At The Edge

Soumyadip's post about 1970 Air India Ad featuring Zeenat Aman made me dig up this one: To Zeenat - one of Life's Big Surpises - Your friend Warren Aug 29, 1976 Zeenat Aman came back from her 1976 US trip with an autograph from Warren Beatty.

Indira Gandhi with Soniya, Maneka, Rajeev, Sanjay, Rahul and Priyanka. The famous shoot by Jitendra Arya. 1979. Came across it in December 1979 issue of Debonair. -0- Zeenat Aman and Shobha De. 1975. Came across it in docu-film 'Key-Fill-Cut' (2010) on the work of Jitendra Arya [ watch it here ]

Ladies from Manoranjan (1974)

Zeenat Aman Mosaic having 5198 tiles selected from  8793 frames extracted from famous trippy (What was he smoking!) dream sequence song 'Chanchal Sheetal Nirmal Komal' (Satyam Shivam Sundaram,1978). [Click the above image to get a better view. For a still better view, download 3425×4740 pixelss – 7.7 MB Image Here and you may spot the giant pink mushrooms, plaster of Paris Lotus, purple haze, few nebulas,  some  and everything in between] Created using Andreamosaic . Earlier : Nargis-Raj Kapoor Mosaic

Will Muhammad look like Amitabh or will heaven look like Zeenat Aman? - Last lines from the poem 'Will Heaven look like Zeenat Aman?' by Bushra Rehman . [You can read it at her website] Image: Something I did to a publicity still from the film 'Pukar' (1983) starring Amitabh Bachchan and Zeenat Aman. It's that sea bather's song from the film. -0- And yes, some Zeenat Aman (and other philum) paintings by Chitra Ganesh .

  All tied up Found this sizzler of a  rare photograph in India Today's 33rd Anniversary Issue, 29th December 2008. It's supposed to be from the year 1977. Caption to the photograph carried Raj Kapoor's famous soundbite about Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978) - 'Let them (conservative ladies) come to see Zeenat's t*t*, they will go out forgetting her body and remembering the film.' Ironic. .   Goddess loves tea This is something I did to an old ad featuring Zeenat Aman -0- That word has been star*ed cause those kind of bits make crawlers go crazy and then you look at the stats  wondering what the hell is wrong with the world. And them you mumble something like that line by Raj Kapoor.

Zeenat Aman in a still from the trippiest Hindi film song ever rolled on a film - "Chanchal Sheetal Nirmal Komal" [ youtube Query ] from Satyam Sivam Sundaram (1978). Found it in The Week magazine dated June 28, 2009.

This stunningly beautiful portrait photograph of Zeenat Aman (on left) was taken at Hamilton Studios (Ballard Estate, Mumbai) in 1968. She was 17 or 18 years at the time. Later, Zeenat Aman made her modelling debut in a Nirlon India calendar shot by Hamilton Studios. Found this image at an article about Hamiltion Studios in Man's World magazine. Do check it out to see some more vintage and rare stuff from the Studio. Surprisingly, I found the image using MSN's  Bing Image Search , Google Image search had nothing on it. That's a good enough reason for me to try Bing more often. More information about the photograph was offered by an article from Times of India.  "One day Mrs Karvaste - he did not call herself Mrs. Aman - drove up to the studio in a Mercedes Benz and asked me to take a picture of her daughter for marriage,'' says [Ranjit] Madhavji [owner of the studio]. "When I saw how pretty Zeenat was, I suggested that her mother allow her to m...

The Sixties belonged to Hindi film heroines, cover girls such as Mala Sinha and Meena Kumari, who smiled demurely from cracker boxes, the very image of the bharatiya nari. In the ’70s, they were replaced by Rekha, Mumtaz, Yogita Bali and popular south Indian actresses. The imagery too changed from the chubby-cheeked kids and goddesses of the ’50s and ’60s. Cracker labels now looked more like film posters. The quality was crude, mostly hand-drawn and the packaging was poor in quality. The ’80s and ’90s brought bikini-clad Westernised heroines to Hindi cinema. Thus, we see Zeenat Aman and Mandakini on cracker boxes of “atom bombs”, pun entirely intended. The “bomb” had clear sexual overtones. One marked distinction remained. The phooljhari packet labels which are mostly used by younger kids still carry images of the mother and child or an angelic girl. Other crackers like rockets and bullet-bombs, which are of fairly high intensity have “sex bomb” images of these popular heroines draped ...

continued from Lux ad featuring Zeenat Aman Your skin will be fresh and smooth Leela Chitnis promises you a lovlier skin! Lux Toilet Soap Lux soap ad from 1941 featuring Leela Chitnis (right: in V.Shantaram's 1937 film Vahan ) Leela Chitnis, a big time film actress in 1939, was born in a Marathi-speaking household in Karwar, Karnataka and was one of Indian cinema's first educated ladies. In 1941, Leela Chitnis (b. 1912) became the first ever Indian actress to promote Lux soap. Lux was first launched in India in 1929 and since then almost all the top Indian actresses of their era have represented the Lux brand. Not only top actresses but even actresses like Prema Narayan did Lux ad ... (Condt..) -0- and info. (and pic) about Leela Chitnis here 

I was browsing around and came across a blog called  Everything Bollywood by Karen. The blog gives access to some wonderful Picasa albums having old magazine scans, covers, film poster, even lobby cards and stuff . One can spend hours at the place. It is quite a collection! In one of the albums themed around old celebrity advertisements, along with some previously unseen material, I found some of the stuff originally uploaded by me (like Zeenat Aman in Taj Mahal Tea ad and more), some by Soumyadip and some by  Meghna G ( for some reason her exhaustive flickr albums on Indian print ads are not available anymore). The following ads of Zeenat Aman are from the album on advertisments . Lux ad featuring Zeenat Aman from 1970s Zeenat Aman has it. The complexion you wish you were born with. "Being a star is tough on a girl's complexion. That's why I use fragrant Lux Supreme. Its rich, creamy lather with the gentle touch of beauty cream gives me a smooth young ...

Khatau bring you the pick of the bunch - the first flowers of early spring! Khatau's Terkosa All 'Terene' and 'terene'-cotton Sarees from The Reader's Digest, March 1972 I believe that the model on the right is Persis Khambatta . A search for names of some other Sari models of that era leads to Shobha Rajadhyaksha (now De of TOI), Meher Mistry (now Castelino) and Geeta Khanna. In 1972, Garden sarees/Vareli dress material ran a print ad campaign based on floral prints. The Khatau campaign on the left seems to have been in response to the Garden Sari ad. Interestingly, Persis Khambatta, famously, became the face of Garden sarees only much later in 1985 in an ad that with the catch line, 'you fascinate me', revived the fortune of Sari fashion in India. A fashion that began in 1970s with the growth of Surat based Sari czars of synthytic textile industry. 'Terene' was the synthetic wonder textile of that era ( just like lycra of this e...

India’s finest CTC tea Brooke Bond TAJ MAHAL Stronger liquor Plus superb taste To give you Total tea This Ad of Taj Mahal Tea featuring Zeenat Aman is from the year 1972. Zeenat Aman's film Hare Rama Hare Krishna had been recently released in the year 1971 making her the most famous Indian hippie and the quintessential Indian sex- symbol. This particular Ad could be older as she looks really young in it. Who would have thought that kohl eyed Zeenat Aman could sell tea wearing a purple suit , big danglers in ear and having a centrally parted two- chowtye ed hair. Wah Zeenat! Wah! -0- Wah! Ustaad Wah! Arre huzoor, wah Taj boliye Wah Taj! catch line was adopted in the late 80s when tabla maestro Zakeer Hussain was employed (or rather his peculiar hair was employed) to promote the hazaron me ek chai . -0- This is the first post from the series on Vintage Indian Print Ads based on Ads I collected from an old edition of The Reader’s Digest Check out rest of the ...