Hindi Popular Cinema and Its Peripheries

Abstract

First things first. For an uninitiated viewer (and reader) of Hindi cinema produced from Bombay, it may be imperative to recognize ‘who was Suraiya’. While biographies and interviews of well-known (male) actors frame her life in a particular way,¹ especially highlighting her enigmatic presence/absence, it may be worthwhile to know that Suraiya (1929–2004) initially did a few playback songs (at the early stage of her career during 1941–42), and her popularity as a singer-actor, as well as a dancer, grew during the mid-1940s (especially during 1948–49) with the success of films like 1857 (1946), Dard (1947), Dak Bangla (1947), Aaj Ki Raat (1948), Kajal (1948), Vidya (1948), Pyaar Ki Jeet (1948), Gajre (1948), Shair (1949), Jeet (1949), Dillagi (1949), Duniya (1949), Char Din (1949), Dastaan (1950), Sanam (1951) and so on, along with films by influential filmmakers like K. Asif, Mehboob Khan, Chetan Anand and Nitin Bose—Phool (1944), Anmol Ghadi (1946), Afsar (1950), Waris (1954) and so on. Moreover, she also co-starred with the singing legend K. L. Saigal in Tadbir (1945), Omar Khaiyyam (1946) and in Parwana (1947), though her career arguably took off with Tamanna (1942). Let us say that she was one of the actors who continued to perform her own songs, even at the times when the popularity of the playback singers soared and their voices demarcated the scene with their extraordinary skills.²