HERE is a formidable combination. One of the finest Sufi singers of today, Hans Raj Hans, singing one of the finest Punjabi poets of all time, Shiv Kumar Batalvi. No wonder every one of the eight songs stands out.

Singing Shiv is not an easy task. Some of his poems are just not meant for being set to music. But Hans manages to bring to the surface their inherent harmony with the help of composer Jaidev.

There are the evergreen Mainu tera shabab lai baitha and Main ik shikra yaar banaya with which you can hum along. Then there are some "happy" songs like Ajj din chadhya tere rang varga, but the best are the songs sung blue. The melancholy in numbers like Peeran da paraga and Ghaman di raat is palpable.

The recording quality is uniformly good.

Nadeem of the Nadeem-Shravan duo continues to be away from the country ever since he was accused of being involved in the Gulshan Kumar murder case, but that has not stopped him from continuing to compose film music. Neither the quality nor the quantity of his work has gone down much.

Here he not only composes the music but also sings the title song. And it is a cute low-key effort indeed. The music has a western influence and is suffused with the softness of understated romance.

The album gives a good break to Tauseef Akhtar who sings a theme version of the title song and also a solo, Kyon dil bichde.

The only other solo, College mein, which has been sung by Sonu Nigam, is a simple, youthful ditty.

It is the duets that rule the roost. If Hai kya ladki (Kavita Krishnamurthy and Abhijeet) is naughty and frothy, Tera dilbar tera saathi (Alka Yagnik and Sonu Nigam) is a typical dance number.

Ek mein ek tu introduces a new singer, Nirja Pandit. She has tried to sing in the Asha Bhosle mould. Her co-singer here is Abhijeet.

Tera dilbar (Alka Yagnik and Sonu Nigam) is quite similar to this one.

The lyrics are by Sameer.

It is strange that while Punjabi songs have carved a niche all over the country, Haryanavi songs are nowhere in the reckoning. This cassette tries to remove the imbalance somewhat, although it is doubtful if it will succeed much in the endeavour because it is a strange amalgamation.

Some songs are copies of hit Hindi film songs (like the title number which is based on the Parda hai parda quawwali from Amar Akbar Anthony) while some have only been altered a bit to sound Haryanavi (Altaf Raja’s Yaaron se ishq yon).

But there are some genuinely slapstick comedy numbers like Ghunghat ne hata le. The trouble is that some of them like Jai Bhole Shiv Shambhoo go overboard and may end up annoying a section of religious people.