Pacific Duets - XIII

#450

        Song:   dhadakne lage dil ki taaron ki duniya
                jo tum muskuraa do
                sanwar jaaye hum beqaraaron ki duniya
                jo tum muskuraa do

        Film:   Dhool Ka Phool (1959)
        Singer: Asha Bhosle, Mahendra Kapoor
        Music:  N Dutta
        Lyrics: Sahir Ludhianvi
        *ing:   Rajendra Kumar, Mala Sinha
 

Remembering the late Rajendra Kumar in one of his celebrated roles.
This pacific duet, inordinately late in coming, is a farmaish post for
Hemlata Khemani. Sorry about the delay, Hema.

Asha and Mahendra Kapoor interact quite well in this soft, breezy tune,
set to a nonchalant accompaniment of strings rather similar
to "beqaraar karke humen yuun na jaaiye", and probably scores of other
tunes; a fairly common gait employed by romantic duets.

To say that Mahendra Kapoor's rendition is impeccable in this song
would probably be meddling with the truth (to employ a Wodehousian
descriptor:-)) There is an ingrained softness in the timbre of his
voice that gels well with the structure of the tune and the sentiment
of the song. However, his diction shows definite signs of heading the
wrong way, something that was a big contributing factor in my
intransigent anti-Mahendra Kapoor bias, especially with his later
output. Nevertheless, these two demonstrate a good synergy here,
especially the way the vocal pieces are distributed between the two
singers.

I have to mention my absolute favorite from the movie- "jhukti ghata
gaati hawaa sapne jagaaye, nanha sa dil mera machal machal jaaye", by
the same pair of singers, and a chorus to boot. This is a close variant
of "panchhi banuun udti phiruun" from Chori Chori, and has the same air
of liberated joy as in, say, "phaili hui hai sapnon ki baahen".

A fine cross-section of singers is found in this movie: Asha, Mahendra,
Rafi, Lata, Sudha, all get song-hours in a modest 8-strong soundtrack
(atleast 8-strong on my CD, maybe more).