Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs

Hans kar hansaa mastee mein gaa

Posted on: March 5, 2024


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.

Blog Day :

5709 Post No. : 18227 Movie Count :

4959

Every year, hundreds of Hindi feature films are certified by Censor Board of Film Certification (CBFC). Just for a sample check, I found that for the years 1951-1980, on an average, 100-120 Hindi features films had been certified/released. I am sure the number of Hindi films certified/released in the subsequent decades must have increased significantly. There were many Hindi feature films which had been shot but got shelved or remained incomplete or if completed, remained unreleased. I checked on the websites of Indian Motion Pictures Producers Association (IMPPA) and Producers Guild of India (GUILD) for the list of such films. Unfortunately, no such information is available on the website. It is one more example of the poor upkeep of film related statistics.

There are many reasons as to why films get shelved or remain incomplete and if completed, remain unreleased. But the generic reason is the way the films were made until few years back. Normally, till the end of the last century, a film was shot in driblets as the main actors would give dates for shooting for days normally ranging between 5-10 days at a time and the actors would get paid according to the progress of the film. Those days, the popular star-actors would sign the films in good numbers because of the lure of signing amount. This would result the clash of dates of the main actors thus delaying the shooting and increasing the film’s production cost. The net result of these systems was that a film could take an average 18-36 months. The longer the time to complete a film, the bigger will be the risk associated with the completion of the film apart from other risk associated with filmmaking.

I have gone through the articles on our Blog which has so far covered around 80 unreleased (UR) films including shelved and incomplete films. I have also gone through some on-line articles covering a few specific films of such categories. Based on the information from these articles wherever the reasons for such films were spelt out, I have listed below 5 broad categories of reasons which led to films remaining incomplete or shelved and completed but remained unreleased.

1. Financial constraint : When the films take longer time than expected to complete or the allocated budget for the film is exceeded during the making of the films, the producers/financiers have to provide additional funds to complete the films. If they failed to arrange the additional finance, the films remain incomplete and finally shelved. One of the shelved films mentioned under this reason is Ramesh Sippy’s mid-1980s multi-starer, ‘Zameen’ with Vinod Khanna, Rajnikanth, Sanjay Dutt, Madhuri Dixit and Sridevi. The film exceeded the budget during the making of the film and it was reported that financiers/distributors refused to provide further finance for the film. Another film was J P Dutta’s ‘Sarhad’ which was shelved in 1976 due to budget constraint when nearly 50% of the film’s shooting was completed.

2. Creative differences and Compatibility Issues: Creative differences and compatibility issues can arise between the producer and director, between director and main actors and among the main actors. If they are not sorted out, one of them would leave the film which can result in the suspension of the film’s shooting. If the alternative arrangements are not made in time, the film remains incomplete or shelved. An interesting case under this reason was K Asif’s film, ‘Jaanwar’ with Dilip Kumar pairing with Suraiya for the first time. This film started its shooting sometime in early 1950s. It was reported that Suraiya did not like the handling of a bold scene by Dilip Kumar with her and she felt that film’s director was hand in gloves with him because of many retakes of the bold scenes between Dilip Kumar and Suraiya. She felt humiliated and left the shooting in a huff never to return. The film was shelved. ‘Shiqwaa’ (1950s) with Dilip Kumar and Nutan in the lead role was on near completion when the film was stalled due to reported differences between film’s director, Ramesh Saigal and the producer, Makhan Lal Jain of Filmkar Productions. Dilip Kumar was also upset with the producer as he was planning to start a film with more or less the similar story of K Asif’s ‘Mughal-e-Azam’ (1960) which was under production.

3. Lack of film’s qualitative progress: After the filming of few scenes, if the director, especially when he is also the producer, feels unhappy about the way the film is shaping up due to weak script or underperformances of the lead actors, two things can happen during this stage. Either the film is shelved or it is reshot with changes in script or the lead actor/s as the case may be. In the second option, there is a danger of film’s budget getting exceeded. In the absence of alternative funding arrangements, the film may remain incomplete for indefinite period. Guru Dutt’s ‘Gauri’ with Geeta Dutt in the title role in 1957 and ‘Raaz’ with Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehman in 1959 were shelved after shooting few scenes when he realised that the films were not shaping well as per his liking.

4. Unforeseen Reasons: Apart from financial and creative risks, the filmmaker also faces some unforeseen problems in completing the film. During the partition in 1947, many Hindi films under productions, both at Mumbai and Lahore were affected due to sudden migration of the main actors and core technicians. Some films remained incomplete while a few of the affected films were remade with new actors. The death of the main actors, producer and director may result in inordinate delay in completng the film. The most talked about film under this reason was K Asif’s ‘Love and God’. After the success of ‘Mughal-E-Azam’ (1960), K Asif started filming ‘Love And God’ with Guru Dutt in the lead role some time in 1962. The film was near its completion when Guru Dutt passed away in October 1964. K Asif started shooting afresh with Sanjeev Kumar. K Asif passed away in 1971 leaving the film abandoned. Finally, K Asif’s wife with the financial help from producer, K C Bokadia decided to revive the film. But before the shooting started, Sanjeev Kumar passed away in 1985. The film was released in incomplete form in 1986. ‘Chaalaak’ was started around 1961 with Raj Kapoor and Madhubala in the lead roles. The film was nearly 50% complete when Madhubala could not report for shooting due to her health issues. The film was delayed. The film got shelved after Madhubala passed away in 1969.

There are some other unforeseen reasons for films to get stalled. Muzaffar Ali’s ‘Zooni’, shooting of which had started in 1988, remained incomplete due to insurgency in Kashmir valley. Tinu Anand’s ‘Shinaakht’ which started shooting in 1988 with Amitabh Bachchan and Madhuri Dixit in the lead roles, was shelved when the director found that the story of the film was almost similar to Manmohan Desai’s ‘Ganga Jamuna Saraswati’ (1988).

5. Films completed but remain unreleased: The reasons for completed films remaining unreleased range from CBFC objections, creative differences between the producer and director, financial/legal disputes, and distributors not showing intererst in releasing the films on commercial consideration. Gulzar’s ‘Libaas’ was completed in 1988. The film’s producer, Vikas Mohan wanted the director, Gulzar to change the film’s climax which he refused. Producer, therefore, decided not to release the film. It was, however, shown in the International Film Festivals. Anurag Kashyap’s ‘Paanch’ (2001) failed to get CBFC certification because of the depiction of excessive violence and use of fowl language. After some cuts, CBFC cleared the film, but it remained unreleased. Muzaffar Ali’s ‘Anjuman’ (1986) remained unreleased as he did not get any film distributor to release the film.

There was a crucial case of the film, ‘Aag Kaa Daryia’ (1991 UR) which was completed after a long delay. The film’s shooting started in 1984 with Dilip Kumar, Rekha, Padmini Kolhapure, Rajiv Kapoor and Amrish Puri. The film was progressing very well under the direction of S V Rajendra Singh Babu when the producer, Venkataraman passed away. It took time to arrange fresh finance for the film during which Rajendra Krishan, the film’s screenplay-dialogue-song writer passed away. The film was completed and got censor certificate in 1991. The film’s trailer was also released. However, at the last moment, one of the financiers/distributors raised the financial disputes which led to the film remaining unreleased. (Source: ‘The Scroll’, 11/12/2022).

In the recent years, due to corporatisation of the film production and distribution, some professionalism has come among the makers and distributors in Hindi film industry. Artists and crew members have become committed to a film with ‘start to finish’ schedules of shooting. With high budget being the order of the day, films are generally produced by a consortium of film production companies to minimise the financial risk. A film is normally completed in less than a year with a planned release date in advance in most of the films under production. With the corporate approach to making films, the number of shelved or incomplete films seems to have been reduced.

‘Behroopiya’ (UR) was one of the shelved films of the early 1960s. Some details of the film were mentioned in the credit titles of ‘Film Hi Film’ (1983) in which one song from ‘Behroopiya’ was used as a part of the story. As per the details, ‘Behroopiya’ was produced by Navinchandra Shah under the banner of Chandra Movie and was directed by Nandlal Jaswantlal. The film had Raj Kapoor and Vyjayantimala in the lead roles. Lyrics for the song was written by Shailendra and and the music director was Shankar-Jaikishan. The film was Chandulal Shah presentation and the year of production was stated to be 1964.

I have a doubt about the 1964 as the year of production of ‘Behroopiya’. Nandalal Jaswantlal passed away sometime in 1961 and Chandulal Shah took over as a director to complete the film, ‘Akeli Mat Jaiyo’ (1963). This suggests that ‘Behroopiya’ was shot sometime in 1960-61. Most probably, the film was left incomplete after the death of its director, Nandlal Jaswantlal and later shelved in the background of the box office failure of ‘Akeli Mat Jaiyo’ (1963). Well, ‘Behroopiya’ may have inspired Raj Kapoor to produce and direct ‘Mera Naam Joker’ (1971).

I am presenting the only song, ‘hans kar hasaa masti mein gaa’ from the shelved film, ‘Behroopiya’ (1961)UR) which was shot for the film. The song was rendered by Manna Dey on the words of Shailendra which was set to music by Shankar-Jaikishan. At 2:33 of the video clip, dancer, Edwina is seen with Raj Kapoor. The song was included as a part of ‘Film Hi Film’ (1983) and Universal Music released the audio clip of the song in 2013.

Video Clip:

Audio Clip:

Song-Hans kar hansaa masti mein gaa (Behroopiya)(UR)(1961) Singer-Manna Dey, Lyrics-Shailendra, MD-Shankar Jaikishan
Chorus

Lyrics:

O ho o
o ho o
haa aa aa aa
o ho ho o
hee hee hee hee hee hee
hee heeheehee hee hee hee hee
hahahahaha
hahahahahaha

aa ha ha hahahahaa

hans kar hansaa
masti mein gaa
hans kar hansa
masti mein gaa
kal hogaa kyaa
hogaa kyaa
bhool jaa
hans kar hansaa
masti mein gaa
kal hoga kyaa
hogaa kyaa
bhool jaa
hans kar hansaa

hahahahaha
hahahaha

jaadoo bhari
ik shaam hai
phir uske aage kuchh bhi nahin
iss dil mein bhi
laakhon hain gham
par tumse badh ke kuchh bhi nahin
duniyaa kaa dil
behlaaye jaa
kal hogaa kyaa
hogaa kyaa
bhool jaa
hans kar hansaa
masti mein gaa
kal hogaa kyaa
hogaa kyaa
bhool jaa
hans kar hansaa

apni hansi
apni khushi
tum pe nichchaawar karke chaley
chhoti si jaan
itni si lau
deep se phir bhi deep jaley
duniyaa ko tu
kuchh deke jaa
kal hogaa kyaa
hogaa kyaa
bhool jaa
hans kar hansaa
masti mein gaa
kal hogaa kyaa
hogaa kyaa
bhool jaa
hans kar hansaa

hahahaha
hahahaha

2 Responses to "Hans kar hansaa mastee mein gaa"

Kamath Sir,

You’ve touched upon a significant subject in your writeup. Unreleased Hindi films offer a poignant reflection of the industry’s volatile landscape, where creative ambitions often collide with practical constraints. Each unreleased film carries a narrative of lost potential and unfulfilled dreams, highlighting the fragility and resilience inherent in the art of cinema.

Even completed films may languish unreleased due to various factors, from regulatory hurdles to distribution disputes. Examples like Gulzar’s ‘Libaas‘ and Anurag Kashyap’s ‘Paanch‘ demonstrate the challenges of navigating censorship and commercial considerations in the film industry. Yet, filmmakers like them could leverage OTT channels, making minor script adjustments, to potentially recover costs and reach audiences in innovative ways.

Thanks for such a wonderful write-up on a less-discussed subject.

Gandhi Vadlapatla

Like

Gandhi Vadlapatla ji,

Thanks for your appreciation.

I agree that the OTT platforms have considerably reduced the risk of completed films remaining unreleased.

Liked by 1 person

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