"It was a wonderful experience interacting with you and appreciate the way you have planned and executed the whole publication process within the agreed timelines.”
Subrat SaurabhAuthor of Kuch Woh Pal
Until a few years ago most of did not know Edwina Violette (or Edu) by name. We only knew her as a background dancer in many Hindi songs. Famously, in the song ‘O Hasina Zulfonwali Jane Jahan’ from Teesri Manzil (1966) she appears in the beginning shaking her head and flaunting her long hair, before settling down on the letter C of the giant ROCKY sign. Thanks to the efforts of famous blogger Greta Kaemmer, the world ‘discovered’ her. One of us (SS) was so thrilled that he wrote his first book on Hindi films, Edu’s biography.
In preparation for the book, SS watched more than one hundred videos of her (put together by Tom Daniel), he was struck by the other faces in the background who danced in many of these songs. It occurred to him that a book should be written about them while we can still identify them.
So, SS requested his friend Narsingh D Agnish to watch all the videos and capture still images of her co-dancers. He painstakingly captured almost 1,000 images, of which about 500 were selected to be sent to Edu by email. She responded promptly identifying most of them and writing little notes about them in the bargain!
We have selected about 300 of those images for this book. We are thrilled that we have been able to put names to so many faces of her co-dancers.
All three of us loved working on this book, we hope you will enjoy it too and have the excitement of saying, “I know her, she is Pamela, Edu’s best friend. Or, I recognize him, he is Terence, Edu’s brother!”
Edwina Violette, Narsingh Agnish, Professor Surjit Singh
Edwina Violette was born as Edwina Lyons to John and Kathryn Lyons on July 22, 1941 in Bombay. She was educated at the Convent of Jesus and Mary at Byculla, Bombay and Poona. Her brothers Terence, Neville and sister Marie were already working in films, she decided to follow them. She worked mainly as a background dancer in Hindi films from 1957 to 1967.
She got married to Keith Violette on November 26, 1960. They moved to the UK in the 60s and has lived there ever since. After having worked at many jobs, she retired as a Finance Officer at the St Pancras Hospital, London.
She lives in Hertfordshire and enjoys the company of her children nd grandchildren. She is active on Facebook and has thousands of friends and followers.
Narsingh Agnish obtained MS (Zoology Honors) from the Panjab University and PhD (Anatomy & Cancer Research) from the University of Saskatchewan. He joined Hoffmann-La Roche (Roche) in 1977 and retired as Senior Research Leader after 25 years in 2003.
He married to Marleen (Ambros) since 1969, has four children: Vivek, Devinder, Jai and Asha.
His hobbies are Collecting and sharing Bollywood film music, photography, and competitive contract bridge (the card game, not what civil engineers build!).
Professor Surjit Singh, a diehard movie fanatic, period. He is a retired Theoretical Physicist. He has been watching Hindi movies since 1952, has been collecting Hindi songs, movies and magazines since 1969, and has been writing about these things since 1996. He has had a website since 1999,
http://hindi-movies-songs.com/joomla/
