After Doordarshan Centre was established in Srinagar in 1972, a number of tele-films were made. These first few films were about things that all Kashmiris used to cherish, mytho-memories and words of their Habba Khatoons, Rasul Mirs and Badshahs. Among these tele-films Habba Khatoon by Basheer Badgami was probably the most popular and famous. The film had Reeta Razdan as heroine in the role of poet-queen of Kashmir and Ghani Khan as King Yusuf Chak. The songs were sung by Shamima Dev (who later went on to be Azad [previously]).
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This much I know from ‘A History of Kashmiri Literature’ by Trilokinath Raina. But till recently I hadn’t see any of these films ( who knew a few of them were shown in Kashmir Film festival organised by Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in 2009 [.pdf of Films Schedule]).
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This morning [thanks to Mrinal Kaul] I came across the famous Habba Khatoon.
Uploaded to Youtube by 44x4x4x [who given his profile picture there, a painting called ‘A Beauty of the Valley’ by G. Hadenfeldt, found in ‘The Charm of Kashmir’ (1920) by V.C. Scott O’connor‘ , is probably already a reader of this blog or someone who somehow found a part of it. I big thanks to the uploader for sharing].
