I like this Sitara Devi dance in Aabroo (1943). It’s also fun to see Yakub enter the picutre… As I mentioned sometime back, in the same film, he did a drag version of “Inhi Logon Ne”.
By the way, I have heard/read that Sitara Devi still makes lively appearances and actively promotes kathak… She is 93 years old now! In Aabroo, she was 24. (In Roti, she was probably 23… At first, I had gotten some misinformation from somewhere that she was considerably younger in that film, just a teenager (16 or 17?)… But it makes more sense that she was in her 20s at this time.)
Dances on the Footpath 
The singers seem to be Sitara Devi herself and Durrani. I did not realize that sitara Devi was a singer too. Anil Biswas said in
http://giitaayan.com/satish/art-194.htm
“Sometimes when I am alone I recall the tunes
of “kyoN ham ne diya dil” (sung by Sitara, lyrics by
Wajahat Mirza, from `Vatan’) and..”
This is my idea of a ‘song on the footpath’ Thanks
You’re welcome, Swarup. Though as pointed out by Cineplot, there was another singer at the time who may have sometimes been confused with Sitara Devi – and who also sometimes sang for her (I think) – named Sitara of Kanupur. Could it be that this was more the singing Sitara and Sitara Devi was a dancer-actress who sang only sometimes? Is there a way to tell which one is being referred to when someone refers to the singer as Sitara? I recall some YouTube posts also where the singer was referred to as Sitara and someone pointed out that it wasn’t Sitara Devi. So, when someone refers to a singer in a ’40s film as Sitara…I am never sure at this point who it really is. :)
From what I could gather so far, Sitara Kanpuri started singing for films in 1944. The confusion seems to be from then on. Perhaps part of the problem is due to the old practice of having the name of the film character or actress on the discs. I wonder why some voice recognition technology cannot be used to decipher these. In any case this lead me to listen to some nice songs. Thanks.
Swarup
You’re welcome – always good to hear when a post here does good!