Aaj naye geet saje meree paayal mein
Posted on: October 2, 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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‘Manzilein Aur Bhee Hain’ (1974) was produced by Johny Bakshi and was directed by Mahesh Bhatt who also wrote the story. The dialogues were written by the veteran theatre personality, Satyadev Dube. The cast included Kabir Bedi and Prema Narayan in the lead roles supported by Gulshan Arora, Purnima, Sudhir, Mac Mohan, Mukesh Bhatt, Shah Durrani, Kirti Kumar, Viju Khote, Ranvir Raj, Uma Dutt etc. Both Johny Bakshi and Mahesh Bhatt made their debuts as producer and director, respectively. Both had known each other while working for Raj Khosla as Assistant Director/Production Controller.
The film was completed in 1972 but ran into problems with Censor Board for about 15 months. In an interview, Mahesh Bhatt revealed that for Censor Board, the film’s two fugitives’ polyandrous relationship with a woman who is their partner in crime amounted to undermining the institution of marriage. Finally, the film got the Censor Certificate on August 13, 1974, as an ‘Adult’ film with cuts. The film had a limited theatrical released on September 27, 1974. The VCD of the film I watched, has a 2016 Censor Certificate with major cuts to make it fit for public viewing under parental guidance. The theme of the film is that there are alternative paths to becoming a criminal who lives under the constant fear of death.
The story of the film is as under:
The film starts with a group of fugitives after looting valuables faces the security guard. To scare him away, their leader of the gang, Uday Singh (Kabir Bedi) fires from his gun and unintentionally, the bullet hits the security guard killing him. Uday Singh is arrested and is in prison awaiting his death by hanging. On the day when he is being taken to the gallows, his gang members attack the prison and Uday Singh escapes along with his gang to a deep forest and take rest. However, on the next day, there are fight within the gang members on the whereabout of the jewellery they have looted in which Uday Singh is doubled crossed by his other gang members when he was in prison. However, his close associate, Gulshan who saves Uday Singh while getting hold of his loot. In the fight two gang members are killed and other two gang members escape.
Uday Singh’s plan is to cross the state border through the forest route. But before that, he meets his blind mother (Purnima) to whom, to console her gives his false profession that he is an undercover agent working for the police because of which he has to change his identity by sometime becoming a robber. He introduces his friend, Gulshan who is with him. She tells Uday Singh to treat Gulshan as his younger son. Both leave the house by assuring her that soon they will meet her. The police team has got a wind of their escape route and they are closing on. At that point, they decide to hide in a house where they meet Shanti (Prema Narayan), a prostitute.
Next morning, Shanti sees their pictures in the newspapers released by the police as the wanted fugitives. Having exposed, it is risky to escape leaving her. While Gulshan, always in the aggressive mode, wants to shoot her, Uday Singh offers her an alternative. She has to join them by becoming the partner in crime. She agrees thinking that her life as a prostitute is no better than joining the criminals. Three of them leave the house to their destination of crossing the state border by the forest route. They walk, they hide and take the night halts in the forest.
Next day morning, Gulshan finds Shanti missing along with the looted jewellery. Thinking that she has escaped with booty, both Gulshan and Uday Singh run to search for her. However, soon they find her taking a bath in a nearby stream after which she wears all the looted jewellery. Uday Singh meets her while Gulshan, who does not like Uday’s closeness to her, watches both of them from a distance.
In the meanwhile, Uday Singh’s two fugitives Sudhir (Sudhir) and Mac (Mac Mohan) to whom he has pardoned and let off with a warning, are in the revenge mode on Uday Singh for not sharing the loot. They visit his mother’s house to know the whereabout of him. Being blind, she is not able to tell them except that he has assured her of meeting her. Even Shanti’s client is not able to give them any clue nor their informer at the police station. There is frustration as two months have passed and they are clueless about Uday Singh and Gulshan.
At the police station, Police Commissioner is frustrated by his police team’s inability to trace Uday Singh and Gulshan. When the regular routes with police check points do not give results, the police commissioner orders the team to search for the forest route and put police forces at the vintage points including the streams, ponds as they will certainly be visiting for water.
After many days of spending together while travelling through the forest, Shanti is disturbed by the polyandrous relationships both Uday Singh and Gulshan have developed with her which may lead to friction between them. Both of them assure her that this will not happen between them. In fact, after crossing the border, Uday proposes to construct a house to all of them to live together.
Both the police team and two fugitives, Mac and Sudhir have got winds of Uday Singh and Gulshan’s location. Both the police team and two fugitives are independently pursuing them. Mac and Sudhir ambush them cornering from a top vintage point of a hill. Uday Singh sees them and as a bet, he throws his booty towards them to stop them coming toward him. In the milieu of grabbing the booty, both Mac and Sudhir are killed by Uday Singh.
At last they are near the state border as the topography changes from the forest to the desert type plains. All three of them have been walking under the scorching sun searching for the water holes to quench their thirst. At last, they find a pond but the police team has already surrounded it. With thirst and weakness affecting them, Uday Singh tells Gulshan to take Shanti to a safe place and he would run away in another direction. But after some distance, Uday comes back to join Gulshan and Shanti as he cannot think of leaving them. The police team has already surrounded them. Finally, he throws the booty in front of the police chief and requests him that since he has committed the crime, he should be punished and Gulshan and Shanti should be spared. After police agree to his request, Uday surrenders.
The film end with Uday Singh being hanged till death while Gulshan and Shanti meet Uday Singh’s blind mother in her house. Gulshan tells her that his son with his wife has come and soon she is going to become a grandmother.
Despite censor board cuts and deleted scenes, the film has retained some semblance of continuity. The film was quite ahead of its time both in terms of the bold story as well as in its technical aspects. Some of the action scenes were superbly shot on the location. Kabir Bedi, Gulshan Arora and Prema Narayan have given good performances. As a director, Mahesh Bhatt has handled each of the main characters superbly by not allowing them to go overboard in their performances. Though the film was critically acclaimed, it was a disaster at the box office.
The film had four songs written by Yogesh and set to music by Bhupinder Singh which was his only Hindi film as a music director. One song has been covered on the Blog. I present 2nd song, ‘aaj naye geet saje meree paayal mein’ rendered by Asha Bhosle. It is a background song picturised on Prema Narayan. Kabir Bedi and Gulshan Grover are watching her from a distance. Later, Kabir Bedi meets her while Gulshan Grover is observing both of them with disgust. The song ends abruptly. However, audio clip covers full song. The song has some traces of R D Burman type of melody and the orchestration which is not a surprise as Bhupinder Singh was the lead guitarist among R D Burman’s core musicians.
The context of the song is that Kabir Bedi and Gulshan Arora are two fugitives who are on the run from the police chase with their booty. They have met Prema Narayan, a prostitute while hiding in her house. She joins them as a partner in crime. They are following the forest route to escape from the police and they spend night in the forest. In the morning, Gulshan Arora finds her missing and thinks that she has escaped with the booty. They both run searching her when they find her taking bath in a nearby stream. The background song reflects her dream of becoming a bride decked in costumes and jewellery whenever she gets her share of booty. But as of now, she does not know where her stupid decision (joining the fugitives) will take her.
Video Clip:
Audio Clip:
Song-Aaj naye geet saje meree paayal mein (Manzilen Aur Bhi Hain)(1974) Singer-Asha Bhonsle, Lyrics-Yogesh, MD-Bhupinder Singh
Lyrics (Based on Audio Clip):
aaj naye geet saje
meree paayal mein
aaj naye geet saje
meree paayal mein
phool se haathhon mein
ye kangnaa bajtaa hai
lagaayee maine bindiyaa to
roop meraa sajtaa hai
aanchal mein aen aen
aaj naye geet saje
meree paayal mein
paanvon mein chhanakte hain bichhuwe
(??) ye mere badan ke bhaar se
kaanon ke chamakte ye jhumke
gaalon ko choomen machal kar pyaar se
bolen aen choodiyaan
sun o o meree jaan
hai naheen
ab koi gham tujhe ae
aaj naye geet saje ae
meree paayal mein
pankh binaa
ye ud kar aaj kahaan
jaanoon na jaanoon chalee main jhoom ke
sochoon oon
kyun abhee
meree bekhudee ee
le chalee
kis galee
ab mujhe
aaj naye geet saje
meree paayal mein
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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