I would have been the worst hit ☹

I think they were/are the lifeline of the movies, and they were/are my lifeline too. Like those movies, I couldn’t do without humming those songs (mostly from the 1950s and 60s) every moment of my life.

Since the release of the first Hindi film, Raja Harishchandra, in 1931 by Dadasaheb Phalke, Bollywood has produced around 30,000+ films so far.

As a matter of fact, Indrasabha, a 1932 film that heralded the era of musicals in Indian cinema, had 72 songs. It holds the Guinness Book of World Records for the film with the most songs in 1980.

Imagining a Hindi movie without a song was something like a child adversative to candies, chocolates, or ice creams.

There are four commercial movies known not to have any songs. Naujawan (1951), Munna (1954), Kanoon (1960), and Ittefaq (1969).

Coming back to the weird thought of Hindi movies not having any songs, and how it would have affected me the most.

I come from a Bengali ‘musical family’, and have been a singer since a child. We had a record player (HMV) and scores of records that would play on different RPM (revolutions per minute). The biggest records were played at 33 RPM, followed by those at 78, and 45 RPMs.

Thanks to my father, we had scores of records of Rabindra Sangeet (songs written and composed by Tagore). I had picked up all those songs, sung by male voices, as I thought it inappropriate to sing songs sung by female voices (childhood patriarchy 😊).

If there were no Hindi movie songs, I would have been left singing only Bengali songs, as I wouldn’t have any access to songs from other languages, especially Hindi.

I must also confess, I sing more Hindi (movie) songs every day than I sing Bangla songs.

As a child, I remember, we didn’t have a radio.

I used to stand in the middle of the courtyard of our house, my head raised as if catching the airwaves. I would stand there for hours, listening to the songs and trying to imitate them, whatever I could. Once the song was again relayed later, I would fill in the gaps and would generally have the songs memorized in a week or so.

That was undoubtedly the golden era of Hindi movie songs, with the best singers, music composers, lyricists, and accompanying musicians producing the greatest songs.

If Bollywood was devoid of songs, we wouldn’t have had those legendary singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammad Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Manna Dey, and many others.

We wouldn’t have had the great composers like SD Burman, Ravi, Madan Mohan, Naushad, OP Nair, Hemant Kumar, Salil Chaudhury, and many more. 

We wouldn’t have had the awesome lyricists like Shailendra, Gulzar, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Sahir Ludhianvi, and many more.

Bollywood has given every Indian a song to sing, of his/her choice.

Bottomline: Bollywood songs are immortal.