Aao chalen us paar sajni
Posted on: June 1, 2020
This article is written by Arunkumar Deshmukh, a fellow enthusiast 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 film Pattharon ka Saudagar-1944. The film was made by Minerva Movietone. It was a Costume drama, directed by a Debutant Director Shorey Daulatlavi, who was earlier a Cinematographer with Minerva. Sohrab Modi was not known to be a generous person or one who encouraged Talent development in his staff. All his decisions were made on the basis of financial considerations. No wonder, he paid this novice quite a low wage. After this film, Daulatlavi got attached to Navyug Pictures and directed three more films, namely Din Raat-45, Paro-47 and Saajan ka Ghar-48.
The Music Director was Meer Saheb. During the period of 1937-38, C Ramchandra ( he was only Ram Chitalkar those days) worked in Minerva Movietone and had the opportunity of working under Meer Saheb. He wrote in his Marathi Autobiography, ” Meer Saheb was a good person and a good Musician, but problem with him was that he would forget the tune set in the evening by next morning. When I joined him, I used to write the Tune’s notation immediately, so that his problem was taken care of. He was very much pleased with me for this “.
Out of seven songs in the movie , five were written by Lyricist Gaafil Harnalvi and two by Sudarshan. The cast of the film was Al Nasir, Meena, Paresh Banerjee, Sheela, Sankatha Prasad, K N Singh, Jilloo, Balraj Mehta and others.
Though this film came from Minerva Movietone, one of the famous and successful movie studios of India, film Pattharon ka Saudagar (1944) was a failure. Almost every successful and famous studio faced this problem of flops. Minerva actually had started with a big flop movie, ‘Atma Tarang-37 ‘ and there were two earlier flop movies made by Modi, under different banner,- Hamlet-35 and Sayeed E Havas-36. Even in later stage, Minerva’s films like Main Haari-40, Phir Milenge-42 and Dr. kumar-44 had flopped. Even Minerva’s ambitious last big film Jhansi ki Rani-53 had failed.
In case of another famous company, Prabhat Films, films like Dharmatma-35, Ramshastri-44 etc had flopped. Similarly, New Theatres of Calcutta had flop films like their first 3 films and later Nartaki-41, Meenakshi-42 and Anjangarh-48 were flops.
One more point of films’ success or failure is, how other films, made around same time fared in its competetion. In 1944, quite a good number of successful films had been released and they gave a tough competetion to PKS. Some of the notable films of 1944 were….Bhanwara, a quicky made by Kidar Sharma for Ranjit (it was reportedly made in 9 days flat, as per Kidar Sharma, in his autobiography), featuring Saigal. Naturally, his songs made the film popular. Film Bharthari became popular for Surendra’s songs. Chal Chal re Naujawan was Filmistan’s first venture. Chaand was first film of Husnlal-Bhagatram ( first time Prabhat hired a non Marathi composer). Daasi had good songs under Pt. Amarnath.
Draupadi was first film of Sushila Rani, who sang all 9 songs in the film. It was directed by her mentor-and husband, later – Baburao Patel. Irada was the first film for Hemant Kumar’s first Hindi playback song. Fazli Brothers- the pioneers of Muslim socials in India released Ismat-first such film in Bombay by them. Their earlier 2 films were from Calcutta. Bombay Talkies gave Jwar Bhata- Dilip Kumar’s first film. Surprisingly, Agha was the leading man opposite Shamim and Dilip kumar was the second Hero opposite another debutante Mrudula.
Krishna Bhakta Bodana was the only film of the Revolutionary singer from Surat- Master Vasant Amrit. Lal Haveli of Nurjehan, in which C Ramchandra sang one song for Mir Saheb-his old boss from Minerva. Shalimar’s Mann ki Jeet featured their star Neena again. New Theatre’s My Sister with Saigal’s song in the music of Pankaj Mullick was famous. Shantaram’s Parbat pe apna dera had Amirbai’s career best song “Pareshan hoon ke kyun meri pareshani Nahi jaati “. Prabhat’s Ramshastri directed by Gajanan Jahagirdar and film Uss Paar with the first duet of Mukesh with Kusum Mantri were also there. With all these films, the mediocre Pattharon ka Saudagar had no chance to succeed at all.
A very odd name in the cast can be seen- Balraj Mehta. I am sure,hardly anyone has ever heard his name, but he was a very active person in his life. Born on 22-4-1918 at Lahore, he was the son of Sukh Dayal Mehta – Superintendent in the Commissioner’s office at Lahore. He completed Matriculation from Central Model High School and B.A. from Dayal Singh College of Lahore in 1939.
He was active in Students’ union and held General Secretary’s post of Punjab University Students’ Union, in 35-37. He organised All India Student Federation conference in 36/37. He was a born Leader. He was interested in acting on stage. In 1944, he founded Indian National Theatre (I.N.T.), which is a very famous institution in India now also. He wrote, directed and produced its first stage drama ” Aawaaz” in 1945.
By now he was married and needed to earn money. He joined film line. He acted first in “Dulla Batti” in 1939-40. Then came Sajjan-41,Panna-44, Parakh-44, Pattharon ka Saudagar-44, Gulami-45 and lastly Pul-47.In the period 1944-45, he also became Secretary of Film Artistes’ Association and served it for a long time. In 1947, he entered Politics. After Independence, he became a journalist. After this I found his name in the cast of film Ayodhyapati-56 and then as a Director of film Trunk Call-1960. However, there is no information about him after this.
The second Heroine of this Costume drama was Sheela. She was a find of Sohrab Modi himself. SHEELA(real name-Roshan Ara) was born on 13-3-1925 at Sholapur-Maharashtra. Her father was Station Master at Sholapur Rly.Stn.
Once Sohrab Modi had come to Sholapur with his Drama company. He went to the station to do reservations and saw Sheela. They got to know each others and he proposed to give her roles in his films.Thus Sheela came to Bombay in 1936 and Joined Minerva Movietone as a singer/actress.
Her first film was Khan Bahadur-37, in which she sang and acted. Then came Jailor-38 in which she sang 4 solo songs under MD Mir Sahib.Then Divorce and Meetha Zahar came.
She became famous only after her songs in Pukar-39. Bharosa, Wasiyat and Sikander also gave her name and fame. In Sikander she had 6 songs out of total 7 songs. The famous song ‘ zindagi hai pyar se’ also had her voice in the chorus. She was Heroine in film ‘ Vaseeyat’-40
Ulti Ganga, Bhakta Raidas, Prithvi Vallabh,and Patharon ka Saudagar were all Minerva films.
She had also done films elsewhere. Viz:Alladin and wonderful lamp, College Girl, Gaibi Gola, Jahan ara, Keemti qurbani, Sansar naiya, Shaitan ka pash etc.
After 1943, she almost stopped working. Only in Beete Din-47 and lastly in Billi-49 she sang songs., which was a stunt film of Nadia and Cavas.
She had married the actor Rama Shukla, in 1947. He was a Kanauji Brahmin and they had terrible opposition to their marriage. The marriage was by Registration. Only 4 friends were present in the marriage. They had one son and one daughter. Rama Shukla died by Heart attack in the 50s.
Her voice had a peculiar mixture of Muslim style of Amirbai karnataki and Marathi slant od Shanta Apte.
There is an anecdote with one of her songs. When film Pukar was in the making, C.Ramchandra was working as an assistant to MD Meer Saheb. He has mentioned in his autobiography also that in the absence of Meer saheb, he used to insert his tunes to songs as Meer saheb’s. This was known to many, except, may be, Meer saheb himself. One of the very popular songs sung by Sheela ” Tum bin hamri kaun khabar le” was actually composed by C.Ramchandra. This is supposed to be C Ramchandra’s first composed song. The credit ,of course, went to Meer Saheb.
Let us now listen to today’s song. It is a duet of Rajkumari and Sheela. I liked this song. May be you will also like it. With this song, film Patthron ka Saudagar makes its Debut on the Blog.
Song-Aao chalen uss paar sajni (Paattharon Ka Saudaagar)(1944) Singers- Sheela, Rajkumari, Lyricist- Sudarshan MD-Meer Saheb
Lyrics
Aao chalen uss paar sajni
aao chalen us paar
aao chalen uss paar sajni
aao chalen us paar
kaah karoon mann maane naahin
kaah karoon mann maane naahin
daude baarambaar sajni
daude baarambaar sajni
aao chalen uss paar
aao chalen uss paar sajni
aao chalen us paar
aao chalen uss paar sajni
aao chalen us paar
wo duniya albeli si hai
uski reet ?? si hai
wo duniya albeli si hai
uski reet ?? si hai
wo to ek paheli si hai
wo to ek paheli si hai
jo koi jaane jo koi samjhe
jo koi jaane jo koi samjhe
pahunche ?? sajni
pahunche ?? sajni
aao chalen us paar
Aao chalen uss paar sajni
aao chalen us paar
Aao chalen uss paar sajni
aao chalen us paar
parbat ooncha dariya gahra
kadam kadam par ?? pahra
parbat ooncha dariya gahra
kadam kadam par ?? pahra
?? sunahra
?? sunahra
usmein baitha sundar sundar
mohan raajkumaar sajni
usmein baitha sundar sundar
mohan raajkumaar sajni
aao chalen us paar
aao chalen uss paar sajni
aao chalen us paar
aao chalen uss paar sajni
aao chalen us paar
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
June 1, 2020 at 8:44 am
Got to know some very interesting facts. Thanks.
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June 1, 2020 at 10:04 am
Thanks for your comments.
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June 1, 2020 at 10:04 am
Thanks for your comments.
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