When asked about a Bollywood song, Google Gemini responded:
Ah, you are talking about the beautiful track "Sheesha-E-Dil Itna Na Uchhalo" from the 1960 film Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai!
Sung by Lata Mangeshkar, composed by Shankar-Jaikishan, and penned by Hasrat Jaipuri, this song was picturized on Meena Kumari as she sings on a boat.
While it is a beloved classic today, it actually ran into some trouble with the All India Radio (AIR) screening committees at the time of its release.
AIR objected to a specific line in the lyrics because it was deemed "absurd" or "unscientific" by their highly rigid, literal-minded screening board. The line that caused the stir was:
"Ye kehne aayi hain sau machhliyaan kinaaron par..." (A hundred fish have come to the shores to say this...)
The AIR censors took the lyric entirely too literally, arguing that fish cannot leave the water to come onto the shores to speak or "say" things, and therefore the imagery was ridiculous and misleading for public broadcast. Because of this bizarrely strict, hyper-literal interpretation of poetic license, the song faced a temporary broadcast hurdle on state radio.
It remains a classic example of the era's hyper-regulation, where even harmless, whimsical romantic imagery was over-analyzed by radio bureaucrats!
The real story is: https://www.rediff.com/movies/special/when-he-spoke-the-whole-nation-listened/20240313.htm. (2024)
In 1960, when the film Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai hit the theatres, one of its songs drew frowns from an information and broadcasting minister, notoriously wary of the corrupting influence of Hindi film music.
Sheesha‐E‐Dil Itna Na Uchhalo was the 'decadent' song that riled B V Keskar. {It features a bunch of young women - nurses? -- one or two in one-piece swimsuits - dancing on a beach and in the water.}.
On his orders, a clerk pasted a ban sticker on the album's 78 RPM vinyl record. But he pasted the 'NA' sticker on the wrong side and ended up banning the memorable Ajeeb Dastan Hai Yeh from the airwaves for a number of years.
Radio legend Ameen Sayani, who breathed his last on February 20, shared the anecdote with Pervaiz Alam, a former broadcaster with BBC Hindi.
Sayani, 91, regaled Alam with several stories that are now part of nostalgia -- just as he did millions of rapt listeners on radio with an iconic voice and mannerism that set the benchmark for broadcasters in India.
It is well-known how Keskar's moral policing became a boon for Radio Ceylon.
Keskar had his prudish notions on culture and decided to ban film songs on All India Radio (AIR) in 1952.
Sayani swiftly seized an opportunity at the Sri Lanka-based Radio Ceylon and presented the iconic Binaca Geetmala, a weekly show that introduced listeners to the catchiest new songs in a golden era of Bollywood.
The show ran from 1952 to 1988 on Radio Ceylon, before shifting to AIR's Vividh Bharti -- until 1994 with a rechristened name, Cibaca Geetmala.
Alam, who interviewed Sayani at length for an archive for public broadcaster Doordarshan, recalled growing up in Aligarh as an ardent listener of Binaca Geetmala.
"The traffic in the city would stop when his programme was aired. There were communal tensions and other problems, but on Wednesday evenings, he would say 'Behnon aur bhaiyon' and everyone would listen to his calm and soothing voice."
