In celebration of the announcement of Dada Saheb Phalke award for Manna Dey, let's do a playlist. Clearly, not easy doing one favourite, so till then, here's a bunch of songs, listed in order of remembrance:
Duets and multi-singer songs:
The ultimate patriotic song that we forget is actually an Afghan yearning for his homeland:
And the one that he would always be remembered by:
The one that gets all philosophical with "ye duniya more baabul kaa ghar, wo duniyaa sasuraal"
The one that almost everyone would name on their favourite Manna Dey list:
No, he isn't all sad - here's one from one of the first multi-starrers:
The one that was even on Outlook's own list of best songs of all-time:
And then one more from the Salil-da stable:
A quintessential Manna da in Bootpolish: Lapak Jhapak
Think of this, for instance, and who else could have sung it? aayo kahaan se ghashyaam
For Dev Anand in Funtoosh: phuul geNdwaa naa maaro
And how many of these type has he sung?
Continuing with the distinctively Manna Da songs: sur naa saje
Another one of those: tere nainaa talaash kareN jise
Not to miss the total dance-drama in this, complete with beard-sheard and what not:
The other paayaliyaa song:
And, yes, there is plenty of fun stuff too - take this classic: chalat musaafir moh liyo re
We are talking only solos, to start with, though there are a whole lot of duets and others that come to mind, for example the one with four of our biggies: Rafi, Talat, Manna, Bhupender
And clearly, the best qawaali in a film ever:
This one is clearly a Kishore song all the way, particularly given how he is supposed to have improvised it while singing, but Manna Da has to be acknowledged as a sport for agreeing to do this one:
Am not crazy about Raj Kapoor or Nargis, but here's this duet with Lata:
In Basant Bahar with none other than Bhimsen Joshi: ketakii gulaab juuhii champak ban phuule
And of course, for Anil Biswas, with Lata, the classical demo in ritu aaye ritu jaaye in Hamdard:
As I said, it is difficult to go with one, but for me, "phir kahiiN koii phuul khilaa" from Anubhav would definitely be in the reckoning on any all-time list...
Share your favourites with us.