Kai saal pahle ye din raat thhe jab sunahre roopahle
Posted on: August 16, 2025
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.
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‘Aahistaa Aahistaa’ (1981) was produced by Sibte Hasan Rizvi and was directed by Esmayeel Shroff. The cast included Kunal Kapoor, Padmini Kolhapure, Shammi Kapoor, Nanda, Shashikala, Girish Karnad, Aruna Irani, Deven Verma, Kader Khan, Rehman, Ashalata, Savita Bajaj, Leela Mishra, Rakesh Bedi, Sudhir Pandey, Soni Razdan, Master Sandeep, Baby Gazala, Krishnakant etc. For Padmini Kolhapure and Kunal Kapoor, it was their first film in lead roles.
The film was a remake of the National Film Award winner Kannada film, ‘Gejje Pooje’ (1969), literal translation in English being ‘Worship of Anklets’. But in the film’s context, it has a wider meaning of a mock marriage which a devadasi is supposed to go through before her life is dedicated to the services of the deity of a temple. The film was based on a Kannada novel with the same name written by M K Indira. The timeline of the story is early 20th century when the system of Devadasi was collapsing from its high pedestal of offering religious and artistic services to the temple deities to sexual favour or becoming the mistress to aristocrats. The film highlights the stigma attached to the offsprings of Devadasi even if they want to come out of the Devadasi system.
The film’s story has been best summarised by Nida Fazli’s ghazal, kabhee kisi ko mukammal jahaan naheen milta written for the film. The world itself is imperfect. One should happily adjust assuming that there would be imperfections in relationship, love, joy, pain etc. It is not that one does not get love and acceptance. The problem is that of the love from the place one expects. In the film, Sangeeta (Nanda) and her daughter, Chandra (Padmini Kolhapure) got immense love and respect from the family of Sagar (Shammi Kapoor) and his wife (Ashalata) but both of them longed for the love from Chandrakant (Girish Karnad) who was their real prospective husband and father respectively. The film’s story in some detail is as under:
The film opens with Subbalaxmi (Shashikala) the head of a household chatting with Gundamma (Savita Bajaj). She says that in this household men are not welcome to be born but their visits are welcome. Girls born in the household are happy occasions. This is in the context of her niece, Sangeeta (Nanda) who delivers a baby girl who is named as Chandra, part of the name of her father, Chandrakant who, she thinks, had abandoned her after she became pregnant out of wedlock. So, she has fallen back on the family’s profession of granting sexual favours to rich patrons. She does not want her daughter, Chandra to follow her profession. Instead, she wants her to get educated.
Chandra grows up and becomes friendly with Kunal (Kunal Kapoor), the son of Sagar (Shammi Kapoor) who is their neighbour. Chandra joins college in which Kunal has already been studying. Both becomes close friends eventually turning themselves as a love pair. They want to get married. But Kunal’s mother is opposed to this alliance since she is aware of the profession of Chandra’s family. Subbalaxmi also opposes the marriage as she has dreamt of initiating Chandra in their profession to earn money for the rest of her life.
While the prospective marriage between Chandra and Kunal is in limbo, one day, Chandrakant visits Sagar, his old friend. While Chandrakant is having dinner with Sagar, he hears a sitar recital from a neighbouring house, the sound of which is familiar to him. He finishes his dinner hurriedly and goes to the neighbouring house to see as to who is playing the sitar. The lady playing the sitar was Sangeeta, his lost sweetheart to whom Chandrakant was to marry. Sangeeta is very happy to see Chandrakant after a long gap. She introduces Chandra as their daughter.
Chandrakant clears the misunderstanding of Sangeeta by telling her that he had not abandoned her. In fact, he wanted to marry her but her aunt, Subbalaxmi demanded Rs.20000/- which he was unable to raise immediately. It took him six months to raise the sum required to be paid to Subbalaxmi. When he visited the house, he found that they had left the place. He tried to locate her but in vain. After some time, Chandrakant got married to a girl from a wealthy family with whom he has two daughters. He requests Sangeeta not to reveal that Chandra is her daughter as he has two daughters to be got married. He assures her that he would take care of Chandra’s education. While leaving, he gifts Chandra his diamond ring.
The father-daughter bonhomie is watched by Kunal from his house and misinterprets as Chandra has become the entertainer to a man like her mother. When Chandra is confronted by Kunal, she is unable to explain to him because of the oath she has taken not to reveal the identity of her father. Things move fast as Chandra receives an invitation of Kunal’s marriage and the girl, he is getting married to, is her step-sister, the daughter of Chandrakant.
Just like her mother who has turned to prostitution when she mistakenly felt that she was abandoned by Chandrakant, Chandra also decides to get initiated into the family profession by performing the ceremony of the anklets worship in a temple. While she was to entertain her first patron (Sudhir Pandey), Chandra requests that she would first seek the blessing from Sagar who has treated her as his own daughter. She visits Sagar’s house and get the blessings where her real father is also present. After the blessings, she falls down in the house and dies as she has swallowed diamonds from the ring her real father, Chandrakant had gifted her. After hearing the commotion, Sangeeta reaches and dies of shock when she sees the dead body of Chandra. An emotionally charged Chandrakant reveals the truth to Sagar.
The film had eight melodious songs (including one dual version) written by Nida Fazli (6) and Naqsh Lyallpuri (2) which were set to music by Khayyam. Seven songs (including the dual version song) have been covered on the Blog. I present the 8th and the last song, ‘kai saal pahle ye din raat thhe jab’ rendered by Anwar and Asha Bhosle. The audio clip of the song mentions that the song is of the soundtrack version, which indicates that the song was picturised. However, I do not find the song in the DVD of the film. It is difficult to guess whether the song was edited out from the film or from the DVD.
From the lyrics of the song, my guess is that it is picturised on Kunal Kapoor and Padmini Kolhapure who are recalling their childhood days as neighbours. My guess is strengthened by the fact that there are other two songs in the film rendered by Anwar and Asha Bhosle which have been picturised on Kunal Kapoor and Padmini Kolhapure. It is a nostalgic song, superbly crafted by Nida Fazli with his lyrics and Khayyam by his simple musical composition using only mandolin and flute with light rhythm, probably by a pair of small bongos. Anwar and Asha Bhosle have lent innocence to the story telling song through their voices.
With this lovely story-telling song, all the songs from the film have been covered on the Blog.
Audio Clip:
Song-Kai saal pahle ye din raat thhe jab sunahre roopahle (Aahista Aahista)(1981) Singers-Anwar, Asha Bhosle, Lyrics-Nida Fazli, MD-Khayyam
Both
Lyrics:
kai saal pahle
kai saal pahle
ye din raat thhe jab
sunahare roopahale
kai saal pahle
ye din raat thhe jab
sunahare roopahale
isee shahar ke ik haseen raaste par
chamakte huye motiyon jaise do ghar
khulee khidkiyon se badee shokhiyon se
bahut baaten karte thhe miljul ke aksar
kai saal pahle
kai saal pahle
ye din raat thhe jab
sunahre roopahle
unhee do gharon mein se ik ghar ke baahar
jo udham machaatee rehtee thhee din bhar
kabhee munh banaakar kabhee muskuraakar
wahee bholee bhaalee see gudiyaa baraabar
jo chhotee see ladkee thhee
tum to naheen ho
naheen
ham nahee wo
kai saal pahle
kai saal pahle
ye din raat thhe jab
sunahre roopahle
kai saal pahle
ye din raat thhe jab
sunahre roopahle
isi shahar ke ik haseen raaste par
hamaare hee jaisaa kaheen ek thhaa ghar
jo pariyon kee baaten sunaataa thhaa aksar
kabhee dhoop bankar
kabhee chaand bankar
kai saal pahle
kai saal pahle
ye din raat thhe jab
sunahre roopahle
usee ek ghar kee khulee chhat pe aa kar
koi goraa goraa saa
koi goraa goraa saa
khushrang manzar
bahut chhedtaa thhaa hamen chup chupaa kar
wahee bholaa bhaalaa saa gudde baraabar
jo chhotaa saa ladkaa thhaa
tum to naheen ho
nahee nahee
ham nahee wo
na tum ho na hum hain
to phir kaun thhe wo
wo chhotaa saa ladkaa
yakeenan ham hee hain
wo chhotee see ladkee
yakeenan ham hee thhe
ham hee hain ham hee thhe
hum hee hain ham hee thhe
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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