Every Wednesday night from 8 to 9 p.m. a bunch of us would gather in the open space of Travancore Hostel, close to the loud speaker located outside in the middle of the building facing the open space of the quadrangle. We are the faithful, hard core fans of latest Hindi cinema songs, drop whatever we were doing in order to listen to Binaca Geetmala, coming through the shortwave radio signals (thanks to the inventor Marconi) from Colombo, courtesy of Radio Ceylon. Of course we have to gratefully thank the major sponsors, binaca toothpaste and saridon headache relief pills etc for their financial support that provided us the entertainment for an hour per week. The song selection was based on listeners’ choice. Fans would send their requests to Radio Ceylon to listen to their favourite Hindi movie songs in the Binaca Geetmala. The song with the greatest number of requests would be played towards the end of the show to heighten the suspense and keep us guessing. It was always the most recent and most rewarding.

             The popular Hindi songs from the latest bollywood (I don’t think this name was even coined in the late fifties) movies whose tunes where in the minds and voices of all the youth throughout India. How can you ever forget the immortal tunes from movies like Awara, Barsaat, Boot Polish, Shree 420, Madhumathi, Chori Chori, Anarkali, Paying guest, Munimji, Anadi, Thumsa Nahi Dekha and the list is endless. They were not ordinary tunes, they were the most haunting and everlasting melodies. Top notch music direction by Shankar and Jaikishan, C.Ramachandra, S.D.Burman, Guru Dutt, Hemant Kumar, O.P.Nayyar, Salil Chowdary and Kishore Kumar and so on. These music directors changed the course of Indian movie music and had a tremendous influence on the future generations because they boldly introduced western style tunes(yodeling etc) and all kinds of western orchestral instruments. Of course these beautiful melodies were sung by the divine singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Geeta Dutt, Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh, Kishore Kumar, Asha Bhonsle and Talat Mohammed…..

            We listened to every song, the catchy tunes and enjoyed thoroughly the background music of accordion, electric guitar etc. It was unfortunate we did not understand the Hindi words and the meaning of the song. But who cares, we replaced the words with la,la,la and na, na, na etc and recalled the tune and sang the full song in our own way. Very soon the same tunes were dubbed into Tamil and Telugu songs for our delight and pleasure.

            It reminds me of the two ardent fans or you might say crazies were Sampath(Voora) and Venugopal(Bob) who were the regulars, and after the geetmala, simply walked away singing some catchy tune including the background, humming it happily back to their hostel rooms. It was a painful experience to get back to reality and face the night’s homework, assignments etc. late at night.

           To be honest, those melodious tunes are still fresh in my memory as they have been recalled and sung many times over for the past fifty years after I left India in 1961 and never have I forgotten them. I wish you all very melodius music memories from your past.