When a rare English song in a Hindi film became young India’s beating heart

In the 1970s, listening to popular music was more public than personal. Home radios tuned in to Radio Ceylon’s 'Aap Hi Ke Geet' every morning. The addictive Binaca Geetmala could be heard in parks on Wednesday nights. And Vividh Bharati’s late night 'Chhaya Geet' was often a nightcap to the ear. Loudspeakers in street corners, small transistors in smaller pan shops, baritone-voiced radios in listeners’ clubs (shrota sanghs) – the sound of music was everywhere.It was in this bustling ecosystem of shared melody that an unusual song of eager love had young urban India swaying and swooning. Written by a 77-year-old poet, Harindranath Chattopadhyay, composed by a 20-year-old music director with a famous surname, Rajesh Roshan, and vocalised by a debutant teenage singer, Preeti Sagar, ‘My Heart Is Beating’ was a rarity in Hindi cinema: A song written in English. These were the times Hindi film lyrics were synonymous with heady Urdu and lively Hindi. The Queen’s language was still viewed by some as a hangover of the colonial past and a privilege of the elite.But the song brimming with lilt and moxie broke through the language barrier. Post-pubescent teens in public schools and city colleges felt the song spoke to them as a generation. “The number was even played at weddings, extremely unusual for an English song those days,” recalls lyricist Amit Khanna. As film director Mahesh Bhatt aptly says, “It was a clutter-breaker.”A remake of the Malayalam hit ‘Chattakkari’ (1974), the film ‘Julie’ (1975) walked the tricky terrain of inter-religious love between a Christian girl of an Anglo-Indian background and a Hindu Bengali boy. The tiny minority community had dwindled from roughly 3 lakhs in 1951 to 1.73 lakhs by 1971. Celluloid representation of Anglo-Indians was mostly stereotypical. But Julie, despite formulaic in parts, offered a relatively more authentic portrayal of their predicament.Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, whose first wife Lorraine Bright a.k.a Kiran Bhatt was an Anglo-Indian, recalls how she felt joyous at the community being represented in the film. “The leap into that landscape was so refreshing. And that song, because it dared to break out and be what it is, became a representative tune for them,” he said. medium120689449Binaca Geetmala records show that ‘My Heart is Beating’ wasn’t ‘Julie’s’ most popular song. “Bhool gaya sab kucch…Julie I love you,” despite raising conservative eyebrows for its public declaration of amour in English, fared way better at No 3 in the annual show of the countdown programme. ‘My Heart Is Beating’ was ranked 19 while ‘Dil Kya Kare’, the unfailing Valentine's Day favourite, stood at 22. ‘Yeh Raatein,’ the film’s most creative track, didn’t make it to the charts. But the super success of Sagar’s ‘full English’ number signified a larger point: an acknowledgement of India's break from its colonial past and a readiness to embrace the language in a new light. Social scientist Shiv Viswanathan avers that language was secondary to the sentiment in the number. “The song’s simplicity gave it power, beauty and popularity,” he says. The popularity endures. A YouTube video version of My Heart Is Beating has a healthy 8.3 million views.Even today, 50 years on, the composition feels fresh in its orchestration. String, brass, woodwind -- every section is as perfect as a tuned Steinway. But it’s Sagar’s rendition that’s the song’s elevator. Educated at Bombay’s Queen’s Mary School, her diction is flawless. And her voice both soars and seduces, drawing out the lyrics’ nuance. “Her voice was so us,” says Bhatt. The recording was okay-ed after the second take, remembers Sagar. medium nocaption120689623The filming too broke conventions. Five family members, including a pre-teen Sridevi in shorts, prance and jive around a dinner table. The composition is imbued with a distinct Western music influence, and in an interview music director Rajesh Roshan said that it was emblematic of Skeeter Davis. “Unki chhap hai usme (Her imprint is there),” he told Radio Nasha Official. The American country singer-songwriter is best remembered for the single, The End of the World (1962), which peaked at No 2 on US Billboard. “I was looking for a voice like hers. Which I found in Preeti,” he said.Preeti Sagar, daughter of actor Moti Sagar (film: Malhar, 1951), was already singing commercials in a bunch of languages. She initially felt that ‘My Heart is Beating’ would either be filmed in a nightclub, or, played like background music like foreign tracks usually were. “I really didn't know it was going to be picturised on heroine Laxmi-ji,” said Sagar, who was also related to actor Motilal and singer Mukesh. 120689314The magnitude of the song’s popularity surprised her. She recalled going to see the film in Bombay’s Metro, the theatre packed with youngsters. “When the song came, some of them in the back were wondering who sang it and I badly wanted to stand up and say, it’s me,” she recalled. Then again in Delhi, we were once walking at night in Delhi’s Defence Colony where my uncle lived. “And I could hear the song being played in every house we walked past,” Sagar said. Even the film, made on a frugal budget, became a major box-office success celebrating its silver jubilee in Bombay and listed among the year’s Top 10 box-office winners by Trade Guide. In the same interview, Roshan also remembered visiting prolific poet and dramatist Harindranath Chattopadhyay’s home in Bandra’s Carter Road and the poet merrily writing the lyrics to the tune. “At one point, the song says, time is fleeting. That’s what stuck with me. The transience of life. Love trapped within the bubble of life which is not eternal. We should hear the song more closely. It is not glib, rather has a certain depth,” says Bhatt. medium nocaption120690915Which is why a golden jubilee of years later, the song, like our hearts, keeps beating, ‘repeating’ and pleasuring us.