Volume-3 [1951-60]
While I am presenting this Second Edition to music lovers, nearly 17 years after the first edition was released in January 1980 as first of the publication of ‘Hindi Film Geet Kosh’ series, I am reminded of a music lover (advocate), who had acquired a copy of the first edition. Instead of writing a few words thereafter, he directly sent me a notice to either send him the song index thereof or compensate for the problems faced by him due to non-availability song index. This notice made me to think that due to the absence of the song index, many music lovers like him would have been feeling trouble in finding songs. To overcome this problem, next 4 volumes published thereafter contained large song indices prepared manually by spending many months. After the publication of ‘Volume-3’, as I was involved in compilation and publication of succeeding volumes, it wasn’t possible for me to compile and publish song index of ‘Volume-3’ separately and like other music lovers, I was also prompted several times to search the complete book to find a single song of fifties. Looking to the demand of music lovers, Dr S K Tyagi (Meerut) and his wife along with Bhim Raj Garg of Delhi decided to make the song index under my supervision. Based on the notes made by Gulshan Pamar of Muktsar (Punjab), they started the task of making the song index. Although I wasn’t satisfied with the handwritten index of songs that finally came out but somehow, it fulfilled the need of the music lovers to some extent and before the publication of this second edition, its photocopy was being circulated to the music lovers on demand.
During the last 17 years after the release of the first edition, I never attempted to make the song index as I had realized soon after 3-4 years of the publication of the first edition that I would have to come out definitely with the second edition in future. There were many reasons for it and one of it was the missing ‘Song Index’ which made it incomplete. In the subsequently published 4 volumes, music lovers on finding the long song indices included in them, used to wonder as to why was the ‘Song Index’ missing in the most popular volume. In the subsequently published volumes after that of Volume-3, due to the listing of the films year-wise alphabetically in English and not in Hindi, that song index was to become obsolete. Moreover, if the song index would have been included in the first edition itself, some mistakes crept therein unknowingly due to the ignorance of correct information could have been avoided. For example, one film titled ‘Bade Ghar Ki Bahu’ appearing in the year 1960 in the previous edition, had also been included under another title ‘Bhabhi’ in ‘Appendix -1’. This information was given to me by music director Chitragupta of the film himself when I met him personally in 1982 at his residence. In the absence of song index, songs of film ‘Sitamgar’ released in 1954 appeared again for the same name but a different film produced and certified again in 1958 though it contained different songs.
My maternal grandfather late Prof. Balwant Singh had earned lot of fame and popularity by writing many books and articles on spiritualism and meditation. By inheriting the quality of firm determination from my father Sardar Sumer Singh Sachdev and soft corner for music from my mother Shrimati Surinder Kaur (daughter Shrimati Roop Kaur who was herself a good singer as well) and acquiring proficiency in Hindi language from Shri Rajendra Kumar Shukla (Retired Principal), when I started compiling songs of Hindi Films in late 60s, I had no direct contacts with the creators of these songs viz. singers, lyricists and composers till the release of the very first volume i.e. Volume-3 in January 1980. From various sources other than Radio Ceylon, whatever information I could gather, I had compiled it to publish Volume -3 pertaining to the period 1951 to 1960. Hence, for various obvious reasons, lot of information remained missing. Being the compiler, I always had the grief that I couldn’t give full justice to the most popular volume of ‘Geet Kosh’ series. Due to lack of funds, unlike subsequent volumes, 800 copies only were got printed of the most popular volume with the contributions made by many music lovers. It is another case that to fulfill the demand of music lovers, I started providing its ‘photocopied edition’ when all 800 copies of it were sold out in the year 1985.
For various reasons stated above, as Volume-3 of ‘Geet Kosh’ could not be published to my entire satisfaction, I had made up my mind to release a revised (second) edition in near future. After the release of first edition of Volume-3 (1951-60) in January 1980, subsequent publications viz. Volume-2 (1941-50) in February 1984, Volume-4 (1961-70) in July 1986, Volume-1 (1931-40) in October 1988 and finally Volume-5 (1971-80) in March 1991 came out. After the release of Volume-5, I realized that based on the available sources, meager external help coming for the compilation work, current situation and remaining years of my life, I should start using the computer to compile the rest of my work. Once I make the entries of around 5,700 Hindi Films and its nearly 45,000 songs in the computer, the biggest advantage to me was that I wouldn’t have to work separately to prepare a list of songs written by any one lyricist or sung by any one singer or composed by any one music director. Hence in 1993, after purchasing a computer, by spending lot of time and with hard work, I learnt to use a computer with the help of one Mr.Santosh Tiwari, my SBI colleague. After that, when the work of entering details of the volumes into computer started, I started first with ‘Volume-3’. All the information was entered in such a way (in database) that any type of index would be available instantly. During the last 17 years, whatever additional information had been gathered was also added in the database. While feeding the details of ‘Volume-3’, it struck to me that why not, as an experimental basis, use the data for the publication of 2nd edition of this Volume so that in future, the other volumes could be printed directly using the computer. And thus, with the help of computer, the task of publishing 2nd edition of this volume started.
Way back in June 1974, during my first visit from my native place (Kanpur) to Bombay, when I had approached HMV office for gathering information for including the same in Geet Kosh volumes, I was told that they have nothing to show relating to 78 rpm gramophone records manufactured and marketed by them. So, thereafter, I never contacted them for disc catalogues and related information. But given a clue, I alongwith Shri Biswanath Chatterjee visited HMV office in December 1989 and got the information that I had sought for in the year 1974. We also gathered the information relating to Volume-3 as well along with the details for Volume-5. Had we got this information in 1974 as we had expected therefrom, we could have updated our Geet Kosh Volumes much more. With the help of one time assistant of well known composer Vasant Desai, Shri Kailash Nath Jaiswal and another officer Shri Vijay Bandekar who were posted there, I was able to gather information about the N series – N 50001 till N 56031 (the last record released in 78 rpm) of shellac gramophone discs which had most of songs from Hindi films released between 1951 till 1970. I was very much pleased with this comprehensive information and felt somewhat assured that whenever the second edition of ‘Volume-3’ would be released, I had made all strenuous efforts I could make to collect the information.
When I started entering the data of the Geet Kosh Volumes using the special software developed by one Shri Shashi Shekhar Shukla, it struck to me that it would be better to include some additional information in Geet Kosh volumes. I had already considered it worth to include the name of the Producer of every film, not included in earlier published 5 volumes. It was also decided to include the names of guest artists in a proper way. Unlike in the first edition of Volume-3, the names of the assistant music directors have been included in this second edition now. Additionally, the information relating to censor certificate, I contacted Head Office of the Censor Board in Bombay but to no avail. Efforts to get the censor related information from National Film Archive of India, Pune through Sulabha Ternikar also proved futile. Feroze Rangoonwalla of Bombay and Piyush Vyas of Ahmedabad suggested to check in the Gazettes published by Central Government for it. With the help of Bhim Raj Garg of Delhi, I had noted down censor details of films released between 1971 and 1980 from the Gazette previously. Thus, once again with Bhim Raj Garg’s efforts, this time photocopies of censor related information of films released between 1951 and 1960 were acquired from the Central Secretariat Library (CSL) in Delhi from the Gazettes available thereat. U.K. based Gurucharan Singh Sandhu was kind enough to send lot of information from his collection viz. microgroove records, cassettes, CDs, spool tapes, etc. which has been included in this edition.
To recheck all the information entered in the computer for the present edition, I felt the need to take external help from music lovers. Gurucharan Singh Sandhu was kind enough to visit Kanpur for this purpose for two weeks. Veerbhadra Singh Jhala from Narwar, Ujjain (M.P.), who had already handed over his entire collection of records and compilation to me in May 1984, also came on his own to Kanpur to help me in this venture. During the two weeks of his stay in Kanpur, he helped me a lot in compiling the details of censor related information from the gazette. In correcting mistakes and providing information, other friends who helped included Harish Raguwanshi (Surat/Editor: ‘Mukesh Geet Kosh’ and ‘Gujarathi Film Geet Kosh’), Kaiyyum Aziz (Gondal, Distt. Rajkot), Murlidhar Soni (Jaipur) and Piyush Vyas (Ahmedabad). Shri Raguwanshi tried again to go through old issues of ‘FilmIndia’ monthly magazine to find some missing information. Even in difficult situation, Anoop Gadodia from Calcutta not only corrected lots of mistakes but also provided lots of valuable information. Piyush Vyas who always helps me made available some rare booklets for the present edition. Kaiyyum Aziz continued sending me details of songs he listened on Radio since long. During the publication of the current edition, I was remembering the time when, along with Bishwanath Chatterjee of Bhopal, we had prepared manuscript for earlier edition as a joint venture. The reason that Shri Chatterjee was so much involved with my Geet Kosh project, was that he had himself thought about making such a Geet Kosh long before it had came to my mind but due to lack of resources and certain limitations, he couldn’t compile it. On being insisted, Shri Chatterjee had come twice to Kanpur in late seventies for preparing the manuscript of the first edition of Volume-3 whereafter started the series of Geet Kosh publication.
From the Gazette released by Central Government which provided details of certification of Hindi films that had been censored during the years 1951 and 1960, we easily got details of a few films which were either missing in the first edition or had been wrongly included therein. For example, a film titled ‘Gabru’ (produced in Punjabi Language) and ‘Amanat’ under the year 1951, included in the first edition, have been dropped from this edition as both of these films were produced in Pakistan. Two Films – Talaash(1952) and Gypsy(1957) - have been included in this edition which could not be included in earlier edition due to lack of information. On getting the correct censor dates available in the Gazettes, 3 Films viz. ‘Boot Polish’, ‘Mayur Pankh’ and ‘Pamposh’ have been shifted from the year 1954 to 1953. Another film ‘Scout Camp’ has been included under 1958 instead of 1959. One Film released with two different names ‘Chabukwaali’ and ‘Hunterwaali’ which was included separately in the earlier edition has been listed under the title ‘Hunterwaali’ once alone in this edition. Due to oversight, ‘Love in Shimla’ (1960) had been left out in the previous edition but has been included in the present edition. Total number of Hindi films included in this edition remains same i.e. 1125 but by adding 35 unclassified/incomplete films in Appendix -1, total comes to 1160.
While including lot of information obtained from HMV Office, Bombay in this second edition, I was very much pleased but was also surprised that there were discrepancies in their earlier released HMV disc catalogues from which I had noted down details for the first edition. During this exercise, I found that names of the singers were either wrong or incomplete. Actually, the information that I got in 1989 from the Instruction Memo was the original source that was to be given on the labels of the records. Based on the information given in Instruction Memo, labels of the gramophone records carried same details, being manufactured at HMV’s DumDum (Calcutta) factory . But inadvertently, due to some mistakes and/or carelessness, the details of singers for some songs got wrongly or incompletely printed on the record labels. Many such errors have been corrected in this Edition. Many of the details of the singers of songs got printed wrongly as the instruction memo itself had wrong or incomplete information and so, efforts have been made by way of providing footnotes with respective films to indicate the same at various places in the book. I had never imagined that the information given in HMV catalogues could be incomplete or wrong. Hence I don’t have any other option but to let the readers know that they can now consider the second edition as more authentic and correct. It is my wish that after the release of the second edition, music lovers should not consider the first edition a reference book. Information received directly from various film personalities such as lyricists, composers, singers, producers, directors, etc. during personal meetings has also been included in this edition. Actually, I believe that without the help of film personalities and music lovers, the task of compilation is always incomplete.
In this edition, with the help of computer, the data has been presented in an organized manner so as to publish the book. The song index and film index have also been sorted out alphabetically with the help of computer instantly. One can find lot of difference in the indexing done with the help of computer as compared to the one done in the previous edition manually for the simple reason that when arranging alphabets and numbers in order, computer puts the numbers first and then alphabets in order, etc. but I firmly believe that music lovers won’t face any difficulty in using this edition.
After the release of this edition, very soon the data for Volume-6 will be entered in the computer so that the data can be used for not only getting the different query results instantly but also for publishing the book as well. Along with this, the task of computerizing the previously published volumes will continue. Once all the songs from 1931 till date are entered in the computer, the list of songs or films of any artist, composer, director, producer, singer, lyricist, etc can be acquired easily and instantly. This critical task is expected to take a long time for completion. Once the data has been entered in the computer, it is my desire to come out with revised editions of Volume-2 (1941-50) and Volume-4 (1961-70) which were originally released in February 1984 and July 1986 respectively as similar to Volume-3 because these 2 volumes are being made available to music lovers in the ‘Photocopied’ forms only. There is a possibility that by that time, stock of Volume-1 and Volume-5 might also be sold out. Actually, once all the data from the previously released Volumes with updates are entered in the computer, it would be very easy to come out with revised editions of any of the volume.
After the release of this new edition in April 1997 at Bombay with the help of Dr Prakash Joshi, Nalin Shah, etc., data entry for the volumes that would have information about the films-songs released after 1980 would be taken. Due to the increasing number of Hindi films being produced after 1980, it has been decided to come up with volumes containing data of films of 5 years each and also to include songs from films with languages similar to Hindi such as Bhojpuri, Rajasthani, etc. so that each Volume would have details of songs of about 1,000 films each otherwise one book with details of about 2,000 film would be difficult to accommodate.
While handing over this modified and revised edition of the Volume-3, I beg to excuse for the delay in presenting it to music lovers. There are many reasons for the delay but the main reason was that it was a new process of getting to know to work with the computer which consumed lot of time. Actually, in order to ensure the accuracy of the data, it was necessary that I get to learn the computer so that I could also rectify errors using the computer and all the information I could present it before the music lovers as correctly as possible. Hopefully, there would be no delay in publishing next volumes. It is my humble request to my well wishers and music lovers to provide opinion and suggestions for the current edition and also make information available to me so that the upcoming volumes may be presented as complete as possible.
Kanpur : 18th November 1996 Har Mandir Singh 'Hamraaz'
