The Kapoors - bio review
asi...@my-deja.com
Blogger and journo Jai Arjun Singh writes a very nice review of the
latest book on the Kapoor family:
http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/2005/12/this-little-duckie-wrote-another.html
Cheers
Arun
surjit singh
The URL is
Could not make myself read beyond the first few words. Lyallpur is NOT
a district of NWFP. It is in the Punjab and is called Faisalabad these
days. Hard to know if the error is in the book or the review :(
Should I buy the book anyway?
>
> Cheers
> Arun
asi...@my-deja.com
surjit singh wrote:
> The URL is
>
> http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/
>
> Could not make myself read beyond the first few words. Lyallpur is NOT
> a district of NWFP. It is in the Punjab and is called Faisalabad these
> days. Hard to know if the error is in the book or the review :(
>
> Should I buy the book anyway?
>
> >
> > Cheers
> > Arun
True, but that error can be forgiven. Not many youngsters now about
Lyallpur and Jai (who I know is a very good researcher) must've gone by
the original mention in the book. The only reason I know of Lyallpur
being the older name of Faisalabad is because a curmudgeonly Omar
Qureishi ranted about the change in name (done to kiss the Saudi
sheik's butt) during a commentary session in a cricket match way back
in the 80s.[And another Pakistani commentator mentioned that it was
called "Manchester of Asia", thus adding that sobriquet to one more
city in the subcontinent. I've heard the same thing being said of
Kanpur and Coimbatore.]
But I found the review to be excellent. I do not want reviews to be a
bunch of excerpts from the book (or the story of a film). Lazy journos
do that very often these days. Jai really writes good reviews of books
and films.
Cheers
Arun
Surjit Singh
asi...@my-deja.com wrote:
> surjit singh wrote:
>
>
>>The URL is
>>
>>http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/
>>
>>Could not make myself read beyond the first few words. Lyallpur is NOT
>>a district of NWFP. It is in the Punjab and is called Faisalabad these
>>days. Hard to know if the error is in the book or the review :(
>>
>>Should I buy the book anyway?
>>
>>
>>>Cheers
>>>Arun
>
>
> True, but that error can be forgiven. Not many youngsters now about
Haven't their been TONS of Cricket matches there? Isn't a supposedly
'educated' person little bit curious to see where the city might be? I
am sure commenrators mention endlesslly how far it is from Lahore or
Islamabad or what its previous name was? It is not some small village in
a remote corner of Pakistan!
If you don't know where Maler Kotla is (I went to school there), I
forgive you, but if you do not know where Ludhiana (Manchester of India)
is, I wil never forgive you, NEVER EVER! :)
> Lyallpur and Jai (who I know is a very good researcher) must've gone by
> the original mention in the book. The only reason I know of Lyallpur
> being the older name of Faisalabad is because a curmudgeonly Omar
> Qureishi ranted about the change in name (done to kiss the Saudi
> sheik's butt) during a commentary session in a cricket match way back
> in the 80s.[And another Pakistani commentator mentioned that it was
> called "Manchester of Asia", thus adding that sobriquet to one more
> city in the subcontinent. I've heard the same thing being said of
> Kanpur and Coimbatore.]
>
> But I found the review to be excellent. I do not want reviews to be a
> bunch of excerpts from the book (or the story of a film). Lazy journos
> do that very often these days. Jai really writes good reviews of books
> and films.
>
> Cheers
> Arun
>
--
Surjit Singh, a diehard movie fan(atic), period.
http://hindi-movies-songs.com/index.html
surjit singh
Surjit Singh wrote:
> asi...@my-deja.com wrote:
> > surjit singh wrote:
> >
> >
> >>The URL is
> >>
> >>http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/
> >>
> >>Could not make myself read beyond the first few words. Lyallpur is NOT
> >>a district of NWFP. It is in the Punjab and is called Faisalabad these
> >>days. Hard to know if the error is in the book or the review :(
> >>
> >>Should I buy the book anyway?
> >>
> >>
> >>>Cheers
> >>>Arun
> >
> >
> > True, but that error can be forgiven. Not many youngsters now about
>
> Haven't their been TONS of Cricket matches there? Isn't a supposedly
their -> there, obviously.
I'll buy the book anyway, for pictures and some anecdotes.
asi...@my-deja.com
OFF TOPIC warning.
==============
Surjit Singh wrote:
> >
> >
> > True, but that error can be forgiven. Not many youngsters now about
>
> Haven't their been TONS of Cricket matches there? Isn't a supposedly
> 'educated' person little bit curious to see where the city might be? I
> am sure commenrators mention endlesslly how far it is from Lahore or
> Islamabad or what its previous name was? It is not some small village in
> a remote corner of Pakistan!
I checked with Jai by email. He says that he is quite sure that the
error was in the book but will confirm. Btw, tons of cricket matches
are played at Faisalabad, but very few people, including highly
educated ones know of its old name; Lyallpur. Therefore, the confusion
on the location of "Lyallpur district" is understandable. [That said,
I had always thought that the Kapoors were Peshawari. Now that's NWFP.]
==
The city was founded by Sir James Lyall c.1895 and named in his honor.
==
Heck, how many people, including die-hard cricket fans know that there
is a very prominent cricket stadium named after an infamous Arab
dictator? [They know the name of the stadium, but do not link the two.]
>
> If you don't know where Maler Kotla is (I went to school there), I
> forgive you, but if you do not know where Ludhiana (Manchester of India)
> is, I wil never forgive you, NEVER EVER! :)
>
Yes, in fact I've read that you get good butter chicken there. :-)
Cheers
Arun
skalr...@yahoo.com
Ahmedgarh (where I went to school for sometime before moving back to
Howrah). Do those names ring any bell, Surjitji?
Happy Listenings.
Satish Kalra
surjit singh
skalr...@yahoo.com wrote:
> Ahhhh, Maler Kotla. I have been to Mukerian, and also in Mandi
> Ahmedgarh (where I went to school for sometime before moving back to
> Howrah). Do those names ring any bell, Surjitji?
Yes. Mandi Ahmedgarh is between Ludhiana and Maler Kotla. The railway
line goes south all the way to Delhi via Sangrur, Kaithal etc.
>
> Happy Listenings.
>
> Satish Kalra
yshi...@hotmail.com
asi...@my-deja.com wrote:
> OFF TOPIC warning.
> ==============
>
> Surjit Singh wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > True, but that error can be forgiven. Not many youngsters now about
> >
> > Haven't their been TONS of Cricket matches there? Isn't a supposedly
> > 'educated' person little bit curious to see where the city might be? I
> > am sure commenrators mention endlesslly how far it is from Lahore or
> > Islamabad or what its previous name was? It is not some small village in
> > a remote corner of Pakistan!
>
> I checked with Jai by email. He says that he is quite sure that the
> error was in the book but will confirm. Btw, tons of cricket matches
> are played at Faisalabad, but very few people, including highly
> educated ones know of its old name; Lyallpur. Therefore, the confusion
> on the location of "Lyallpur district" is understandable. [That said,
> I had always thought that the Kapoors were Peshawari. Now that's NWFP.]
>
>
> ==
> The city was founded by Sir James Lyall c.1895 and named in his honor.
> ==
>
> Heck, how many people, including die-hard cricket fans know that there
> is a very prominent cricket stadium named after an infamous Arab
> dictator? [They know the name of the stadium, but do not link the two.]
I think it is Qaddhafi?
Loony Tunes
asi...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> Lyallpur and Jai (who I know is a very good researcher) must've gone by
> the original mention in the book. The only reason I know of Lyallpur
> being the older name of Faisalabad is because a curmudgeonly Omar
> Qureishi ranted about the change in name (done to kiss the Saudi
> sheik's butt) during a commentary session in a cricket match way back
> in the 80s.
Well...there is Naqsh Lyallpuri who wrote some very good songs. A very
good poet IMHO.
Loony Tunes
Loony Tunes
skalr...@yahoo.com wrote:
> Ahhhh, Maler Kotla. I have been to Mukerian, and also in Mandi
> Ahmedgarh (where I went to school for sometime before moving back to
> Howrah). Do those names ring any bell, Surjitji?
A very good friend of mine is from Maler Kotla.... I think Animesh
might know him.
>
> Happy Listenings.
>
> Satish Kalra
Loony Tunes
following up..
Of course I am assuming that he had/has (?) connections to Lyallpur...
Surjit Singh
He must have been born there.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was born there too.
Surjit Singh
Surjit Singh wrote:
>
>
> Loony Tunes wrote:
>
>> Loony Tunes wrote:
>>
>>> asi...@my-deja.com wrote:
>>>
>>>> Lyallpur and Jai (who I know is a very good researcher) must've gone by
>>>> the original mention in the book. The only reason I know of Lyallpur
>>>> being the older name of Faisalabad is because a curmudgeonly Omar
>>>> Qureishi ranted about the change in name (done to kiss the Saudi
>>>> sheik's butt) during a commentary session in a cricket match way back
>>>> in the 80s.
>>>
>>>
>>> Well...there is Naqsh Lyallpuri who wrote some very good songs. A very
>>> good poet IMHO.
>>
>>
>>
>> following up..
>>
>> Of course I am assuming that he had/has (?) connections to Lyallpur...
>>
>
> He must have been born there.
>
> Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was born there too.
>
Looking for Lyallpuris, found this:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-544840,prtpage-1.cms
Aditya Basrur
asi...@my-deja.com wrote:
> Heck, how many people, including die-hard cricket fans know that there
> is a very prominent cricket stadium named after an infamous Arab
> dictator? [They know the name of the stadium, but do not link the two.]
Lots. Didn't they name it in the 1960s or 1970s when trying to butter
up the Arab League?
>
> >
> > If you don't know where Maler Kotla is (I went to school there), I
> > forgive you, but if you do not know where Ludhiana (Manchester of India)
> > is, I wil never forgive you, NEVER EVER! :)
> >
>
> Yes, in fact I've read that you get good butter chicken there. :-)
That's a fun book. Can't remember much of it now, but remember enjoying
it when reading it. Now on my bookshelf.
Aditya [ Any reviews of part II of Tim Mackintosh-Smith's "Travels with
a Tangerine"? ] Basrur
> Cheers
> Arun
asi...@my-deja.com
http://www.mumbaimirror.com/ --Look under Entertainment
==========
He was entranced by her voice, she by his chikna face and blue eyes
Sunday, December 18, 2005 | Sunday Read
In this exclusive extract from her book The Kapoors, The First Family
of Indian Cinema, journalist and writer Madhu Jain dwells on the unique
relationship that the late showman Raj Kapoor shared with Lata
Mangeshkar
Raj Kapoor's trinity of women - Nargis, Padmini and Vyjanthimala
- is widely known. Less so is his very special relationship with Lata
Mangeshkar. He was entranced by her voice, and she by his chikna face
and blue eyes as well as his formidable talent and powers of
persuasion. She looks girlish and coy in photographs taken during the
early days of their collaboration. There is an air of intimacy, of
unspoken complicity in a photograph in which Raj Kapoor is grooming
Lata. He is standing behind her as she sits. A cigarette dangling from
his lips, he is dressing her hair, while she looks like a blushing
teenager. Lata Mangeshkar became yet another woman in white: she only
wore white saris, but with coloured borders. While Nargis was his
screen beloved, Lata Mangeshkar was her voice and the aural incarnation
of the poetic soul of Raj Kapoor in his early days.
Lata, like Nargis, was also his collaborator in creation - in this
case his partner in creating some of his most memorable songs. Raj
Kapoor pushed her to the limit, extracting her best, and she willingly
gave it. The intensely heady experience of composing and recording the
three songs for the nine-minute dream sequence of Awara - an RK
epiphany - had meant so much to both. She sang through the night,
beginning at nine at night, and continued until day broke, after which
she, Raj Kapoor, Shankar and Jaikishen went to the Irani restaurant
opposite Famous Studios in Tardeo. Years earlier, it had been the same
sort of exhilaration after they finished recording the music for
Barsaat, when they went out and sat on the pavement outside the studio,
wondering if the film would make it. In his biography of Lata
Mangeshkar, Raju Bharatan writes: "Lata in white was for Raj a
replica of Nargis in white; somewhere the voice and the vision
merged."
The singer with her tanpura spent many evenings in the cottage -
sometimes singing through the night. Raj Kapoor was besotted with her
voice. In the fifties, after Barsaat and Awara, he even planned to make
a film with her as a heroine. He was going to call it Soorat aur Seerat
(Face and Soul). It was a film Raj Kapoor and Lata Mangeshkar had
developed together around the theme of the body versus soul, beauty
versus ugliness. Kapoor had first touched upon the theme of internal
and external beauty in his film Aag. In that film the disfigured
persona is a man, the hero, who is shunned by women after a fire
destroys his face. There is a poignant line in the film in which the
hero says that had he not been so handsome, with his golden hair and
blue eyes, the subsequent rejection would not have hurt. Here was Lata
with a magical voice and face slightly disfigured by the smallpox she
suffered when she was five.
Raj Kapoor shelved the idea, returning to it years later when he made
Satyam Shivam Sundaram, with Zeenat Aman playing the Lata role. In an
interview years later he spoke about making a film about an ugly girl
with a beautiful voice - like beauty and the beast. According to
Bharatan, Lata Mangeshakar felt insulted by Raj Kapoor's choice of
Zeenat Aman. The singer thought these were pointed references to her
because 'her vocals had been the inspiration for the Satyam Shivam
Sundaram theme, which was first written as Gharonda by Inder Raj
Anand'. Unfortunately, while talking about casting Roopa (form), the
role of Zeenat plays, Raj Kapoor is supposed to have bragged: 'Give
me a girl with big boobs and I will make her an actress.' Initially
he had planned to cast Hema Malini in the lead role: he had acted with
her in her debut film Sapnon Ka Saudagar. Lata was not averse to the
Dream Girl playing Roopa. 'What she did not like was the body
beautiful theme,' writes Bharatan. 'She expected the fusion of
emotion and vision, and got fusion of vision and passion.' She was
apparently aghast by the 'Zeenatising of Satyam Shivam Sundaram.'
People forget that Lata Mangeshkar was a sensual being, and not just a
disembodied, ethereal voice. She had acted in plays and in movies long
before she became a playback singer. In photographs, the young Lata may
look tiny, shy and fragile. Yet, hope and ambition stare out of those
limpid, sad eyes. She toughened up fast when the mantle of supporting
her entire family fell on her with the demise of her father, the
actor-singer Dinanath Mangeshkar.
Lata Mangeshkar may have had a weakness for Raj Kapoor. But she was the
only woman to make him dance to her tunes. The two fell out over
Lata's levy: two-and-a-half per cent royalty for her songs from the
music companies, in addition to the fee Kapoor paid her for each film.
Film directors used to get ten per cent from the music companies. Raj
Kapoor used to give half of what he got from HMV to his music director.
He believed in a one-time payment to the singer. The problem with Lata
arose when Mera Naam Joker was being made: the singer realised that she
had not yet been paid for Sangam.
It was a draw; neither of them budged. Raj Kapoor's nightingale
became a prima donna: she kept going abroad or tours. She returned to
Raj Kapoor four years later when Bobby was being made. Both Mera Naam
Joker and Kal Aaj Aur Kal were commercial flops. Raj Kapoor must have
realised that Lata was his talisman: he needed her more than she needed
him. Obviously, Raj Kapoor's infatuation with Vyjanthimala rankled
- ironically enough, like Krishna Kapoor, Lata was wearier about
Vyjanthimala than Nargis or Padmini. She also resented the
danseuse-actress getting all the credit for the Man dole, mera tan dole
song sequence in the film Nagin.
Lata Mangeshkar did turn up for the recording session of the final song
of Satyam Shivam Sundaram. Unit members recall seeing her sitting in
her white Ambassador in the courtyard of Famous Studios - and Raj
Kapoor waiting with folded hands by the door. She looked at him and
drove off. 'The look on Lata's visage as she thus took off was one
of score-settling triumph,', writes Bharatan. Was she still simmering
over what she perceived as an insult: the choice of Zeenat Aman with a
half-scarred face to play the character that is supposedly based upon
her? Whatever, there was no final song in Satyam Shivam Sundaram.
Raj Kapoor and Lata had more in common than music. Both their fathers
had been part of travelling theatre groups. Dinanath Mangeshkar's
Marathi play Raj was staged at the Royal Opera House in Bombay. Prithvi
Theatres staged their plays there when they were in the city. As
children, and later as adolescents, both grew up in the world of
greasepaint. She used to sneak off to see movies as a child, as did he.
Her first acting role was when she was seven. Raj Kapoor wasn't much
older. Both shared a passion for cricket. Theirs could have been a
meeting of the minds as well.
They also had Dilip Kumar in common. The thespian was her rakhi
brother, and in a sense blood brother of Raj Kapoor. What is puzzling
is the fact that Raj Kapoor did not make Lata Mangeshkar tie a rakhi on
him, as he did with other actresses. Nadira and Nimmi were two of his
sisters; in fact he asked Nimmi to become his muhn boli behan as soon
he cast her in Barsaat. Were his feelings less than brotherly towards
the singer whose voice enthralled him and gave him a high?
(The book will be released at ITC Grand Maratha, Sahar, on Monday)
* "Lata in white was for Raj a replica of Nargis in white; somewhere
the voice and the vision merged"
====
Abhay Jain
<asi...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:1134944711....@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> An excerpt from The Kapoors by Madhu Jain
>
> http://www.mumbaimirror.com/ --Look under Entertainment
> ==========
>
> He was entranced by her voice, she by his chikna face and blue eyes
> Sunday, December 18, 2005 | Sunday Read
>
>
> Satyam Shivam Sundaram, with Zeenat Aman playing the Lata role. In an
> interview years later he spoke about making a film about an ugly girl
> with a beautiful voice - like beauty and the beast. According to
> Bharatan, Lata Mangeshakar felt insulted by Raj Kapoor's choice of
> Zeenat Aman. The singer thought these were pointed references to her
> because 'her vocals had been the inspiration for the Satyam Shivam
> Sundaram theme, which was first written as Gharonda by Inder Raj
I distinctly recall reading an article in 1964 when Sangam was released
that its original name was 'Gharonda". It is pssible Raj kapoor may have
had a fix for this name hence he tried to use it again for Satyam Shivam
Sundaram.
AJ