Geeta ji was a lovely human being who knew how to balance house and work. She tried to give her best in whatever She did.
She sang a song in movie Abhimaan (1957), proclaiming the same, That She was the queen of the house. Enjoy this lovely song of hers composed by Anil Biswas ji. Lyrics of this sweet and lovely song are by Indivar.
Here are the lyrics thanks to Atul’s Song a Day Blog :-
hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm ghar ki raani hoon jee main ghar ki raani hoon jee main ghar ki raani hoon jee main ghar ki raani hoon jee shaam kahoon main mangal taaraa bhor suhaani hoon jee main ghar ki raani hoon jee
jab bartan chheden sargam main bhooloon apna har gham is aangan ke dar kone mein mera mukhdaa chamke chamcham yahi meri duniyaa yahi meri duniyaa main is duniyaa ki deewaani hoon jee main ghar ki raani hoon jee main ghar ki raani hoon jee ghar ki raani hoon jee main ghar ki raani hoon jee main ghar ki raani hoon jee
laaj se dulhan pyaar se patni mamta se hai maataa kitna sundar kitna pyaaraa ho kitna sundar kitna pyaaraa naari ka ye naataa naari ka ye naataa
sadaa nayaa ek roop sadaa nayaa ek roop sadaa ek nayi kahaani hoon jee main ghar ki raani hoon jee main ghar ki raani hoon jee ghar ki raani hoon jee main ghar ki raani hoon jee main ghar ki raani hoon jee
he mere Bhagwaan he mere Bhagwaan tumhaari dayaa na mujhse roothhe sukh mein kabhi abhimaan na aaye dukh mein dheer na chhoote sukh mein kabhi abhimaan na aaye dukh mein dheer na chhoote tumhaari dayaa na mujhse roothhe
gire na aankhon se gire na aankhon se aanchal bas main wo paani hoon jee main ghar ki raani hoon jee main ghar ki raani hoon jee ghar ki raani hoon jee main ghar ki raani hoon jee main ghar ki raani hoon jee
Enjoy listening to this lovely song picturised on the beautiful Chand Usmani.
Geeta ji is also known to be adept in the home department and many have raved of her fabulous cooking.
Fellow Geeta fan Lakshmipriya ji has shared two lovely pictures of Geeta ji where She can be seen working in her home. Here they are:-
Here’s another one where Geeta ji can be seen working in the kitchen:-
Thanks Lakshmipriya ji for sharing these lovely pictures.
Fellow Geeta Fan, Anish Raj Pandit ji, has also shared a lovely picture of Geeta ji resting after a hard rehearsal probably on her baaja. See how, simple our Geeta ji was, working hard without any luxurious furniture.
First of all, I would like to thank everyone for the response to my efforts in colouring Geeta ji’s photos in my previous article here. I have spent a lot of time in doing the colouring and I am glad that many people have loved them.
Due to some past bad experiences, I did put my name in them but I was helpless as I had to ensure proper credit is given to me.
It is said in our culture that any lady looks her best on her wedding day. Few years back I had come across some Black and White photos of Geeta ji’s wedding with Guru Dutt where one can see her family and friends rejoicing their union. It was natural for me to wonder, How stunning Geeta ji would have looked on her big day. And when I wonder about such things, Its natural for me to want to try to colour those photos.
Today, I am sharing the results of my colouring various photos of the wedding of Geeta ji with Guru Dutt. I hope you will enjoy seeing them as much as I loved working on them. Many people are relatives whom I am not aware. If you can identify some, Do please leave your comments below. Thank you. Lots of Best Wishes to all of you from the Carribean!
Geeta ji and Madhubala are two personalities who brought a lot of colour to Hindi films. One with her voice and the other with her charms. Their period was of B&W movies and both had a long partnership together. We have already talked about their partnership on the blog here.
I used to offer wonder, How it would be if Madhubala’s songs sung by Geeta ji were to be made available in colour. In today’s world a gamut of technologies are available which can help colourise videos. It’s an ongoing battle whether it should be done in the first place but unless efforts are made to progress the technology, we cannot expect to have natural looking colourised videos one day. Colour does add another dimension to what we see after all.
I was discussing this concept with Shaheed Haniff ji, a fellow Geeta fan who loves colourising artist photos who had shared a few colourised photos of Geeta ji with us in a heartfelt article here earlier.
He told me that it requires a lot of computing resources like processing power, memory etc. In fact, He told me that a few years back he had actually colourised a song clip of Aa Aa Meri Chaal Pe from K Amarnath’s Kal Hamara Hai (1959) in which Madhubala had done a double role! He told me that it took him over three months to complete the task with his simple laptop. Here are the results of his efforts for all of us to see:-
A youtube search also revealed that the ‘Gaane Naye Puraane’ channel had actually colourised the lovely Geeta-Kishore Duet, Aankhon Mein Tum from Half Ticket (1962) which had been composed by Salilda.
It is available at this link for those interested:-
During her long career Madhubala acted in only one full length colour film Jwala which also proved to be her last movie. In this movie, Geeta ji had featured in one of the songs, Haule Haule Ek Bhi Na Ghungroo Bole which was unfortunately not picturised on Madhubala. Here is the song for completeness:-
If you are aware of any more coloured videos of their combination do share links in the comments!
Thanks a lot to Anish Raj Pandit ji for this post on Geeta ji at various Recordings, Functions and Mehfils.
Geeta ji is one singer who could convey emotions of all kinds and switch effortlessly between them. When one hears to her songs, one can’t but help notice how She gives her all to the song. Each word She sings has her stressing at the right places and giving just the right emotions. Singer Talat Mahmood had rightly observed in an interview that Geeta ji was the best at catching the mood of the song.
It is a pity that we do not have any videos of Geeta ji doing her recordings which would have given us a bird’s eye view of all her recording efforts. Again, videos of her stage shows, TV/Radio/Media appearances would be great too. We certainly hope that such videos will turn up one day. However, fortunately for us, thanks to various fans and magazines there are quite a few photos that are available of Geeta ji at the studios where She is definitely in her element!
So fellow fans, sit on your rocking chairs and enjoy seeing Geeta ji giving her mellifluous renditions at the studios and with audiences!
While we wait for such pictures and photos, I, Anish sign off leaving you with two of her rare colour photographs probably taken in her UK stage show visit with Rafi sahab.
This article is written by Fellow Geeta Fan and Enthusiast Anish Raj Pandit ji. Thanks a lot to him for sharing this with us. We look forward to more posts by him for the blog in the future also!
“Her voice conveys the sweetness of honey and the pain of the bee sting.”🩸- Subhash K. Jha, film critic.
What is it about Geeta Dutt that is so special? Why does a musician like me love her songs so much? Her beautifully balanced voice and sincerity of expression are quick answers, but there are deeper societal and spiritual connections as to why her singing evokes something special in me, and so many other lovers of her singing. Here is a compilation of the words of myself and my dear friend Sounak Gupta, from a recent conversation. I have noticed that the younger generation of people who still love old Indian music are less biased and reverent to only the most prolific singers – so I have no fears, regrets, or qualms in posting such a conversation. Our generation is going back to a kind of discernment of old Indian music that is totally heart-based, and not just fame and power-based.❣️
Geeta wasn’t limited by any archetypes and stereotypes. I feel this could have upset many people of her time period, that felt a woman should either be seen as “respectable” (the meek heroine in a white sari) or not (the childish rebel, the vamp, the social outcast). The stereotypical woman was not supposed to be too otherworldly or internally liberated – using whatever training, and whatever they had been told by others, to achieve their goals- more like Lata- instead of someone whose voice had an ethereal, irreplaceable, and emotionally evocative nature to its expression. Geeta’s physical beauty challenged notions of the time as well, without her trying at all. Her dark, dusky, “saanwili” complexion and kind, expressive eyes warmed the hearts of those she met, as did her elegance and gentle, thoughtful disposition.
I really think the heart and freedom in Geeta’s self and singing shattered a lot of preconceived notions, and caused some discomfort to many in society. It had an otherworldly and not-calculated beauty to it, and a sort of unforced adaptability to it, that made it hard to pin down and categorize emotionally. Everyone wants to be able to reduce and simplify themselves and others to some set of characteristics, out of fear. Yet, Geeta humbly and effectively defied all of this societal nonsense just by being true to herself, and nothing more. She didn’t try to forcefully embody masculine characteristics to defy her surroundings (which would just be another way of conforming oneself to expectations), and instead embraced her inner freedom, femininity, and every facet of her nature and gifts. The acclaimed singer Jagjit Kaur had said that Geeta was the singer who could express the full range of feminine emotions. Geeta’s expression challenged the assumption that a woman had to be either the childish vamp or the meek heroine-in-white in Indian cinema. She showed us that we can be anything that we sincerely want to be, if we stay internally free and undisturbed.
I feel many preferred Lata and gave her more work partially because she didn’t disrupt their emotionally fixed notions of what women should be like in Indian society. That they shouldn’t sing from the heart in a way that makes others feel that a woman may have something truly special and transcendent to them – true sincerity, humility (being comfortable with yourself), authenticity, confidence, and beauty. That a woman should be prude, hard-headed, conservative, and stick to the status quo. Lata may have been outspoken and quick-tempered about matters of money, ego, and recognition, but in a stereotypical and business-like way — a way that resonated with and reinforced many men and their temperaments. She was therefore still this stereotypical person in every other way, who just worked hard at what she was told to do, and was reliable and dutiful. This is not only what men, but also what most women, wanted to see in other women- as they had also suffered such fate and pressure from society, and would find it annoying if someone didn’t also take seriously or adhere to what expectations they had suffered.
For this and other superficial reasons, there have been many Lata and Asha imitators in the singing world (conscious or not), and many people who can do justice to their songs- because there is an expressive predictability, or formula, in them. There is a conditioning. However complex the composition may be makes absolutely no difference, and may even prove the point further. Their expression is coming from the place of an arbitrarily defined identity and ego – and therefore creates predictable results. Yet, there are no Geeta imitators- no people who say they can sing exactly like Geeta, or do the same special justice to her songs. This is because Geeta’s singing defies description. It was captivating, expressive, soulful, unique without trying to be, sensual, romantic, passionate, loving, raw, refined, sincere, delicate, powerful, endearing, sorrowful, pure, authentic, all rolled into one. There was something unearthly and mysterious about her singing when her voice warmed the hearts of the heartless world and cast a spell on her listeners.
This was possible only because of the purity and authenticity with which Geeta approached everything. She approached every song with that essential constituent, that common factor! A devotional song sounds devotional by virtue of its words, but when a vamp’s song pleases the devotee, and a devotional song pleases a non-believer, it is the authenticity in whatever is being expressed that touches the soul! Geeta’s songs are pure in their feeling, regardless of their content. Geeta challenged the notion that a woman (or anyone) had to limit themselves to any single identity – that you didn’t have to choose or label yourself at all to find meaning in life, and that by doing so you were actually limiting yourself, whether that identity challenged society or not (many could still take note of this today). She showed us that a person could genuinely and freely (not just reactively) be the lover, the vamp, the lamenter, the comedian, and the devotee. Geeta did more than merely rebel and fix her identity in yet another arbitrary place. Instead, she just ignored all of the potential boundaries around her, as if they didn’t exist and were mere illusions, and sang purely from the heart – the place of ultimate freedom.
Geeta Fan Lakshmipriya ji has dug up a photo from the Internet of Geeta ji. As per her, this beautiful pic of Geeta Dutt ji was taken in Delhi on September 18, 1959.
Thanks to Shashank Chikarmane ji for sharing these photos of Geeta ji!
More pictures shared by him.
Few of these photos you may have seen in Haimanti ji’s book as well. The J P Kaushik photo had been shared earlier by Shishir Krishna Sharma ji shared to him by the composer himself when he interviewed J P Kaushik ji.
Manisha Roy ji (wife of Mr.Tapan Roy), daughter in law of Geeta Dutt’s eldest sister recently helped us getting in touch with Ibha Dutta ji. Ibha ji is the daughter of Geeta Dutt’s elder sister Jyotirmayee Devi
An extremely Beautiful pic of GEETA DUTT with Lakshmi Chakraborthi [Geeta Dutt’s sister / Mrs. Promod Chakraborty ] shared by IBHA DUTTA [ the daughter of Geeta Dutt’s elder sister Jyotirmayee Devi seen to the left of Geeta Dutt ] with Sounak Gupta who had the great fortune to meet her in Kolkata. He came in touch with her through Manisha Roy ji (Mrs. Tapan Roy) – daughter in law of Geeta Dutt’s eldest sister.. All the credit for this post goes to Manisha Roy ji Ibha Dutta ji & Sounak Gupta ! Many thanx to all of them.
And last but not the least, Here’s a picture of Geeta ji with her parents and siblings, courtesy Lakshmipriya ji!
Lakshmipriya ji has also shared a very rare picture of Geeta ji with her son Arun Dutt. Thanks to her for sharing it.