Nigaahen churaao na daaman chhudaao
Posted on: September 24, 2025
- In: "Aankh" song | Bhupinder Singh songs | Bhupinder Singh-Minu Purushottam duet | Duet | expression of love | Feelings of heart | Guest posts | Minu Purushottam Songs | Post by Sadanand Kamath | Song excluded from movie | Songs of 1970s (1971 to 1980) | Songs of 1974 | Yearwise breakup of songs
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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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‘Faaslaa’ (1974) was produced and directed by Khwaja Ahmed Abbas (K A Abbas) who also wrote the story, screenplay and dialogues. The cast included Shabana Azmi, Raman Khanna (debutant), Komilla Virk, David Abraham, Chand Usmani, Paintal, Yunus Parvez, Ravikant, Helen, Sadhana Khote, Shaukat Kaifi, Dinesh Thakur etc. Jairaj, Nadira, Nitin Sethi and Imtiaz made guest appearances in the film.
K A Abbas was an active member of the left-inspired Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA). All his earlier films, whether as a director or writer like ‘Dharti Ke Laal’ (1946), ‘Asawara’ (1951). ‘Shri 420’ (1955), ‘ Shahar Aur Sapna’ (1965), ‘Do Boond Paani’ (1971) and many more, dealt with social injustice and underprivilege classes of the society.
So, K A Abbas brings out his favourite theme albeit in a different way in ‘Faaslaa’ (1974). In this film, an industrialist is ethical in his actions and works for the good of the downtrodden people. He employs ex-convicts in his company to rehabilitate them. He behaves like a commoner. He wants to donate to a children’s hospital by liquidating a part of his shareholdings in the company. His acts are not liked by few board members and insiders of his company. They brand him as mentally ill person and put him in asylum. A journalist-advocate becomes his partner and successfully exposes the conspiracy against him.
The story of the film is as under:
Gautam Chandra (Raman Khanna) runs a family business, Chandra Enterprises in Mumbai which he has inherited from his grandfather. His aunt Radha (Chand Usmani) is the head of the company. He is assisted by his manager, Sharma (David Abraham) who has some streak of shadiness. Because of his wealth, Gautam spends more time with Maya (Komilla Virk), his love interest in parties than in his business related work which suits Sharma. He has decided to get married with Maya after celebrating his 25th birthday.
One day, Gautam decides to give a surprise to Maya by visiting her for a dinner outing. When he enters her room, he finds her in the arms of Gopal (Imtiaz Khan). Although she invites him to join for a drink, he walks out and drives his car back home in a disturbed mind during which his car runs over a young child, Anil (Master Akashdeep), the brother of journalist and advocate, Asha (Shabana Azmi. He offers Asha that he would get him admitted to the hospital with best doctors and bear the cost of the treatments. Asha declines the offer and asks him to leave her house to meet her again in the court room.
In the court, the lawyer representing the Gautam’s company says that the car was driven by company’s driver which he admits in the court. However, Asha who is present in the court says that at the time of accident, Gautam was driving the car. In the court, Gautam accept the charges and the judge pronounced him prison sentence of 15 days. He is put in the barrack along with three other prisoners, a pick pocketer (Paintal), a safe breaker and an union activist (Dinesh Thakur). Gautam becomes friendly with his fellow prisoners. His 15 days of inter-action with them turns him a changed man from a brat to more like a commoner. After 15 days, Gautam is released from the prison. Before leaving, he assures his three fellow prisoners that he would give them employment in his company provided they give up their undesirable professions. He assures the union activist that he would take him as a teacher for his workers’ training. He fulfils his promise after their release.
Asha writes a report on the car accident for her newspaper, severally criticising Gautam. The editor suggests her to tone down the article as the company gives them good advertising revenues. She declines and resigns from her job as a journalist. After the release from the prison, Gautam feels guilty for having responsible for Anil’s loss of limbs. He starts visiting him occasionally without revealing his identity. Anil develops affinity toward Gautam as he is left alone while Asha is on her freelancing job.
One day, Asha finds that Anil and Gautam has become pally. After knowing that she has lost her job in the newspapers because of the pressures from his manager, Sharma, he gets her reinstated in her job. Gradually, Asha’s attitude towards Gautam gets soften. One day, he takes her for a stroll on the beach to have a free and frank conversation with her to dispel her dislikes for rich businessmen like him. With more such meetings, she realises that Gautam is unlike any other wealthy businessman and he is a kind-hearted man having given employment to his three prison mates. They fall in love with each other.
With the positive effect of spending time with Asha, Gautam starts taking more interest in the company’s operations. His prison-mates who have been employed in his company reveal to him that Sharma and his close associates have been siphoning of company’s funds to themselves. One day while having conversation with his aunt, Gautam comes to know that after the death of his father, her mother became mentally insane and committed suicide. Gautam gets a feeling that he may also get affected by the mental illness through his mother’s gene. He shares the information about the death of his father and suicide by his mother.
Asha does some investigative operations by accessing old newspapers from her office. Her investigation brings out some startling disclosure that Gautam’s father was a freedom fighter who was jailed. This created a rift between Gautam’s father and grandfather. While fighting on behalf of the workers of his company, his grandfather employed goons to control the agitation. During the workers’ agitation, Gautam’s father was accidentally killed by the goons. His grandfather felt repentant and before his death, he bequeathed his company and other assets to Gautam. As to the Gautam’s mother, Asha could only get the information that her mother was from a lower strata of the society which may have created further rift between his father and the grandfather.
In the Board meeting of his company, Gautam presents a proposal for selling some part of his shares of the company to donate the money to a children’s hospital. The Board of directors rejects his proposal by telling him that he has become mentally unstable and he needs to be treated in an asylum. With the background of his mother’s reported mental illness, he gets convinced. He is put in an asylum where he meets an old woman (Shaukat Kaifi) who has spent nearly two decades in the asylum.
Asha visits the asylum to meet Gautam during which she also meets the old woman after hearing her story from the doctor that she has not spoken for a long time until she heard Gautam playing his mouth organ in the asylum. During their meeting, the old woman turns out to be Gautam’s mother. Gautam was separated from her after branding her mentally ill and put in the asylum as a part of conspiracy by the insiders of the company including his aunt. Asha gets a doubt that the same insiders may have initiated the conspiracy against Gautam by branding him as mentally ill.
Asha files a case in the court to get Gautam released from the asylum on the ground that he is not mentally ill. Sharma gets his manipulated witnesses against Gautam. After overcoming lots of legal hurdles created by Sharma, Asha is successful in proving the court that Gautam is not mentally ill. The court gets him released from the asylum and orders the arrest of Sharma and his associates in siphoning off company’s money. The film ends with Gautam, Asha, Anil and Gautam’s mother coming out of the children’s hospital after donating funds.
Like all his earlier films, in ‘Faaslaa’ (1974), K A Abbas has ensured that the narratives remain in focus on the main theme. Almost in every long scene, there are direct or indirect evidence of his ideological philosophy, which to his credit, do not sound preachy but the legitimate part of the story. Another feature of this film is that K A Abbas has presented a balanced view in that not all rich persons are necessarily exploiter of the poor strata of the society.
The highlight of the film is that just before the end of the film, Gautam (Raman Khanna) makes a 5-minute forceful submission to the court about his assessment of the situations in which he has found himself in the guise of mentally ill person. His submission in the leftist ideological language sounds impressive to hear like the one as under:
This world is full of madness where one person stays in a bungalow of 21 rooms and 21 persons stay in one room, where a dog takes bath in a marble tub and thousands of persons are deprived of water, where a country spends crores of rupees for manufacturing an atom bomb but are short of funds to create basic health and educational infrastructures. The distance (faaslaa) between the earth and the sky has been reduced but the distance between human beings has not got reduced.
Many such rhetorics in the film do not seems to have impressed the general film audience for whom the films are means of entertainment. The film did not have star value as the lead actors were almost newcomers. There was no ingredients in the film for the box office success except an item number of Helen’s dance. As happened with K A Abbas earlier directed film, this film also failed at the box office. However, the box office failures of the films did not deter K A Abbas to deviate from his belief in the ideology he propagated through the medium of films.
The film had four songs written by Kaifi Azmi which were set to music by Jaidev. Two songs have been covered on the Blog. I present the 3rd song, ‘nighaaen churaao naa daaman chhudaao’ rendered by Bhupinder Singh and Meenu Purushottam. The song seems to have been deleted from the film.
I can fairly guess as to where the song was planned to appear in the film. Raman Khanna convinces Shabana Azmi to come with him in his car to have a free and frank talk as to why she hates rich people including him. After some discussion on rich verses poor, Shabana Azmi gets to know him in a better perspective. His behaviour and the attachment to an old mouth organ which he plays on the beach gives her impression of a common man. Her attitude changes toward him. The lyrics fits well for the song in this situation.
The reason for the deletion of this song from the film’s soundtrack, I guess, may be due to the fact that a song, dil ne tadap tadap ke tadpaana sikhaa diyaa, more or less in similar genre, was picturised on Shabana Azmi and Raman Khanna.
Audio Clip:
Song-Nigaahen churaao na daaman chhudaao (Faasla)(1974) Singers-Bhupinder Singh, Meenu Purushottam, Lyrics-Kaifi Azmi, MD-Jaidev
Lyrics:
hmm
hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm
hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm
nigaahen churaao
naa daaman chhudaao
nigaahen churaao
naa daaman chhudaao
mere saathh aao
mere saathh aao
mere saathh aao
mere saathh aao
muhabbat kee duniyaa
basaao to aaun
wafaa ko wafaa kar
dikhaao to aaoon
wo chaandee kee talwaa…r
wo chaandee kee talwaar
sone kee deewaar
bedard be-rooh daulat kaa sansaar
usse chhod kar tum
jo aao to aaoon
usse chhodkar kar tum
jo aao to aaoon
wafaa ko wafaa kar dikhaao to aaoon
wo sone kee deewaar
main tod aayaa
wo daulat kaa sansaar
main chhod aaya
basaayenge duniyaa
basaayenge duniyaa
nayee
aa to jaao
bichhaa dee hai nazren
kadam to badhhaao
bichhaa dee hain nazren
kadam to badhhaao
mere saathh aao
mere saathh aao
mere saathh aao
mere saathh aao
mere saathh aao
mere saathh aao
mere saathh aao
mere saathh aao
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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