"Pacific Duets - VI"

 #423

         Song:   raat sard sard hai chaand zard zard hai
                 mere dil mein pyaar ka halka halka dard hai

         Film:   Jaali Note (1960)
         Singer: Asha Bhosle, Mohammed Rafi
         Music:  O P Nayyar
         Lyrics: Anjaan (?)
         *ing:   Dev Anand, Madhubala

 Two oft-observed components of pacific songs are humming and whistling.
 Simple and slow tunes lend themselves very beautifully for being piped
 nonchalantly as a musical accompaniment to the vocals, and succeed in
 creating a nice "our-own-little-world" kind of ambience.

 This lovely, "straight" melody from one of Shakti Samanta's hoodunnits
 is a perfect example of this. I call it straight because that's
 exactly what it is - you hear the first line of the mukhDaa and you
 can nail down the tune of the rest of it almost to the note. But it's
 simplicity in no way subtracts from the feathery lilt of the tune ;
 indeed it augments it. A relaxing, relaxingly portrayed song.
 The audio and video versions of this song are quite different - there
 is an antaraa missing from the video version, and on the video, the
 song starts off with "chaand zard zard hai" - no mention of the
 'raat' being 'sard'. The missing stanza, in Rafi's voice, and composed
 quite beautifully in some low notes, goes :
         dhiire dhiire do dilon ke kaafile
         <some nice humming by Asha>
         apni apni manzilo.n pe aa mile
         shikwe lab pe hai.n na dil mei.n hai.n gile
         na dil mei.n hai.n gile, na dil mei.n hai.n gile
         haay, raat sard sard... etc.

 This is quite a good soundtrack, actually, mostly decked by a bevy
 of Asha-Rafi duets like "gustaakh nazar chehre se haTaa", "dil hai
 aapka huzoor lijiye na lijiye", "such kehta huun bahut hasii.n ho",
 etc. An affluent Asha-Rafi-OPN showcase.