Happy 29 Days to Shahrukh’s Birthday! Best Songs

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Yesterday I did a “serious” post, best films, so today I get to do another “silly” one!  29 songs of Shahrukh.

Okay, I’m going to try something new and confusing and count backwards from 29 to 1, ending with my all time favorite Shahrukh song.

29. I’m going to start with his first song of all time.  It’s just so joyful!  Like, “yes, I am here!  To bring a new birth to Indian film!”

28. And his second film has one of those songs that sticks in your mind until it drives you insane for days on end.

27. Technically his first film, the first one he signed, in which he only had one real song sequence, but BOY did he sell it!

26. This is really a Nana Patekar song more than a Shahrukh song, but he is so cute in it!

25. Surprisingly sweet love song for a Madame Bovary adaptation!

23. Skipping ahead a few years, every song in this film is good, but I think this is my second favorite.

22.  Oh my gosh do I love this movie!  I could put in every single song in the film if I wanted, and it was painful to choose between this one and “Aana Mere Pyar Ko”, but ultimately, this one stands out as a bigger achievement all on its own, outside of the context of the film.

21. This movie I don’t like that much in general, and I don’t really even like the songs that much.  But come on, you gotta appreciate this one!  Age 48, jumping around like he’s half his age!

20. This movie has so many great Shahrukh songs, I was torn.  But I went with this one, because I love the opening, when he is singing along in the car and just looking so joyful!

19. Can’t resist that SRKajol chemistry!

18. Even better in their second film!

17. Another movie with a bunch of good songs, and a movie I am on record as loving, but I am going with this one because it is soooooooooooooo sexy.

16.  Hmm, now it’s getting tricky!  What to pick next? I guess another one that I like mostly for how dropdead sexy it is?

15.  And, for a total change of pace, one that I like for how dropdead sad it is.

14.  Too sad!  Let’s get some happy in here.  In fact, let’s let Shahrukh cheer us up himself.

13.  You might say this is really a Sonali Bendre song, but it isn’t, what makes it is Shahrukh’s reaction shots.

12.  Another one where Shahrukh’s reactions really sell the whole thing.

11.  And speaking of reacting to women, my mother’s favorite SRK song!

10. So far, all of these songs I have liked one thing in particular a lot.  But moving forward, it’s basically going to be top ten songs where every single element (visuals, music, place in the film, choreography, actors) is perfection. So, you ready for perfection?  Well, partial perfection, the full version isn’t available online yet.

9. Here’s another one, perfectly gentle and sincere and “Haule Haule”, like the title says.

8. Now, this one is a great song, with a really cute dance, and also a great message!

7. Okay, getting down to the end now, the really really good ones!  This one I just love, for how the music sounds, and how Shahrukh’s face shows the mental journey he is going on, and the freedom when he runs without limping in the middle.

6. I’m not going to say this is anything deep or meaningful, but man is it catchy!  I defy you to watch this video, and NOT start singing along!

5. It’s a close one for me between these two songs.  But I give a slight edge to “Chammak Challo” because of how great Shahrukh looks in a tailored tuxedo shirt.

4.  Brilliant matching of narrative needs and pure beauty.

3.  TOP THREE!!!!  Now, this is definitely the order they are in for me.  But I understand if others would put them in a different order.  But I would be SHOCKED if anyone actually disagrees that, in whatever order they go, these are the top 3 best SRK songs of all time.

2. You know, someone told me recently they don’t actually like this song?  I just don’t understand that!  It’s so wonderful, and it makes me so happy to be an American!

1.1. Is anyone surprised that this is number 1?  Could it ever really have been anything else?

27 thoughts on “Happy 29 Days to Shahrukh’s Birthday! Best Songs”

    • I had such a hard time limiting myself to just one song from that movie!

      On Wed, Oct 4, 2017 at 10:24 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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  3. Chaiyya Chaiyya is definitely number one for me, too. AR Rahman writes the best songs, and it’s been in a musical (Bombay Dreams) and is on the BBC;s list of the world’s 100 Best Songs.

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  4. I am going to save this post forever and ever. I love having all these songs in one place! I have a game I play which is “what event in the past would you have liked to have attended”. One of my top picks is the Globe Theater for the very first performance of Shakepeare’s Rome and Juliet. Think of that moment when Juliet wakes up but Romeo is dead. (spoiler alert!:)) But back to Shah Rukh: I would like to have been in the audience when this relatively unknown television not even so much a star, roared into Mumbai (then Bombay) and stayed. Think of it: no one really knows him and by the time he gets off that motorcycle in Deewana he is Shah Rukh Khan.

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    • I have a friend who got to go to first day first show of Kuch Kuch in India (she was doing her study abroad), and that is one of those experiences I would love to be able to have. The wonder of the SRKajol chemistry, the surprises of the plot, the heartbreak, and most of all the moment when Salman appears and NO ONE knew he would be making an appearance!

      On Wed, Oct 4, 2017 at 12:20 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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  5. I had previously, privately, shared these thoughts elsewhere, with another blogger who loves Hindi films, who did an essay on songs set in the villain’s lair in, what would now be considered, old school Bollywood motion pictures [typically where Helen, in the roll of a ‘gun-moll’, happily danced to a provocative song]. When I read your, “So, you ready for perfection?” comment for the tenth ranked song on your list, after previously noting your opinion on the ranking the Don remake in your top ten for films involving Mr. S.R. Khan, specifically “[t]hat alone, and all the little hints built in going up to the ending, would be enough to put this on a top 20 list”, I offer the following song of perfection (within your scope limitation): “Aaj Ki Raat.”

    Note: It was not on the original soundtrack, so it does make it specific to the S.R.K. era.

    This is one lair song that I thought was worth wasting time on by watching it repeatedly. The rest of this response is lengthy (to demonstrate my sincere appreciation for the perfection demonstrated by this film song and a complete lack of any editorial modesty) and please do not hesitate to ignore it if you are pressed for time:

    Only because I think “Aaj Ki Raat” from the Don remake is a perfectly filmed song that I have watched it more times than I care to admit in public. I usually end up assessing its lairity, if that’s even a word, to anyone’s top ten ‘perfect’ Indian film songs, when such situations arise. I am speculating here but I think the law firm of Khan and Khan (Farhan and Shah Rukh) collectively decided to mimic Mr. J. Nicholson’s ‘A Few Good Men’ character to declaim “You want the lair song? You can’t handle the lair song!” before going on to create “Aaj Ki Raat” for, at least, my viewing pleasure and dragging lair songs, kicking and screaming (to put it in sophomoric level prose) into the 21st Century A.D. (or C.E. if the reader takes offense to the absence of political correctness).

    I rarely come across Continental European characters in the English literature extolling words of that language in the fiction I read, but Ms. A. Christie’s Hercule Poirot praises the word ‘slick’ when describing the alleged crime in “Evil Under The Sun.” From the laser-sharp hint-of-green in an otherwise dark setting hinted at in the opening credits that makes The Matrix’s look tacky (something very hard to do visually, considering the effects of what the Wachowski brothers did in that film) to the revenge-seeking characters acted by Ms. K. Kapoor and Ms. P. Chopra that chose to engage in Blofeld-style polite conversation with their James Bond opponent in Don, instead of knee-jerk “Kuttay! Mein Tera Khoon Pee Jaaoongaa” [politely translated by Mr. W. Shakespeare’s ghost as ‘Cur! I drinketh thy blood, anon’] prototypical Dharmendra-style punch-first-talk-later, the aforementioned law firm was setting up audience members with the expectation that their remake will not be an extended Tom and Jerry cartoon with blood, gore and songs.

    Then said law firm, as if to prove this intent, took the highest common factors in lair songs and decided to, to put it politely, mess with them in “Aaj Ki Raat.”

    Lair Song Element 1: Suspense via subterfuge. Law firm execution: We can do suspense without subterfuge. No one is in any obvious disguise. All the human beings have their identities known. Yet the suspense kicks into gear via the lyrics basically asking “what’s going to happen?” Well [spoiler alert], defecated-output happened, and by the time the Don theme plays at the end of the lair sequence, it was nuclear level fecal matter. And I‘m not even going to include what happens in the parking lot immediately thereafter in this comment.

    Lair Song Element 2: “Hero-giri” [the set of flamboyant actions that define a Hindi film hero], i.e., the protagonist needs to go it alone because the Bollywood police is incompetent and hence going to show up two reels later. Law firm execution: the Fuzz didn’t wait for The Fat Lady to sing, and then take a smoking break, before bothering to show up; Mr. B. Irani’s policeman Silva was there before the first word was lilted out, hinting at a police presence before lair activity commenced. In fact the so called protagonist-of-all-protagonists (the law firm did title the film after his name, after all) looked clueless when his boss, Mr. R. Khattar’s Singhania, headed off to the restroom midway through the song. The only one going-it-alone, to be blatantly obvious, was someone who didn’t appear outside this song, and went-it-alone and that too to a restroom (a locale not exactly associated with stage-setting to show a hero’s solitary prowess).

    Lair Song Element 3: Dance-friendly tune. Law firm execution: Ensure the percussive beats per second were measurably more frequent than average, relentless, tainted with the happy-pop reputation of Ms. A. Chinai’s vocal quality and infused with what I would call dread (I find it possible to imagine that the song is both (a) one a happy singer at a Karaoke would bray out and (b) a not-so-happy singer belting out a passive-aggressive anger-tinted version, with this bifurcated possibility creating said dread. “Is it a happy song or am I not sure?” (And if it’s not a happy song is my worry becoming dread?). Shifting the instrumentation into an industrial-strength gear when Singhania enters the restroom was, as hyperbolic critics would say, “oof.” [figuratively untranslatable, in my view]

    Lair Song Element 4: Colorful clothes, preferably in psychedelic, head-ache inducing combinations. Law firm execution: Black, grey and white are colors as well. The only instances of “color” are four gold circular bands on Ms. I. Koppikar’s dress as well as the red blood of two story-moving white-clad characters on themselves. These two characters never appear anywhere else in the film yet their roles in the storytelling was necessary. Shiny Gold and Blood Red on a dark, grayish canvas was nice in theory to show shocking contrast, but I’m not sure it translated into a heightened visual experience. (Maybe they were going for Mr. S. Spielberg’s Schindler’s List impact of a bright red cap on a girl in an otherwise black-and-white movie). The law firm gets credit for trying. The law firm made an executive decision not to have a four-foot florescent orange polyester feather appear in the headdress of a Helen-equivalent character. Instead they found some genius in Wardrobe who proved that Ms. Chopra has enough charisma to wear what is basically tinfoil and end up in a onesie-for-grown-ups that clearly demonstrates what fashion is supposed to do in terms of dressing up the feminine human form. A photograph from her appearance in this song should appear as a visual demonstration of “form-fitting” in English language dictionaries. I’m not sure how to put her ability in exact words but Ms. Chopra showed how to make a visual impact without six gajjillion accessories, props and dress changes and only in one shiny version of the little black dress and looking the way a Bollywood leading lady is supposed to appear in a Bollywood song and dance routine.

    Lair Song Element 5: Sleight-of-hand, or to put it bluntly, “hey everybody, look at the obvious bosom gyrations of the super-confident female(s) distraction with complete attention while super-secret daring scheme is executed by others.” Law firm execution: In a word, misbehavior, or the ‘sidey’ characters decide to exercise their right to disobey their traditional roles and do things in their own style.
    Let me elaborate –

    Sidey Role A: DCP Silva’s henchwoman in white, who would have been played by Helen or the headline heroine in the default scenario.

    She gets a mysterious vial (which could be a poison, a tranquilizer, a laxative or something else) at the beginning and Mr. B. Irani’s character’s subtle wink seems to give her confidence levels a boost to do whatever not-exactly suspenseful thing she’s supposed to do. It made me imagine a back-story where Silva has something on her to threaten her with legal consequences if she doesn’t do what he’s coercing her to do.

    Her next appearance is to look down on the champagne glass on the tray as she approaches Singhania’s character. It could be either to make sure she’s not spilling the beverage or a play on the reptilian portion of the male brain by trying to look coy (en route to becoming a simpering member of the feminine gender) by lowering her eyes to increase the odds of looking more attractive to Singhania; contrast this with Ms. Koppikar’s wide-eyed look up into the eyes to Don, specifically the camera, elsewhere in the song in a show of contrasting behavior hoping to generate a similar reaction from a Y-chromosomed body. Maybe I’m giving the law firm way too much credit, but when this woman in white is doing this the choreography makes the chorus line behind her, for literally a split-second, lean their collective torsos out sideways and then mean-revert as if to take a sneak-peak over her shoulder so as to sate their curiosity of what she’s up to. Talk about making an engrossed audience wanting to subconsciously copy the sneak-peak to see what happens next.

    Her third appearance shows her nervous facial tic/expression being quickly covered with a poker face (where Helen/Heroine would have done a semi-swoon and much limp-wristed hand waving in front of their face to manage perspiration levels or sing drivel like “I may be scared but tonight I will be strong, so help me God”). And her next expression is a calm welcoming smile before she quickly exits stage right, her job done. I don’t even know if she knew what exactly Mr. B. Irani’s character gave her in the form of instructions. It could have simply been something as innocuous as “bung it in the glass of bubbly, serve it up and walk away, easy-peasy and you’ve helped the police” when he gave her the initial super-quick wink of assurance, something that seems to have worked by the time she gave her final smile.

    All this would have been done by the Helen-equivalent in the dark ages, with much energetic and joyous prancing.

    Sidey Role B: Mr. P. Malhotra’s Narang-the-henchman being bored out of his mind instead of attentively ogling at feminine bounties as expected of cronies of the big boss so as to be remiss in his professional duties in any lair song. In all of the single-digit, nano-second appearances of Narang in this lair song, he isn’t exactly towing the company line. His:

    (1) grimace-instead-of-genuine-smile at the beginning of the event (internal thought – “lets get this over with so I can hit the sack before the sun rises”),

    (2) being mentally checked-out (internal thought – “since the big shots are all here making this event clearly above my pay-grade, maybe my mind should wander to whether the late night gas station in my neighborhood would still be open later tonight”) while

    (3) lethargically slow-tapping of two fingers against his temple in a less than half-assed attempt to be social while staring into nowhere while pretending to concentrate on the rhythm of the song (internal thought – “I’m drawing a blank on …, aah screw it I’m not taking any more of my time thinking”)

    His:

    (4) slow awakening when the first bullet is fired at the end of the song (internal thought – “I may be the guru of sleeping-with-my-eyes-open-no-matter-the-decibel-levels in my immediate vicinity, but I hope nobody noticed I may not have been fully alert because my response time was a wee bit slow”) and

    (5) grimace when bullets start flying (internal thought – “note to self, I’m getting to old for this glamorous life”).

    Mr. P. Malhotra’s performance made me imagine these things, and I am usually not that imaginative person. None of this would have been done by the bronze-medal level baddie in the dark ages who would have been reduced to head-banging while ogling at the nautch girls or replaced by the director by some actor willing to do so. Alas, the role was too small and seen-before to make it into any kind of hall of fame for acting performance.

    Lair Song Element 6: Good vs. Bad dynamics.

    All non-lair Bollywood songs are defined from my perspective as one in four categories –
    (1) “I’m an item number designed solely to titilate”
    (2) “I’m in love”
    (3) “I’m sad, boo-hoo” or
    (4) “let me preach to you so as to improve society”; the qawwali where witty repartee is engaged in by the duet’s performers has died with the previous century, where as the lair song usually has some good vs. bad thingee going on.

    Law firm execution: “the hell with it, we’re also going to do bad vs. evil and evil shall prevail.”

    Good vs. bad: Om Puri’s Inspector Malik manages to arrest criminal Don.

    Now onto Bad vs. Evil.

    Bad: Singhania; there is no doubt that everyone is figuratively dancing to his tune as soon as he enters the lair scene – just look at his head nod in his opening appearance when he’s buttoning the white dinner jacket on his all-white threads while emitting a completely relaxed, no-nonsense, professional, confident demeanor.

    Shakespearean level Evil: Silva’s Macbeth persona offering what looks like an antidote in the restroom to Singhania’s Macduff persona so that they can possibly conspire and conquer the world before we discover that Silva goes “assurance doubly sure” by giving Singhania an additional dose of toxins, delivered in the same manner as the original sin. It gives rinse-lather-repeat phraseology a whole new imagery. The previously mentioned increase in the background instrumentation when Singhania entered the restroom by the law firm increased my anticipation that something else may happen and Mr. B. Irani’s acting in that restroom impressed me. Then he finishes it off by calmly aiming his gun in the middle of the following firefight and assassinating his henchwoman in white (supersizing “friendly fire” to what I would call “frenemy fire”). Gold medal for Evil; Good gets a bronze medal; the jury came back with a hung decision on Bad.

    Lair Song Element 7: Stop the singing and dancing and have a few dialogues to spoon-feed the audience about what’s going on (this is not limited to lair songs, unfortunately). Law firm execution: “Action speaks louder than words.”

    For instance, in the last verse of the song, Ms. Koppikar’s character turns Don away from dancing with Ms. Chopra’s character and smiles at him in such an uninhibited manner, it establishes that these two are the couple that sins together, stays together in this anti-hero film, headline stars notwithstanding.

    This was followed immediately by Ms Chopra’s turning her back away from that couple and putting on an I-know-something-you-don’t-I’m-so-smug-half-smile that says “you can live in the illusion that Don’s with you but my possessiveness will outdo your possessiveness.” Nobody at this stage realizes that her ‘junior varsity’ level know-it-all mindset is really ‘junior varsity’ level considering what Don did to her character eventually, by dropping the wildcat reference at the end of the movie, en route to his departure with Ms. Koppikar’s character.

    The song reaches its end when minor-league sidey sees gun in the waistband of alleged waiter, takes his gun out and shoots him (No need utter nonsense like “Khattraa!” or “Danger!”) without hamming it up.

    And the sequence ends after Don releases Ms. Chopra’s character’s hand to help her escape a police raid as he is about to surrender to Puri’s Malik and the audience sees her expression soften while the soundtrack plays a the main film theme that has Don asking people about identity – “Mein Hoon Kaun?” / “Who am I?”

    In the following mini-scene, Ms. Chopra’s character’s hand is placed on the wall for support to help her brain cope with what just happened, is it to slow her character so she is instinctively trying to wait to see an opportunity to save Don, or is it an subconscious involuntary reaction typical of non-psychotic humans that instinctively reach out to place a gentle palm on the back/shoulder/chest of someone they are becoming fond of?

    None of these were done with dialogue delivery.

    Lair Song Element 9: Ethnic diversity. Law firm execution: Look! Long golden locks! Hah! Made you look! At a long blond-haired male goon wearing his hair in a pony-tail (which didn’t exactly prove to have any drag utility when Don ejected him from an airborne plane au revoir style, but I digress). Less flippantly, it was a relief to notice that the significant majority of the chorus lines appeared to be of Malaysian origin for a song set in Kuala Lumpur. Thank you, dear law firm, for not losing it on this point.

    Lair Song Element 10: The protagonist proves he’s “the man.” Law firm execution: Don is reduced to a diminutive ill-informed loser by the time he’s handcuffed and removed from the lair.
    The evidence –

    (1) So much for his “Don to pakadna mushkil hi nahin, namumkin hai” [translation: apprehending Don is not only difficult, it’s impossible]. This was the hero’s go-to dialogue-delivery designed to elicit applause from fanbois in the cheap seats from the time of the first-day-first-show screening of the original, at a time when Ms. Koppikar’s character, supposedly the bimbo in this setup, manages to escape and that too without any notable heroics.

    (2) He doesn’t know that Silva is the Kaizer-Soze channeling Vardhaan, but others like Mr. A. Rampal’s character (not in this song) know something is not kosher.

    (3) Don’s boss is killed on his watch, which is in contrast to Don himself anticipating untrustworthy peers when he is introduced at the beginning of the movie.

    (4) He loses his killer instinct of using Ms. Chopra’s character as a hostage and/or body blocker and letting her hand go in a moment of weakness. Or is Don really outthinking everyone at that stage by acting like Vijay even though he didn’t know exactly what just happened (maybe Don does have some cognitive limitations).

    (5) Where’s his fancy-schmancy engraved gun to shoot other badasses, if he’s such a badass? Surely he’s not channeling Vijay at that time, because even Vijay is expected to have competent survival instincts (All Don knows about Vijay for sure is that the police think Vijay is capable of doing police-level work including shooting people). He’s no puppeteer pulling all the strings in the standard lair song or even digging an underground tunnel to rescue kidnapped victims as a supporting lead.

    (6) Singhania ruffles his hair as you would to a favored child thereby putting Don in his place in the hierarchy of the criminal caste system at the meet-and-greet.

    (7) Don’s amateurish level of confusion when Singhania disappears towards the restroom is telling.

    And I really appreciate Sonu Nigam’s decision not to belt out the final leg of the song, like Arijit Singh did more recently in “Bulleya” via Ranbir Kapoor’s sing-acting in “Ae Dil Hai Mushkil” trying to prove that the Hindi film hero character is the sun around which every other actor hovers. Mr. Nigam tones down his reputed talent to sing with depth and volume and sings his lines on par with the less talented female lead vocalists, just trying to sing-along and dance-along helping restrain Don’s character from becoming larger than his clichéd life.

    By the end of the lair song, officially the good guys win (Malik does arrest Don) but nobody comes out as ‘the man’, not even Silva who gets shot.

    Yet there is a fable-level instruction to audience members that is often associated with ‘the man’s’ obvious preachiness after the lair song ends. This is usually done by a Khakhi-clad Iftekhar-equivalent, he of policeman fame from the Helen lair song era, often mouthing about the long arms of the law eventually catching every criminal to the extent of putting Mr. Fantastic in the runner-up position.

    In this song, the law firm’s moral of the story is even more obvious, i.e., “when you put a bunch of misanthropes in an enclosed space, don’t be surprised by the ensuing cluster-you-know-what-rhymes-with-duck.”

    All of these components create a serious switcheroo on the viewer, especially when eventually contrasted with the unexpected finale, when Don proves he is the Don persona, Vardhaan’s shenanigans notwithstanding.

    Four thoughts on paying-homage-to-old-school in the set-up going into this song, so that the Khans could demonstrate how to show respect for the original by sincerely trying to something wonderful:

    (1) The previous scene had a policeman turning his back to a gun-toting (old school image: the tough guy’s not scared of walking away from a person waving a weapon, very typical of a Bollywood hero turning his back to a threat in ye olde timey days);

    (2) There’s a briefcase on the table lying closed (old school image: the mysterious briefcase in The Maltese Falcon, et. al. … not sure what all it contains)

    (3) The sampling of Ms. D. Summer’s “I feel love” before the singing starts, which came out a year before the original Mr. A. Bachchan-led Don, and which would have still being played a year later at discotheques given that is now on more than one ranked list of best disco songs

    (4) The preference for a black-and-white set of colors (old school image: aaaah, the good old days of black and white films).

    And I’ll end this with a rough translation of the song’s lyrics, partly located via bollynook, that helped create the necessary intrigue:

    It’s evening, there are glasses of wine
    And intoxication
    Even the body and the mind
    Are in a melted state
    Colors have suffused
    Still there is restlessness
    Why does the heart beat?
    Why does it say this, this heart?
    The insane still don’t know all this

    Tonight (the “Aaj Ki Raat’)
    What’s going to happen to happen?
    What’s going to be gained?
    What’s going to be lost?
    Tonight
    What’s going to happen to happen?
    What’s going to be gained?
    What’s going to be lost?

    In just a couple of moments, who knows what will happen here
    The heart which was always mine, will remain mine
    Who is there inside whose heart, that will be decided
    The decision is this, I will win
    The insane still don’t know all this

    Tonight
    What’s going to happen to happen?
    What’s going to be gained?
    What’s going to be lost?
    Tonight
    What’s going to happen to happen?
    What’s going to be gained?
    What’s going to be lost?

    Come, let me whisper something to you
    This night shall change its colors in a moment without much noise
    I will then take you with me without much noise
    Where will you go? See, I am here
    The insane still don’t know all this

    Tonight
    What’s going to happen to happen?
    What’s going to be gained?
    What’s going to be lost?
    Tonight
    What’s going to happen to happen?
    What’s going to be gained?
    What’s going to be lost?

    Regards.

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    • Wonderful comment! Thank you!

      All I have to add is my favorite moment, right at the beginning when Singhania first arrives, he ruffles Shahrukh’s hair and Shahrukh looks after him with a kind of angry bitter snear. Which, on the first watch, you can write off as our noble vijay being disgusted by the Big Bad he has been sent after. But on later watches it fills in an entire backstory of insults and patronizing and ignoring Shahrukh’s efforts, which have lead him to concieve of this whole plan.

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      • The Singhania head-ruffle is also indicative that Singhania knows Don’s persona. Notice that the quick-to-get-offended S.R.Khan character dances and more importantly smiles when he starts singing the chorus to make his song participation start, while Singhania sits in the background with his head tilted to one side (not exactly the sign of someone on high alert). Singhania was socialized in the power-food-chain of the criminal world where big fish eats small fish and survival requires small fish to grow up, away from the big fish. He knows that Don will get over the head ruffle quickly. Singhania can ‘manage’ small fish and remind them via, e.g., chiding S.R. Khan’s character through the head ruffle, who’s boss. If Don had not ‘pouted’ Singhania would probably have not had his guard down like Don and Narang. Instead he would have realized that Don is losing some of his immaturity and possibly becoming someone who has to be managed more carefully. All this makes the film end a bigger wow, because it reminds the audience that just because Don had a bad day after exhibiting immaturity and a lack of awareness about danger is not evidence that Don has limited capabilities when it comes to becoming a criminal mastermind.

        Once again, thank you for your work.

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  6. Wow, I’m surprised that there are no songs from DDLJ!?!

    But I’m glad that Mitwaa is in here! I feel like you don’t give KANK enough love. For me Tumhi Dekho Na is my favorite song from KANK.

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    • DDLJ is above all songs!

      And I’m going to have to try to remember to check the comments of this post before I update it for next year, add in some of the songs people have pointed out.

      On Wed, Oct 4, 2017 at 6:37 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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    • It’s the favourite of the 2-year-old in my family…he loves to watch it over and over again standing in front of the screen, absorbed and slightly moving his body. And it belongs to my favourites, too.
      As does the other song from Pardes (Meri Mebooba)

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  9. I am not a fan of listings, I am more the collector type…I think I have more than hundred favorite songs only out of ShahRukh movies which I can listen over and over again and which will give me a looooot of positive energy 😀

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