Bolo aalee mere soone shaaant hriday mein
Posted on: December 25, 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.
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Today’s song is from India’s Milestone movie – Kisan Kanya-1937.
The year 1937 was a year of Revolution for the newly started Talkie Films. Initially the films were mainly based on Folk tales, Parsi dramas and Mythological stories. 1937 was a year in which the Film industry was trying to drop its old skin and don a New Avtar. From this year, a variety of subjects were used to make films. If we briefly look at some path breaking, landmark films using Novel themes, we will understand how the film industry was attempting to change itself.
The newly established Minerva Movietone made a film on the importance and benefits of Celibacy in the film ‘Atma Tarang’.
Some artistes made their Debuts in 1937, like Ghulam Mohammad,MD for film Banke Sipahi, Comedian V H Desai in film Captain Kirti Kumar, Kishore Sahu in fil Jeevan prabhat, the eternal Mausi of Hindi films, Leela Mishra debuted in film Gangavataran. This was also a Debut film for Dadasaheb Phalke in making a Talkie film. David made his Debut in ‘Zambo-the ape man’.
Prakash films tried their hand at Stunt films with ‘Challenge’ and ‘His Highness’, using Veterinary actors like Dogs, Horses and a Motorcycle. Prabhat’s iconic film ‘ Duniya Maane na’ shook All India audiences with its story. Shanta Apte sang an English song in it. Bombay Talkies made its first and last Mythological film ‘ Savitri ‘ with Ashok Kumar and Devika Rani.
Gangavataran was a film made by Dadasaheb Phalke. It was his First, the only and his last Talkie film too.
Imperial made India’s first indigenously made First colour film-Kisan Kanya. With this film, however, Master Nissar ended his ‘Hero’ ship as an actor.
Wadia Movietone made India’s first songless talkie film,’ Naujawan ‘, facing the ire of its audience for ‘cheating’ them !
‘Zambo – The Ape man ‘ became the first Tarzan type Indian talkie film, beginning a new Genre !
Maadan theatres Calcutta pulled its shutters down with their last Talkie film’ Zinda Bhoot ‘.
1937 was real path breaking for 2 solid reasons….
One, for the first time, Playback singing started in a Bombay film with ‘Mahageet ‘. The song was sung by Anil Biswas, its MD and it was filmed on Hiren Bose, in the role of a beggar, near a crematorium (Smashan Bhoomi), as per book ‘ Music without Boundaries’ by Dr. Ashok Ranade,pp183-186.
Secondly,for the first time, in an Indian film successful special effects were used in the film ” Khwaab ki Duniya ” -a film by Prakash Pictures, based on the popular novel “The Invisible Man” by H G Wells. A Hollywood film by the same name was made in 1933. The trick scenes in this Indian film were as good as the Hollywood film. Credit goes to Babubhai Mistri for creating the actions of an Invisible man , on the screen. He was nicknamed ” Kala Dhaga ” after this film.
Film Kisan Kanya-1937 was a Milestone film because it was the First indigenously made fully coloured film. The film was made by Imperial Film Company, Bombay, owned by Ardeshir Irani. He was an extraordinary person who achieved several milestones, not broken by anyone till today. Khan Bahadur Ardeshir Irani (5 December 1886 – 14 October 1969) was a writer, director, producer, actor, film distributor, film showman and cinematographer in the silent and sound eras of early Indian cinema. He was one of the greatest legends of today’s Indian Cinema. He was the director of India’s first sound film Alam Ara. He was the producer of India’s first colour film Kisan Kanya. He was renowned for making films in Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, English, German, Indonesian, Persian, Urdu and Tamil. He was a successful entrepreneur who owned film theatres, a gramophone agency, and a car agency.
Ardeshir Irani was born into a Zoroastrian family on 5 December 1886 in Poona, Bombay Presidency. In 1905, Irani became the Indian representative of Universal Studios and he ran Alexander Cinema in Bombay with Abdulally Esoofally for over forty years. It was at Alexander Cinema that Ardeshir Irani learnt the rules of the art of filmmaking and became fascinated by the medium. In 1917, Irani entered the field of film production and produced his first silent feature film, Nala Damayanti, which was released in 1920.
In 1922, Irani joined Bhogilal Dave, the former manager of Dadasaheb Phalke’s Hindustan Films, and established Star Films. Their first silent feature film, Veer Abhimanyu was released in 1922 and starred Fatima Begum in the female lead. Dave, a graduate of the New York School of Photography, shot the films while Irani directed and produced them. Star Films produced seventeen films before Irani and Dave dissolved the partnership.
In 1924, Irani founded Majestic Films, joined by two talented youngsters, B.P. Mishra and Naval Gandhi. At this establishment, Irani produced the films and either Mishra or Gandhi directed the films. Despite its success, fifteen films later, Majestic Films closed, giving way to the equally short-lived Royal Art Studios which had exactly the same life-span as the earlier two, however, it became famous for a certain type of romantic films. Irani improved on it, using new talent to great effect.
In 1925, Ardeshir Irani founded Imperial Films, where he made sixty-two films. By the age of forty, Irani was an established filmmaker of Indian cinema. Ardeshir Irani became the father of talkie films with the release of his sound feature film, Alam Ara on 14 March 1931. Many of the films he produced were later made into talkie films with the same cast and crew. He is also credited with making the first Indian English feature film, Noor Jahan (1931). He completed his hat-trick of earning fame when he made the first colour feature film of India, Kisan Kanya (1937). His contribution does not end only with giving voice to the silent cinema and colour to black-and-white films. He gave a new courageous outlook to filmmaking in India and provided such a wide range of choice for stories in films that till date, there are films being made which have a theme relating to one of the one hundred fifty-eight films made by Irani.
In 1933, Irani produced and directed the first Persian talkie, Dokhtar-e-Lor. The script was written by Abdolhossein Sepanta who also acted in the film along with members of the local Parsi community.
Irani’s Imperial Films introduced a number of new actors to Indian Cinema, including Prithviraj Kapoor and Mehboob Khan. He also interfered with the medium. He produced Kalidas in Tamil on the sets of Alam Ara, with songs in Telugu. Also, Irani visited London, England for fifteen days to study sound recording and recorded the sounds of Alam Ara on the basis of this knowledge. In the process, he created a whole new trend unknowingly. In those days, outdoor shootings were shot in sunlight with the help of reflectors. However, the outdoor undesirable sounds were disturbing him so greatly that he shot the entire sequence in the studio under heavy lights. Thus, he began the trend of shooting under artificial light.
Imperial Films Company Est: 1926, successor to the Majestic and Royal Art Film companies was set up by Ardeshir Irani as a diversification of his exhibition interests in partnership with Esoofally, Mohammed Ali and Dawoodji Rangwala. Organised as a vertically integrated combine with its own exhibition infrastructure. Started following the decline of Kohinoor, it continued many of the latter’s Mohanlal Dave-inspired genres, often with the same stars and film-makers. Imperial became closely associated with the costumed historical genre launched with Anarkali (1928), shot and released almost overnight in direct competition to Charu Roy’s The Loves of a Mughal Prince (1928). Irani also rushed out Alam Ara (1931), released as India’s first full talkie narrowly beating Madan Theatres’ Shirin Farhad (1931). Imperial was the first studio to shoot scenes at night (in Khwab-e- Hasti, 1929) using incandescent lamps.
It owned India’s top silent star, Sulochana, and promoted her along with Zubeida, Jilloo and, for a while, the young Prithviraj Kapoor. This was perhaps the first major instance of a deliberate manufacturing of a star-cult as a marketing strategy. Top Imperial film-makers include R.S. Choudhury, B.P. Mishra and Mohan Bhavnani, whose film-making set the house style, as did Nandlal Jaswantlal’s sound films. A fair number of the studio’s talkies were remakes of its own silent hits with Sulochana (Anarkali, 1928 & 1935), Wildcat of Bombay (1927) became Bambai Ki Billi (1936), etc. It made films in at least nine languages: Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Burmese, Malay, Pushtu and Urdu. The first Iranian sound film, Dukhtar-e-Lur (aka Dokhtare Lor Ya Irane Diruz Va Emruz, 1932) was also made here. Kisan Kanya (1937) by Gidwani was India’s first indigenously manufactured colour film, made with the Cinecolour process. When it closed in 1938, its economic and generic inheritance was continued by Sagar Movietone.
Film Kisan Kanya-1937 was famous as the First indigenously made colour film of India, made by Ardeshir Irani’s company- Imperial Film Company. Film pioneer Irani was the first to make an International Co-Production, with Italy, film Nala Damayanti- a silent film of 1920. Secondly, he had the honour of making and releasing India’s First Talkie Film ” Alam Ara-1931″. And with the film Kisan Kanya, he achieved a Hat Trick of ‘ First in India’ credit in film making.
Ardeshir Irani was very keen to become the First to make a Talkie film of India. He knew that Madon Theatres of Calcutta too were busy in making their First Talkie film, with two popular stars of the day. Irani hastened the speed of his shootings and recordings. Lot of secrecy was maintained in filming the movie. From his secret sources in Calcutta, he was getting information on the progress of Madon Theatres’ film in making. He came to know that their film was to have about 20 songs in the film. Irani decided to limit the number of songs in his film to save on time. Now they would have only 7 songs. Thus they saved on many days of shootings and recordings. Thus, while Alam Ara was released on 14-3-1931, Madon could only release their First Talkie film ‘ Shirin Farhad” on 30-5-1931, a cool two and a half months later !
Similarly, Irani studied why Prabhat’s first colour film “Sairandhri-33″ failed technically and decided to do all technical processes in India, for his colour film Kisan Kanya-37. Thus his colour film came out much better than Prabhat’s film.”Irani perhaps was the world’s first multilingual film maker,having made forays into English, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Persian, Burmese, Indonesian and Pashto. He is credited with launching the Talkie era in countries like Burma, Indonesia and Iran. He made nearly 120 Talkies in a span of just 8 years. He was also the first to establish a colour laboratory imported from Hollywood.”
Irani made one hundred fifty-eight films in a long and illustrious career of twenty-five years, between the First and Second World Wars. He made his last film, Pujari, in 1945. Irani was not compelled to live like Dadasaheb Phalke for he realised that the war was a time not suitable for film business and therefore he suspended his film business during that time. He died on 14 October 1969 at the age of eighty-two, in Bombay. (Thanks to wikipedia, Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, The formative phase of Indian Cinema-Ashok Raj in Hero-I, article by D.B.Samant, Shirish Kanekar and my own notes. )
The film was directed by Moti B.Gidwani – an England trained Director. It was this same Gidwani who joined Baburao Painter’s Maharashtra Film Company at Kolhapur. Irked by an outsider usurping their legitimate rights, a group of disgruntled artistes, led by V.Shantaram left the company and established Prabhat Film Company. The Music Director was Ram Gopal Pandey (variously billed as R.G.Pandey, Ram Gopal and Pandey) and the film’s cast was Master Nissar, Padma Devi, Ghulam Mohd., Jillo Bai and others.
The film’s story was….
In a village, a landlord (Ghani) exploits the farmers and leaves no opportunity to rob them of their legitimate earnings. Ramu (Master Nissar), the farmer is no exception. He has been regularly exploited by the landlord. Ramdai (Zilloo Bai), the landlord’s wife, is religiously inclined and resents her husband’s actions. Bansari (Padma Devi) is a maid servant in the house of the landlord who is in love with Ramu. The romance of Bansari and Ramu goes on smoothly until Ramu is arrested on a false charge of murdering the landlord. Ramdai, the landlord’s wife, is aware as to who had murdered her husband. Realising that the innocent Ramu’s life would be taken away, she goes to Randhir (Ghulam Mohammed), a villain with a heart, who had actually murdered the landlord. Ramdai pleads with him to confess for the sake of Bansari, the girl who is also loved by Randhir.
In the climax, Randhir in the bravado character, confesses his crime of murdering the landlord. Ramu is released. The final scenes of the film depict the need for the wealthy persons to come forward to help the poor villagers of India.
Now enjoy this 87 year old duet sung by Master Nissar and Padma Devi……
Song- Bolo aalee mere soone shaant hriday mein (Kisaan Kanya)(1937) Singers- Master Nissar, Padma Devi, Lyricist- Not known, MD- Ram Gopal Pandey
Both
Lyrics
Bolo aalee
bolo aalee
bolo aalee
mere soone shaant hriday mein
kyon ye dhoom machaa daalee
bolo aalee
bolo aalee
jab kalee khilee
jab kalee khilee
kyon bhanwraa aa mandraayaa
kyon kalee hansee
kyon kalee hansee
kyon hans kar paas bulaayaa
kyon hans kar paas bulaayaa
bolo aalee
bolo aalee
phool phool mein aen
kyoon chhup kar yoon
phool uthha van ka maalee
phool phool mein
phool udhar kyon
phool uthha van ka maalee
kyon daal daal aur paat paat par
kook uthhee koyal kaalee ee
kook uthhee koyal kaalee
bolo aalee
bolo aalee
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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