Chalte chalte yoon hi koi mil gaya thha
Posted on: October 10, 2008
I was a school kid less than 10 years of age, when Pakeejah was being released, and believe it on not, even us pre teens used to discuss Pakeejah in our class, how this movie was going to be Meena Kumari’s best performance, how this movie was supposed to be a magnum opus, etc. We all knew that this movie was in the making for many years.
Then we came to know that Meena Kumari had died. The expectations from this movie got escalated as a result.
In the meanwhile, the music from this movie was hitting the air waves. Those were the days of R D Burman’s music, and the music of Paeejah was actually old fashioned to our ears, what with Ghulam Mohammed, a relic of 1940s as the music director of the movie.
Though the music was nowhere close to the popularity of R D Burman’s music, the songs from Pakeejah got popular despite their retro appearance. Two songs from Pakeejah became especially popular. One was ” inhi logon ne le leenha dupatta mera” and the other was ” chalte chalte yoon hi koi mil gaya tha”. In fact, when one looks at the list of Binaca geetmala 1972 finals list, these two Pakeejah songs actually ended up being second and third in the list, respectively. Wow ! These two songs became that popular ! Certainly it was the finest achievement of Ghulam Mohammad as a music director.
The song ” chalte chalte” is the topic of discussion here. This song quietly became popular among people, excluding me. The music of this song reminded me so much of the “purani filmon ke geet” that I listened to in Radio Ceylon from 7-30 AM to 8 AM every morning, and I thought that this new song belonged there. But there was no doubt that this song became popular. The song was slow and steady, and it did win the hearts of people who were less biased than me about their judgements of how a song of 1970s should sound.
Just like the music director, even the lyricist Kaifi Azmi was a lyric ( I mean relic) of the past, a boring lyricist as far as I was concerned. He would write lyrics that few people understood, and which rarely became popular with members of aam janta such as yours truly. Just because one was a shayar did not mean he should live in a glass house and subject his audience to abstruse heavy duty words. Majrooh, Saahir, Hasrat etc were shayars too, but see how they wrote lyrics that people could actually understand and enjoy- that is how I felt about Kaifi Azmi.
Coming to this song, I thought that Kaifi Azmi got away in this song and the song became popular because this song had less scope for inserting complicated words. The key words for public here were “chalte chalte” which even school kids like me could understand. Then there were rhyming words viz, “dhalte dhalte”, “talte talte” and “jalte jalte”, and lay public liked the song because of pre-dominance of such easy to understand words. Of course, Kaifi Azmi quitely slipped in words like shab e intazaar and muktasar, but he got away with it in this song, because the singing by Lata and music by Ghulam Mohammad ensured that the song did become popular with the audience.
It is a song that has many admirers now, and even I have silently switched sides and joined the list of admirers. 😉 What can one do ? I find that one needs to like this song to impress those who matter, viz Shalini ( the farmaish sender for this song). And closer to my household, my wife is an admirer of this song too. So here is this song which was an extremely popular song in its days, and whose popularity has increased even more thanks to defectors like me as well as because on new admirers discovering this song with every passing day.
Song- Chalte chalte yoon hi koi mil gaya tha ( Paakeezah) (1971) Singer-Lata, Lyrics- Kaifi Azmi, MD-Ghulam Mohammad
Lyrics
chalte chalte
chalte-chalte
yoonhi koi mil gayaa thaa
yoonhi koi mil gayaa thaa sar-e-raah chalte-chalte
sar-e-raah chalte-chalte
wahin tham ke rah gayi hai
wahin thamke rah gayi hai meri raat dhalte-dhalte
meri raat dhalte-dhalte
jo kahi gayi na mujhse
jo kahi gayi na mujhse vo zamaanaa kah rahaa hai
wo zamaanaa kah rahaa hai
ke fasaanaa
ke fasaanaa ban gayi hai
ke fasaanaa ban gayi hai meri baat talte-talte
meri baat talte-talte
yoonhi koyi mil gayaa thaa
yoonhi koyi mil gayaa thaa sar-e-raah chalte-chalte
sar-e-raah chalte-chalte
yoonhi koi mil gayaa thaa sar-e-raah chalte-chalte
chalte-chalte
sar-e-raah chalte-chalte
chalte-chalte
chalte-chalte
chalte-chalte
chalte-chalte
chalte-chalte
chalte-chalte
chalte-chalte
chalte-chalte
chalte-chalte
yoonhi koi mil gayaa thaa
yoonhi koi mil gayaa thaa
shab-e-intazaar aakhir
shab-e-intazaar aakhir kabhi hogi muktasar bhi
kabhi hogi muktasar bhi
ye chiraagh
ye chiraagh bujh rahe hain
ye chiraagh bujh rahe hain mere saath jalte-jalte
mere saath jalte-jalte
ye chiraagh bujh rahe hain
ye chiraagh bujh rahe hain
ye chiraagh bujh rahe hain
ye chiraagh bujh rahe hain
ye chiraagh bujh rahe hain
ye chiraagh bujh rahe hain mere saath jalte-jalte
mere saath jalte-jalte
6 Responses to "Chalte chalte yoon hi koi mil gaya thha"
October 10, 2008 at 6:53 am
Believe it or not, even I liked this song for that whistle at the end of the song, but I was too coy to admit that. Now that you have said so, I am relieved that I am not the only weird one to do that.
Now I believe that the tiny clip of whistle at the end has served the same purpose in this song as a tadka or chaunk serves while preparing an Indian dish.
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October 10, 2008 at 12:35 pm
🙂 Oh yes, the whistle is very very important and us weird ones always find these little things in a song!
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October 13, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Sadly, I don’t have any childhood memories of this as I wasn’t born when the film was released but I got to watch the film when I was a teenager and instantly fell in love with the whole movie and everything about it. As for this song, “yeh chiraag bujh rahe hai” is my favorite line from the song more so because of the way Lata ji sang it… and I agree if it weren’t for the whistle of the train, the song wouldn’t have been the same. It adds to that mysterious yearning feeling that Sahibjaan is hiding behind her sealed lips and piercing eyes that are shining with tears.
14 years? That’s some crazy amount of time. I think Meena Kumari is one person who probably holds a record on working in films that took the longest and shortest time for shooting. No? I heard Dil Ek Mandir was shot in around 22 days. Pls do correct if I’m wrong.
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October 15, 2008 at 7:14 pm
I love all the songs of this movie. They are all very easy on the ears. This song is indeed the most famous song of the movie. It reminds me of a story from my schooldays.
I was in the seventh class. We had this bad-tempered English teacher who never ever gave us a “free period” (a “free period” was one where we could just enjoy the 40 minutes without studying anything. It invariably meant we would have a song session where some good singers would entertain the rest of the class).
That day she surprised us by saying “ok, you have a free period today”. We were thrilled. Immediately the song session started. And the farmaishes.
Everybody was going “chalte, chalte”.
Meaning “chalte chalte, meri ye geet yaad rakhna” (which was one of the most popular songs of the day then).
This teacher said “yes, of course…sing chalte chalte”.
So this guy goes up front and starts “chalte chalte, meri ye geet yaad rakhna…”
She shouts “What ? This song ? I thought you were going to sing that Meena Kumari chalte chalte.”
We quickly changed the song to a less controversial one in case she decided to cancel the free period. 🙂
Memories.
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October 16, 2008 at 2:46 am
Well, your teacher was one with classier taste. Of course, Bappi Lahiri’s Chalte chalte is also good, but that is of a different genre.
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Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
October 10, 2008 at 6:49 am
You are a Superstar Atul! Thank you 🙂
I was 2 when this film was released. And my father the music buff immediately bought the LP. Initially what interested me was the seeti (whistle) at the end of this song. I used to listen to the song just for the train ki seeti. This song was a hit for me because of a tiny bit of whistle at the end of the song rather than the music, lyrics or singer; Appreciation of all that came a lot later.
And of course as a child I spent most of my time dancing to the radio/gramophone and this song was a good one to sway to! Its one of those songs that is just imprinted in my mind and I love it.
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