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Articles on Hindi Films

Details: Published: 17 February 2023; Last Updated: 17 February 2023

Soon after I posted my Rafi challenge, people pointed out that since I was looking for rare songs $1 may not be sufficient. So, to coax rare Rafi songs out of people I offered $10 for each new song from 1-10 and so on.

For a few months, I received emails almost daily. These were obviously from people who had never heard of Hindi Film Geet Kosh and the other 3 books on Rafi. I had to reject them because the songs were known. Once in a while I would get an email saying that the person had hundreds of unknown Rafi songs but would not part them at any price! I begged them to send me a list so that I can try to get them from another source. They never replied.

Long story short, only a total of 8 new songs were discovered. Four by me, I gave myself $40. Two other people sent songs but refused to take the money, so I gave them rare songs from my collection. All of these songs were songs available only in the film for which no records were issued.

So, did I ever give anybody any actual money? Ketan Dholakia has been pestering me for a long time saying that I never gave anybody money. This is ironic because he was present when I gave 20 crisp one dollar bills to two RMIMErs!

It happened during the June 28, 2002 RMIMeet at Chetan and Poorvi's house in New Jersey. I gave $10 to late Satish Kalra for a song from Balam and another $10 to Chetan for a song from Basant Bahar.

Photographic proof!
Late Satish Kalra and Me.