If rain had different expressions, so did our lyricists and depending on the character and situation in the story, our filmmakers created magic on screen. On top of my favorite rain song list is Bimal Roy’s Parakh where Sadhana waits in the balcony for her beloved and sings ‘O sajna barkha bahar aayin…’ It was a subdued song of love and appreciation of nature.
In Sujata however ‘Kaali ghata chaye mora jiya ghabaraye…’ naayika/ Nutan spends most of the time indoors, attending to household chores but the thundering clouds awaken dormant desires in Sujata, she runs up to her room, throws open the windows and soaks in the fragrance. The close-up shot of Nutan smiling at the clouds and admitting desire for a soulmate is heart-wrenching.
Different directors used rain in different ways to seduce the audience. While director Shakti Samanta left nothing to imagination about what his hero/ heroine were going through in ‘Roop teara mastana’ in Aradhnana, the seduction was more succinct in Roti Kapda aur Makaan when a sari clad Zeenat Aman jumps into the rain and sings ‘Hai hai ye majboori’ her boyfriend Manoj Kumar cannot join her because he has an interview call and so watches her waiting under an umbrella.