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They were the dark ages. Shockingly after an amazing 70s. Creativity was the last thing on everyones mind. No one cared. Hindi cinema was treated as a prostitute by those who had come in to make money. And that was their only objective. Dish out a 3 hour film to make money. Video had made it’s foray into India and almost overnight - video became the villain of the film industry. Video was made out to be the cause on why the Hindi film industry was suffering. Of course it was true, to an extent. Yet if one compares the number of illegal downloads of a new movie on the very Friday of it’s release, the video days look like a God’s gift to the film industry. The problem lay elsewhere…

The middle class had moved out of the …

There have been many good female singers in the hindi cinema right from the days of Noorjahan and Suraiya. Geeta Dutt, Suman Kalyanpur and Sudha Malhotra all gave good and hit songs and their songs were able to compete with the songs of any good female singers active in those years. They all have many songs where question of comparison with other singers does not arise and listener is fully satisfied with their singing only. They have got many songs of their own.

Even it is hard to imagine that any other female singer could have sung Afsana Likh Rahee hoon dil e bekarar ka (Dard 1947), better than the Uma Devi, who later became famous in her new incarnation of Tun Tun-the famous female comedian.

Inspite of the fact that so many good female singers always remained active in …