When a rare English song in a Hindi film became young India’s beating heart

In the 1970s, listening to popular music was more public than personal. Home radios tuned in to Radio Ceylon’s ‘Aap Hi Ke Geet’ every morning. The addictive Binaca Geetmala could be heard in parks on Wednesday nights. And Vividh Bharati’s late night ‘Chhaya Geet’ was often a nightcap to the ear. Loudspeakers in street corners, small transistors in smaller pan shops, baritone-voiced radios in listeners’ clubs (shrota sanghs) – the sound of music was everywhere.
It was in this bustling ecosystem of shared melody that an unusual song of eager love had young urban India swaying and swooning. Written by a 77-year-old poet,

Harindranath Chattopadhyay

, composed by a 20-year-old music director with a famous surname,

Rajesh Roshan

, and vocalised by a debutant teenage singer,

Preeti Sagar

, ‘

My Heart Is Beating

’ was a rarity in Hindi cinema: A song written in English. These were the times Hindi film lyrics were synonymous with heady Urdu and lively Hindi. The Queen’s language was still viewed by some as a hangover of the colonial past and a privilege of the elite.