I started this series on my Facebook group Yaad Kiya Dil Ne on 23 Aug 20. Since then, many other members have put up these songs. Here, I shall be giving you one of my own, per day.
Last time, I gave you Beautiful Duet #38 – O shama mujhe phoonk de. So here, then, is the next one:
Song #40
Aaja re ab mera dil pukara
Remembering Jaikishan on His Birth Anniversary 04 Nov
My dad loved parties; both attending and organising. I recall sing-song sessions were always essential parts of those parties. My dad’s younger brother is the only surviving sibling of my dad. When dad organised a party to receive him and his American wife Connie, she sang Ye raat ye chandni phir kahan!
However, in all local parties, the songs that I heard most were Shankar Jaikishan songs. Sad songs were more welcome during those days than happy ones and this song made a sort of Jubilee!
I didn’t know Hasrat Jaipuri at that time; Kishwar Jaipuri behna, do forgive me since I was only a boy of about seven to eight years old. However, we were still aware of Mukesh, Lata Mangeshkar and Shankar Jaikishan, the guys who gave us the most popular and memorable songs in Hindi movies.
Of course, I was unaware of Prithvi Theatre. However, in my later life, Prithvi Theatre became an essential part of my off working hours in the Navy. Other than seeing excellent plays there, we used to look forward to Irish Coffee during the Interval with adequate lacing with Whiskey.
We should be grateful to Prithvi Theatre and the doyen of Kapoor family: Prithviraj Kapoor (whose birth anniversary was yesterday) and his son Raj Kapoor for having brought together Shankar Jaikshan for us.
Aah – 1953 Movie

Raj Kapoor’s Barsaat, a 1949 movie, was the first movie of Shankar Jaikishan and the first movie in which Lata Mangeshkar was credited on screen as playback singer (for both Nargis and Nimmi).
What a team leader Raj Kapoor was. Raja Nawathe had worked as an assistant director to Raj Kapoor in Aag (1948), Barsaat (1949) and Awaara (1951). In this movie, Raj Kapoor as the producer, took Raja Nawathe as full fledged director!
Hasrat Jaipuri and Shailendra divided the nine songs of the movie between themselves and these were composed by Shankar Jaikishan. And what beautiful and unforgettable songs these were:
- Sunate the naam jinaka bahaar se.
- Raja ki aayegi baraat.
- Jaane na nazar.
- Ye shaam ki tanhayiyan.
- Jo main janati unke liye.
- Aaja re ab mera dil puakara.
- Chhoti si ye zindagani.
- Raat andheri door savera.
- Jhanan jhanan jhanan.
This film was a flop because initially the movie was to have a tragic ending (inspired by Devdas) but Raj Kapoor insisted on a happy ending, which killed the movie.
The Song
Fortunately, the sad and melancholic songs didn’t get killed and are therefore among the best remembered songs of Shankar Jaikishan.
Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy Lata Mangeshkar and Manoj Kumar singing for Nargis and Raj Kapoor: Aaja re ab mera dil pukara..
आ जा रे
आ जा रे, अब मेरा दिल पुकारा
रो रो के ग़म भी हारा
बदनाम ना हो प्यार मेरा
आ जा रे
हो ओ ओ घबराये हाय ये दिल – २
सपनों में आके कभी मिल – २
मौत मेरी तरफ़ आने लगी
जान तेरी तरफ़ जाने लगी
बोल शाम-ए-जुदाई क्या करे – २
आस मिलने की तड़पाने लगी
आ जा रे …
आपने बीमार-ए-ग़म को देख ले
हो सके तो तू हमको देख ले
तूने देखा ना होगा ये समा – २
कैसे जाता है दम को देख ले
आ जा रे …
I hope you liked my choice of Beautiful Duet #40.
Please await Beautiful Duet #41- Dil dhoondta hai phir wohi.
Many of Bimal Roy’s films had the female as the main protagonist and so was the 1958 film Madhumati that was produced and directed by him.
alil Chowdhury composed the song in Raag Darabari Kanada and it was sung by Mohammad Rafi.

And this is the song of that image! This song describes what Mehboob Khan wanted to project as the image of Indian Woman as opposed to what Katherine Mayo did in her 1927 book Mother India that vilified her. Mehboob Khan wanted to project her as an intrepid woman who’d stand firm against all odds and circumstances.
It is rare for me to give you a song that has the theme-word in the mukhada itself. However, I have been meaning to put up this song for some time now.
OP Nayyar, of course, is best remembered for his songs with horse-trot beat such as Maang ke saath tumhara, Laakhon hain yahan dilwale and Phir wohi dil laya hoon. His movies had the largest number of hit and super hit songs. He claimed not to know much about raagas and the like and yet some of his songs were very well composed in raagas; his favourite being Raag Peelu or Pilu and next favourite being Pahadi.
This movie was directed by Jagdish Nirula and starred Dharmendra, Rajshree, Chand Usmani and Mehmood.
End of the year is the time of the year for retrospection. We were so keen to usher in New Year. But, did we do anything new at all? Did we get rid of old habits and adopted new virtues? Did we think of new ways to solve life’s problems? Or, we were just puppets at the hands of Time and drifted aimlessly?



This handsome young man from Phagwara in Punjab joined Hindi movies as an actor so that he would act opposite Meena Kumari.

Hemant Kumar has been my favourite singer since my boyhood days and yet I am often very shy writing about him; just like I am writing about Mere Mehboob Tujhe.
This Asit Sen movie starred Rajesh Khanna as the man who has lost his noodles after being cheated in Love. Waheeda Rehman is a nurse at a mental asylum. Whereas, other nurses have found it beyond them to handle such cases, Waheeda Rehman has been the nurse of choice because of her empathy and sensitive handling.


Mukesh and Lata Mangeshkar, the singers of the duet that I am giving you, made some of the most enchanting duets in Raj Kapoor movies. I had a Facebook group called Dil Ki Nazar Se based on the title of their duet in 1959 Hrishikesh Mukherjee movie Anari. Some of the other are: Aa ab laut chalen, Dum bhar jo udhar moonh phere, and Aaja re ab mera dil pukaara.
The song has been sung by Lata Mangeshkar and Mukesh on the lyrics of Shailendra and composition by Shankar Jaikishan. As I said, it is in Raag Bhairavi, Tal Kaherava. The song is picturised on Raj Kapoor and Padmini. A word about them at this stage:
When it came to women, the roles in which each one of them had to show their mettle were as courtesans and the ones in which they could dance in wet saree.
We lost him on this day in the year 2011. He did Assam proud by having been awarded two of the highest awards by the government of India: the Bharat Ratna, eight years after his death and Padma Vibhushan, one year after his death.
The other day I gave you, in the Beautiful Duets series a song that made Raveena Tandon the “Mast mast girl”. That was in the 1994 movie Mohra. Seven years later, her role in 2001 movie Daman, also a Kalpana Lajmi movie, won her the National Film Award for Best Actress. I am sure, she and us would value it even more than the “mast mast girl” title.
The film is about marital violence. When I acted in and directed in a private show (for the navy audience) Mahesh Dattani play ’30 Days of September’ about Incest, it came out from the mouth of Renuka Chaudhary, the Indian Minister for Women and Child Welfare that the incidence of incest in Indian families was as high as 51 percent! Well, the incidence of marital violence must be even higher. It has been, for ages, a male dominated society and you would have seen thousands of Hindi movies wherein the place of an Indian wife is shown at the feet of the husband (“Ab hamen aap ke kadmon mein hi rehna hoga”!)

It was sung by Kavitha Krishnamurthy and composed by Bhupen Hazarika.
Today is the death anniversary of the greatest singer: Mohammad Rafi. I am going to reproduce three of his songs in each of the series that I am running. This was put up on 01 Jan 2021 as follows:
These were penned by my second most favourite lyricist: Raja Mehdi Ali Khan. Almost all the sites giving lyrics don’t even mention this as Zindagi song since they have (they copy from one another all the time) shown the theme-word line as:
I ended the last year with sad and poignant songs in keeping with the spirit of the year. This year (except for doing away with this group) would usher in Love and Joys for all of us. This song reflects that. It is a very gentle composition by the maestro Madan Mohan (some of the most memorable songs in Hindi movies were by this pair, particularly those sung by Lata Mangeshkar.
Anarkali screamed in the court of Mughal e Azam, Emperor Akbar: Pyar kiya to darna kya. So what, if she was only a courtesan and the object of her love was Prince Salim. Prince Salim rebelled against his own father: Akbar, was defeated and sentenced to death. She saved his life by offering her own. It wasn’t a happy ending for the couple. It was a rare case.
However, most often than not rebellious Love wins, whether in Indian Love Story or that based on Eric Segal’s novelette.

This was a Pramod Chakravorty movie starring Pradeep Kumar and Anita Guha.