And when talking of songs, no one can ignore some of the great music directors and singers of that era. Wonderful lyricists were strolling the musical lawns of film music during that period. For fear of getting their names wrong, I’m not mentioning them all, but I salute them for their great lyrics.

Music Directors? There were plenty: Naushad, Ravi, Madan Mohan, O.P. Nayyar, C. Ramachandra, Chitragupt, Shankar Jaikishan, Hemant Kumar, Kishore Kumar, Salil Chowdhury—remember Madhumati?—and S.D. Burman. If anyone can add other names, it would be much appreciated.

And the singers—what a galaxy! Shamshad Begum, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle—how many generations did they span?—Geeta Dutt, K.L. Saigal, Manna Dey, Talat Mahmood, Mukesh, the man with the golden voice, Mohammad Rafi, Mahendra Kapoor, Hemant Kumar, Kishore Kumar. Where does the list end? Please, add more names if you can.

I’m restricting myself to my childhood days. If I had to continue beyond that, I would need to write a book.

During this period, however, Tamil music was not widely available, especially in Delhi. Tamil movies were generally screened during early morning shows on Sundays. I came to notice and appreciate South Indian music and music directors much later, after moving to Madras.

There were some music directors in the South who composed for a few movies and then moved on—Lingappa, Chalapathi Rao, and many others, who produced stunning music. Sorry, I can’t recall all the names. Coming to a later period, some of the great music directors in the Tamil cine world were G. Ramanathan, K.V. Mahadevan, M.S. Viswanathan and T.K. Ramamoorthy, and Shankar Ganesh. Who can forget Ghantasala or G.K. Venkatesh?

And the singers: P. Susheela, P. Leela, T.M. Soundararajan (TMS), P.B. Sreenivas (PBS), Seerkazhi Govindarajan, A.M. Raja—who was also a music director—Jikki, Jamuna Rani, and P. Bhanumathi. The list goes on and on. All their voices and music still bring such pleasure. Again, I have restricted myself to the era up until the early 1960s.

To be continued... 48 - Part 4.