Tumse duniyaa mujhe chhudaatee hai
Posted on: April 27, 2025
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 the film Taqdeer-1943.
This was Mehboob Khan’s second film from his own studio-Mehboob productions. His first film was Najma-1943 (his own daughter’s name was Najma). That film was woven around a woman’s life. Similarly, his second film also was about a young girl. The girl was Nargis- making her Debut as an adult heroine (14 years) opposite the hero Motilal (age 33 years). The story was about lost children in Kumbh Mela and then found by unrelated people who bring them up, having lost their own. Sounds like a precursor to a Man Mohan Desai’s film ? Maybe it gave him an idea !
Film Taqdeer-1943 was a good beginning for Nargis as she became a big star and had solid political support from the Congress Government at a later stage of her life.
The cast of the film consisted of Motilal, Chandramohan, Charlie, Nargis, Jillobai, Kayam Ali, N.A.Ansari, Mahshar Shirazi, Laddan etc. The music for all 10 songs was by Rafiq Ghaznavi- a close friend of Mehboob Khan. Incidentally, this was his last film as an independent M.D. Later he did Ek Din Ka Sultan-1945, with Shanti Kumar and then Laila Majnu-1945 with Govind Ram.
Jillobai, who played the role of the wife of Chandra Mohan in this film, was born in 1905 in Delhi. She was from a Tawaif family. She started from stage dramas and then silent films. During this period, Master Nissar was attracted to her, but being a shrewd woman, she spurned his advances, only after a lot of money was spent on her by him. She acted in more than 100 Talkie films and also sang 3 songs in 3 films initially. Her first talkie film was India’s first Talkie film Alam Ara-1931, in which she sang one song also. She acted in many popular films like Anarkali-35, Kisan Kanya-37, Pukar-39, Sikander-41, Taqdeer-43, Zeenat-45, Jugnu- 47, Mother India-57, Mughal-e-Azam-60 etc etc. Her last film seems to be Suhani Raat-74 .
Nargis (01 June 1929 – 03 May 1981), regarded as one of the greatest actresses in the history of Hindi cinema, made her screen debut as a child in Talash-E-Haq in 1935, but her acting career began in 1942 with “Tamanna” 1942. During a career that spanned from the 1940s to the 1960s, Nargis appeared in many commercially successful as well as critically appreciated films, many of which featured her along-side actor Raj Kapoor. She was the younger sister of the well-known actor Anwar Hussain. In the year 1993, the Government of India issued a postal stamp on Nargis.
One of her best-known roles was that of Radha in the Academy Award-nominated Mother India (1957), a performance that won her Best Actress trophy at the Filmfare Awards. In 1958, Nargis married her Mother India co-star, actor Sunil Dutt, and left the film industry. She would appear infrequently in films during the 1960s. Some of her films of this period include the drama Raat Aur Din (1967), for which she was given the inaugural National Film Award for Best Actress.
Nargis had a long-time relationship with actor Raj Kapoor, who was her co-star in the films Awara and Shree 420. Raj Kapoor was married and had children. After he refused to divorce his wife, Nargis ended their year-long relationship.
Nargis was born as Fatima Rashid on 01 June 1929 in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, to famous singer Jaddanbai. Nargis married actor Sunil Dutt (a Mohyal from Jhelum) on 11 March 1958. Dutt had saved her life from a fire on the sets of Mother India. She converted to Hinduism and changed her legal name to “Nirmala Dutt” after they married on 11 March 1958. Three children were born from their union : Sanjay, Priya & Namrata.
Sanjay went on to become a successful film actor. Namrata married actor Kumar Gaurav, son of veteran actor Rajendra Kumar who had appeared alongside Nargis & Sunil Dutt in Mother India. Priya became a politician and a Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha).
Nargis made her first film appearance in the 1935 film Talash e Haq when she was six years old, credited as Baby Nargis. Nargis is a Persian word meaning Narcissus, the daffodil flower. She was subsequently credited as Nargis in all of her films. Her second film as a child artist was Madam Fashion which was directed by her mother Jaddanbai. She was the heroine herself and had cast Baby Nargis and Baby Suraiya. Suraiya later became a popular Indian actress who had made her debut with the film. Nargis did child roles in 5 films.
Nargis appeared in numerous films after her debut; she won lasting fame for her later, adult, roles, starting with at the age of 14, in Mehboob Khan’s Taqdeer in 1943 opposite, Motilal. She starred in many popular Hindi films of the late 1940s and 1950s such as Barsaat (1949), Andaz (1949), Awara (1951), Deedar (1951), Shree 420 (1955), and Chori Chori (1956). She appeared in Mehboob Khan’s Oscar-nominated rural drama Mother India in 1957 for which she won the Filmfare Best Actress Award for her performance. Baburao Patel of the film magazine Filmindia (December 1957) described ‘Mother India ‘ as “the greatest picture produced in India” and wrote that no other actress would have been able to perform the role as well as Nargis.
After her marriage to Sunil Dutt in 1958, Nargis gave up her film career to settle down with her family, after her last few films were released. She made her last film appearance in the 1967 film Raat Aur Din. The film was well received and Nargis’ performance as a woman who has dissociative identity disorder was critically acclaimed. For this role she won a National Film Award for Best Actress and became the first actress to win in this category. She also received a Filmfare Best Actress Award nomination for this film. In all, she acted in 59 films.
With her husband Sunil Dutt, Nargis formed Ajanta Arts Cultural Troupe, which involved several leading actors and singers of the time & performed at remote frontiers to entertain the Indian soldiers at the border. It was the first troupe to perform in Dhaka, after the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971. Later, Nargis worked for the cause of spastic children. She became the first patron of The Spastics Society of India. Her charitable work for the organisation got her recognition as a social worker.
Along with her husband, Nargis formed the Ajanta Arts Cultural Troupe, which roped in several leading actors and singers of the time and held stage shows at border areas. In early 1970s, she became the first patron of The Spastics Society of India, and her subsequent work with the organisation brought her recognition as a social worker, and later a Rajya Sabha nomination in 1980. In 1958, she was honoured with the Padma Shri by the Government of India.
Nargis died on 03 May 1981 of pancreatic cancer, a few days before her son Sanjay Dutt made his debut in Hindi film Rocky. In 1982, the Nargis Dutt Memorial Cancer Foundation was established in her memory.
Awards and recognitions –
● 1958 : Filmfare Best Actress Award for Mother India
● 1958 : She was the first film actress to be conferred by the Government of India with the Padma Shri title, the fourth highest civilian award.
● 1958 : Best Actress Award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival for Mother India
● 1968 : National Film Award for Best Actress for Raat Aur Din.
● 1969 : Nominated, Filmfare Best Actress Award for Raat Aur Din
● 2001 : “Best Artists of the Millennium” award by Hero Honda and film magazine Stardust along with actor Amitabh Bachchan.
A street in Bandra, Mumbai, is named Nargis Dutt Road in her memory. A postal stamp of face value ₹ 1.00 by India Post was issued in Nargis’ honour on 30 December 1993. Google celebrated Nargis Dutt on her 86th birthday on 1 June 2015.
The National Film Awards honoured Dutt by instituting the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration upon her achievement in Hindi Cinema. ( Based primarily on an article by Suresh S. ji and my notes.)
The story of the film was….
Badriprasad (Charlie) a widower, is in the theatre business and is staging a play at a fair (the Kumbh Mela). His manager Ghanshyam, tells him that Pappu, Badriprasad’s young son, is lost. They look for him but cannot find him. The manager instead finds a little girl, Shyama, who seems lost. He and his wife, being childless, decide to bring her up as their daughter.
Judge Jumna Prasad (Chandra Mohan) who is also at the fair, is unable to find his daughter Shyama and tries searching for her with the help of the police. The judge’s wife loses her mental balance when she hears about her missing daughter. The doctor says that she is in danger of losing her life too if Shyama is not found soon. The judge’s servant finds Pappu and tells the judge to dress the boy in Shyama’s clothes and pretend the boy is Shyama to save his wife’s life. Thereafter, the judge’s wife continues to believe that Pappu is Shyama in spite of seeing him dressed as a boy even after he grows up. She insists on calling him ‘beti’ (daughter).
Badriprasad loses all interest in his theatre after the loss of his son. His manager Ghanshyam encourages him to revive the theatre. Badriprasad sees the little Shyama dancing and asks the manager about her. By now Ghanshyam’s wife has died and he lets Badriprasad adopt the little girl. Shyama (Nargis) grows up in the theatre milieu as Badriprasad’s daughter and is also the main cast in their theatre productions.
Pappu, now called Babu (Motilal), visits the theatre with his parents. He is enamoured of Shyama and soon both fall in love. The judge refuses to allow the marriage as he considers theatre people below his social standing. Babu finds out that he is not the judge’s real son and leaves home. The judge’s wife regains her memory following the shock of Babu leaving the house. Disagreements are sorted out once the lost identities of Shyama and Babu are discovered. In the end, all is well !
Enjoy this 82 year old song by Shamshad Begum…..
Song- Tumse duniya mujhe chhudaatee hai (Taqdeer)(1943) Singer- Shamshad Begum, Lyricist-Mahrul Qadri, MD- Rafiq Ghaznavi
Lyrics
tumsa duniya
tumsa duniya mujhe chhudaatee hai
haaye
tumse duniya
aakhree aas tootee jaa jaatee hai
aakhree aas tootee jaa jaatee hai
tumse duniya
tumse duniya mujhe chhudaatee hai
haaye tumse duniya
kya karoon haaye main kidhar jaaoon oon
kya karoon haaye main kidhar jaaoon oon
saans bhee aah ban ke aate hai haaye
saans bhee aah saans bhi aah ban ke aatee hai haaye
tumse duniya
maine duniya ka kya bigaada hai ae
maine duniya ka kya bigaada hai ae
mere dil ko ye kyun dukhaatee hai
haaye mere dil ko
mere dil ko ye kyun dukhaatee hai
haaye tumse duniya
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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