NEW DELHI: The last recorded song of the legendary Kishore Kumar was auctioned for Rs 1.56 million at the first ever Osian’s-Cinefan Film Festival auction of Indian cinema memorabilia.
The song, recorded on 10 October just before the singer died in October 1987, was bought by Gurgaon-based Kingdom of Dreams for the full rights for its new musical show Jhumroo that celebrates the spirit of Kishore Kumar.
The song was ‘Tum hi to woh ho’ written by Kulwant Jani with music by Usha Khanna. This was for a film called ‘Khel Tamasha’ by Rakesh Kumar which never got made.
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Setting a new landmark, the auction had a sale of Rs 6.955 million and 86 per cent lots sold with records established across all types of publicity material and memorabilia.
For the first time the auction received generous participation from the film fraternity and cinema enthusiasts and saw lively competitive bidding from the floor and telebidders which enthralled the attendees.
Superstar Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao bid for six collector’s items valued at Rs 3.21 lakhs including Shammi Kapoor’s jacket (Lot 74 for Rs 88,000).
The average lot price of Rs 46,679 was a major improvement with more than 200 per cent rise over the last five years. Total percentage value of the lots sold over the Higher Estimates was 88.09 per cent while those sold above Lower Estimates was 140.94 per cent.
Auction lots on offer consisted of vintage and rare posters, show-cards, stills, song-synopsis booklets among other artifacts. The highlights that comprised the auction lots were 45 signed black and white photographic stills by the evergreen Dev Anand (Rs 4 lakhs); rare Satyajit Ray designed film posters of the 1960s; the turquoise ring set in silver worn by Farooque Sheikh in Muzaffar Ali’s famous Umrao Jaan (Rs 96,000); a cricket bat signed by Aamir Khan and the team from Lagaan (Rs 1.56 lakhs).
The auction also had very rare photographic stills mounted on lobby cards and Show-Cards from Aan, Mother India, Dil Diya Dard Liya, Leader, Humraaz, Zanjeer, Aan Milo Sajna, the famous scarf from Junglee (1961) worn by Shammi Kapoor (RS 1.56 lakhs), the sweater from Andaz (1971) (Rs 15000), the Shehnai, and the last unreleased song by Kishore Kumar completed just three days before his demise in October 1987.
It also included many posters from films with Rajesh Khanna, such as Aradhana, Amar Prem, and Andaz fared exceedingly well with new records for all.
“After eleven years of hard work by Osian’s, India can proudly say it has the basis of an international standard market for its cinematic heritage; hereafter no one will dismiss these items as raddi (garbage). They are collectibles and they have significant financial value. Though there is still a significant distance to cover for an in-depth market to emerge, and hundreds of galleries and dealers to surface in a legitimate manner” stated Neville Tuli, founder chairman – Osian’s, who has pioneered the movement with the art world over the last decade.
He added that the auction emphatically indicated that an enormous potential exists for developing the market for Indian cinema memorabilia, and that the film fraternity now feels a sense of respect for its cinematic heritage and the growth will be exponential and hopefully the task of preserving our cinematic heritage will be somewhat easier.
