Ham kis se karen shiqwa rona hai muqaddar mein
Posted on: May 17, 2020
This article is written by Arunkumar Deshmukh, a fellow enthusaist of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in other sites without the knowledge and consent of the web administrator of atulsongaday.me, then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.
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Today’s song is from an obscure film Hamara Sansar-45. It was a film made by Prakash Pictures, whose 2 Mythological films – Bharat Milap-42 and Ram Rajya-43, had become super duper hit films of that era. This branded Prakash Pictures as experts in Mythological films. Film Hamara Sansar-45 had actually followed another social film Police 44, but both films failed to continue the Hit parade of the two earlier successes. Prakash never wanted to be stamped or labelled as a film company of any particular Genre, so they decided to continue making social films, till they made the 3rd of the ” Shri Ram” series film few years later. They made film Raam Baan-48, with the same lead pair, but this film failed miserably due to various reasons.
Film Hamara Sansar-45 was directed by Dr. Shanti Kumar – not to be confused with Music Director Shanti Kumar Desai. In spite of several attempts, I could not get any information on this director since about 8 years. Film’s music was given by Pt. Gobind Ram, who was one of the major composers from among the Punjabi school of film composers in the 40s. His songs did not have exactly the Punjabi rhythm, but the style was exclusively Punjabi. His songs were sweet to ears. The cast of the film was Jeevan, Ranjana, Sumati Gupte, Jilloo, Umakant, Rajkumari Shukla, Susheel Kumar and many more.
When the film industry started growing, in the initial stage there were very few film making centres. By 1931, they were Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Lahore and Kolhapur. It was but natural that in Calcutta, most artistes and technicians were Bengali. Nearby states like Assam, Dhaka,Orissa and Bihar also supplied manpower. Similarly in Madras, Tamilians, Andhrites, Kannada and Malayalam people were more in the industry. In Lahore, Muslims, Punjabis and Sindhis worked in films there.
In Bombay, two communities – Marathi and Gujarati played prominent roles in this growing industry. Bombay being the ‘ Mayanagari’ which provided work to everybody and anybody, who was ready to do work, no wonder people from every corner of India gathered here. Take the case of India’s first Talkie film Aalam Ara-1931. The producer and the screenplay writer-Ardeshir Irani, as well as the Music Director Phirozshah Mistry were Parsees, Dialogue writer Joseph David Penkar was a Bene Israeli Jew from Coastal area of Konkan, Hero Master Vithal was from Kolhapur of Maharashtra, Heroine Zubeida was from Gujarat, Jilloo was a tawayaf from Delhi, Prithviraj Kapoor was from Peshawar, W M Khan was from Western Frontier area, Jagdish Sethi was from Punjab, Elizer was from Tamilnadu, L V Prasad was from Andhra and Omkar Devaskar was from Madhya Pradesh.
However, the financial strings of film industry were in the hands of Gujarati people (including Parsees) and the actual work of acting, direction, music, singing, make up, costume and other technical aspects were done mostly by Marathi people. As the times moved on, the regional film centres anf films became stronger enough to provide opportunities to artistes etc and Marathi, South and others’ participation in Bombay became thinner. However, on and off Marathi artistes kept on coming to Hindi films in various departments-mainly acting and music. One such artiste was Sumati Gupte, about whom, hardly any information is available in English or Hindi books or on internet sites. For the first time, here are her details, for our readers.
Sumati Gupte was born on 11-5-1918 in a small town, Vai, in Satara District of Maharashtra. However, her education took place in Baroda, Gujarat, from where she completed her graduation and obtained B.A. degree. She was keen to work in films.
She joined Prabhat Film company to work in its Bilingual film Sant Dnyaaneshwar-40. The film was released on 21-5-1940 in Central cinema, Bombay. It became a hit film. She sang 2 songs also in this film. She started getting film offers in Marathi. She acted in several films like Thoratanchi kamala, Navardeo and Chimukala Sansar. The last film was directed by a young man-Vasant Joglekar. They fell in love and soon got married in 1943. Sumati became Sumati Gupte Joglekar. In due course, the couple had 3 daughters- Meera, Chanda and Madhushri.
Sumati acted in many Marathi films, but at the same time she also acted in Hindi films. She acted in Sant Dnyaneshwar-40, Sharbati Aankhen-45, Hamara Sansar-45, Santan-46, Veer Ghatotkach-49, Nand Kishore-51, Shiv leela-52, Samaj-54, mausi-58, Kareegar-58, Keechak Vadh-59, Waqt-65, Pariwar-68, Adhikar-71, jalte Badan-73, Paise ki Gudiya-74, Sajjo Rani-76 and Aadmi Sadak ka-77.
Sumati also sang 4 songs-2 each- in film Sant Dnyaneshwar-40 and Panghat-43. Vasant Joglekar’s family had very close relationship with actor Ashok kumar. Joglekar produced 10 films and directed 20 films. In most of them, Ashok kumar had acted. When film Kareegar-58 was to be made, Ashok kumar had already 30 films on hand, but he agreed to work in his film. Ashok kumar always took only 50% fees in his films. His only condition used to be that Sumati Gupte should bring lunch box of her cooked food on the sets. He was very fond of her cooking. No wonder, Sumati was a CKP by birth-a fish eater and Bangali babu liked Fish dishes very much !
Besides films, Sumati loved to work in Marathi stage dramas. She worked in many famous and popular dramas. The drama advertisements used to highlight her name, to attract the audience. Sumati got many awards like Rasrang magazine’s Phalke award, V. Shantaram award and Chitrabhushan, Life time achievement award from Maharashtra Govt.
Her husband Vasant Joglekar died in 1993.They had tried to promote their elder daughter Meera in Hindi films. She acted opposite Joy Mukherjee in film “Ek Kali Muskayi”-68. Neither she nor the film succeeded. She left films and got married to Ajit Gulabchand, a famous businessman of Mumbai. However, after few years, they divorced and she married Achyut Vaze, a stage Producer.
Sumati Gupte Joglekar died on 31-10-2009. After her death, their was a court dispute about her estate. Meera’s sister Chanda filed a case in court against her, but Meera won the case and the estate, in crores, was evenly divided between 3 sisters.
There was another Marathi actress in this film – Ranjana. The Heroine of this film was Ranjana. Now, hardly anyone knows about this actress who had worked as a Heroine with Dilip Kumar also in his early career. One can not get any information about her in any book or on the internet. Here is some information about her.
Ranjana’s real name was Ratan Shantaram Deshpande. She was born in Nagpur on 20-10-1927. While studying in St. Ursula High School, she learnt dancing and music from well known ustads. After passing her 6th standard examination, she came to Bombay to her elder sister, Kusum Deshpande, who was already working as actress with Minerva Movietone films. Kusum married Vasant Thengadi, a handsome actor in Hindi films of those times.
Kusum arranged for specialised dancing for Ratan in the holidays. later Ratan was taken to Vijay Bhatt of Prakash pictures for an interview. She was immediately selected and got a role in the famous film Ramrajya-1943. In this film she was Chitralekha, Sita’s sakhi. Vijay Bhatt also changed her name to Ranjana. She was on pay roles of prakash for Rs. 2000 pm. She acted in films like police-44, Vikramaditya-45 and Hamara Sansar-45. Next films were Nai Maa-46 and Zamin Asman-46.
Ranjana was called by Bombay Talkies to do Heroine’s role opposite Dilip kumar in film Milan-46. This film was based on Bangla film Nauka Doobi written by Tagore. She did the role of Hem Nalini in this film’s Hindi version. The same role was done by Meera Sircar in the Bangla film Nauka Doobi.
After this film, Ranjana was in great demand, but she wanted to quit films and get married to live a simple life. She married a young and handsome writer Arvind Shukla. But after few months he fell sick and there was no income. So, she had to continue working in films till 1975. She also worked in many Marathi films. In all, she worked in about 35 films or so. Ranjana worked with many big stars of her times like, Prem Adeeb, Prithviraj Kapoor, Jairaj, Dilip kumar, Jeevan, Umakant etc etc
It is interesting to note that her sister and her brother in law acted with her in few films. Some such films were Zamin Asman-46 and Shadi se pehle-47. In film Saajan ka Ghar-48 all three had worked together.
We have many families like this in Hindi films. I remember Zubeida and her mother and sisters, Sitara Devi and her 2 sisters, Nargis,her mother and brothers, Kapoor family, Dilip kumar, his brother and sister in law, many film couples and families of several film people are examples. Ranjana was perhaps one early example.
Thank God this Ranjana was not around when yet another Ranjana came to Hindi films. She was Ranjana Deshmukh, niece of actress Sandhya(nee Vijaya Deshmukh). This Ranjana, however , worked mainly in Marathi films and did only 6 Hindi films starting with the Rajkamal Pictures’film “Ladki Sahyadri ki”-66. She was just 11 year old then.Her other films were Chaani-77, Jai Mahakali-79, Navratri-83, Jhanjhar-86 and lastly Upraant-87. Unfortunately, she first met with a car accident and then died of Heart attack at the age of just 44 years or so, on 3-3-2000.
The film’s Music Director Gobind Ram was a good composer, but he never got enough fame in the industry. There is a very good, but very long article on him in apnaarchieve.com, written by Vidur Suri. Here is an adapted short version for our readers.
In the pre-partition period of Hindi films, there were many schools of music directors, many times on a regional basis, but some were just unique. The Punjabi school of film composing was a very important and innovative school among these. This school gained popularity in the 1940s, which also resulted in the immense popularity of Punjabi folk music. Ghulam Haider was considered to be the most important of these, but equally great were Pandit Amarnath , Shyam Sundar , Husnlal – Bhagatram , G. A. Chishti , and Pandit Gobindram .
Pandit Gobindram Ji was a trained musician from Lahore, and was equally popular in both Hindi and Punjabi films. Unlike other music directors of the Punjabi school, music composed by him did not typically reflect native Punjabi trends, but instead lay firmly in the category of mainstream 1940s’ music. One could very well say that he played a crucial part in shaping the music of the 1940s. His music is truly melodious and varied, with a unique combination of highly expressive tunes, yet very fun and foot tapping and rhythmically catchy. He is one of the music directors who used a very large number of singers, only second to Gyan Dutt, one of his worthy contemporaries. He excelled equally in composing happy, sad, romantic, serious, comical, classical, just any kind of songs. It is a pity that he has never received the attention that he deserved.
Among his landmarks are the introduction of and enormous contribution to making Shamshad Begum and Zohrabai the top singers in Hindi films. He recorded the maximum number of Hindi film songs with Shamshad Begum – 86 songs in 19 films. He was also one of the foremost music directors to encourage and bring forward great veteran Rafi , and also introduced great singer Zeenat Begum to films. He has about 30 films to his credit and each one had equally superb music. Most popular singers of that period have graced his songs. His use of light music, Ghazals, Thumris and various popular music forms in films, provide a ready insight into the uniqueness of 1940s music, and with a slightly unique flavour of both his compositions as well as a tiny tinge of Punjabi style.
Pandit Gobindram Ji started his career with Jeevan Jyoti (1937), but his first Hindi film in the 1940s was Himmat (1941). Today, it is remembered for being the second ever Hindi film of veteran singer Shamshad Begum Ji, where she beautifully sang the traditional Dadra ‘Inhin Logon Ne Le Leena Dupatta Mora’ , in her young, sweet but powerful voice. The famous song with the same lyrics in Pakeezah (1972) is largely a copy of this song. This was the first song composed by Gobindram that helped him gain recognition. Other songs from this film included a beautiful duet by Ghulam Haider and Umraozia Begum , ‘Main Hoon Rani Ek Sunehri Nagri Ki’.
His last film was Naqaab-55. Gobindram worked with more than 30 lyricists during his career. With 56 songs in 8 films, his collaboration was the highest with Ishwar Chandra Kapoor. Some of the other prominent lyricists he worked with include Bharat Vyas , Ram Murti Chaturvedi , Ramesh Gupta , and Qamar Jalalabadi . (adapted from an article by Vidur Sury, with thanks).
Today’s song is sung by Shamshad Begum. It is 4th song from this film to be posted on this Blog.
Song-Ham kis’se karen shiqwa rona hai muqaddar mein (Hamaara Sansaar)(1945) Singer-Shamshad Begam, Lyrics-Ramesh Gupta, MD-Pt Govindram
Lyrics
hum kis’se karen shiqwa
rona hai muqaddar mein
hum kis’se karen shiqwa
rona hai muqaddar mein
kashti bahi jaati hai
toofaanon ke manjar mein
kashti bahi jaati hai
toofaanon ke manjar mein
hum kis’se karen shikwa
rona hai muqaddar mein
har taraf mere chhaayi hai
gham ki ghata kali
har taraf mere chhaayi hai
gham ki ghat kali
armaanon bhari duniya
kismat ne mita daali
armaanon bhari duniya
kismat ne mita daali
dil toot gaya mera
bas ek hi thokar mein
gulzaar e chaman n n n n n
ab to
ujda nazar aata hai
hai ae ae ae
gulzaar e chaman n n n
ab to
ujda nazar aata hai
ummeedon ke nakshe par
parda nazar aata hai
ummeedon ke nakshe par
parda nazar aata hai
mallaah bhi kehta hai
toofaan hai samandar mein
mallaah bhi kehta hai
toofaan hai samandar mein
kashti bahi jaati hai
toofaanon ke manjar mein
hum kis’se karen shiqwa
rona hai muqaddar mein
3 Responses to "Ham kis se karen shiqwa rona hai muqaddar mein"
May 19, 2020 at 12:16 pm
Arun Ji, Thanks for the post giving many snippets from lives of artistes from Hindi films. I could recall Vasant Joglekar from his film ‘Aaaj aur Kal’ ( I liked the movie, with good music by Ravi)
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Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
May 17, 2020 at 9:05 am
Culled information very enriching in every aspect. My Salaam for great write up.
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May 17, 2020 at 9:06 am
Thank you ji.
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