Bela Ke Phool, and what a radio station plays at one in the morning

Bela Ke Phool went out on Vividh Bharati at the very end of the broadcast day. The bela is a jasmine that opens at night and is gone by morning, which is a tidier bit of programming symbolism than most stations manage. What made the programme work was not the theme, though. It was a genuine constraint: at that hour you cannot play anything loud, so the producers were forced into the half of the catalogue that nobody else scheduled.

Woh Shaam Kuch Ajeeb Thi is what that constraint produces. Hemant Kumar wrote it for Kishore Kumar with almost nothing behind the voice, and Kishore, who could fill a room when a film asked him to, does not. The song is at conversational volume from the first bar to the last, and it works because the arrangement never once offers to help.

Kuchh Dil Ne Kaha comes from a film whose central character barely speaks. Kaifi Azmi's lyric is the interior monologue the script deliberately withholds, and Lata sings it as thought rather than as speech: the phrases start before you expect them and end early.

Yeh Dil Aur Unki Nigahon Ke Saaye survives by accident. Prem Parbat's negatives were destroyed and the film is effectively lost; the song outlived it because Jaidev took a National Award for the score and the recording stayed in circulation on its own. It is a strange thing to listen to a song that has outlived the thing it was made for.

And Jaaiye Aap Kahan Jayenge is O.P. Nayyar, of all people, sitting his rhythm section down. He built a career on a clip-clop beat you can identify in one bar. Here he leaves it out almost entirely, and Asha Bhosle is left holding the song alone.

The station keeps the hour: Bela Ke Phool runs from eleven at night on your own clock.