Showing posts with label Dr Deepak Namjoshi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dr Deepak Namjoshi. Show all posts
Bappi Lahiri passes away in Mumbai at the age of 69
8:14 AM
Avijit Ghosh (THE TIMES OF INDIA; February 17, 2022)
Music director Bappi Lahiri, who harnessed and harvested the “disco sound” to produce chartbusters in films like Disco Dancer and Namak Halaal but was equally adept in composing gentler semi-classical and folksy tunes best exemplified in the less remembered songs of Aangan Ki Kali, Apne Paraye and Aetbaar, passed away in a Mumbai hospital late Tuesday night. He was 69.
The composer-singer had been under treatment for several weeks. “He was suffering from OSA (obstructive sleep apnea) and recurrent chest infection...He succumbed to his illness at about 11:45pm,” Dr Deepak Namjoshi of Mumbai's CritiCare Asia Hospitals said in a statement.
In the 1980s, a disco track became mandatory in Hindi films after the tsunami-like success of Qurbani’s ‘Aap Jai sa Koi’ (singer: Nazia Hasan, composer: Biddu). Songs became something that you both danced and listened to. For the young and the restless, beat acquired more prominence. And the electronic synthesizer became the busiest instrument. No Bollywood composer understood, captured and expressed the new musical ecosystem like Bappi.
His dalliance with disco started with ‘Hari Om Hari’ (Pyara Dushman, inspired by Neil Sedaka/Eruption’s ‘One Way Ticket’) and ‘Rambha Ho Ho Ho’ (Armaan). Director B Subhash’s Disco Dancer became his high noon. From the title track to ‘Jimmy Jimmy’, every track in Disco Dancer was dancey and delicious. If ‘Awara Hoon’ was Hindi cinema’s major cultural export in the 1950s, ‘Jimmy Jimmy’ remains a musical ambassador even in Vladimir Putin’s Russia today. Just go to YouTube for confirmation.
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Bappi Lahiri’s breathless foottappers and Indeevar’s nursery-rhyme lyrics (‘Char baar marenge ek baar ginenge’, Mawaali) in Southern productions defined popular film music in the 80’s. They were integral to mind-numbing entertainers whose plots could match Donald Trump’s statements for incredulousness. Jeetendra’s Himmatwala, Mawaali, Maq sad and Tohfa were all propelled by these tunes. “He was a king in Madras,” director B Subhash told this reporter some years ago.
In the 1980s, Bappi da, as many called him fondly, provided the score for an eyepopping 230 films. In 1985, he gave music to 33 movies: 30 Hindi, 2 Bengali, 1 Tamil; which means a film released every 12 days! The composer lorded over the charts even when some of the songs were copies of foreign hits and desi classics. There was an alternative side to him as well.
In Basu Chatterjee’s Apne Paraye, he surprised critics with his folksy tunes. ‘Shyam rang rangaa re’, where he employed the Bengal percussion instrument khol, has the meditative feel of a Chaitanya kirtan. ‘Gao mere mann’ carries the smell of ponds, banana leaves and 19th century Bengal.
Not many would associate him with songs such as ‘Saiyan bina ghar soona’ (Aangan Ki Kali), ‘Chaar din ki zindagi hai’ (Ek Baar Kaho) or ‘Kisi nazar ko tera’ (Aetbaar). Many of them were sung by Yesudas and Bhupendra.
Born in north Bengal’s Jalpaiguri town to musician parents, Alokesh (his original name) trained under guru Samta Prasad and was hailed as a tabla prodigy at just six. Nanha Shikari (1973) was his debut Hindi film. But the composer made a distinct impression with Chalte Chalte (1976), among his finest scores.
Amit Khanna, who wrote the lyrics, recounts how Bappi got the film. “The film director Bhisham Kohli, also Dev Anand’s nephew, was looking for a music director. He was unable to get R D Burman and Laxmikant Pyarelal. Bappi had earlier come to Navketan looking for work. And I was impressed by some of the tunes I heard. I told Bhisham, why don’t you try him? During the music session, Bappi played the ‘Chalte Chalte’ tune. I wrote the opening lines. And this led to the song,” recalled Khanna.
Slowly, he worked his way up with hummable melodies in low budget action films such as Zakhmee, Ravikant Nagaich’s Surakksha and Wardat and the Ramsay brothers’ horror yarns (Saboot). Disco Dancer elevated his career. But when Prakash Mehra, then Bollywood’s biggest director along with Manmohan Desai, signed him for ‘Namak Halaal’, Bappi entered the super league. The music in Namak Halaal and Sharaabi (both Big B films) were worth the weight of the gold chains he fondly wore.
Namak Halaal’s ‘Pagh ghungroo baandh’ was nearly 12 minutes long but the tune was riveting. ‘Raat baaki’, which he sang with Asha, is a standout. Sharaabi earned him his lone Filmfare award in 1985. He tasted success in the 1990s too: K C Bokadia’s Aaj Ka Arjun and David Dhawan’s Aankhen, to name just two. ‘Gori hai kalaiyan’ (Aaj Ka Arjun) topped the Binaca Geetmala in 1990.
In recent years, Bappi sang in Baaghi 3 and Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan. Last April, he had contracted Coronavirus but recovered well.
Now, the amiable and ever-smiling composer is no more. But the best of his 80s tracks remain groovy as ever. And even today, there’s no better farewell song than ‘Chalte Chalte’.
Vidya Sinha, face of the working woman in 70s, passes away
7:54 AM
Chhoti Si Baat Heroine Dies Of Lung Ailment
Avijit Ghosh & Bella Jaisinghani | TNN (THE TIMES OF INDIA; August 15, 2019)
In 1970s India, she typified the nice, neighbourhood middle-class girl whom shy guys would wait for wordlessly at the bus stop. Vidya Sinha, who played that girl to perfection in the middle-of-the-road classic Chhoti Si Baat (1976), passed away at Mumbai’s Criticare Hospital on Thursday. She was 71.
"Vidya Sinha died around 11.30 am. She was ailing with lung disease and recently also had heart trouble. She was not responding to treatment,” Dr Deepak Namjoshi, who treated her, said.
Chhoti Si Baat was the bigger hit but Vidya had already caught everyone’s eye earlier in the modestly successful Rajnigandha (1974), which was based on Hindi litterateur Manu Bhandari’s story, Yehi Sach Hai. Both films were directed by Basu Chatterjee, the master of miniature middle-class life.
The characters played by Vidya in these films had larger social echoes. In Rajnigandha, she was a student unable to choose between two lovers. In Chhoti Si Baat, she played a typist wooed by two suitors. Both these women were half-confined, half-free. Through them, Vidya seemed to be representing thousands of middle-class women in urban and small town India. She became their celluloid mirror, her life and pleasures a fulfilment of their fantasy. In times when Bombay heroines were synonymous with shimmery glamour and inviting pouts, Vidya was the divergent other: big, kohl-laced eyes, smart saris and a smile that reminded you of flowers in the morning sunlight. She was the real, attainable middle-class girl for thinking young men.
The hashtag, Vidya Sinha, was the top trend on Thursday evening. And it only underlined that she still retained a fond, if forgotten corner in many hearts even four and a half decades later.
To Vidya’s credit, she tried to break free of the “good girl” image. She even bashed up baddies in Chalu Mera Naam (1977). But it didn’t work. Neither did producer-director B R Chopra’s Karm (1977) where she was cast opposite Rajesh Khanna, then a superstar on a slippery slope.
The following year, Pati, Patni Aur Woh (1978) became a box-office smash, though actor Sanjeev Kumar walked away with the plaudits. Apart from Amol Palekar, the hero of both Rajnigandha and Chhoti Si Baat, she shared screen space with Kumar in other films such as Mukti (1977) and Tumhare Liye (1978). Vidya also acted in Raj N Sippy’s profitable thriller Inkaar (1978), which was inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low.
No image-conscious heroine would have played the avenging killer in Ramsay’s murder mystery, Saboot, or the female Fagin who exploits child beggars in Raj N Sippy’s Josh (1981), in a desi Oliver Twist kind of film.
“I still remember her final scene where she gets buried amid a barrage of coins, the very coins she would exploit the children for. We did not use visual effects, that scene was actually shot with heavy coins. We took precautions not to hurt her. But Vidya ji was very brave. She endured retakes without complaint,” recalled Sippy.
Another notable film in her resume is Tyaag Patra (1978), based on renowned Hindi writer Jainendra Kumar’s famous novel of the same name. Gulzar’s Kitaab (1977) was certainly more watched.
In a 2015 interview with rediff.com, Vidya had said that she grew up in central Bombay’s Matunga area. She was Miss Bombay in 1968 and started modelling which led to her being cast by Basu Chatterjee, her daughter Jahnavi told TOI.
In the rediff interview, Vidya regretted having said no to Raj Kapoor for the role eventually played by Zeenat Aman in Satyam Shivam Sundaram.
Her first husband, whom she had married before signing her first movie Raja Kaka, passed away in 1996. A second marriage ended in acrimonious divorce. In recent years, she found comfort in television work. What will endure longer is the girl with sparkling eyes of Rajnigandha and Chhoti Si Baat.
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