RAMCHANDRA Aasha. Devta • SAREGAMA 120420 (51:29)

Only Aasha was available for viewing purposes. Dating from 1957, Aasha stars Kishore Kumar, Om Prakash, and Vyjayanthimala and was directed by C. Ramachandra. It is a romantic comedy. Kishore plays a character also called Kishore, the son of a landowner. The film focuses on greed and on how one should distribute wealth fairly. Kishore is sent by his aunt to live with her son Raj (played by Pran) in Bombay (now Mumbai). However, Raj has been leading a double life and using Kishore as one of his characters that he uses to lure women into his arms, so the arrival of the real Kishore is something of a shock. The real Kishore falls in love with Nirmala, one of his brother’s girlfriends.

There are eight songs on the soundtrack CD. The first, “Ina Meena Dika” (not subtitled, alas—not all are in this movie), was one of the first rock and roll hits in India. It crops up twice, and Saregama logically use these two versions to bookend the other songs. One version is sung by a male singer (on the soundtrack, it is Kishore Kumar himself) and the other by a female (Asha Bhosle). Ostensibly, both are sung by an “Arab Theater,” hence the prevalence of fez headwear. The actual song is magic, and I profess a slight preference for Bhosle’s version. Also, on the soundtrack disc a fader is used to bring the music into focus, something that is absent in the film. “Ek Pardesi” (Of the rich and the poor) and “Haal Tujhe Apni” are the other two songs featuring Kumar as vocalist. The rest are split between Bhosle and Lata Mangeshkar. The active “Jara Ruk Ruk Ke” (With some pauses and some halts) is happy-go-lucky in the best escapist way. The melodic line of “Chal Chal Re Kanhai” includes more traditional tinges to the line and includes an effective mid-song tempo change. Interesting to compare Mangeshkar in this against Bhosle in the next song, “O Ja Re Chanda” (Go to sleep, dear moon), a much more overtly traditional song, in which the onscreen heroine accompanies herself on a sitar. Bhosle’s simplicity of utterance, for me, steals the show. “Tu Na Aaya” (You never came and it began to grow dark), a Mangeshkar number, is beautifully sung, though, with the singer riding the easy beat with expertise.

A pity Devta was unavailable. There are seven songs, split between Mangeshkar and Bhosle with the one exception of “Udhar Chali Ja Janaki,” which is taken by Manna Dey. The songs are lovely. Aasha represents a kind of purist Golden Age Bollywood, and should be celebrated for that. The DVD is available at www.nehaflix.com. Colin Clarke