There was a time when music of a Hit Album or Film used to become a rage all over the country in just a few days of its release. It was an era when Music Cassettes used to sell like soft drinks in millions and music companies used to earn a fortune out of a single hot selling album in just a few weeks.
One of these music companies operating in the country at that time was T-series, which is still one of the leading ones in the present. The company was superbly lead by Late Gulshan Kumar who did have a remarkable music and business sense in the era when good music was evolving as an independent identity different from the usual Film Music. In fact T-series was easily the leading company at that particular period of time since HMV (now Saregama) was struggling to maintain its number one position in the market.
Gulshan Kumar & his team’s fabulous musical instincts were repeatedly proved by the way they capitalized on every great album coming their way and one of those highly melodious albums was LAL DUPATTA MALMAL KA. The music was first released as a private music album with songs written by Majrooh Sultanpuri and sung by Udit Narayan, Anuradha Paudwal, Suresh Wadkar Pankaj Udhas and Mohd. Aziz. It had superb music by Anand Milind who had just tasted success with “Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak”. It had gems such as Kya Kartey Thhey Saajna, Suni Suni Ankhiyon Mein, Ab Dawa Ki Zaroorat Nahin, Tumne Rakh To Lee Tasveer Hamari and more. Personally I simply loved “Main Gul Hun, Kali Hun, Saba Hun” and listen to it even today.
The music album became such a phenomenal success within a week of its release that there used to be constant repeat orders from the dealers almost daily. I had a personal experience of this euphoria as one of our friends had a music shop then in our locality and we used to constantly monitor the craze. Amusingly at first everyone was pretty confused that What is this album, Is it a Private music album, a Film music album, a Compilation or what? And probably that gave another brilliant idea to the company and they suddenly announced a Tele film coming soon in its new posters.
So perhaps this was the first ever tele-film which was forcibly made (at once) on a story revolving around its already famous songs which had become a country wide craze in 1989. Within few months of the announcement, the VHS tapes of the tele-film were released which once again were in demand due to the novel concept introduced by its makers. And the credits on its sleeve said, Lal Dupatta Malmal Ka (A Romantic Film), Directed by Ravinder Peepat. The film had Sahil Chadda as its hero and Viverly as the heroine along with other artists. As a tele-film shot on video format it was never meant to be released on the big screen but it surely was a stupendous success in the audio and video market in the year 1989.
Interestingly, exactly the similar hype was also seen when next year T-Series released another Big Musical Hit called AASHIQUI in 1990. Now with this album too there was a confusion in the start, since there were no hero-heroine shown on its Cassette Sleeves and it had only a boy and girl hiding under a coat. For a week or so AASHIQUI was also considered to be another Tele-film being made by the company but this misconception was later cleared in an official announcement by T-series. As a matter of fact, both the above mentioned albums LAAL DUPATTA MALAMAL KA and AASHIQUI still hold the highest selling albums record for its company T-series.
Those were really the days when Music was both bought and played like craziness and fanatics like myself even used to buy another copy of the same album to be on the safer side. Because many a times the cassette used to entangle in the players itself and we had to buy a new one at once. And we always used to fear that probably it will not be available later so let us buy it in advance.
Hope you enjoyed reading about these two great albums equally as I enjoyed writing about them re-living the good old days once again.
HIS BLESSINGS
