Tu Hamko Dekh Aur Hamaari Nazar Se Dekh
Movie: Zindagi Aur Hum
Year: 1962
Music: Roshan
Lyrcis: Veer Mohammadpuri

Youtube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hrG5pVMjCM

IL-83 in Chicago was my bread and butter road during those times. Both home and office were on that road. A few miles up north was the suburb of wheeling. I accidentally discovered a video store at the interestection of IL-83 and Dundee road in wheeling. This had tonnes of old B&W VHS tapes. The videos were a very good source of rare songs and soon I accumalated a huge pile of tapes. On top of that I had a stack of tapes I got from India which were auto-recorded from Vividh Bharati but I never heard. So I began to organise the collection 
by cleaning up the tape set from India. I relaised that most of the were duplicates. I came to the last tape which I wanted to junk along with the rest but decided to have a quick listen. And out came this song that just had me spell bound.

The song opens with a subtle sarod prelude (Thanks to Ajay and Saee Deshpande for the confirmation that its Sarod) setting the tone for this ethereal composition.

Lata begins softly with "tuu hamko dekh aur hamari nazar se dekh; miiThi adaa se, pyaar se and suddenly the pitch and the emphasis increase with "Pyaari nazar se dekh". There are some fans who adore her voice for the ability to sing well at high pitch and this is a prime example.

The movie has three leading Ladies; Nalini Jaywant, Chand Usmani and Naina.The song is picturised on Naina in a garden looking at the moon and the lyrics capture the situation very well with

"rangat gulon se chaand se ujli si chandni,
bulabul ke taraane liye koyal sii raaganii".

Every antara ends with "tuu hamo dekh" repeated twice, seperated by a lovely Sarod piece.

If I have to decribe the composition in one word I would say "Mulayam". Devoid of heavy orchestra, the music complements the singing voice very well.

Veer Mohammadpuri hasn't written many songs in HFM, but this song is enough to showcase his ability to caputure the delicate feelings with lines like

"ai hoshdaar hosh ka pardaa uThaake mil".

The movie has several other outstanding Lata songs like "dhiire se gagari utaar" and "jaa re jaa re meri chhod chunariya". The last two became huge favorites at RMIM meets prompting a few of us to call Roshan as "Zindagi Aur Hum Roshan".

After falling in love with most of the songs, my hunt now focussed on finding the video.Gurucharan Sandhu ji gave me the lead and I was finally able to get a copy. The plot is quite contrived with 3 ladies chasing one guy. The movie is worth watching just for the picturisation of some wonderful melodies.