O sanam mera saathh denaa
Posted on: December 12, 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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‘Beqasoor’ (1969) was produced by Vijaykumar and was directed by Kamran. The cast included Dara Singh, Sanjana, Sham Kumar, Maruti, Ulhas, Ratnamala, Habib, V Gopal, Sadhana Khote, Dilip Dutt, Madhumati, Meenakshi etc. It was ‘B’ Grade action-thriller film. Dattaram composed the songs of the film during his waning career as a music director.
Dattaram Wadkar (1929 – 08/06/2007) predominantly worked with Shanker-Jaikishan (about 70 films) as his music assistant, taking care of the rhythm section of the songs during 1953-77. During this period, he also independently worked as the music director in 19 films spread over between 1957 and 1971.
Dattaram was born in North Goa in a poor family. In 1942, the family shifted to Mumbai and stayed in Thakurdwar in Girgaon area. Those days, many artists from film industry and Hindustani classical musicians used to stay in that area, one of them being a female vocalist who was the friend of Dattaram’s mother who was also a singer. Through her, Dattaram was initiated as disciple of Pandit Pandharinath Nageshkar for learning Tabla and Dholak. Later, he also learnt playing the same instruments from Pandit Yeshwant Kerkar, who introduced him to music director, Sajjad Hussain. He worked with Sajjad Hussain as percussionist for about three months.
Dattaram met Shankar of Shankar-Jaikishan for the first time in a gym where both were regular visitors. One day, Shankar has come to the gym with Tabla. After the end of his exercise followed by bath, he started playing his Tabla. Hearing the rhythmic beats, Dattaram met Shankar and started playing on his Tabla. Shankar was so much impressed with his Tabla playing that he invited him to accompany him to Royal Opera House where rehearsals of the plays of Prithvi Theatres followed by actual staging of plays used to take place. During the interval of the plays, musical instruments would be played – Ram Ganguli on Sitar, Shankar on Tabla, Jaikishan on harmonium etc. Once in a while, Dattaram used to get opportunity to play Tabla and Dholak. So, Raj Kapoor, Shammi Kapoor, Premnath and other actors had noticed him playing Tabla/Dholak.
Raj Kapoor has started planning to make his second film, ‘Barsaat’ (1949) for which he has given the music direction to debutant Shankar-Jaikishan. Naturally, Dattaram became the part of R K Films as a musician. Initially, He played Tabla/Dholak as a musician in all films under Shankar-Jaikishan but only at the rehearsal stage. At the time of the recording of the songs, the Tabla/Dholak used to be played by Shankar. It was Dattaram’s wish to actually play percussions at the time of recording of the songs. His wish got filled when the regular dholak player did not turn up at the time of recoding of the song. So, Shankar-Jaikishan asked him to play the dholak for the song recording of ik bewafa se pyaaar kiya in ‘Aawaara’ (1951). From ‘Aah’ (1953) onwards he got accredited as the Music Assistant on the films’ credit titles.
Sebastian D’Souza, another musician from Goa joined Shankar-Jaikishan as the Music Assistant from ‘Shree 420’ (1955) onwards who was taking care of the melody part of the songs while Dattaram was taking care of the rhythm section of the songs.
Raj Kapoor had decided to produce ‘Ab Dilli Door Naheen’ (1957) for which he was neither director nor an actor in it. It was akin to a children’s film. He wanted Shankar-Jaikishan to be the music director. Being a low profile film, Shankar-Jaikishan suggested Dattaram’s name as they have seen him composing tunes. Raj Kapoor agreed and called Dattaram for the tune of the first song to be recorded. It was a birthday song for which the tune composed by Dattaram was approved by Raj Kapoor. Thus, jiyo laal mere tum laakhon barasa> became the first song to be recorded under the debutant music director, Dattaram. Despite all the eight songs of the film becoming very popular, the film failed at the box office. But Dattaram had impressed Raj Kapoor with his compositions.
In the very next year, Dattaram got another film of Raj Kapoor, ‘Parvarish’ (1958) for which he got all the tunes of the songs approved from Raj Kapoor before recordings. All the seven songs in different moods became very popular. A special feature of the song, aansoo bhari hai ye jeewan kee raahen was that it was recorded with only three musical instruments – the Sarangi, Tabla and Sitar. This was not by design but due to the fact that at that time, the members of Cine Musicians Association were on strike. Dattaram had to manage the recording of the song with his musician-friends who were not connected with the film industry. Ustad Zahoor Hussain Khan played the Sarangi.
Dattaram’s third film with Raj Kapoor as the lead actor was ‘Shrimaan Satyawaadi’ (1960). Again, all the seven songs of the film became very popular. All the three films of Dattaram did not create ripples on the box office. Almost the same fate was with his other films like, ‘Qaidi No.911 (1959), ‘Santaan’ (1959), ‘Zindagi Aur Khwaab’ (1961), ‘Jab Se Tumhen Dekha Hai’ (1963) etc. His career as a music director did not pick up in the same way as that of Laxmikant-Pyarelal who have also graduated from the music arranger to music director. Dattaram’s career as a music director can be compared with that of Ghulam Mohammed who was the music assistant to Naushad and had also been the music directors for many films with popular songs. The common factors between the two were that both came from the background as Tabla/Dholak player and they continued to serve as music assistants while pursuing the career as independently as the music director. As the saying goes, nothing grows under a banyan tree.
One of the major contributions of Dattaram to film music was the creation of what is known as ‘Dattu Theka (rhythmic beats) played on dholak. This beats became popular after his song, chun chun karti aayee chidiyaa. He used the same ‘theka’ in masti bhara hai sama, wo chaand khila wo taare hanse and some more. ‘Dattu Theka’ is an innovative faster and continuous structure of taals played on Dholak which are in variant with the regular percussion taals like Teen Taal, Jhap Taal, Dadra Taal, Keharwa Taal, Roopak Taal etc. Dattu Theka became popular with other music directors also. In the musician’s notations, it was specifically mentioned as ‘Dattu Theka’ whenever they were required to play the beats.
Dattaram in the final years of his career worked with music director, Laxmikant-Pyarelal. However, because of his indifferent health, he retired from the films and returned to his native place in North Goa sometime in the first half of 1990. He passed away at his residence in Goa on June 8, 2007, due to a severe heart-attack.
‘Beqasoor’ (1969) is not available for viewing on any video sharing platform. The synopsis of the film’s story which I got from Mike Burnam’s website, is given below with some editing:
Ram (Dara Singh) is a kind-hearted but mischievous thief who works for Seth Mangatram (Sham Kumar). Because of Ram, he has made a lot of money. But Ram is unaware of the Seth Mangatram’s evil reach.
One day, while evading the police, Ram accidently knocks down an elderly woman (Ratnamala). He helps her and drops her home, providing medical aid and saving her life. Because she has no one to look after her, he accommodate her to stay on with him and she became like a mother to him.
One day, Ram sees a beautiful girl, Geeta (Sanjana), who is being accosted by a group of gangsters. He saves her from the men. It turns out that Geeta is Mangatram’s daughter. Ram and Geeta fall in love which is not liked by Mangtaram. He warns Geeta to stay away from Ram. But they are inseparable. Ram has even declined the offer of Mangtaram’s money for staying away from his daughter. Finally, Mangtaram reveals Ram’s criminal past to Geeta, who is shocked. She confronts Ram who admits his past deed and promises her that he is going to give up all his misdeeds.
Mangtaram, unable to split up the pair, now plans Ram’s murder. He locks Geeta in a room and tricks Ram into attempting a rescue of her. But it was too late for Ram to realise that it was all a trap to attempt a deadly end to the love affair.
As often happens in most of the action-thriller ‘B’ Grade films, one can visualise that at the end, Ram successfully overcomes the numerically superior Mangatram and his henchmen and unites with Geeta.
The film had four songs written by Farooque Qaiser which were set to music by Dattaram. One song has been covered on the Blog. I present the 2nd song, ‘o sanam meraa saathh dena pyaar kee raah mein’ which is rendered by Mohammed Rafi and Suman Kalyanpur. It is a romantic song which means that it may have been picturised on Dara Singh and Sanjana.
Note: The life profile of Dattaram is based on his interview titled ‘Masti Bhara Hai Shama’ available on one of the video sharing platforms.
Audio Clip:
Song-O sanam mera saathh dena (Beqasoor)(1969) Singers-Mohammed Rafi, Suman Kalyanpur, Lyricist-Farooque Kaiser, MD-Dattaram
Both
Lyrics:
o sanam meraa saathh denaa
pyaar kee raah mein ae ae ae
o o o
jag chhod denge
aapkee chaah mein ae
o sanam meraa saathh denaa
aap aa gaye
zindagee aa gayee
aap ko dekh ke
bekhudee chhaa gayee
paas aaiye
ye nazar choom loon
jaaneman be-piye
aaj main jhoom loon
o sanam
mat chhod jaanaa
pyaar kee raah mein aen aen aen
o o o sab chhod denge
aap kee chaah mein
o sanam meraa saathh denaa
pyaar aap kaa
kam agar ho gaya
umr bhar ke liye
dil meraa kho gayaa
pyaar aap hain
aasraa aap hain
aur main kya kahoon
devta aap hain
o sanam dil hai deewaana
aap kee chaah mein ae ae
ho o o meraa saathh denaa
pyaar kee raah mein aen
o sanam
mera saathh denaa
pyaar kee raah mein aen aen aen
o sanam mera saathh denaa
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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