Chal ree sakhee tu gaagar le kar
Posted on: October 27, 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.
|
Blog Day : |
6310 | Post No. : | 19533 |
Today’s song is from the film ‘Kisaan Kanya’ from 1937. This movie is famous for being the first indigenously made colour film of India, by Ardeshir Irani’s Imperial Film Company. Film pioneer Irani was also the first to make an international co-production, with Italy – the film ‘Nala Damayanti’ – a silent film of 1920. Secondly, and more importantly, he also holds the honour of making and releasing India’s first talkie film ‘Alam Ara’ in 1931. And with the film ‘Kisaan Kanya’, he achieved a hat trick of ‘First in India’ credit in film making.
The film was directed by Moti B.Gidwani – an England trained Director. It was this same Gidwani who joined Baburao Painter’s Maharashtra Film Company at Kolhapur in 1929. Irked by an outsider usurping their legitimate rights, a group of disgruntled artistes, led by V.Shantaram left the company and established Prabhat Film Company. The film’s cast included Master Nissar, Padma Devi, Ghulam Mohd., Jillo Bai and others. The Music Director was Ram Gopal Pandey (variously billed as R.G.Pandey, Ram Gopal and Pandey). He hailed from U.P. After trying to become a singer unsuccessfully, he became assistant to many well known composers and learned the methods.
His first break came in 1936 with ‘Matwali Jogan’ aka A girl from Lahore. Then he was called by the Imperial film company for its first colour film Kisan Kanya-37. Master Nisar and Padma Devi’s songs became popular, so he was given two more films- Mere Laal-37 and Vasant Bangalee-38. Then came Mother india-38, Actress kyon bani-39, Flying Rani-39, Perfect man-38, Daughters of India-39 and Chalti Duniya-40. He was then connected with Mohan Pictures. He did other movies like Tatar ka chor-40, Deepak Mahal-40, Captain Kishore-40, Jadui Bandhan-41, Shahzadi-41, Bulbul E Baghdad-41, Bandukwali-44, Hoor E Jungle-46, Baghdad ka Chor-46, Arab ka chand-46, Ali Baba-46.
His last film seems to be Angoorbala-47. He was left behind as his music was stage and drama type only. He did not change the style either. In all he gave music to 22 films and composed 203 songs. None of his songs are remembered today. No other information is available on him.
The film’s story was written by Prof. Ziauddin of Shanti Niketan and the screenplay and the dialogues were by the ace journalist Manto. In his book “Dastavez” he has described the situation, actors and the Imperial Film company in great and interesting style. The book is worth reading. Originally written in Urdu, its Hindi translation was available till a long time ago. I have a copy of this Hindi version, thanks to our friend Deepak Choudhari ji – presently settled in Bangalore. I would suggest our Bangalore based Atulites to get in touch with him and see his huge collection of books in various languages and songs. He was planning to buy a flat in Bangalore outskirts to keep his collection.
The film’s story was….
In a village, a landlord (Ghani) exploits the farmers and leaves no opportunity to rob them of their legitimate earnings. Ramu (Master Nissar), the farmer is no exception. He has been regularly exploited by the landlord. Ramdai (Zilloo Bai), the landlord’s wife, is religiously inclined and resents her husband’s actions. Bansari (Padma Devi) is a maid servant in the house of the landlord who is in love with Ramu. The romance of Bansari and Ramu goes on smoothly until Ramu is arrested on a false charge of murdering the landlord. Ramdai, the landlord’s wife, is aware as to who had murdered her husband. Realising that the innocent Ramu’s life would be taken away, she goes to Randhir (Ghulam Mohammed), a villain with a heart, who had actually murdered the landlord. Ramdai pleads with him to confess for the sake of Bansari, the girl who is also loved by Randhir.
In the climax, Randhir in the bravado character, confesses his crime of murdering the landlord. Ramu is released. The final scenes of the film depict the need for the wealthy persons to come forward to help the poor villagers of India.
Film Kisan Kanya-1937 was a Milestone film because it was the First indigenously made fully coloured film. The film was made by Imperial Film Company, Bombay, owned by Ardeshir Irani. He was an extraordinary person who achieved several milestones, not broken by anyone till today.
Khan Bahadur Ardeshir Irani (5 December 1886 – 14 October 1969) was a writer, director, producer, actor, film distributor, film showman and cinematographer in the silent and sound eras of early Indian cinema. He was one of the greatest legends of today’s Indian Cinema. He was the director of India’s first sound film Alam Ara. He was the producer of India’s first colour film Kisan Kanya. He was renowned for making films in Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, English, German, Indonesian, Persian, Urdu and Tamil. He was a successful entrepreneur who owned film theatres, a gramophone agency, and a car agency.
Ardeshir Irani was born into a Zoroastrian family on 5 December 1886 in Poona, Bombay Presidency. In 1905, Irani became the Indian representative of Universal Studios and he ran Alexander Cinema in Bombay with Abdulally Esoofally for over forty years. It was at Alexander Cinema that Ardeshir Irani learnt the rules of the art of filmmaking and became fascinated by the medium. In 1917, Irani entered the field of film production and produced his first silent feature film, Nala Damayanti, which was released in 1920.
In 1922, Irani joined Bhogilal Dave, the former manager of Dadasaheb Phalke’s Hindustan Films, and established Star Films. Their first silent feature film, Veer Abhimanyu was released in 1922 and starred Fatima Begum in the female lead. Dave, a graduate of the New York School of Photography, shot the films while Irani directed and produced them. Star Films produced seventeen films before Irani and Dave dissolved the partnership.
In 1924, Irani founded Majestic Films, joined by two talented youngsters, B.P. Mishra and Naval Gandhi. At this establishment, Irani produced the films and either Mishra or Gandhi directed the films. Despite its success, fifteen films later, Majestic Films closed, giving way to the equally short-lived Royal Art Studios which had exactly the same life-span as the earlier two, however, it became famous for a certain type of romantic films. Irani improved on it, using new talent to great effect.
In 1925, Ardeshir Irani founded Imperial Films, where he made sixty-two films. By the age of forty, Irani was an established filmmaker of Indian cinema. Ardeshir Irani became the father of talkie films with the release of his sound feature film, Alam Ara on 14 March 1931. Many of the films he produced were later made into talkie films with the same cast and crew. He is also credited with making the first Indian English feature film, Noor Jahan (1931). He completed his hat-trick of earning fame when he made the first colour feature film of India, Kisan Kanya (1937). His contribution does not end only with giving voice to the silent cinema and colour to black-and-white films. He gave a new courageous outlook to filmmaking in India and provided such a wide range of choice for stories in films that till date, there are films being made which have a theme relating to one of the one hundred fifty-eight films made by Irani.
In 1933, Irani produced and directed the first Persian talkie, Dokhtar-e-Lor. The script was written by Abdolhossein Sepanta who also acted in the film along with members of the local Parsi community.
Irani’s Imperial Films introduced a number of new actors to Indian Cinema, including Prithviraj Kapoor and Mehboob Khan. He also interfered with the medium. He produced Kalidas in Tamil on the sets of Alam Ara, with songs in Telugu. Also, Irani visited London, England for fifteen days to study sound recording and recorded the sounds of Alam Ara on the basis of this knowledge. In the process, he created a whole new trend unknowingly. In those days, outdoor shootings were shot in sunlight with the help of reflectors. However, the outdoor undesirable sounds were disturbing him so greatly that he shot the entire sequence in the studio under heavy lights. Thus, he began the trend of shooting under artificial light.
Imperial Films Company Est: 1926, successor to the Majestic and Royal Art Film companies was set up by Ardeshir Irani as a diversification of his exhibition interests in partnership with Esoofally, Mohammed Ali and Dawoodji Rangwala. Organised as a vertically integrated combine with its own exhibition infrastructure. Started following the decline of Kohinoor, it continued many of the latter’s Mohanlal Dave-inspired genres, often with the same stars and film-makers. Imperial became closely associated with the costumed historical genre launched with Anarkali (1928), shot and released almost overnight in direct competition to Charu Roy’s The Loves of a Mughal Prince (1928). Irani also rushed out Alam Ara (1931), released as India’s first full talkie narrowly beating Madan Theatres’ Shirin Farhad (1931). Imperial was the first studio to shoot scenes at night (in Khwab-e- Hasti, 1929) using incandescent lamps.
It owned India’s top silent star, Sulochana, and promoted her along with Zubeida, Jilloo and, for a while, the young Prithviraj Kapoor. This was perhaps the first major instance of a deliberate manufacturing of a star-cult as a marketing strategy. Top Imperial film-makers include R.S. Choudhury, B.P. Mishra and Mohan Bhavnani, whose film-making set the house style, as did Nandlal Jaswantlal’s sound films. A fair number of the studio’s talkies were remakes of its own silent hits with Sulochana (Anarkali, 1928 & 1935), Wildcat of Bombay (1927) became Bambai Ki Billi (1936), etc. It made films in at least nine languages: Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Burmese, Malay, Pushtu and Urdu. The first Iranian sound film, Dukhtar-e-Lur (aka Dokhtare Lor Ya Irane Diruz Va Emruz, 1932) was also made here. Kisan Kanya (1937) by Gidwani was India’s first indigenously manufactured colour film, made with the Cinecolour process. When it closed in 1938, its economic and generic inheritance was continued by Sagar Movietone.
Ardeshir Irani was very keen to become the First to make a Talkie film of India. He knew that Madon Theatres of Calcutta too were busy in making their First Talkie film, with two popular stars of the day. Irani hastened the speed of his shootings and recordings. Lot of secrecy was maintained in filming the movie. From his secret sources in Calcutta, he was getting information on the progress of Madon Theatres’ film in making. He came to know that their film was to have about 20 songs in the film. Irani decided to limit the number of songs in his film to save on time. Now they would have only 7 songs. Thus they saved on many days of shootings and recordings. Thus, while Alam Ara was released on 14-3-1931, Madon could only release their First Talkie film “Shirin Farhad” on 30-5-1931, a cool two and a half months later !
Similarly, Irani studied why Prabhat’s first colour film “Sairandhri-33″ failed technically and decided to do all technical processes in India, for his colour film Kisan Kanya-37. Thus his colour film came out much better than Prabhat’s film.
Irani perhaps was the world’s first multilingual film maker,having made forays into English, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Persian, Burmese, Indonesian and Pashto. He is credited with launching the Talkie era in countries like Burma, Indonesia and Iran. He made nearly 120 Talkies in a span of just 8 years. He was also the first to establish a colour laboratory imported from Hollywood.”
Irani made one hundred fifty-eight films in a long and illustrious career of twenty-five years, between the First and Second World Wars. He made his last film, Pujari, in 1945. Irani was not compelled to live like Dadasaheb Phalke for he realised that the war was a time not suitable for film business and therefore he suspended his film business during that time. He died on 14 October 1969 at the age of eighty-two, in Bombay. (Thanks to wikipedia, Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, The formative phase of Indian Cinema-Ashok Raj in Hero-I, article by D.B.Samant, Shirish Kanekar and my own notes. )
The Hero of the film was Master Nissar. Master Nisar was the most popular hero of the early talkie films. He was also one of the most highly paid stars of that era. His popularity was such – it is said that once due to a very large crowd gathered to see him, the Governor of Bengal was forced to divert his car to another road ! When Master Nisar went to Nashik for shooting Bhavnani’s film, he had to be kept closed in a room of his hotel to avoid his fans and hunters from other film companies, who would try to abduct him ! This same person, who enjoyed fame, name, money and fan following once, had to spend his last days in misery, poverty, neglect and pitiable conditions in a one room tenement in a Kamathipura chawl with few aluminum pots and a box full of photographs. During his heydays, he had learnt the art of massaging, as a hobby. This very art came to his help in his last days and he used to work as a masseur and earn a few rupees sometimes.
Film historian Isak Mujawar has written in his book ‘Flashback-II’ about several instances of his later years. Here are two of them. When the film ‘Do Bigha Zameen’ (1953) was being made, Bimal Roy wanted a masseur for a scene in which the Zamindar (Ulhas) is getting a body massage. Bimal da asked the then manager Jugal Kishore (who later on became an actor, director and producer) to bring a masseur having a solid physique. When Jugal Kishore brought a very thin, emaciated looking person, Bimal da was very upset. When Jugal Kishore told him that he was Master Nissar, Bimal da was moved and gave him the role.
Those who have seen the film ‘Guddi’ (1971), there is a scene in which a lanky, thin person is massaging Om Prakash. Dharmendra tells Guddi, “Do you know who he is ? Master Nissar, one time a great actor who was popular and very rich. Film line is such that riches to rags stories are very common here”. In his final days, Nisar was seen begging on roads.
One of Master Nisar’s heroines was Padma Devi in some films. She was a Bengali actress named Neelima. She made her debut in silent films with ‘Sea God’, a 1931 production from Saroj Films. She acted in about 15 silent films. While moving to the talkie films, she had difficulty with her diction and singing in Hindi language. But she overcame this with grit and determination, and learnt all this. She did all this while working in films like ‘Laal e Yaman’, ‘Kurukshetra’, ‘Prithviraj Sanyogita’ etc. (all films from 1933).
She was introduced to Baburao Patel and in no time they became ‘special friends’. Baburao cast her as a heroine in 4 films in his own Gandharva Cinetone company. She became a part of his office and personal life too. However after Susheela Rani’s entry as Baburao’s secretary, she was pushed first aside and then outside. She returned to Calcutta in 1946 and appeared in many films in character roles. She returned to Bombay in 1961 and was seen in smaller roles in Hindi films till late 1970s. Her last film seems to be in 1979.
Here is a 88 year old song from this film, sung by Padma Devi and Chorus. Enjoy the style of songs of the early cinema….
Song-Chal ree sakhee tu gaagar le kar (Kisaan Kanya)(1937) Singer-Padma Devi, Lyricist-Unknown, MD-Ram Gopal Pandey
Lyrics
Chal ree sakhee tu gaagar le kar
wahaan pe milenge ??
Chal ree sakhee tu gaagar le kar
wahaan pe milenge ??
kayee yaadon ne rasiya mareree
rasiya mareree
rasiya mareree
aavat ?? saare ??
Chal ree sakhee tu gaagar le kar
wahaan pe milenge ??
Chal ree sakhee tu gaagar le kar
wahaan pe milenge ??
?? ka paanee preet kee doree
?? ka paanee preet kee doree
prem kee gaagar bhar le goree
bhar le boree
bhar le boree
tohe soojhat hansee hansee ree
tohe soojhat hansee hansee ree
rovat nain hamaare
rovat nain hamaare
Chal ree sakhee tu gaagar le kar
wahaan pe milenge ??
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
Leave a comment