Mynahs have oodles of character – you can see it in those sharp-eyed little faces, and in the nonchalance with which they peck on the fringes of roads, just inches from speeding trucks. (I’m assuming it’s the common mynah Rajinder Krishan was referring to when he wrote this song). And it celebrates the feistiest of India’s more ubiquitous birds. O meri mynah tu maan le mera kehna ( Pyaar Kiye Jaa, 1966): What a peppy, cute song – from Mehmood and Mumtaz’s dancing to Manna Dey’s and Usha Mangeshkar’s rollicking singing. It is also delightful evidence of the fact that a peacock, dancing, can draw people’s attention off just anything possible.ģ. It’s brilliantly picturised, the music’s awesome (as if Rafi’s voice, tripping along in that drunken but perfectly in sur way) and Johnny Walker is at his absolute best. Jangal mein mor naacha ( Madhumati, 1958): Those of you who’ve been reading this blog for a while probably know how much I love this song. I love this song Lata sings it very well, it has beautiful music (and bird call-like notes too!) and the picturisation includes two of my favourite people.Ģ. Interestingly, it is believed that the papiha’s call is actually ‘ pee kahaan’ – Hindi for ‘where is my love?’, good enough reason for lyricists to want to feature it in love songs. Suno sajna papihe ne ( Aaye Din Bahaar Ke, 1966): While the papiha (the hawk cuckoo, better known as the brain-fever bird) got labelled a gossipy tittle-tattle in Fariyaad, this song assigns the bird a kinder role – as the harbinger of spring. Another post).Īnd to make it more difficult for myself, I decided this had to be ten different birds. (Though, to be fair, there are some awesome songs on those too: Chal ud jaa re panchhi, Jaa re jaa re ud jaa re panchhi, Panchhi banoon udti phiroon mast gagan mein, etc. They’re all from films I’ve watched, and they’re all species-specific. They’re all pre-70s songs (though, admittedly, birds were alive and kicking through the 70s too: remember Jhooth bole kauwa kaate? Remember Ek daal par tota bole? Or Tota-mynah ki kahaani toh puraani?). Inspired by all these birds, I’ve come up with my list of ten songs that feature birds, or names of birds. Or, more commonly, pigeons and crows and kites and whatnot. With lovers being likened to parakeets and mynahs, or a pair of swans or a pining lover being assigned the role of a chukar partridge yearning for the moon (not something I have ever heard of a bird doing). Birds have always been very much a part of Hindi film songs. The sight of all those lovely birds reminded me of all the great ‘bird songs’ we have in Hindi cinema – a motif, oddly enough, that’s endured into relatively recent times, what with the (to me, excruciating) Kabootar jaa jaa and Chhat pe kaala kauwa baitha. Most of them are gone by this time of the year, but there’s plenty of bird life still to be seen: The barrage on the Yamuna hosts a vast number of migratory birds through the winter. I spent a bit of last Sunday at Delhi’s Okhla Barrage Bird Sanctuary.
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