Hawa mein udta jaye, mora lal dupatta malmal ka!

Although malmal is strictly out of vogue these days, just for this song I wouldn’t mind donning a complete velvet dress 🙂

P.S: Please note the correction here – malmal is muslin, not velvet! Madhulika – thank you!

I speak to you ladies and gentlemen, about none other than Barsaat (of which we have been having a little too much in Delhi these days). The film was a blockbuster, as we call them these days, but what else could it POSSIBLY be, when it starred the oh-so-in-love Raj Kapoor and Nargis?

Such a hit was Barsaat, that RK earned enough money to buy a studio of his very own – RK Studios. And now an interesting story behind that – about how the RK emblem was created. No idea what I am talking about?

Well, look at the image below:

This is a scene from the film itself – where RK is stringing the violin in the  typical Hindi-film-hero way, slow and deliberate, pining for Nargis’ love while  she, guided by the soulful music runs towards him. Very intense, indeed. It’s  one of the most iconic scenes of all times, I think (there’s their pyaar hua  iqraar hua scene too). Anyway, I suppose this scene became so etched in RK’s  mind that he decided to turn it immortal – as the emblem of RK Studios.

So now if you see the emblem it looks something like this–> 

Pretty Damn Cool, I say!

By the way, he bought this studio when he was just 24, making him the youngest film director of those times. Ambition, good looks and Nargis – I wonder if there’s anything he didn’t have.

But if we are going to talk about good looks, Premnath (the other actor in  the film) can’t be left too behind. Just LOOK at him – wow.

Now a little bit of trivia – sadly unrelated to Premnath. After Aag, RK  wanted composer Ram Ganguli to write music for the film but Lata  Mangeshkar apparently found him offering the same tunes to someone else!  Needless to say, Ganguli was dropped. Sad.

Then came Jaikishan, who offered to take up the offer only if his friend,  Shankar could come on board too. RK complied, and therein lies the history  of one of the most prolific music directors of all times. The stories films tell!

Oh, guess what, I DO have Premnath-related trivia! 🙂

Thanks to this blog, I came to know that RK and Premnath were good friends and RK would often end up at his house.  It seems RK had a thing for Premnath’s sister (well if she was even half as good looking as he, I don’t blame RK). Funny thing is, RK actually ended up marrying his sister, Krishna.

Another very well written review of the film says that before Premnath turned to his method-actor type villainous roles, this film was his first taste of success following which he went on to become a leading actor in many films with stars like Meena Kumari and Madhubala.

Lata Mangeshkar, who was a newbie at the time, got a big break (not the first one) because she got to sing for both Nargis and Nimmi (the other actress opposite Premnath – lucky girl).

Raj Kapoor also signed Shailendra to pen songs for the film – at a starting salary of Rs. 500. (That was huge then.)

Well, that’s all from me for now, hope you had a good read, Cheers!