S.Janaki’s songs in Malayalam – Part III

Composers from Bombay who worked for Malayalam movies singled out Janaki to render their songs. In the late 60s and early 70s, Tarachand Bharjatya decided to venture south and dubbed 3 Hindi successes of his Rajshri Productions in Malayalam. The first in this series was the 1967 hit ‘taqdeer’ starring Bharat Bhushan, Shalini, Kamal Kapoor and Fareeda Jalal. Laxmikant-Pyarelal, who had composed the score for ‘taqdeer’, recorded the songs in the same tunes for the Malayalam version titled ‘vidhi’ (1967). P.Bhaskaran wrote the lyrics for the tunes and when Janaki sang Lata’s ‘jab jab bahaar aayi’ as ‘amirtam pakarna raathri’, the song cast aside the slur of a dubbed tune and fetched repeated airtime. Janaki’s two other songs on the movie, ‘aayiram chirakuLLa’ and ‘nandhavanathilE pushpangaLE’ also equaled, if not bettered the charm of the originals, and Laxmikant-Pyarelal were besotted with this dulcet diva of the South. The 1970 Dharmendra- Rakhee starrer ‘jeevan mrityu’ was the next Rajshri movie in this series to be dubbed in Malayalam. Titled ‘jeevitha samaram’ and released in 1971, the movie had L-P reworking their tunes again, and this time too, they picked on Janaki to replicate Lata’s magic in the two versions of ‘jhilmil sitarOn ka’. Janaki met their expectations and more with the both the happy (with Yesudas) and pathos rendition of ‘chinnum ventharathin.’ Bharjatya then dubbed the 1971 movie ‘uphaar’ starring Jaya Bhaduri and Swarup Dutt as ‘upahaaram’ (1972). Janaki summons vistas of forlorn loneliness in her ‘pirinju pOi sakhee’ (Lata’s ‘sooni rE nagariyaa’ ).