IMMORTAL MELODIES: Waheeda Rehman in the famous Piya tose naina lage re number in Guide.

Have you ever heard a tape over and over again, trying to find that haunting melody you heard in the movie? Have you ever rushed out from a Hindi movie to buy its music cassette, only to find half the songs missing? The song Bade bhole ho hanste ho sunke duhayi kanhayi, from the film Ardhangini cannot be had for love or money. So also, the song from New Delhi, Kanhayi tori murli bairan bhayee.

For these songs, you have to prowl the by-lanes of Chor bazaar, or Calcutta and Hyderabad’s patli gullies. And only after sifting through mounds of dust do you come across a musical find a stack of old records which some unthinking owner had thrown away. Says Atul Pendse, a collector, quot;It’s strange that some very rare soundtracks can be found with music lovers, but music companies are not trying to unearth these and make them available. When I was looking for the soundtrack of Saiyyan, made in 1951, no music company had the music. I found someone who had it and managed to get it after a long time. I recorded 30 cassettes and distributed it to different people.quot;

Earlier, recording companies gave the reason of shortage of disc space. Songs had to be cut down to three-and-a-half minutes as that was the time span a 78 RPM record could accommodate. Given this, it became a rule to record songs twice once for the film, that is, for the original soundtrack; and once for the recording company. The result? Often one or two songs were cut off. Even after the transition from the 78 RPM to the LP, the situation remained the same.

And even CDs haven’t changed that practice. Music buffs are looking for missing antaras. Songs like Meri pyari Bindu, meri bholi Bindu from Padosan, which was improvised on the sets of the film, were never recorded on tape and are still missing. Piya tose naina laage re from Guide is another example. Director Vijay Anand says, quot;I recorded it as a 12-minute song against everyone’s advice. quot;I wanted this song to tell the whole story. But in the record we had to cut it.quot;

Recordings picked up from the original soundtrack reveal each note, each nuance, every subtle fluctuation of the song. Music picked up from LPs or cassettes do not have the same quality. This is evident in the CD of the film, Naujawan. The Lata Mangeshkar number Thandi hawayein lehrake aayen has been taken from the original soundtrack and released by EMI. The song has a colour entirely its own.

There are innumerable examples of songs which one has never heard after seeing the film. In the film Deedar the famous number O bachpan ke din bhula na dena by Lata/Shamshad was repeated by Rafi at the end of the film, but one never hears it. In Sazaa, the popular number Tum na jaane kis jahan mein kho gaye was different in the film and quite different on record. In the 1956 film Devta, C Ramchandra composed a fabulous number, Kisi se pyar hai humko, which is not on records. There immortal moments on celluloid that never make it to the audio version are the real tear-jerkers of Indian cinema.