The music for the Hindi version was inspired by the famous musician-intellectual of the time Dilip Kumar Roy (1897-1980) and composed by S. Meera, with nearly twenty exceptionally melodious songs, all vying with each for best song, is one of those films that one can never have one’s fill of. Dungan (1909-2001), the American from Barton, Ohio, and co-written by Kalki Krishnamurthy, the legendary writer and freedom fighter (1899-1954). And that is how I acquired my precious copy of the Hindi Meera, directed by Ellis R.
Armed with enough blank audio and video tapes, and with both the TV and the radio on side-by-side, I would assume the role of watchdog (and a pugnacious one at that, if anyone interrupted), keeping my eyes and ears open for any vintage treasures that were on the way. And, of course, the melodious but sad strains of a shehnai vaadan (usually by Ustad Bismillah Khan) could be heard wafting through the neighborhood TVs and radios that would all be on, in anticipation of any announcements or updates.įor the avid vintage-films/vintage-music collector in me, this was the time for some serious recording work. Likewise, All India Radio would offer quite a musical bonanza, with rare recordings of devotional songs, bhajans, and classical music-which were all certainly not easy to come by on an ordinary day. The other thing about such deaths was that one could be fairly sure that Doordarshan would be inclined to broadcast vintage devotional or mythological films-essentially, classics that would stir the soul. XI-so it was certainly a lost holiday opportunity for whining school goers.) (Of course, Rajiv Gandhi’s death occurred during the summer vacation-I had just finished Std. Sometime in the next couple of days or so, Doordarshan, in a gesture of magnanimity reserved for such somber occasions, paid homage to the departed soul by screening Chandraprabha Cinetone’s Hindi Meera-which, for some reason, unlike its Tamil original, is not easy to come by.Īs a schoolgirl, for me-as for many others, undoubtedly, in keeping with Shakespeare’s “whining schoolboy … creeping like snail unwillingly to school”-the death of a famous political leader usually meant a sudden holiday, much welcomed especially if it was the postponement of a dreaded test or assignment. Rajiv Gandhi had been assassinated on May 21. I have some memories associated with my old VHS tape of the 1947 Hindi version of the 1945 Tamil film Meera that is synonymous with M. This post first appeared in the PassionForCinema blog on December 3, 2009.