Dharti meri maata pitaa aasmaan

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Post number 14000 was written by Sudhir Ji on 1 february 2018. In that post, he made several interesting observations and he wanted my take on them. I will try to cover those points and make some points of my own.

While brieflyly discussing the previous thousandth posts, Sudhir Ji made this observation:

The 1K post –

He did write that he expects the blog to go from “strength to strength” and that he would “. . .add many more thousands of songs […] in the times to come”. So this is one question I would like Atul ji to respond to specifically – was his expectations that we shall reach, where we have reached today, and still going strong??

It was 30 march 2009 when this 1000^th post was published. That was nine years ago. The world was a very different place from what it has become now. I was based at Jabalpur and I hoped to stay there in future as well. I was happily settled there. It turned out that got transferred to another state in a few months time. If I was not able to foresee what was going to happen in a few months time, then how was I going to see into the future of the blog.

I was then like a batsman who worries about where his next run is going to come from. By that time, I had worked out my standard strategy of posting 6 songs daily for three days followed by seven songs on the fourth day thus adding 25 songs every four day. Repeating the same process four times, that would give me 100 songs in 16 days. So I was happily clocking 100 songs every 16 days. Those were simple days when we had not thought about “debutant” movies, “YIPPEE” movies etc. Even the concept of contributions by regulars had not taken shape. We did not have the team of contributors that we now have. I did not even have my pets at that time that have become such an important part of my life for the last six- seven years.

The pages about list of songs that we take for granted now a days were not there at that time the 1000^th post was published. The “yearwise list of songs” was introduced seven days later, on 6 april 2009, followed by “moviewise list of songs” on 19 april 2009.

Very few songs were covered till then, so deciding upon “new” songs to cover was quite simple and easy those days. I was able to cover my six to seven song a day fairly comfortably, by the first half of the day itself.

No, I never thought at that time that the blog would one day have 14000 songs in it. At that time, I thought that I would run out of songs to cover after I had covered around 2500 songs.

Song post number 2000 was a rail song posted on 27 september 2009. The blog by now has 90 rail songs. I still have at least one great rail song up my sleeve. It is lying in the drafts for last seven years. It is a kind of song that may be used for a future thousandth song.

The “music directorwise list of songs” was introduced on 3 november 2009 and thus the three important song lists were put in place a little after the posting of the 2000^th song in the blog.

There has been this demand for singerwise list of songs as well. Even that may come up, if I could persuade myself to do that.

As far as Raja’s tendency to enrich English dictionary with words like ‘mind-bloggling’, ‘gangout’, etc is concerned, let me assure our readers that Raja has been at it even before this blog began. We have been together in a cricket forum since 2005 and it was then and there that he had coined a term called “Atulism” for my kind of humour. He seems to have inspired others in the blog and now we find others too coining terms like “YIPPEE”, “Atulites” etc.

Raja had written the writeups for the 3000^th and 4000^th posts in the blog. These two posts also happened to be the thousandth posts of Lata and Rafi respectively.

5000^th post was unprecedented for the blog for the levels of planning that it involved. It too combined an artist’s personal milestone with blog milestone, but the artist was far lesser known that Lata and Rafi. This less known artist, viz Bulo C Rani, was the composer of the iconic qawwali “Hamen To Loot Liya Mil Ke Husn Waalon Ne“. This song was a long pending “farmaish” by many people.

The planning for this post began by the time the blog had around 4700 songs in it. Bulo C Rani was only on 21 songs at that time. His songs (most of them obscure) began to be posted in the blog with suspicious regularity and his 100^th post coincided with the 5000^th song in the blog on 13 november 2011.

This date, 13 november became an important date as far as thousandth posts for this blog are concerned. It was exactly one year later on 13 november 2012 saw the 7000^th song being posted, though at that time this coincidence went unnoticed. It was only while we were planning for 9000^th post that we realised that 13 november 2011 and 2012 had seen posting of 5000^th and 7000^th posts. So we went into an overdrive to ensure that the 9000^th post was published on 13 november 2013.

The above observations also mean that the blog was covering 2000 songs per year from 2011 to 2013. This led to the blog achieving its peak strike rate of 4.63 songs per day when the 9000th post was published on 13 november 2013. Had we maintained this rate till today (2 february 2018), we would be on 16140 instead on 14000 !

We were unable to maintain that rate and we have fallen to a rate barely above 4 songs per day. But the fact that the blog still adds “new” songs daily (albeit at a lower rate) without fail means that we are going on and on and adding more songs.

Preparation for the 10000^th song was quite a remarkable exercise involving tremendous teamwork and planning for nearly three weeks. All regulars of the blog wrote articles and they themselves were introduced through articles written by other regulars. That mega exercise then culminated into the posting of the 10000 ^th song that rewrote HFM history. The behind the story tales of the preparations and waiting for the 10000^th post are fond memories that are still fresh in the minds of regulars despite the passage of more than three years.

The way the blog has evolved with time is something that neither I nor others would have visualised in the past. We nowadays interact online on whatsapp, email, facebook, phone etc. We have had several togethers, inadvertently coined “gangout” by Raja. They are in addition to bilateral meetings, of course.

I have attended just one “gangout” in December 2014 at Mumbai, which has been my only such meeting so far. I have had meetings with some regulars at Delhi, Nagpur, Lucknow etc as well.

The interactions with other regulars have led to several ideas that have been implemented in the blog. The list of songs (yearwise, moviewise, MD wise) were introduced as results of suggestions by Raja. The concept of YIPPEE movies came from Pradeep Raghunathan. Covering missing movies in the blog was an idea that came from Khyati Bhatt.

HFM related statistics that are available online (if any) are nowhere in the same league as cricket related statistics. I dream of the day when we will be able to have authentic statistics for artists the way we have authentic statistics from cricketers. Unlike cricket, where records are kept thanks to the British legacy of discipline in cricket, Indians have failed to keep authentic records of their history, including HFM history. Still, there are some diehard HFM fans, and some of them are our own regulars, who are helping collect hard to find details of HFM and putting them in one place for easy reference. We in this blog have covered all the available songs of KL Saigal and Suraiyya, and we are just a few songs short for artists like Naushad, SD Burman, OP Nayyar etc. Even in case of Rafi and Lata, we have already covered nearly 60 % of all their songs.

Whenever we post century (or thousandth) post of an artist, we try to give moviewise breakups of all their songs. For instance, I have given such breakups for Suraiyya, Rajinder Krishan, Naushad, OP Nayyar etc. My plan is to give such breakups for all artists who have more than 100 songs in the blog. That would be extremely useful statistical exercise in the field of HFM. So keep watching the blog in future when we add statistics for all major HFM artists.

We in this blog are extremely strong when it comes to making resolutions and sticking to them. We are more than one month into 2018 and we have managed to live up to the new year blog resolutions for 2018 so far. Even today (2 February 2018), the “debutant” movie (number 3820) has been introduced. So it is time now to introduce the YIPPEE movie of the day.

The YIPPEE movie of the day is ‘Geet Gaata Chal’ (1975). This movie was directed by Hiren Nag for Rajshree Productions, Bombay. This movie had Sachi, Sarika, Khyati (new discovey), Madan Puri, Manhar desai, Agha, Dhumal, Sundar, V Gopal, CS Dube, Madhup Sharma, Pardesi, Jugnu, Sriram, Surendra Singh, Prakash Mishra, Imtiaz Pathan, Junior Mehmood, Urmila Bhatt, Leela Mishra, Minu Mahtab, Saroj Borkar, Padma Khanna etc in it.

This movie had nine songs in it. Eight of these songs have been covered in the blog. Following are the details:

Here is the ninth and final song from this movie. This final song is a joie de vivre bailgaadi song where Sachin is seen joyously lip syncing this song while moving ever so slowly on a bullock cart, with Sarika too as a co passenger. They would take frequent breaks enroute showing that they were enjoying the journey rather than thinking about the destination. this archtypical Rajshree Production kind of bailgaadi songs were used in some subsequent Rajshree Productions movie as well. The most memorable to such bailgaadi song was Kaun disaa mein leke chalaa re batohiyaa from “Nadiya Ke Paar”(1982).

The song is sung by Jaspal Singh. Ravindra Jain is the lyricist as well as music director.

With this song, ‘Geet Gaata Chal’ (1975) joins the list of movies that have all their songs covered in the blog.

Song-Dharti meri maata pitaa aasmaan (Geet Gaata Chal)(1975) Singer-Jaspal Singh, Lyrics-Ravindra Jain, MD-Ravindra Jain

Lyrics

dharti meri maata pita aasmaan
o dharti meri maata pita aasmaan
mujhko to apna sa laage saara jahaan
dharti meri maata pita aasmaan

oonche oonche parwaton ki baadalon se hode
oonche oonche parwaton ki baadalon se hode
nadiya bahe re saare bandhanon ko tod
phoolo ki hansi mein basi hai meri jan
mujhko to apna sa lage saara jahaan
dharti meri maata pita aasmaan

yoon to meri ankhiyon ne dekhe kayi rang
yoon to meri ankhiyon ne dekhe kayi rang
man ko na bandha maine kisi ke bhi sang
jal ke oopar tairoon main hans ke samaan
mujhko to apna sa laage saara jahaan
dharti meri maata pita aasmaan
mujhko to apna sa laage saara jahaan
dharti meri maata pita aasmaan

———————————————————
Hindi script lyrics (Provided by Avinash Scrapwala)
———————————————————

धरती मेरी माता पिता आसमान
ओ धरती मेरी माता पिता आसमान
मुझको तो अपना सा लागे सारा जहान
धरती मेरी माता पिता आसमान

ऊंचे ऊंचे पर्वतों कि बादलों से होड़
ऊंचे ऊंचे पर्वतों कि बादलों से होड़
नदिया बहे रे सारे बंधनों को तोड़
फूलों कि हँसी में बसी है मेरी जान
मुझको तो अपना सा लागे सारा जहान
धरती मेरी माता पिता आसमान

यूँ तो मेरी अंखियों ने
देखे कई रंग
यूँ तो मेरी अंखियों ने
देखे कई रंग
मन को ना बाँधा मैंने
किसी के भी संग
जल के ऊपर तैरूँ
मैं हंस के समान
मुझको तो अपना सा लागे सारा जहान
धरती मेरी माता पिता आसमान
मुझको तो अपना सा लागे सारा जहान
धरती मेरी माता पिता आसमान