Hollywood and Bollywood play by rather different rules and nowhere is this more apparent than in the contrasts between American action films and the ones made in Mumbai.

For one reason—and as if there even needs to be a second—our action flicks don’t tend to have musical interludes and choreographed all-singing, all-dancing production numbers. If say, Bruce Willis suddenly broke into song and tap-danced his little heart out during one of the Die Hard films or if the entire cast of one of Quentin Tarantino’s films did something like that during a closing credits “item number,” American movies audiences would just think that was plain weird.

In India, not so much, in fact, that would be expected…
 

 
Sometimes the songs themselves are better recalled than the films they came from. Case in point is the 1973 Bollywood musical revenge action-drama, Yaadon Ki Baaraat (“Procession of Memories” in English), the tale of three young brothers (one of them played by Aamir Khan in his very first role) who barely escape their parents’ murder by a crime lord, but lose touch in the aftermath and are raised in different circumstances. The film had three hit songs composed by Bollywood great R.D. Burman with lyrics by the prominent Urdu poet Majrooh Sultanpuri: “Chura Liya Hai” (sung by lengendary playback singers Asha Bhosle and Mohammed Rafi, not the actors), now somewhat of a standard (and the kind of song you might hear on India’s Got Talent, Indian Idol or at a wedding), “Lekar Hum Deewana Dil” and “Meri Soni Meri Tamanna.”

First up is the fucking incredible scene where “Lekar Hum Deewana Dil” is performed. The song doesn’t start until 1:21 in.

 
“Chura Liya Hai”—this video has over 13 millions plays, giving you some idea of its enduring popularity. The gal with the guitar lip-syncing here is Hindi sex symbol/fashion trendsetter Zeenat Aman

 
The classic love song “Meri Soni Meri Tamanna”

 
In this scene the brothers dramtically recognize one another when one of them (a nightclub performer) sings “Yaadon Ki Baaraat,” the song their mother taught them to sing for their father’s birthday party: