Uthho uthho begee uthho sajanwa
Posted on: June 16, 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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1-10-2012.
This is the date which I shall never ever forget in my life. There are dates for several milestones in one’s life, like date of Birth, Date of graduation, Date of Marriage, Date of retirement etc etc. barring a few, one forgets all other dates, because those dates have no relevance to his current or future life.
Certain dates one can never forget, because those are the dates when one’s life had taken a turn – like a Marriage date or a Retirement date etc. 1-10-2012 is neither my date of Birth nor my marriage nor retirement date. So, what is there that makes it so unforgettable ?
I will tell you. This was the date my First Post appeared on this Blog ! Since then my life has taken a new turn for something which I had never dreamt ! After 1-10-2012, not only I went on writing posts till today’s Post No 1614 on this Blog, but it also inspired me to write 5 individual books and 5 books as a joint author with Shri Sheo Khetan ji. After 1-10-2012, a new ME was born. In my life I have achieved many things in different fields, which a normal person may not usually achieve. But the most satisfying thing was what happened on 1-10-2012. I must also record here that my post came up because of Atul ji’s encouragement and taking the responsibility of writing Lyrics for my songs (it continues till today !).
Now, why am I remembering all this today ? Simple ! The post I wrote on 1-10-2012 was on a song from the film ” Savitri”-1937 ! After that day, this is only the second song of this film to feature here today.
In our Mythology, there are many SATIs. Some names are….Sati Arndhati, Vashishtha, Yami, Lamba, Bhanumati, Mavisha, Sudeha, Vaishali, Anjani, Madalasa, Anusuya, Mahananda, Pingala, Sone, Sulochana, Toral, Vimla, Mahananda, Damayanti, Sita, Savitri, Ahilya, Draupadi, Kunti, Tara, Mandodari etc etc. Out of all these names, only Savitri’s name comes to mind, when Sati is discussed. This is because she was the only one who brought back her dead husband to life, very cleverly !
Let us first see what Savitri’s story is …..
Ashwapati was the King of Madra Desh. His consort was Malavi. He was a great devotee of the Sun God, Savitra. The king’s sadhana pleased the Sun God and he blessed the couple with a child.
A daughter was born and she was named SAVITRI, as she was Sun God’s gift.Savitri(Devika Rani) grew into a beautiful Rajkumari. One day while strolling in the forest, she meets SATYAWAN(Ashok kumar),who is the son of King Dumatsena. The king has become blind after his Mantri usurped his throne and threw him out of the kingdom. Satyawan has plans to get it back.
Savitri and Satyawan decide to get married, but Raj Jyotishi predicts that Satyawan will die after just one year. Nevertheless, Savitri marries him. In the next one year Savitri studies the shastras and does penance. After one year, one day, while in the forest, Satyawan sleeps on the lap of Savitri and closes his eyes. Savitri sees that YAMARAJ is carrying Satyawan’s Pran. She follows Yama. Yamaraj asks her to go back, but she refuses. Lastly, Yamaraja says that he will have a debate with her and if she defeats him,he will grant her 3 wishes, except Satyawan’s Pran.
In the debate Savitri defeats Yama and aske these 3 things-
1.Eyesight and kingdom for the Father in law.
2.100 sons for her father and
3.100 sons for her.
Yamaraj smiles,understands but grants all boons. Satyawan gets up alive. Both bow to Yama.
The film was made by Bombay Talkies, who introduced many Heroes and heroines to the Indian film industry. Devika rani and Ashok Kumar were the first Hero-heroine who brought in an era of simple Love stories. Bombay Talkies supremo Himanshu Rai was never known for providing films in different Genres. Film Savitri-1937 was the only Mythological film he made. He was a shrewd businessman and made films for the younger generation.
Himanshu Rai (1892 – 16 May 1940), one of the pioneers of Indian cinema, is best known as the founder of the Bombay Talkies studio in 1934, along with Devika Rani. He was associated with a number of movies, including Goddess (1922), The Light of Asia (1925), Shiraz (1928), A Throw of Dice (1929) & Karma (1933).
Himanshu Rai was born in 1892 in an affluent family in Bengal, he was studying for the bar in London, when he got involved in theatre and later, in films with Niranjan Pal, who was a playwright and incidentally, freedom fighter Bipin Chandra Pal’s son. Himanshu also got involved with a pretty young German girl Mary Hainline, who was part of a theatre troupe called “The Indian Players”. “Remember, this was the Roaring Twenties,” says Peter. It was the time of flapper girls who wore their hair in short bobs and exposed their legs in knee-length skirts. It was the time of fading social inhibitions, and a creative outpouring in the worlds of art, dance, music, cinema.
The story begins, that’s where thirty something Australian Peter Dietze discovered a black & white photograph of a handsome young Indian man. He asked his mother about the picture & was told it was of Himanshu Rai, pioneering founder of Bombay Talkies, legend of the early years of Hindi cinema & also, Peter’s grandfather. His mother had never mentioned Himanshu to him, nor even hinted that he had any sort of Indian ancestry. For the Melbourne businessman, this was a defining moment of his life.
In India, Himanshu Rai is known as the husband of the stunning Devika Rani, so the news of an unknown secret wife is something of a revelation. Himanshu Rai is one of the most fascinating figures of Hindi cinema. But though the major events of his life are well known, if you were to ask, “What was he like?” you would have no clear answer. There are several tantalising missing pieces in his story, impeding a full understanding of the man.
Himanshu and Mary got married & went to Germany. Mary introduced Himanshu to UFA, a leading German film production company, where he met renowned German directors such as GW Pabst and Fritz Lang.
But according to Amrit Gangar, author of a book ‘Franz Osten and the Bombay Talkies : A Journey from Munich to Malad,’ “The assumption that Mary Hainlin introduced Himanshu Rai to the Germans and to UFA Studios needs to be examined & established.” He says that Niranjan Pal and Himanshu were already in contact with the Osten brothers Franz, Peter and Ottmar.
While the origins of Himanshu’s contacts with German film studios, directors and technicians might need more research, what is certain is that an important personal event occurred in Himanshu’s life in 1926, Mary gave birth to a baby girl, Nilima.
But in a fateful twist, in 1929, Himanshu met someone else, the beautiful glamorous Devika Rani, the grandniece of the great Rabindranath Tagore and the daughter of the first Surgeon-General of Madras. She had gone to school in England and was working for a London art studio. She was staying with Niranjan Pal and his English wife. Himanshu met her at a party. Bowled over by her beauty and talent, he offered her a job in his film, “Throw of Dice”. For Devika Rani, Himanshu, more than ten years older than her, was a larger-than-life figure, already the star of the 1925 silent film “Light of Asia” where he had played the Buddha. He became like her mentor. Cary Rajinder Sawhney writes that Himanshu had told Niranjan Pal about his German marriage, but had sworn him to secrecy. So maybe Devika Rani didn’t know about Himanshu’s secret marriage. Or did she? No one knows.
Abandoning Mary and their little daughter, Himanshu married Devika Rani in 1929 and went back to India with her in 1934, they would go on to open a historic chapter of Hindi cinema by starting Bombay Talkies in Malad, then a distant, quiet suburb of Bombay. Why did he forsake his young German wife? “If you’ve ever looked at any pictures of Devika Rani, you’d know why he fell in love with her,” counters Peter simply. “Indeed, the two women knew each other and were friends. There are photographs of them together.”
Bombay Talkies established itself as one of the leading film studios, it had a staff of 400 people, state-of-the-art equipment and churned out films every year, many of which became big hits and are now regarded as classics. Devika Rani was the leading lady in many of them and the studio also introduced new stars such as Ashok Kumar. But running Bombay Talkies took its toll on Himanshu Rai.
“Himanshu Rai was pedalling very hard,” says Peter. “It was the story of a man struggling to keep his studio together.” The Second World War had begun and Himanshu’s lead director Franz Osten and the other Germans in Bombay Talkies were interned in camps in India. He had a serious fallout with his long-time screenwriter Niranjan Pal. By this time there had also been a painful rift with Devika Rani. Some years ago, she had run away to Calcutta with a handsome young co-star Najamul Hussain, who came from an aristocratic Lucknow family, while they were shooting for a film called Jeevan Naiyya.
Himanshu Rai persuaded Devika Rani to come back, but could things have been the same again? Indeed, Cary Rajinder Sawhney writes that many people blamed Devika Rani for her husband’s death.
Himanshu Rai had a nervous breakdown & was hospitalised. He died on 16 May 1940. He was just 48.
After Himanshu’s demise Devika Rani took over Bombay Talkies but it was tough going. It was rare for a woman then or even now for that matter to run a studio. There were many problems, not least of them opposition from other powerful stakeholders in the company such as Sashadhar Mukherjee. In 1945, she quit the studio, married Russian painter Svetoslav Roerich, son of famous painter Nicholas Roerich and went on to live a quiet life with him, first in Manali and then in Bangalore. But she took with her the entire Bombay Talkies archive. When she found she couldn’t take care of the material, she sent it to the New York Nicholas Roerich Museum. She died without any heir in 1994.( Thanks to Suresh Sarvaiya ji, from whose article, some part is used here.)
So, now listen to an 88 year old song from a 29 year old Devika Rani….
Song- Uthho uthho begee uthho sajanva (Savitri)(1937) Singer- Devika Rani, Lyricist-J.S.Kashyap, MD- Saraswati devi
Lyrics
uthho uthho begee uthho
sajanwa
pyaare sakha
utho utho begee uthho
sajanwa
pyaare sakha
udit ho rahe bhaanu gaganwa
udit ho rahe bhaanu gaganwa
man maganwa
man maganwa
chalo chalo bandana karen sajanwa
pyaare sakha
chalo chalo bandana karen sajanwa
pyare sakha
phaila prabhaat ujiyaara
ab door hua andhiyaara
phaila prabhat ujiyaara
ab door hua andhiyaara
bhaanu gaganwa
man maganwa
bhaanu gaganwa
man maganwa
chalo chalo bandana karen sajanwa
pyaare sakha
chalo chalo bandana karen sajanwa
pyaare sakha
prabha saagar kee lahron mein
umandti hai shatrangon mein
prabha saagar kee lahron mein
umandati hai shatrangon mein
jeewan karnee daalen apnee
?? charnon mein
jeewan karnee daalen apnee
?? charnon mein
laagee laganwa
man maganwa
laagee laganwa
man maganwa
chalo chalo bandana karen sajanwa
pyaare sakha
chalo chalo bandana karen sajanwa
pyaare sakha
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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