THIS is why to Bollywood!

Consider thee, Zeenat Aman, from 1978's "Yaadon Ki Baaraat," from which comes the classic song "Chura Liya Hai Tum Ne" - a theme so popular that the title was later appropriated for a Bollywood film in its own right.

Oh, like we don't do that here too, right?

Anyway... "Yaadon Ki Baaraat" is a great example of a gripping '70s Bollywood crime thriller, complete with astonishingly bad wigs, overwrought emotions, and a running time of about 75 years. As some of you know, Zeenat Aman literally tore up the screen in the legendary 1971 hippie film by overwrought auteur Dev Anand, in "Hare Rama Hare Krishna." Her western sensuality was impossible to silence.

Judging from that very sensuality, one might assume that the playback singer she might be most closely associated with would be the husky voiced chanteuse Usha Uthup, but in fact, beyond Uthup dubbing for Aman in the bloated 1975 disaster "Shalimar" in "One Two Cha-Cha-Cha," I can't find any examples. To me a partnership between Aman and Uthup would have been as perfect as was the frequent partnership of Kishore Kumar singing for eternal screen heartthrob Amitabh Bachchan, but... somehow, no. My guess is, music producers of the era including RD Burman simply missed the potential there.

Aman seems most frequently to have been dubbed in song by Asha Bhosle's famous sister, Lata Mangheskar. Uthup is present, for example, in the 1978 Bachchan love-triangle weeper "Muqaddar Ka Sikandar," where she sings on the cheezy disco number "Pyar Zindagi Hai," but only in the intro ... Luxuria Music listeners will know it: "Come and join the lover's paradise." Such was the lot of Uthup, who was so non-traditional that even legendary music directors Rahul Dev Burman and Kalyanji-Anandji never seemed entirely to know what to do with her.

Uthup maintains a live performance schedule in India that you can find more about at her website, http://ushauthtup.com - including some MP3s of extremely ill-chosen western tunes like "Hotel California." In 1981, she released a Hindi-language LP comprised mostly of Bolly-style covers of western disco hits called "24 Carats." It awaits you even now a bit further down the page where you can also download the full soundtrack to the 1980 RD Burman classic "Shaan": http://thirdfloormusic.blogspot.com/2008/02/rahul-dev-burman-shaan-1980.html .

The chatter Astorix went a-Googlin' for photos of Zeenat Aman and came up with an astounding pose of her as a teenager. My guess is, she can't have been more than sixteen. The pose, very simply, makes sighted men blind and blind men sighted - it is that transformative.
Behold:
http://bp3.blogger.com/_BfygLzMILz0/R_mTWuHaSGI/AAAAAAAABkI/EB7V8IITyBo/s1600-h/Zeenat+aman-10.jpg

Further Zeenat glory reveals a magnificent entry for Peter Griffin's Side-Boob Hour: http://img.bollywoodsargam.com/albumsbolly/Hot_Bollywood_Beauties/Zeenat_Aman_In_Satyam_Shivam_Sundaram.jpg

And from "Yaadon Ki Baaraat," an image I captured and posted myself:
http://img151.imageshack.us/my.php?image=eatzeenatwithmouthhg1.jpg

Thanks greatly to Derrick Bostrum for color correction assistance.
Blind men see! Sighted men go blind! Deaf men hear and hearing men go deaf!

This is the true power of Zeenat Aman!