Zaalim jawaani haaye zaalim jawaani
Posted on: April 12, 2014
This article is written by Arunkumar Deshmukh, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.
THE VIBRANT 40s (Episode No. 3)
———————————–
The Hindi film industry has been very dynamic throughout its history. From the beginning till today, plenty of new ideas, experiments and changes have improved the industry in many of its departments. Of course, it is not always that improvement in Technique improves the quality. As per the latest Technology, nowadays,to record a Duet song with chorus, it is not necessary for both the singers to be available at the same time and sing the song together. With 24 track tapes, nowadays, each singer comes as per his appointment to the recording studio, sings and records his part of the song and goes away. Same with the chorus party also. Once everyone has sung his part of the song, then the entire song is mixed and rerecorded together with the track of music and chorus included in it. Lo and Behold….Your New song is ready !
Considering this uptodate technique, the old method of singers doing rehearsals, getting the recording studio and the singers as well as all the orchestra players together, doing a final rehearsal once again and then recording the song with all this at one time,seems to be an outdated method. But then, feel the difference in melody. Anyway,” guzra huwa zamana…aata nahi dubaraa ” !!!
The year 1942 was truly a landmark year in the annals of Film history. This was the year when the big Directors left their present organisations and established own studios and production companies.
The dissatisfied group of S,Mukherjee, Ashok Kumar, Gyan Dutt, Vacchha etc left Bombay Talkies and established FILMISTAN studios.
A.R.Kardar came down from Lahore to Bombay for good and started his Kardar Studios.
V. Shantaram, along with some of his loyals left Prabhat Films and started his own ‘ RAJ KAMAL KALAMANDIR’ ( The name is made from first letters of his father RAJaram and mother KAMALabai Vankudre). His studio was started on the vacant land offered by Wadia Movietone.
Wadia Movietone also saw partition and the 2 brothers, J B H Wadia and Homi Wadia separated. Homi started his own ” Basant Pictures”. Major stars of Wadia Movietone, including Fearless Nadia left with Homi Wadia.
Mehboob Khan left National Studios and started his own ” Mehboob productions”. His studio, however,came up only in the early 50s, at Bandra(w) in Bombay.
Mehboob Khan was one of the major figures in the industry. he,K. Asif and Chandulal Shah were regarded as the giants of production and direction.
Born as Mehboob Khan Ramzan Khan in 1907 at Bilimora,in Gandevi taluka, Baroda, Gujrat, he was a Policeman’s son. He never studied in school( but, later on in life, he studied writing, reading and speaking Hindi, Urdu and English). He ran away to Bombay at the age of 18 years and joined Imperial Film company as an assistant. He kept on doing small insignificant roles in silent films. one of his roles was as one of the 40 thieves in film ‘Alladin and his 40 Thieves’-1929.
Sagar film company, which was a subsidiary of Imperisl was taken over by Chimanlal Desai and Dr. Ambalal Patel and it became a separate full fledged production house called Sagar movietone. Mehboob joined it and did character roles in Romantic prince, Bulbul e azaad, Chandrahaas, Mahabharat, Mirza Sahiba, Premi pagal, Grihalaxmi, Naachwali etc till 1934.
Somehow Mehboob was unlucky on quite a few occasions in his bid to become a Hero in films. First, he missed his chance in Torney’s silent film, when E.Bilimoriya became the Hero, secondly he was replaced by Master Vithal as a Hero in India’s first talkie “Alam Ara’-1931 and lastly he was replaced by newcomer Motilal in ‘Shahar ka jaadu’ as a Hero. Mehboob understood that he was not made out to be an actor. His story was accepted by Sagar and a film under his direction was made- ‘Al Hilal or the judgement of Allah”-1935. The film became a hit and then there was no looking back. In Sagar he directed films like Deccan Queen, Manmohan, Jagirdar, Watan, Hum,Tum aur voh, Ek hi rasta, Alibaba etc. When he started his own production, his first film was ‘Najma’-43.
Mehboob was not an ordinary film maker. Though he was uneducated, he was a Genius with socialist beliefs. Even his Banner showed Sickle and hammer(The background recitation of ” Muddai laakh bura chhahe to kya hota hai, vahi hota hai jo manjur e Khuda hota hai’ was done by his friend Rafiq Gaznavi). Being a Socialist and sold on Nehruvian philosophy, his popular films had a common theme- ‘”The oppressed poor V/s The oppressor Rich”. In films like Aurat, Roti, Aan and Mother India etc one can see this theme clearly. He made blistering attacks on Capitalists and their lust for money. In films like Andaz, however,he supported traditionalism, rejecting Platonic relationships.
In films like ” Elaan”-1947, he dared to challenge the existing shortcomings in Muslim society. He took a look at Indian Muslims from inside. Sometimes the film went into forbidden areas when he suggested Koranic reforms as the way out of ills of Muslims, like illiteracy and backward thinking. This invoked anger from the Fundamentalists and the film was banned for 3 months, but he re released the film without any changes or revisions.
The urbane director K.A. Abbas once referred to Khan Mehboob as the “great rustic” of the Hindi cinema. Indeed, a certain mythology developed around Mehboob—that of the man with popular roots. This image owed much to stories about his origins (the small-town boy who worked his way up through the Bombay studios), and to certain films which dwelt on the travails of the poor and the destitute, such as Aurat (Woman) and Roti (Bread). In fact, however, Mehboob’s output as director was quite varied. After he founded his own company, Mehboob Productions, in 1943, he made historical works (Humayun) and fantasy spectaculars (Aan/Pride). Even films such as Anmol Ghadi (Priceless Watch) and Anokhi Ada (A Special Charm), which appeared to address the class divide, were variations of the triangular love story, the favoured convention of the Hindi cinema.
In these films social representation becomes incidental to the basic plot because the narrative spaces of a simple rural life or of urban destitution are constructed in an idealised rather than in a realistic way. The lighting style of such scenes show them as composed of smooth studio surfaces, and there is an indifference to the more squalid details of characterisation. The emphasis lies in the fullness of melodramatic sentiments—of loss and of romantic longing—which occasion the use of lushly orchestrated songs. All this is a pleasurable closing off of the cinema and its audience from social references, a tendency in Mehboob’s work best represented by his venture into the swashbuckling colour film Aan. Elements of this romantic mode are observable even in Mehboob’s “social” films. In Aurat and its later colour version, Mother India , rural life is often conveyed as a series of spectacularly choreographed scenes of harvesting, festivals, and the romantic engagement of its characters. Andaz (Style) , on the other hand, invites the audience to soak in the luxuries of the modern, upper-class settings in which its characters live.
In this sense, Mehboob was not simply a popularly rooted “rustic” artist, but engaged in creations of high artifice and escapism. However, these elements were often integrated with quite powerful constructions of meaning. Aurat , for example, achieves an almost anthropological view of gender roles. This is accomplished not by the accuracy of its observations about rural life, but by using the grim struggles of rural life as a way of drawing out the role performed by Indian women. This provides the basis for the film’s main interest, the melodrama of the unrelieved suffering of a woman (Sardar Akhtar) on behalf of her sons (Surendra and Yakub). The subsequent version of this film, Mother India , is an interesting contrast. The focus is still on the suffering of the mother (Nargis); but this capacity to suffer is transformed into a distinctly mythical power which moves beyond her immediate family to inspire the whole village community. In both films the woman is the bearer of a patriarchal inheritance for her son, but Mother India may have represented a new, mythicised role model for women, one whose power often co-exists uneasily with its conservative functions.
Perhaps most interesting is Andaz, a drama, at least implicitly, of illicit desire. The story is about Nina (Nargis) who, while faithful to her absent fiancé (Raj Kapoor), relates vivaciously to an attractive young man (Dilip Kumar). The heroine is shown to be a naive innocent who cannot perceive that relaxed social relations between men and women can lead to misunderstanding, and this generates the tragic events that follow. Yet the narration moves beyond, or perhaps deeper into, its own fascination with the settings and mores of its upper class characters, introducing an interesting, fantastical ambiguity. Nina’s denials that she is attracted to a man other than her husband are put into doubt for the audience through scenes depicting the hallucinations and dreams that assail the heroine. In this way the “rustic” Mehboob was surprisingly well equipped to convey certain strikingly modern problems of sexuality and desire.
Mehboob Khan married actress Sardar Akhtar and became co-brother of Kardar (husband of Bahar Akhtar). Mehboob directed 24 films, produced 6 films, wrote stories of 2 films, and acted in about 12 films. Mehboob was a staunch follower of Pandit Nehru. The news of Nehru’s death gave him a heart attack and he died on 27-5-1964.
Child star Sajid Khan of Mother India and Son of India-62 was his adopted son. There was no information on Sajid khan as to his whereabouts for a long time. But I was successful in finding out that he lived in USA.
Born on 28-12-1951, Sajid Khan is a former Indian actor not to be confused with being the brother of Farah Khan. He is the adopted son of Indian film producer Mehboob Khan, founder of Mehboob Studios, in India. Sajid made his acting debut at the age of six in his adopted father Mehboob Khan’s Oscar-nominated 1957 film Mother India where he played the younger version of the character played by Sunil Dutt. dil He also acted in Mehboob Khan’s last directorial venture Son of India in 1962. Then he gained fame in Hollywood with his most famous role as Raji in the 1966 film Maya where he starred alongside Jay North. He and North reprised their roles from the film in the short-lived TV series Maya which aired on NBC from September 1967 to February 1968. Though he has played characters of different religions, Sajid is actually a Muslim and claims Pashtun ancestry. He appeared in many teen magazines of the era, along with Bobby Sherman and Davy Jones. He also had the same manager as they did, Ward Sylvester. In the late 1960s he also had a short-lived singing career releasing two singles but both singles failed to make it into the Top 100 Billboard Singles Charts. He went on to appear in a few other films and television series in the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. His last acting role was in Heat and Dust in 1983.
Today’s song is from film Taqdeer. TAQDEER-1943,is a real forgotten and obscure movie,about which hardly any information will be available on the net,However I remember this movie and have my notes about it.
It was a Mehboob Production film,directed by Mehboob, Music by R.Gaznavi,and Lyrics by Mahrul Kadri.There is one song in the film written by Agha M.Shirazi(who also acted in the film) and one song by Anjum Pilibhiti also.There were 10 songs in the film,2 chorus songs,4 solos of Shamshad begum and 4 duets of Shamshad and Motilal.
The cast of the film was Chandramohan, Motilal, Nargis, Jilloobai, Kayam ali, Ansari, Shirazi, Laddan etc. The Story was by Ghulam Mohd. and screenplay and dialogues were by Agha Jaani Kashmiri.
It was a lightweight comedy about Justice Gangaprasad(Chandramohan) and a Theatre owner Seth Badriprasad(NM Charlie),who lose their daughter and son in Kumbha Mela( This is where this trend started for future films,especially Manmohan Desai type films) respectively.
The children are found but exchanged and Gangaprasad brings up Babu(Motilal) as a rich playboy and Badriprasad raises Salma(Nargis) as a dancer in his Theatre.They fall in love,causing a problem of class Difference.This is revealed when their identities are revealed.
Funny thing is Gangaprasad’s wife(Jilloo bai) raises Motilal thinking that he is a Girl.The scene when it is revealed that he is a Boy,is very hilarious.
There is a song in the film,’Meri Mata Bharat Mata’,in which Nargis is shown holding a sickle and a cloth bundle, with waving fielda behind her.This reminds us of her role and posters of ‘Mother India’-1957(also a Mehboob production.)
Here are some Titbits….
Baby Fatima (Nargis) was all of only 14 when she became Heroine of this film.When Mrs.Mehboob was doing her make up and wrapping her up in a Saree, she was mugging up the dialogues.
Mehboob told her that if she doesn’t do this role, he will incur heavy losses, thus she agreed to do the role.
She was also very happy, when told that all her songs will be sung by Shamshad begum.
She had to wear high heels to match the height of her first hero,Motilal.
Taqdeer was a Hit film.
Let us now enjoy this song filmed on Motilal and sung by Rafiq Ghaznavi, who also composed the music.
Song-Zaalim jawaani haaye zaalim jawaani (Taqdeer)(1943) Singer-Rafiq Ghaznavi, Lyrics-Mahrul Qadri, MD-Rafiq Ghaznavi
Lyrics
zaalim jawaani haaye zaalim jawaani
kaafir adaayen zaalim jawaani
haaye zaalim jawaani
dil mein rahen aur dil ko sataayen
dil mein rahen aur dil ko sataayen
zaalim jawaani haaye zaalim jawaani
aankhen nahin masti ke katore
aankhen nahin masti ke katore
zulfen nahin saawan ki ghataayen
zulfen nahin haaye
zulfen nahin saawan ki ghataayen
zaalim jawaani oye zaalim jawaani
aah mujhe deewaana banaaya
aah mujhe deewaana banaaya
haaye wo bholi
haaye wo bholi bhaali adaayen
haaye wo bholi
haaye haaye wo bholi
hum hain tumhaare
tum ho hamaare
hum hain tumhaare
tum ho hamaare
keh to rahin thhin
keh to rahin thhin
haay neechi nigaahen
keh to rahin thhin
neechi nigaahen
zaalim jawaani haaye haaye zaalim jawaani
aha
9 Responses to "Zaalim jawaani haaye zaalim jawaani"
April 12, 2014 at 1:09 pm
Arunji ,
A wonderful article laden with lots of information. Enjoyed the article and the vintage song. Could you add a few lines about Rafiq Gaznavi .
Thanks once again.
LikeLike
April 12, 2014 at 1:14 pm
One should not do exercise immediately after waking. Walk few rounds first for blood circulation and then do it.
LikeLike
April 12, 2014 at 1:17 pm
What you say is true in real life,but in reel life…anything goes.
LikeLike
April 12, 2014 at 1:31 pm
My compliments for such an extensive research effort. So many snippets of information have been collected so painstakingly to make a very interesting read.
One cannot but be impressed by the relevance and importance of these social messages even today, though they were thought of over seventy years ago.
One doubt – ‘Anmol ghadi’ – should it mean ‘priceless watch’ or ‘priceless moment’? I have not seen film, so cannot decide. Maybe someone who has, can clarify.
LikeLike
April 12, 2014 at 1:44 pm
In the movie “Anmol Ghadi”, “Ghadi” indeed refers to a “watch”.
LikeLike
April 12, 2014 at 3:02 pm
Atulji,
Thanks for splitting the List of songs-movie wise into 8 parts. Thanks for the quick response. However it has not really improved the response time considering that we splitted into 8 pages. I am using quite fast modem.
LikeLike
April 24, 2014 at 1:01 pm
Your article is truly well written. I just saw the film Taqdeer and was amazed at the superb direction and humour in the story. Charlie, Chandra Mohan, Motilal and Nargis do a fantastic job as does Jilloobai. But the best was Badriprasad’s (Charlie) manager. I don’t know who the actor was. Is it Kayam Ali? All the male songs on the DVD have been credited to Motilal except this one. Good to know it was Rafiqe Ghaznavi’s voice.
LikeLike
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
April 12, 2014 at 12:56 pm
You are a fine craftsman and superb story teller.
LikeLike