On the death anniversary of Madhubala, we recount how the working-class citizens of Greece once fell in love with the evergreen beauty. A thread on a Greek love song on Madhubala, that graced the Olympics. (1/13)
After the Second World War when war-torn Greece was bleeding heavily from wounds of the great Civil War and crippling at the brink of economic meltdown, the citizens desperately needed an outlet to find solace. (2/13)
While the upper-class elites had leaned towards embracing the European genre of art, the working class and the refugees took shelter inside the magical world of optimism and love stories offered by Bollywood. (3/13)
In the 1950s and 60s, when India was still nurturing the wounds of Partition, Bollywood went on to produce many movies with the themes of homelessness, refugees, migrants and orphans in that period. (4/13)
The themes of these movies perfectly blended into the lives of suffering Greek families, abandoned children, poor factory workers, and immigrant labourers living in abject misery - who could see themselves on the silver screen desperately seeking a ray of hope. (5/13)
During the late 50s/early 60s, 100+ Bollywood movies had been screened in Greece and Cyprus across many popular theatres, Hindi songs were rendered in their native language, and Nargis/Madhubala became household names across the country surviving a civil war. (6/13)
Madhubala was so popular among the working-class that the famous Greek singer Stelios Kazantzidis, in 1959, dedicated a legendary song to celebrate the beauty of Mandoubala (Μαντουμπάλα), written by great refugee lyricist Eftihis Papayiannopoulou. (7/13)
Kazantzidis and Papayiannopoulou were both legendary icons for the Greek refugees. In Stelios’s own words - “I sing for the poor, the immigrants and the suffering people, who can’t go to the expensive clubs. They regard my music as their Gospel.” (8/13)
In the song, Mandoubala is the lost love of the singer, who he searches for and pleads to return to him. Papagiannopoulou wrote the moving lyrics remembering her daughter, who had died that year. (9/13)
The song is believed to be inspired by another Bollywood classic “Aa Jao Tadapte Hain Arman” from Awaara, picturised on Nargis. The massive popularity of this song, spuŕed Stelios on to release another duet song “The return of Mandoubala”. (10/13)
The song Mandoubala loosely can be translated to
“My sweet love
I long for you to come close to me again
since then when I lost you I melt
your name I shout with pain
Madhubala, Madhubala, Madhubala” (11/13)
A rendition of the original Mandoubala song was performed by Antonis Remos and Anna Vissi at the closing ceremony of the Athens Olympics, 2004. What an immortal tribute to Madhubala, the Aphrodite from India. (12/13)
Acknowledgement: “Hindi Films of the 50s in Greece: The Latest Chapter of a Long Dialog’, by Helen Abadji. elinepa.org.
Translation: Panayiota Bakis Mohieddin (shira.net)
Video courtesy: : youtube.com/user/kapsourak… (13/13)
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It is not always that we give the British credit for some of the beautiful things they left us. The demand for a colonial jail finally led to the creation of a major tourist attraction in Hazaribagh. A short thread on the interesting piece of history (1/n)
During the 1830s several tribal communities like Kols and Santhals rose against the East India Company (EIC) rule in the Chotanagpur region. The foreign interference was getting increasingly unbearable (2/n)
The British, however, with their superior warfare knowledge, were able to squash most of these rebellions. The captured rebels were sent to Hazaribagh to be locked up since it was then the nearest British outpost (3/n)
How a kidnapped prince, a portuguese missionary & a calligrapher helped introduce printing in Bengali.
It starts around 1643 with a Bengali boy born into wealth in Bhushana, Jessore (Bangladesh), whose actual name has been lost to time. As the story goes when the boy was of 20, he was captured by Portuguese pirates to be sold as a slave in Arakan (Rakhine, Myanmar).
He was however rescued by a Christian missionary Manoel de Rosario. Fearing for his life and with nowhere to go the boy sought refuge in Christianity and was christened as Dom Antonio de Rosario.
A short thread on a 19th-century satirical poem on British imperial rule in India and the most fascinating origin of the unusual name of the said protagonist Qui Hi (1/n)
‘The Grand Master; or, Adventures of Qui Hi? in Hindostan’ by an anonymous poet ‘Quiz’ published in 1816, tells a story of the misadventures of a young English author Qui Hi who always finds himself under heavy debt (2/n)
The satire goes on mocking East India company’s imperial policies, Hindu prejudices and the campaigns by the missionaries to convert Indians, accompanied by amazing illustrations with engravings by Rowlandson (3/n)
When the Prince of Wales became the subject of a satire on the Bengali theatre stage, the first law of censorship of the arts in India was enforced. A thread on the enlightening backstory (1/n)
In the 1870s, Bengali Theatre was forging a rebellious nature. With the creation of the National Theatre by Girish Chandra Das, a flurry of plays were staged including Nil Darpan (Indigo Mirror), Bharatmata, and Purubikram (2/n)
For the increasingly educated Bengali intelligentsia, the theatre was becoming a medium to vent out their frustrations against their colonial rulers, a point which the British government was not unaware of (3/n)
#OTD 76 years ago started a rebellion that shook the foundation of the British Indian administration and in many ways was the final tipping point for the independence movement. A look back at the #RoyalIndianNavyMutiny of 1946 (1/n)
The 2nd world war had seen unprecedented expansion of the Royal Indian Navy (RIN). At the end of the war, the seamen returned home after serving in various parts of the world. The India they had returned to was on the boil (2/n)
The reverberations of the Quit India movement were still being felt. The INA trials had led to mass frenzy and support for the INA veterans. The administration was putting down any resistance brutally. But the brutality only added to the fire (3/n)
This #BlackHistoryMonth, a thread on the mind-bending history of traditional African style of cornrow braids and chilling escape adventure of enslaved Africans. (1/11)
Cornrow styled braids are not just a fashion statement, but truly an ancient heritage. Evidences of such braids can be found in many prehistoric artifacts. This clay sculpture from the ancient Nok civilization of Nigeria was dated 500 BCE. (2/11)
When the people of Africa were brought to the New World as slaves, their heads were often shaved to dehumanize them. The helpless slaves, especially women, started to grow braids in a way to demonstrate their heritage as a symbol of strength. (3/11)