her qualities that I find so endearing is her love for pets, especially dogs. Her pets have a world wide fan following and many of us mourned when one of her pet passed away. And she mourned the demise of my cat. She wrote an article on anipals in her blog and dedicated that article to me. Likewise, I too have written a few articles on my pets and I always look forward to Memsaab’s comments on these articles. And she, in uncharacteristic glee has made comments like “best.post.ever” whenever I have written about my pets.
As a token of affection and gratitute, here is a song from “Chaalbaaz” (1969). This song is sung by Rafi and Asha Bhonsle. It is picturised on Dara Singh and a lady who could be Sanjana (I request our knowledgeable readers to help identify her).
Farooque Kaiser is the lyricist. Music is composed by the music director trio of Lala Asar Sattar.
Song-Shukria aapki inaayat ka (Chaalbaaz)(1969) Singers-Rafi, Asha Bhonsle, Lyrics-Farooque Kaiser, MD-Lala Asar Sattar
Lyrics
hmm hmm
hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm
aa aa
aa ha ha ha ha
Shukriya aapki inaayat ka
meharbaan shukriya
Shukriya aapki sharaarat ka
meharbaan shukriya
Shukriya aapki inaayat ka
meharbaan shukriya
Shukriya aapki sharaarat ka
meharbaan shukriya
aap ki raahon mein dil hai
shauk se thukraaiye
aur kya khidmat karoon main
jaaneman farmaaiyem
hosh kehta hai ??
takti rahoon
pyaar ki zid hai magar is aag mein jal jaaiye
zara ban ke
tan tan ke
haaye zara ban ke
tan tan ke
ye adaayen sataaye
khuda ki kasam
Shukriya aapki sharaarat ka
meharbaan shukriya
Shukriya aapki inaayat ka
meharbaan shukriya
ha ha
beqaraari intezaari pyaar ak anjaam hai
chain hai na palbhar
raat ko aaraam hai
aapki hi hi den hain
zara chhup ke
niraala sanam
Shukriya aapki sharaarat ka
meharbaan shukriya
Shukriya aapki inaayat ka
meharbaan shukriya
