Missing Neelam

Saw Afsana Pyaar Ka (1991) starring Aamir Khan and Neelam last night. Her performance with Aamir was fantastic, but I shall save that bit for the movie review. In the mean time, this post is dedicated to Neelam. Stunningly beautiful, a very good actress, and one I have admired for as long as I have known Bollywood (there were a couple of good ones with Govinda, before the latter reinvented himself), primarily for her effervescence. I miss her, and wish we saw more of her in Bollywood today. If I recall correctly, I last saw her in Hum Saath Saath Hain (1999). I think she only made one more film after that. You will recall that she also made a special appearance as a VJ in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998).

One of my favorite Neelam music videos was for a song that was part of a compilation of dance hits in the 1995 BMG release titled Channel [V] Hits: The Ultimate Dance Collection, one of the other albums I discovered while revisiting my old audio tapes yesterday. The music video for track 7 in the album, by Bina Mistry, titled Hot Hot Hot, featured Neelam in a red dress by the beach, singing and dancing and to the tune. Very pretty.

On a personal note, the song is a favorite because it became my anthem of sorts for the cricket World Cup in 1996. I remember listening to it as I traveled across parts of South Asia to catch the live cricket action. Not surprisingly, Star Sports (of Star TV, the dominant sports channel back then at least), made it their theme song for India's cricket tour of the West Indies in the summer of 1996. The song is still my favorite.

My efforts of scouring the Internet for the audio or video of the song proved unsuccessful. However, a variant of the song was part of the soundtrack to Bend it like Beckham (2002) -- a film I didn't enjoy as much as most seemed to have. For the memory's sake, here is the track from the film, with similar lyrics but different music. Excuse my bias, but the one starring Neelam was a lot better (seriously, it was. I'm listening to it now, and the music to it makes the difference), but I guess I shall have to live with the soundtrack version of the song and the video of the original not being out there :(


And speaking of missing Neelam, the following song is fitting then, given the title of this post. Yaad Teri Aati Hai from Afsana Pyaar Ka. Yaad bilkul aati hai Neelam. You are one of Bollywood's finest.