"mile sur mera tumhara" is one of the greatest vignettes growing up in india of the 80s, the days when doordarshan (dd) was unchallenged.
it is fair to say that we didnt realise the greatness of msmt, one of the very few good initiatives of dd, almost passing off as a 'good program' of those days, chitrahar, 'oliyum oliyum' and the sunday movie apart.
it is a lovely song and the old version had some of the greatest performers with bhimsen joshi starting off the song in his inimitable hindustani style ; the tamil version was sung by dr balamurali krishna with a youthful kamalahassan paying attention. it also had his first wife vani ganapathi as the bharatnatyam dancer.
with due respect to the translations before, mile sur mera tumhara means "let our music notes unite"
mile sur mera tumhara
(let our music notes unite)
woh sur bane hamara
(the combined note will be ours)
sur ki nadiyan har disha se
(rivers of music notes coming from all directions)
behke sagar mein mile
(flowing into the seas, meeting)
baadalon kaa roop leke
(taking the form of clouds)
barse halke halke
(raining slowly pleasantly)
mile sur mera tumhara.....woh sur bane hamara....
the equivalent of this is song in different languages...
the interest in those days, for me, was to see the sportspersons in the clipping ranging from narendra hirwani (16 wkts at chennai, on debut, equalling bob massie), rajesh chauhan, p t usha, prakash padukone, flying sikh milka singh at the end....
vivid are also memories of "punk haired" amitabh, jeetendra (man of white shoes) and mithun...
leading ladies were hema, sharmila tagore (saif ali khan's mother, tiger pataudi's wife) and guide heroine waheeda.........
i feel very old reminiscing
; which ofcourse i am not, despite aspersions to the contrary
"sur" for an endearing "mu ka" ruled tamilian who loves to hate hindi could be the sound created when slurping tea out of the saucer, one of the despicable habits i havent seen much outside of tn.
