Matak mere cheeta
Posted on: September 29, 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 a unique film- Love in Bombay-1975.
It is generally said that records are for breaking. It means, in any field, if a record of achievement is made, sometime or the other, that record is broken. Some records are such that one feels, ‘now this will never be broken. It is the ultimate’.
Here are some examples…
When, in the film ‘Dillagi’-1999, 16 singers (11 males and 5 females) were used in the film’s songs, one thought that this was unbreakable. But in 2018, the film ‘ Man Marzian’ used 28 singers ( 16 males and 12 females) and broke that record.
Similarly, when in the film ” Sampoorna Teerth yatra” -1970, one song was of the duration of 45 minutes, it was presumed that this was the ultimate. However, in the film” Maha Pawan Teerth Yatra-1975, one song was of the duration of 70 minutes. So, you are never sure when some seemingly unbreakable record would be broken in later times. one more example.
This is very interesting. When Himanshu Rai and M.Sherawat gave 17 kissing scenes in the silent movie Khwahish, people were excited and thrilled and thought that this was the highest number. However, in the film Shokh Dilruba-1936, Nazir and Yasmin Gave 150 kissing scenes and till today atleast, this record is unbreakable. Anyway, now kissing is banned in films, except in exceptional cases.
Not all records in the film industry are so simple and good. There are a few unfortunate records which no one wants to be broken. You will be surprised to know that today’s film ” Love in Bombay” was made in 1971, it was censored in 1975 but was released only in 2013 – a cool 42 years later ! its making and the release story is very interesting.
Film “Love in Bombay” was produced and directed by the film’s Hero Joy Mukherji in 1971. The music director was Shankar-Jaikishen. The songs were written by Majrooh Sultanpuri. The film’s cast consisted of Joy Mukherji, Waheeda Rehman, Kishore Kumar, Sonia Sahani, Rehman, Bipin Gupta, Anita Guha, Kamal Kapoor, Narendra Nath, Tun Tun and others. Special appearances were by Ashok Kumar and Rajendra Nath. Kishore Kumar had even written one song in this film along with Anand Datta. There were only 6 songs in the film.
Initially, Joy Mukherjee was my favourite hero. His first film-Love in Shimla-1960 was almost immediately after Shammi Kapoor’s ‘Dil deke Dekho”-1959, introducing ASHA PAREKH. Within a span of just one year, we saw TWO New Heroines,who were ‘just the medicine the Doctor ordered’ for the young ones in 1960. Like Shammi,Joy too had a filmi pedigree.Both were tall, handsome, well built and would make ‘miss a heartbeat’ in any young girl those days!
Being a Bengali, Joy Mukherjee had a kind of sweetness in him. He was-arguably- a better looking Hero than Shammi Kapoor. This is no comment on their acting prowess-if any. Having given many entertaining films, slowly Joy too became a prisoner of the popularity cult and his films started losing charm.
By the 70s, Joy was already looking older, with a receding hairline. When we heard that he was making ” Love in Bombay”,in the early 70s, we anxiously awaited the film, not to see Joy, but to see and enjoy the songs of Kishore Kumar, who had immortalised his role in Padosan-1968. But unfortunately the film never came out nor any songs of that film were heard, so we all forgot about it.
Suddenly the film LOVE IN BOMBAY surfaced in 2013 and was released in some Multiplexes. Somehow, I did not feel like seeing the film now. Then my friend invited me to see this film and out of curiosity, I went to see the film. Just in the first half of August I had read the review of this film . This also prompted me to go to see the film.
Honestly, what can be my reaction to a 40 year old film in which my one time favourite hero had acted ?
The film Love in Bombay was the third in the series of “Love in -” movies, viz. Shimla, Tokyo and Bombay. This film was produced by Joy Mukherjee himself and he, reportedly, spent a very large amount on making this film which put him under financial trouble. Ultimately there was no money left to release the film.
His son MUNJOY MUKHERJEE gave an interview to Rediff.com. When asked why the film was released after 40 odd years, he gave explicit details. I am providing here a concise version of that interview, for our readers-with sincere thanks to Rediff.com. This will also tell how a son took efforts to fulfil his Father’s dream….
Love in Bombay was the most expensive movie ever to be released.
The first few reels were shot on a ship. The film cost Rs 30 lakh to Rs 35 lakh . At today’s rates, that would be anything between Rs 15 crore to Rs 20 crores. After investing a huge amount of money in making the film, he did not have any money left to release the film. Joy did try to release the movie in the 1980s and 1990s as the movie was a labour of love, but it was too costly to do so.
When satellite premieres of films came into fashion in 2000, his son told him, ‘Let’s have the film released on television, let’s have a world satellite premiere.’ But he wanted it to be released in a theatre, not on television. Each time the son spoke about releasing the movie, Joy would shut him up. He never even told him where the reels of the film were stored.
Son would tell him that there is no such film called “Love in Bombay”, and that he was lying. No one had even heard the songs from the film. When he was pestered about the film finally in November 2011 Joy decided, “Let’s try to release the movie. We will release it in March 2012.” As fate would have it, Joy Mukherjee passed away on March 9, 2012 without telling his son where the movie was kept.
The son went into a depression after he lost his father. He was so close to him. He would not eat his dinner if it was late. They had playful chats. When he passed away, the house seemed empty.
In May, His son, Munjoy, felt his father was telling him ,’You are the eldest son, you have to take charge of things, you have to carry the family baton.’ The first thing he did was search for the negative.
Normally, films are kept in cold storage, at low temperatures. He started going to cold storages where film negatives are kept. One day, as he was going through his father’s bills, he saw a bill from Fazalbhoy Cold Storage, Worli (Central Mumbai). When he called them, they told him they had the negatives for “Love in Bombay”. He immediately went there, paid the bill and got the negatives.
The next day he started hunting for a good post-production studio. Avitel studio scanned the negative and told him that 30 to 40 per cent of the film was damaged. The technicians also said that the film was in quite a decent condition for negatives lying around for 42 years and somebody must be taking good care of the film.
The people at the cold storage told him that Joy Mukherjee went there every year and got the negatives cleaned manually. He did not know new technology, but because of his efforts the film was in good condition. For the next seven months they cleaned the movie three times till Munjoy was satisfied. Once the cleaning was done, they did colour correction.
The sound was a huge problem. There was no clarity and there was a hissing sound. Munjoy’s friend Mansoor Alam helped him. For three months they worked on the sound. After a year, the film was ready.
Munjoy was trying to sell a product that was 42 years old. He was not sure who wanted to watch it.
What worked to his advantage was that there were legends like Ashok Kumar, Kishore Kumar, his father and Waheeda Rehman in the film. The movie had music by Shankar-Jaikishan, lyrics by Majrooh Sultanpuri, songs sung by Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi and Asha Bhosle. All these people were his aces.
He went to big music companies, but they did not want to release the music. The only company that saw the value of the music was HMV SaReGaMa. Munjoy had produced music albums for them and they released the music.
Munjoy went to many distributors, but they turned him down. Finally, PVR came to his rescue. They thought of releasing the movie in the PVR Director’s Rare section.
Now he had a problem with the Censor Board. His father had got the censor certificate for the film in 1974, and he was releasing the film on the same certificate. In the film, the title appears in three languages as it did in films in those days. The title in English and Hindi was Love in Bombay and in Marathi it was Love in Mumbai. In those days ‘Bombay’ was called ‘Mumbai’ only in Marathi. The Censor Board wanted Munjoy to remove the Marathi name as the censor certificate is for the movie Love in Bombay.
He made those changes, but now they had a problem with the promos. In the promos, Munjoy and his younger brother Sujoy’s name figure as co-producers, but the actual movie has their father’s name. So, they had to remove that and get the promo approved.
If he postponed the film to promote it well, he may not have got theatres later as there are big releases coming up back-to-back like Chennai Express, Once Upon A Time in Mumbaai Dobara, Madras Cafe etc. So they decided to go with the release .
Love in Bombay was released on August 2,2013. Love in Bombay had created a Record. A film was made in 1971, passed by Censors in 1974 and was released in 2013- after a gap of 40 odd years. Earlier the film, “Yaar meri Zindagi” held this record. Made in 1971, it was released in 1996-a cool 25 years ! In the 60s and 70s, some more films were also delayed in getting released and it did show in the films when released after 10 or more years. I remember there was some discussion on such films on this Blog, some time back.
Seeing a film made 40 years ago had some disadvantages. First, most or many people connected with the film were not alive. Joy Mukherjee, Rehman, Kamal Kapoor, Kishore Kumar, Ashok Kumar, Narendranath, Rajendranath, lyricist Majrooh Sultanpuri, composers Shanker and Jaikishen etc had since departed. While this added to the nostalgic value to the film, the plot, presentation and acting styles etc were not digestible in these circumstances. In the 70s or earlier, the heroes were accepted as supermen, capable of fighting on land, in Sea or in Air, they were highly educated, handsome and Rich etc. Today’s films tend to depict realities and are far from the escapist themes of yore.
The story of Love in Bombay was-
Badal (Joy Mukherjee) is a Diver, horse rider ,fighter, swimmer lover, singer and many more things. Near an island, 50 miles off Bombay stands a ship. The evil captain(Kamal Kapoor) and his funny mate(Rajendranath) watch Badal’s diving skills. Badal is offered a job to retrieve a sunken consignment of drugs for poor people-which in fact is to get sunken gold nugget consignment-. he is hired. He comes to the ship on his Horse called Cheetah. There is Mr. Mehra, a millionaire(Rehman), his pretty daughter Preeti(Waheeda), her suitor Roshan(Narendranath), son of Mehra’s close friend(Bipin Gupta) and many others. The ship is wrecked after a storm and Badal saves Preeti. Captain, his mate and many die but main characters survive. They are captured by Tribesmen who kidnap Preeti. Badal and Cheetah save her and rescue her. They fall in love but Mehra and Roshan beat Badal half dead and take Preeti to Bombay.
Badal is saved by some kind souls and he comes to Bombay with his horse. He meets Ganpatrao (Kishore Kumar), a madari with a Bhaloo. they become friends. Badal goes to meet Mehra asking for Preeti’s hand, which is refused. Mehra gives him a challenge to earn 5 lakh rupees in 3 months to get Preeti’s hand.
The rest of the story consists of how Badal, Ganpat Rao and Cheetah the Horse fulfil the condition and how the end is sweet,after all !
Kishore Kumar was expected to repeat his Padosan-68 performance here. He was really very funny in the film, he had 3 solo songs and a duet with Mohd. Rafi too. His Bhaloo is funny, but one can make out that a man is acting in a Bhaloo’s suit.
Overall, Waheeda is lacklustre. She is totally wasted.(Maybe that is why she resented it when this film was released after 40 years. She neither attended the music launch nor the premiere).
The Kishore songs are worth listening to. So here is a song from Love in Bombay-Made in 1971 and released in 2013.
Song- Matak mere Cheeta (Love in Bombay)(1975) Singer- Kishore Kumar, Lyricist- Majrooh Sultanpuri, MD- Shankar- Jaikishen
Lyrics
hey hey
hey hey
buhahahahaha
he he he he
buhahahahaha
matak
ae matak matak
jhatak
ae jhatak jhatak
matak jhatak latak patak
matak jhatak latak patak
matak mere cheeta
hahahahaha
matak mere cheeta
matak mere cheeta
phir haar ke main jeeta
meree Raadha meree Seeta mil gayee mujhe re
matak mere cheeta
phir haar ke main jeeta
meree Raadha meree Seeta mil gayee mujhe re
aa haa haa haa
hey hey hey hey
ho ho ho ho
haha
ae matak mere cheeta
phir haar ke main jeeta
meree Raadha meree Seeta mil gayee mujhe re
hey hey hey hey
ho ho ho ho
hahahahahahaha
naagin dhinna
o jhatpat kinna
oy jhatpat kinna
o naagin dhinna
haahaahaahaa
mere sang lehraake dol aise bal khaake
rokte hee reh jaayen log
leke usko baahon mein
yoon chaloon ke raahon mein
dekhte hee reh jaayen log
mere sang lehraake dol aise bal khaake
rokte hee reh jaayen log
leke usko baahon mein
yoon chaloon ke raahon mein
dekhte hee reh jaayen log
chal pyaare kismat khul gayee
matak mere cheeta
haan
matak mere cheeta phir haar ke main jeeta
meree Raadha meree Seeta mil gayee mujhe re
matak mere cheeta phir haar ke main jeeta
meree Raadha meree Seeta mil gayee mujhe re
haa haa haa haa
hey hey hey hey
ho ho ho ho
haaa
o paijee paijee
bahubalu ??
bolobolobolo re
bolobolobolobalabalabala
ye rivaj mehlon ka reet sheharwaalon kee
main deewaana kya jaanoon re
ab koi bhala maane
ya koi bura maane
main to aaj na maanoon re
ye rivaj mehlon ka reet sheharwaalon kee
main deewaana kya jaanoon re
ab koi bhala maane
ya koi bura maane
main to aaj na maanoon re
mil gayee meree duniya
mil gayee
ae matak mere cheeta
haan matak mere cheeta
phir haar ke main jeeta
meree Raadha meree Seeta mil gayee mujhe re
matak mere cheeta
phir haar ke main jita
meree Raadha meree Seeta mil gayee mujhe re
haa haa haa haa
hey hey hey hey
ho ho ho ho
hey matak mere cheeta
phir haar ke main jeeta
meree Raadha meree Seeta mil gayee mujhe re
aa haa haa haa
hey hey hey hey
ho ho ho ho
haa haa haa haa
hey hey hey hey
ho ho ho
hm hm hmm o o o
mhh mhh mhh
hah hah
hah hmm
9 Responses to "Matak mere cheeta"
October 3, 2025 at 8:37 am
Good Morning,
Very interesting article detailing, how a son worked dedicated and hard to release his dad’s forgotten movie, with such a love and affection.
Thanks for sharing this valuable information.
Regards
Uma👌👍👏🙏
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Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
October 2, 2025 at 3:32 pm
Interesting that you have written a post about “a new but not so new film”.
Is it already so many years since the film finally released- 12 years almost!!!
The film released in 2013, it had a censor certificate of 1975, but going by what is there in the post, as per the interview of Munjoy Mukherjee, they still had to get a re-certificate. That means the fresh certificate was sometime in 2013. So doesn’t that make it a 2013 film, too? Even the music was released only in 2013
Atulji, do we also list this film under films of 2013?
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October 2, 2025 at 5:06 pm
Earlier I had listed it under 2013, but now I have listed it under 1975.
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October 2, 2025 at 5:37 pm
oh, okay.
It is a unique case where it can be listed under two years. There was one other film like that no? “Paanch Dushman” I suppose.
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October 2, 2025 at 8:21 pm
Atul ji,
What is the criterion for listing films in the Blog – as per the year of Censor Certificate or as per the year of release?
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October 2, 2025 at 8:54 pm
Mostly I go by HFGK entry. For movies that do not appear in HFGK, I take a year that I consider suitable. Often the year when the song may have been recorded would seem appropriate to fix the year in case the movie is badly delayed. In this case 2013 would seem strange seeing that most singers as well as the MD of this movie were long dead by 2013.
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October 2, 2025 at 9:21 pm
Agreed attributing this movie to 2013 based on date of song recording will be wrong. And I am not sure that this is there in HFGK as I don’t have a copy of it
thus we may have to check the recertification date?
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October 3, 2025 at 5:19 am
HFGK was published in 1980s and 1990s whereas people became aware of the songs of this movie only in 2013. So naturally this movie does not figure in HFGK.
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October 6, 2025 at 4:01 pm
Peevesie’s Mom ji,
Your point is valid,but date of Censoring is documented and God knows when the film is released. Hence to have a standard procedure, films are dated by Censor dates. HFGK indicates by this method only.
The film in question is mentioned in HFGK as a film of 1975.
Though originally censored in 1974, it had to be recensored in 1975, as few things like producer’s name and removal of Marathi title as Mumbai were removed after 1974.
Date of the film has nothing to do with when the songs were recorded.
There are several instances where songs were recorded much earlier than censoring.
-AD
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