कूक पपीहे कूक

A song from Shalimar Pictures' Ek Raat (1942), sung by Neena in her own voice to S. K. Pal's tune and Pandit Indra's lyrics. The papiha (hawk-cuckoo), whose call traditionally signals the monsoon and a lover's separation, is a stock image of Hindustani romantic-melancholic poetry, and the song uses it to colour a folk-touched lament within the film's largely ghazal-thumri soundscape.

S. K. Pal sets the call-of-the-papiha conceit over harmonium and a plaintive sarangi, the medium tempo leaving room for the bird-call motif that the lyric demands — a folk-inflected number that nonetheless keeps the soft melodic restraint of the rest of the score.