Skip to main content

Man hath no Love but Balls and Bollywood Balloons

bollywood balloons, rajesh khanna, dharmendra
Man cannot live for ever on walks however charming and however fascinating his companion may be.His soul yearns for a ball of some kind whether it be a polo ball, a cricket ball, a tennis ball, a golf ball, or even a croquet ball. Until he has a ball of some description to play with he is never really happy.

Sir Francis Younghusband came up with this revelation in his book Kashmir (1911). He was describing the beautiful meadows of Gulmarg and explaining how, since his previous visit about nineteen years ago, the Golf courses and the Polo grounds had sprung up in place of woods and swamps. According to Younghusband, all this because the soul of a man forever yearns for the ball.
Is balloon a ball?
According to Bollywood, and countless movie song sequences bear witness, a man's soul also deeply yearns for balloons, particularly helium filled ones. In Bollywood, balloons were not just a prop. Hrikesh Mukherjee directing the song zindagi kaisi hai paheli for his film Anand (1971) took balloons to the next level when he used helium balloons an emblem of life.
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousSep 9, 2009, 7:31:00 PM

    Vay! Thanks to Beth Loves Bollywood for alerting me to this post. I track balloons in all Bollywood movies (along with tight slaps to the face and Johnnie Walker drinking)so I loved this post and the picture. Here are a few of my balloon related Bollywood posts:

    http://bollywoodfoodclub.wordpress.com/2008/11/08/bollywood-balloons/

    http://bollywoodfoodclub.wordpress.com/2008/12/26/hum-kisi-se-kum-nahin-and-those-wacky-bollywood-balloons/


    http://bollywoodfoodclub.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/noor-jehan-queen-of-melody-plus-murder-by-balloons/

    So glad to see your posting on balloons, it makes me feel less crazy.

    All the best!
    Sita-ji

    ReplyDelete
  2. Vinayak RazdanSep 9, 2009, 8:49:00 PM

    Hi Sita-ji,
    it's hard not to love those balloons :) Thanks for the links, I actually found one of the images- 'kids with balloon' - at your blog.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousSep 10, 2009, 4:10:00 AM

    Right on bhai! So glad to unite over this balloonage! Jai Bollywood Balloons!
    All the best! :)
    Sita-ji

    ReplyDelete
  4. bollywooddeewanaNov 25, 2009, 1:07:00 AM

    The ultimate ballon extravaganza seen in a bollywood song, the art director definitely had a balloon fetish

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaYFKqAH8w8

    ReplyDelete
  5. Vinayak RazdanNov 25, 2009, 1:25:00 AM

    Absolutely insane! If there is a thing called - too much balloons - this is it. Thanks for sharing the link!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I always like to hear back :)
However, irrelevant comments and irrelevant links will not be published. Needless to say, same goes for abusive comment and spam. Leaving back links related to the topic is encouraged. I know it can be tempting but try not to leave your email ids, phone nos and CVs in the comment.

Popular posts from this blog

Famous Old Faces of Doordarshan

Some people recall the faces and some people recall the names. Here are images of some of the famous readers and presenters of Doordarshan down the years. If you recognize any of them, leave a comment. [ Update 1 : Most of the faces now have names thanks to helpful comments by olio-gallimaufry ] [ Update 2 : Included image of one of the earliest presenters, Gopal Kaul. Send in generously from personal collection by son, Ashutosh Kaul. Sept, 2010.] [ Major Update 3: Got a tip-off about a documentary about the famous faces of Doordarshan from the makers   of     “The Golden Trail , DD@50 :Special feature on Golden Jubilee of Doordarshan ” from which these caps were taken. I managed to catch the incredible documentary and am adding some more faces/name and part of the docu here. New ones can be found after the image of  Narotam Puri. 30th Oct, 2010]  Pratima Puri. Believed to be the first Doordarshan reader.
176 comments
Read more

Indian Cigarette Vintage Ads

He put a cigarette in his mouth and, as a matter of silent routine, offered one to Gwyn, who said ‘No thanks.”Richard looked at him.”I packed it in.”"You what?”"I stopped. Three days ago. Cold. That’s it. You just make the life choice.” Richard looked up and inhaled needfully. He gazed at his cigarette. He didn’t really want to smoke it. He wanted to eat it. Almost the only thing that he still liked about Gwyn was that he still smoked…Paradoxically, he no longer wanted to give up smoking: what he wanted to do was take up smoking. Not so much to fill the little gaps between cigarettes with cigarettes (there wouldn’t be time, anyway) or to smoke two cigarettes at once. It was more that he felt the desire to smoke a cigarette even when he was smoking a cigarette. The need was and wasn’t being met… While it would always be true and fair to say that Richard felt like a cigarette, it would now be doubly true and fair to say it. He felt like a cigarette. And he felt like a cig
21 comments
Read more

Kishore Kumar, Yodel-ay-ee-oooo Songs, A List

*Updated with corrections pointed out by Bart Plantenga , author of some incredible book on Yodeling including Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World. -0- Kishore Kumar 's brother Anoop Kumar, who we basically know for the line ' O manu tera toh hua ab mera kya hoga ', used to own lots of Austrian music records. And from these records, Kishore Kumar picked up the art of Yodel singing, an art perfected in bathroom and then introduced by him to the world of Hindi film music. According to his biography 'Kishore Kumar: method in madness‎ ' by Derek Bose, "Kishore was a fan of the Swiss singer Tex Norton [* Tex Morton, an Australian cowboy born in New Zealand who sang  in the gene autry / Jimmie Rodgers style ] and the Australian Jimmy Rogers [* Jimmie Rodgers , perhaps the most American and one of the most famous yodelers in the world, famous for his blue yodels ] as well." Although most of these songs by Kishore Kumar are t
18 comments
Read more