Ae dil meri jaan
Posted on: December 14, 2023
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, 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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Happy birthday to Biswajeet (born December 14, 1936), the ‘chocolate hero’ of the 1960s on completing 87 years of age today. Kolkata born Biswajeet got his first break in a Bengali film, ‘Kangsha’ (1958). By 1962, he did about a dozen Bangla films before he shifted to Mumbai.
Biswajeet commenced his career in Hindi films with a box office hit film, ‘Bees Saal Baad’ (1962), produced by Hemant Kumar. Since then, his Hindi film career has travelled through the genres, first the suspense/thriller, followed by the musical romance and then to social/drama. His made-up girl’s character in the song ‘kajra mohabbat wala in ‘Kismat’ (1968) was a trend setter for Rishi Kapoor (‘Rafoo Chakkar’- 1975), Amitabh Bachchan (‘Laawaaris’-1981), Sanjay Dutt (‘Mera Faisla’-1984), Govinda (‘Aunty No.1’-1998) etc. He also became a trend setter in fashion with his all-white look that included white shoes. Jeetendra and Govinda later seem to have followed him to some extent.
I used to wonder as to how the Kolkata-born Biswajeet could speak his Hindi dialogues more or less fluently. The reason was that his father being an army doctor, he was on frequent transfers to places like Lucknow, Meerut, Lahore, Karachi etc where Biswajeet had spent his childhood.
Biswajeet had a spate of suspense films like ‘Bin Badal Barsaat’ (1963), ‘Kohra’ (1964), ‘Ye Raat Phir Na Aayegi’ (1966), ‘Jaal” (1967) etc which led to getting him branded as a ‘suspense hero’. In order to avoid the tag of the ‘suspense hero’, Biswajit did films in the genre of musical romance, like ‘April Fool’ (1964), ‘Mere Sanam’ (1965), ‘Do Dil’ (1965), ‘Night in London’ (1967), ‘Kismat’ (1968) etc. Biswajit also went on to do social/family drama films like ‘Kaise Kahoon’ (1964), ‘Sagaai’ (1966), ‘Do Kaliyaan’ (1968) ‘Paisa yaa Pyaar’ (1969), ‘Pyaar Ka Sapna’ (1969), ‘Main Sunder Soon’ (1971) etc. Most of his films were box office success. He also did few Bengali films during 1960s and 1970s. At one time, Biswajeet had a good number of films under production, requiring him to shuttle between Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.
Biswajeet turned producer-director with ‘Kahten Hain Mujhko Raja’ (1975) with star-studded cast that included Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Shatrughan Sinha and Rekha, apart from himself. The film flopped at the box office resulting in heavy financial losses. Post 1975, he did about two dozen of Hindi films but most of his films of this period failed to make much impression on the audience. Also, by this time, Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan, Jeetendra had given him the tough competition for the lead roles under top film production banners. He then switched over to the supporting roles in a few films. During his Hindi film career, he worked in 63 films, his last film being, ‘Aa Dekhen Zara’ (2009) in a guest role. His son, Prosenjit Chatterjee is a supper star of Bangla films.
How would have evolved Biswajeet’s Hindi film career if he had accepted the role of Bhootnath in ‘Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulaam’ (1962) is anybody’s guess. Biswajeet, in an interview, has revealed that Guru Dutt offered him the role when he saw his performance as Bhootnath in the Bangla play, ‘Sahib Biwi Gholam’ at Kolkata. He was called to Mumbai and was introduced to the main cast of the film. His friends, however, dissuaded him from accepting the role as they feared that due to whimsical nature of Guru Dutt, the film may get shelved. Instead, he accepted Hemant Kumar’s offer of ‘Bees Saal Baad’ (1962).
One of the unusual roles Biswajeet played in Hindi film was in ‘Raahgir’ (1969) in which he was a wandering young man in search of the meaning of the life. His performance was critically acclaimed. But the film flopped on the box office front. Another film in which Biswajeet had an unusual role was ‘Do Shikaari’ (1979) in which he played the role of a hunter in the wild African forest. Originally started with the title, ‘Anjaane Safar’ in 1969, the film was held up for nearly a decade reportedly due to the problem with the Censor Board. Finally, the film got the Censor Certificate on March 15, 1978, and was released on December 14, 1979.
‘Do Shikaari’ (1979) was produced and directed by Kuldeep Pal. The star cast included Biswajeet and the newcomer, Rekha in the lead roles with supporting actors, Vinod Khanna, Amjad Khan, Joginder, Keshto Mukherjee, Alka, Padma Khanna etc. The film flopped on the box office front but became famous for the controversy during the shooting in which Rakha was kissed by Biswajeet without her consent. Apparently, the scene got deleted by the censor board. Biswajeet has recently clarified that he did the scene as told by the director and agreed that Rekha’s consent was not taken.
The gist of the story of the film is as under:
The film is about unearthing of a treasure lying in Solomon’s Mines in Africa. Zorro (Amjad Khan) is after that treasure for the last 10 years without any trace of the route to reach. Sunita’s (Rekha) father has the map of reaching the hidden treasure. So, Zorro kidnaps Sunita’s father, and as a ransom, he pressurises Sunita to meet two hunters, Ranjeet (Biswajeet) and Satish (Vinod Khanna) in the African forest in the guise of searching her missing brother. She reaches Africa with the map and meets Ranjeet to help her in searching her missing brother. There is an offer of a huge money in case the brother is located which interests Satish. But Ranjeet refuses to help her by saying that he has more pressing work on hand.
With lot of persuasion, Ranjeet agrees to search for Sunita’s brother. He, Satish and Sunita travel in the dense forest of Africa facing the wild animals, hostile villagers and above all, the treachery by Satish who gets to know the route to reach Solomon’s Mines on a hill. In the meanwhile, Zorro with his men also reaches the African forest to keep a tag on the progress of the search for treasure.
Ranjeet gets hold of a local tribesman who knows the route to the Solomon’s hill. The entire group reaches the cave where they find one man (Mac Mohan) already on the job to search for the lost treasure. Now the secret is out that the search is for the hidden treasurer and not for the missing brother. Ranjeet has no interest on the lost treasure, but Satish gets greedy. He goes with the man (Mac Mohan) and after a long and treacherous walk, he finds the boxes of treasure. They are extremely elated. However, Ranjeet comes and tell them that the tribesman who had shown the route has vanished. Now the problem is how to get out of the cave.
Somehow, Satish finds out the outlet to come out of the cave. While one by one all persons are being taken out of the cave, Satish refuse to help Ranjeet to come out the cave as he wants him to die in the cave so that he gets the entire treasure. After a fierce fight with Satish, Ranjeet comes out of the cave to find that Zorro with his gang has already taken Sunita in their custody to force Ranjeet to take them to the treasure. However, local tribesmen with their weapons surround and overpower Zorro and his men. Zorro is taken into custody by the tribals for the death penalty, and Ranjeet and Sunita become their guests.
The tribal belief that those who tries to take out the hidden treasure never come back alive become once again true in the case of Zorro and Satish.
When the film had commenced shooting in 1969, Biswajeet was one of the top stars in Hindi films and Vinod Khanna was a newcomer having worked only in a couple of films. This was Rekha’s first film. When the film was released in 1979, Biswajit was at the start of his fading phase while Vinod Khanna was rising in status. Rekha had already become a star. Had the film was released on time, it would have become Rakha’s first released film.
‘Do Shikaari’ (1979) had 7 songs written by Jan Nisar Akhtar (3), Rahi Massom Reza (2), Ashk Jallandari (1) and Unknown (1). All the songs were set to music by Chitragupt. One song from the film has been covered in the Blog. I present the second song from the film, ‘ae dil meri jaan teri manzil hai kahaan’ to appear on the Blog, The song is written by Jan Nisar Akhtar and rendered by Biswajit, the only song he rendered for Hindi film. This is the background song when Biswajeet and Rekha travel in the safari jeep on their way to search for the treasure in the African forest.
Despite being a good singer, Biswajit avoided singing for himself in his Hindi films. The reason given by him was that he felt that Mohammed Rafi and Kishore Kumar were much better singers than him. However, when his friend and producer-director Kuldeep Pal insisted on him to sing a background song in this film, he agreed. Incidentally, during the lean phase of his filmy career, especially after 1980s, he started stage shows of his singing all over India. He has also to his credit some non-film song albums.
Video Clip:
Audio Clip:
Song-Ae dil meri jaan (Do Shikaari)(1979) Singer-Vishwajeet, Lyrics-Jaan Nisaar Akhtar, MD-Chitragupta
Lyrics
ae dil meri jaan
teri manzil hai kahaan
ae dil meri jaan
teri manzil hai kahaan
raahbar na raahi hai
door tak siyaahi hai
raaste sabhi hain anjaane
anjaana har samaa
ae dil meri jaan
teri manzil hai kahaan
raat din tujhe hai kiski justjoo
dard ban gayi ye kiski aarzoo
raat din tujhe hai kiski justjoo
dard ban gayi ye kiski aarzoo
armaan hai kyun deewaane
koi inhen kaise jaane
tuhi apna raazdaar
ae dil meri jaan
teri manzil hai kahaan
dhool hai zameen dhuaan hai aasmaan
khauf ka agar iraade hain jawaan
dhool hai zameen dhuaan hai aasmaan
khauf ka agar iraade hain jawaan
aandhi ho yaa ke toofaan
dam bhar ke sab hain mehmaan
nahi rukte kaarwaan
ae dil meri jaan
teri manzil hai kahaan
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
December 14, 2023 at 9:16 pm
Thanks Sadanand ji for the detailed post on Biswajeet`s birthday, Enjoyed reading very much
(Indian Radio channels did not remembered him on his birthday, by broadcasting atleast one of his songs till now, still waiting for that moment……….
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