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Articles on Hindi Films

Details: Published: 10 December 2021; Last Updated: 10 December 2021

I found out that Ali Peter John (Retired Editor Screen Weekly) hates the term. He mentioned that Amit Khanna claimed to invented it. When I asked for the earliest use of the term in print from my Facebook friends, Pavan Jha, who knows everything, and whatsmore remembers everything, mentioned its first appearance in an Inspector Ghote mystery by H R F Keating. It can be seen on page 40 here.

Now You Know!

New j099

Details: Published: 24 December 2021; Last Updated: 24 December 2021

First of all let me clear up a confusion. Last time, I was talking about the song 'Badhai Hai' but the image shown was of the song 'Gazab Kiya' that showed Roopmala. Because of the confusion, people started telling me how Roopmala looked like and about well-known appearances of Roshan Kumari in films :)

What I mentioned in the text was that according to Richard Singer the dancer in 'Badhai Hai' is Roshan Kumari (daughter of the singer Zohrabai). Then Shefali Gandhi doubted that statement, but without telling me who that actually is. That made me look at the song again. Richard Singer has given a good explanation of why the 'Badhai Hai' dancer is Roshan Kumari. I feel safe saying the same.

Here are four images, three of Roshan Kumari, from filmfare (thanks Sudarshan Talwar), in Jalsaghar and Mirza Ghalib. The bottom right is from Waris 'Badhai Hai'.

Now You Know!

New j110

Details: Published: 24 November 2021; Last Updated: 24 November 2021

Like most people I could easily recognize the main dancers, Helen, Bela Bose, Minu Mumtaz, Sheila Vaz (to name a few). But there were many others I could not name, although I saw their names listed as dancers in the movies and in the Hindi Film Geet Kosh, Jeevankala, Heera Sawant, Kanchanmala, Nazi (to name a few). Because of this, my picturization information for many songs was ?, or Nazi?

Then thanks to the internet, I learnt about the work of many bloggers, post-makers and commentators, Arunkumar Deshmukh, MN Sardana, Shishir Krishna Sharma (to name a few). Thanks to their generosity in making rare information and photos available to all, and, after watching the dancers in hundreds of songs, now I can immediately tell (mostly) which dancer it is!

Hats off to such selfless crazy fans of Hindi films!