Aaye piharwaa aaye aaye
Posted on: July 3, 2024
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.
|
Blog Day : |
5829 | Post No. : | 18371 |
Today’s song is a duet from an 85 year old comedy film-Ladies Only-1939.
This film was made by Sagar Movietone. Sagar came up very fast in the film industry and then it got eclipsed also very fast within about 10 years. Starting with Sagar Film Company, it made 12 silent films. Its first Talkie film was Veer Abhimanyu in 1931. By 1940 , Sagar had made 52 Hindi films, 5 Tamil films, 4 Gujarati films, 3 Telugu films and 1 each in Punjabi and Bengali languages. Then it merged with National Studios and made 16 films under this banner.
The year 1939 was the best year for Sagar Movietone, as they made 7 films and 4 films were in the final stages for next year. In the early era of Indian film making, producers freely used the themes and stories from the Hollywood movies, as if they were made for their inspiration only ! Today’s film Ladies Only-1939 was a comedy driven film using the central theme of a Hollywood film ” How to marry a Millionaire”-1937. By the way , there was another movie in Hindi with the same title ” Ladies Only aka Titlee’ in 1951.
Sagar was the first to use 3 Heroines in this film. It was released on 16-2-1939. The film was successful and they used 3 Heroes and 3 Heroines in their next film- Ek Hi Raasta-1939. Today’s film had the cast of Sabita devi, Surendra, Bibbo, Prabha, Harish, kaushalya, Bhudo Advani, Sunalini Devi and many others. The Music was provided by Anupam Ghatak ably assisted by Ashok Ghosh. Sagar used to make repeat films with successful pairs, for example Sabita Devi and Motilal made 9 films and Bibbo and Surendra made 6 films here. In the film Ladies Only-1939, Surendra, Bibbo and Sabita Devi came together.
Sabita Devi was an Anglo-Indian. Her real name was Irene Maude Gasper. In those days, most Non-Hindu artistes took up Hindu names, obviously for Pan-India acceptance. The people did not know their real names. This was understandable, but even many Hindu artistes took new names. This system continues even today. Some examples are…..
Vanmala (real name Susheela Pawar), Lalita Pawar ( Ambu/Ambika), Sandhya (Vujaya Deshmukh), Nishi (Krishna Kohli), Manna Dey (Prabodh Chandra), Bina Rai (Krishna Sarin), Surendra (Surendra Nath Sharma), Kamini kaushal (Uma Sood Kashyap), Vijayalakshmi (Kamla Varma), Mohan Choti (Sakharam Deshmukh), Nana Patekar (Vishwanath) Shekhar (Indriya Daman), etc. etc.
After this film, Sabita Devi Left Sagar Movietone. The director Sarvottam Badami also left and started his own Sudama Pictures. Perhaps they knew that very soon Sagar was to merge with National Studios. The story of this film, as appeared in the April 1939 issue of Film India and adapted by our Sadanand ji Kamath 7 years ago was….
Three girls from three different states, Bengal, Gujarat and Punjab viz. Chhaaya (Prabha, Bengali), Sarojini (Sabita Devi, Gujarati) and Asha (Bibbo, Punjabi), meet at a railway station in Bombay (Mumbai). They decide to stay together for their boarding and lodging for which they rent a flat. Satish (Surendra) also meets these girls who come to know that he is passionate about music and stays opposite their rented flat.
The girls staying together for sometime now know each other’s nature. Asha, the Punjabi girl is crude, greedy, music lover, lazy, comfort seeker etc. Chhaaya, the Bengali girl is miser, coy, primitive, and childish. Sarojini, the Gujarati girl, is educated, resourceful and has a great organisational capacity but these are all at the expense of the other two girls. They also display one-upmanship about their respective states.
All the three girls not only live together, they also aim at the same man, Satish who spends much of his time with these girls either on outings or in their rented flat. One day, girls decide to visit his house across the street without notice and find a stout woman welcoming the girls. The stout woman turns out to be Satish’s wife. It is shocking for the girls. The girls walk out of the house muttering something derogatory about the men folk in general.
Two names in the cast of this film must be less known to most readers. One is – Prabha. Here is some information on her……
Prabha Rajpal was from a respectable Hindu family of Punjab. She was born on 6-6-1915 at Ludhiana. Her father Rajpal was a high ranking government officer based at Lahore. All her education was done in Lahore. She was fluent in Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi and English.
Right from childhood, she was keen on working in films. Being an orthodox family, there was opposition, but despite all this she entered films and her first film was Jung Bahadur aka DareDevil-1935. After doing some films like Dilawar-36, Awakening-36, she left Bhavnani camp and worked in Minerva’s film Atma Tarang-37 as a Heroine opposite Sohrab Modi. She was very beautiful. Then she joined Sagar and worked in films like Gramophone singer-38, ladies only-39, Civil marriage-40. Later she became a freelancer.
In all she worked in 36 films in her career. She got married to a Cinematographer Virender Ahuja and settled down after the film Veerangana-47.
When her husband was one of the producers, she worked in the film Shrimati ji-52 and then retired from films. She died on 12-3-1975.
The other less known name is Sunalini Devi. Sunalini Devi, the actress, was born on 1-1-1896 in Hyderabad Deccan. Her father, Aghornath Chatopadhyay-a Bengali settled in Hyderabad – was a Sanskrit scholar, was proficient in 27 languages and was the first Indian to get the D.Sc. honour. Sunalini was the elder sister of Sarojini, who became Sarojini Naidu after her marriage, and Harindranath Chattopadhyay-renowned poet.
Sunalini learnt Music and Dance from her third year of age itself. Due to her sweet voice, she was called ‘ Kokila ‘. It is to be noted that her younger sister Saojini Naidu was called ‘ Nightingale of India’ ! It is unfortunate that the film industry did not use Sunalini’s music skill in her films and she sang just one song in her career in the film ‘ Raja Rani-(1942)’.
Sunalini started acting in stage dramas from 1918. Her first movie was ” Light of Asia”-released initially in Germany and Poland in 1925 ( its restored version was released on 5th July 2001, in India. ) This film was made by Himanshu Rai. The film was shot in Lahore. It was a silent film on Gautama the Buddha. Her first Talkie film was ‘ veer Kunal-(1932)’. She acted in 56 films. Mostly she was known for motherly roles only. She had, like her more eminent sister, married a south Indian- Mr.A.S.Rajan, a writer from Madras.
Some of her more known films are Aurat,Lalaji, Inkaar, Nai Roshni, Talaash, Bairam khan, Tamasha, Dilruba, Malhar etc etc. Her last film was Chingari-(1955). She retired from films in 1956.
Let us take a look at the film scene in 1939…..
The year was 1939 and the British Government had declared war against Germany and Japan, as soon as the WW II began. All countries ruled by Britain were – willingly or unwillingly, drawn into the war efforts and its effects. The war began in the month of September and soon various restrictions came into operation – like rationing, blackouts, shortages etc. The film industry which was still under its development stage suffered. It also realised the importance of remaining united as one industry. However, all that came after 1 or 2 years. In 1939 there was not much effect seen on the film industry.
The industry had its own problems. In spite of the playback system in operation, their problem was that because there was no technique of recording from the film negative yet, the singers had to sing twice. Once for the actual film shooting of the song, and later, with the same set of orchestra, for commercial records. Sometimes, the original singer was not available due to any reason, some other singer had to sing for commercial records. Thus we have many such examples, where the singer in the film song and the record is different. However, this problem continued only till mid 50’s when the Tape and the required technique became available. With just one time recording, the film and commercial recording were taken care of.
Khemchand Prakash. K.Datta (Datta Koregaonkar), Rafiq Ghaznavi and Anupam Ghatak made their Debut as Music Directors. Kavi Pradeep wrote his first film song for film Kangan. In 1939, 2 most Unusual songs were presented, for the first time ( and this record is not yet broken even after more than 80 years.). One was a Multi-Lingual song from film Aadmi-39, a film by Prabhat….Kis liye kal ki baat. This song was in Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bangla, Tamil and Telugu. ( In its Marathi film version-” माणूस “, this song was only in one language-Marathi.) Different Lyricists and MDs were used for each language. The song became very popular.
Second unusual song was from film ‘ Ghareeb ka Laal’-1939. The song lyrics had the names of 32 artistes, operating in Hindi films that time. Top Heroes and Heroines were mentioned in this song. The beginning of the song was ” Tuze Bibbo kahoon ya Sulochana, Uma shashi kahoon ki Jamuna “. This song was sung by the comedian Mirza Musharraf. In later years many songs with film artistes’ names came but none had so many names. Thus this record is still unbroken, in case of both songs.
Besides these songs, let us quickly take a look at some films of 1939….
Aadmi – Prabhat’s hit film, a remake of the Marathi film ” माणूस “. It had some good songs by Shanta Hublikar, Sundarabai Jadhav and Ram Marathe.
Adhuri Kahani – a trend of Tragedy films set by the effect of film ‘Devdas’. All the 3 main characters of this film commit suicide in the end.
Badi Didi – A New Theatres film.
Brandy ki Botal – Master Vinayak’s comedy remake of Marathi film ‘ ब्रॅंडीची बाटली ‘.
Dil hi to hai – Debut of Kidar Sharma as a Director and Ramola as a Heroine in a Hindi film.
Dushman – New Theatres’ film of Saigal, with only his 4 songs.
Ek hi Raasta – Sagar presents first film with 3 Heroes in one film.
Ghazi Salauddin – Debut of Khemchand Prakash as M.D.
Hukum ka Ikka – First film with a Triple role by Umakant Desai ( who later specialised as Lakshman in 7 films, including Ramrajya-43).
Imaandaar – Debut of actress Shamim Akhtar.
India in Africa – This was the First Hindi film to be shot abroad (in Africa). The Hero B. Nandrekar had also gone to Africa for its shooting. Naaz-54 was not the first such film, though HFGK mentions it so.( Ref – pp 69, Maharashtra-The Birthplace of Indian cinema by Isak Mujawar)
Kangan – First of the 4 Hit films of Ashok kumar and Leela Chitnis, made by Bombay Talkies. Kavi Pradeep’s Debut as a Lyricist in this film.
Kapal kundala – New Theatres. Pankaj mullick’s hit song ‘ Piya milan ko jaana ‘.
Leather Face – Debut of Meena kumari as a child artiste.
Navjeevan – Debut of Hansa Wadkar as a Heroine- Bombay Talkies film.
Pukar – Hit film from Minerva Movietone. Naseem Bano sings ” Zindagi ka saaz bhi kya saaz hai….”
Today’s song is a duet by Bibbo and Surendra Nath Sharma…..
Song- Aaye piharwa aaye aaye(Ladies Only)(1939) Singers-Bibbo, Surendra, MD-Anupam Ghatak
Both
Lyrics
Aaye piharwa aaye aaye
prem ki maalaa laaye laaye
aaye piharwa aaye aaye
prem ki maalaa laaye
phool bichha doon pag mein tohre
phool tihaare baagh tihaare
phool bichha doon pag mein tohre
phool tihaare baagh tihaare
surya kiran bhi tihaari
piharwa
surya kiran bhi tihaari
piharwa
jal thhal tera
jungle teraa
jal thhal tera
jungle teraa
teree rain andheree han
jal thhal tera
jungle teraa
jal thhal tera
jungle teraa
teree rain andheree
toone apne charnon neeche
toone apne charnon neeche
laakhon swarg banaaye
laakhon swarg banaaye
toone apne charnon neeche
toone apne charnon neeche
laakhon swarg banaaye
laakhon swarg banaaye
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
Leave a comment