Sunday, January 30, 2011

Another old Hindi film song

Hum tujhse mohabbat - Awaara from a film which I saw in 1952 and still remember the scene vividly. Those days we were in the twin villages Pedapulivarru-Guttavaripalem with the school in Guttavaripalem and living in a rewnted house in Pedapulivarru ( it was the village of Samudrala Sr, the famous writer of film songs and scripts. I saw the legendary Ghantasala Venkateswara Rao too in that village when he came to visit his in-laws. There were no lavatories those days and like everybody else, he was walking to the outskirts of the village with a small pail of water. I think that he was already famous and some of the children including me followed him for a while. It could not have been comfortable walk since off and on he was stopped by the villagers who wanted to know about his welfare. The only things I remember are his big stomach ( Iassumed that was the reason for the wonderful voice) and his eyes. Anyway, we were being trained by a school teacher in Guttavaripalem and used to go to his house in the nights to study and sleep. One of those nighta we waited until he slept and ran about 6 miles to Repalle to watch Awara. Some of the friends supplied cigarettes so that we could keep awake. We watched the movie and ran back before the teacher got up and slept a bit. Many of the songs ans scenes of the movies are stll very vivid including the above.

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