Door chala chal tu kaheen door chalaa chal
Posted on: February 8, 2026
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 a 2-part Triade from the film Panghat-1943.
From their initial C grade stunt /costume films, Prakash Pictures of Vijay and Shankar Bhatt turned to Mythological films after the mammoth success of Bharat Milap-1942 and occasionally made a few social films too. In the end Prakash made exclusively social films only till closing down the studio in 1971. In their busy times in the first half of the 1940s, they made today’s film as a quicky.The entire film was shot in 45 days. This was possible as they had taken mostly B grade artists who had plenty of free time for shootings.
Film Panghat-1943 was directed by K.J.Parmar and Mahesh Chander- both Cinematographers with Prakash Pictures.The music was by S.N.Tripathi, favourite of Prakash Pictures. The Lyricists were Pt. Indra and Ramesh Gupta. The cast included Ratnamala, Umakant, Susheel Kumar, Alaknanda, Jeevan, Leela pawar, Rajkumari Shukla, Baby Tara and many others.
1943 was a year in which the II world war was in full swing. Both sides were almost equal. The effects of the war on India were…
it faced the infamous Bengal Famine, caused by the war profiteering. Controls on film production were tightened by the Government. I.P.T.A. became operative with its first staged play ‘Nibanna’. Film Kismet became one of the biggests Hits ever. V.Shantaram’s Rajkamal Kalamandir debuted with Shakuntala, as did Mehboob with his film Najma. Government made showing of Newsreel before any film mandatory. Film Raj Nartaki’s english version The Court Dancer was exhibited in the USA, first time for an Indian film.
1943 produced 105 Hindi films, the highest number during the war years, 1939 to 1945. Many landmark and musical films appeared in this year giving a respite to the war torn audience of Indian Cinema. Let us take a look at some of these films.
Film Bhaichara had music by the only other “Sursagar” musician – Himangshu Dutt ( the more well known being the singer Jagmohan Sursagar).
C.Ramchandra had his first musical hit with the film Bhakta Raj, made by Jayant Desai productions.
Gauri from Ranjit became Monica Desai’s first Hindi film in Bombay. It was a very successful film with songs by Khemchand Prakash, based on Bangla Folk tunes.
Kanan Devi gave some sweet songs in the film Hospital, under Kamal Dasgupta’s baton.
Bombay Talkies film Hamari Baat was the last film in which Devika Rani acted. Anil Biswas was the composer.
Music Director Khurshid Anwar brought Gauhar Sultana from Lucknow to sing some songs in the film Ishara. Naushad'[s musical film Kanoon had some good Suraiya and Shyam duets.
Film Kashinath was Nitin Bose’s last film in New Theatres, after he developed differences with B.N.Sircar.
Anil Biswas gave his career best musical Hit film ” Kismet”- the longest running film from Bombay Talkies.
Nurjehan’s musical film Nadan was popular with songs from composer K.Datta. Director Mehboob made his first film Najma, under his own banner Mehboob productions.
Yet one more musical from Naushad- film Namaste.
At last a musical hit for composer S.N.Tripathi- Panghat from Prakash Pictures. Rajkumari Shukla sang her only Hindi song in this film;. (the film was remade as Chitchor-1976).
Film Paraya Dhan had music by Bengal’s famous musician Gyan Prakash Ghosh. Deena Pathak sang her only 2 songs in this film as Deena Sanghavi.
Ghulam Haider makes merry again with Shamshad hit songs in the film Poonji from Pancholi, Lahore.
One more superhit film – Ram Rajya from Prakash Pictures had very good songs from composer Shankar Rao Vyas. Saraswati Rane gave 2 melodious songs. Yashwant Joshi and Yashwant Nikam sang the famous song ” Bharat ki ek Sannari ki katha”. Ram Rajya had also a distinction as the only Hindi film that was seen by Gandhi, on 2-6-1944.
( before this Gandhi had seen ” Mission to Moscow-43′ an English film, in Wardha, according to The Hindu (Kathmandu Ed.) dt.8-2-2010). The film had early songs by Manna Dey also.
Naushad in full swing with his 3rd Musical Sanjog, where Suraiya gave playback to Mehtab, the Heroine.
Vasant Desai gave excellent songs in the hit film Shakuntala by V.Shantaram.
Hospital- excellent songs by Kanan Devi.
Kanoon- another hit from Naushad.
Mera Khwab- MD Ghulam Mohammed’s Debut film
Najma- Mehboob khan’s first film, on Muslim society.
Nurse- Gyan Dutt gave an excellent song of Rajkumari-‘ Vo gaye nahin’
Prithvi Vallabh- A big budget costume drama made by Minerva, based on the story of K.M.Munshi. It had songs by Minakshi Shirodkar.
Tansen- Saigal’s first film in Bombay. Khurshid matches him song by song.
Taqdeer- Nargis aka Baby Fatima debuted as an adult. However her name comes third in the credits, after Motilal and Chandramohan.
Film Panghat-1943 was based on a story of mistaken identity. The film and its 12 songs became quite popular. In the subsequent years, many films were made on this theme. Film Chitchor (Amol Palekar and Zarina Wahab)-1976 and Main Prem ki diwani hoon-2003 were such films that come to mind offhand.
In 2004, a book called “Why we tell stories’, written by Christopher Booker was published. It is a book having more than 700 pages-728 pages to be exact. The book says “There are only 7 (Seven) basic plots in the whole world. They are recycled again and again in Novels, movies, Plays and Operas. These are
1.Overcoming the Monster
2.Rags to riches
3.The quest of mistaken identity
4.Voyage and return
5.Rebirth
6.Comedy and
7.Tragedy “.
After this book was published, there was chaos and criticism started. ‘New York Times’ also jumped in. The author coolly replied to all points and stuck to his statements. If we look at Hindi films, I personally feel that what the author has said is true in our case. Only thing is that our film stories are always a clever mixture of all or some of the above points. In our film industry Master Bhagwan, Manmohan Desai and Nasir Hussain were experts in using the same story again and again in different garbs !
The story of the film Panghat-1943 was….
The story is very interesting and will remind the readers of a popular and famous film of 1976 with melodious music.
Jamuna Prasad Chaturvedi(Jeevan-who was Onkarnath Dhar in real life,but known as OK Dhar Kashmiri in the 30s) s/o Durgaprasad Chaturvedi,is an orthodox Bramhin Zamindar who has built a community Well,for water for everybody in the surrounding villages.His wife Mrs Shantidevi(Leela Pawar) and he are popular.When his daughter Radha grows up,he fixes her marriage with Mohan(Umakant Desai) son of Trivedi,a big businessman from other village.
Kiran s/o Ganga Prasad arrives instead of Mohan and is welcomed by them.Kiran is loved by Jamunaprasad ,his wife AND also Radha.After some time when the real identity of Kiran is revealed he is refused by Jamuna and his wife and he is suggested in various ways to leave.Then Mohan arrives and realises the mistake but finally sacrifices for the sake of lovers and the end is good.
One of the heroines in this film was Ratnamala. How many of us really know anything about this actress. It is surprising that a very lovely and beautiful actress, who was Heroine of about 20 films in the 40s and has about 300 films to her credit remains practically unknown. She was the Heroine with Saraswati Cinetone, Prabhat Film company Sagar, Ranjit, Prakash pictures etc- all well known banners. She was in films for 50+ years and was a famous name in Marathi films of Dada Kondke.
It’s a great pity that hardly any or no information about her is available in books,Encyclopedias, wiki or on the Internet. When all sources of information come to a dead end, I turn to Harish Raghuwanshi ji of Surat and I am never disappointed. Here, I provide a short Biodata of Ratnamala, based principally on the articles given by Harish ji.
She was born as Kamal Bhivandkar on 22-6-1923 in Bombay. Her father was Auditor of Central Bank, Bombay. She was good looking and could sing well. From the age of 14 years, she went on the stage of several Ganesh Melas prevalent in those times. She earned 5-10 rupees per performance. Due to the family’s financial problems, she started looking for work. She was proficient in Marathi, Gujarati, English and Urdu languages. In 1938, she was picked up by Dada Torne of Sarswati Cinetone, Poona, who cast her as Heroine in Marathi film’ Bhagwa Zenda ‘. Seeing her performance, she was taken by Prabhat Film company for the Marathi version of their film Das Baje-42. Torne had renamed her as Ratnamala.
Vijay Bhatt of Prakash Pictures offered her a role in film ” Bharat Milap-42″, when Kusum Deshpande selected for the role of Bharat’s wife fell ill. Seeing her performance, she was selected as a Heroine for the film ‘ Station Master-42 ‘. Here too the original Heroine Jyoti fell ill. Then came Panghat-43, Police-44, Kavita-44 etc. She acted in many Mythological films also. Some of her well known films were, Dholak, Maya Bazar, Sasural, Bhabhi ki Chudiyan, Faulad, Woh kaun thi, Nishan, Bahu beti, Mera Saayaa, Raaz, SaraswatiChandra, Brahmachari, Upahaar, Seeta aur Geeta, Nastik etc etc.
She acted in 130 Hindi films and many more in Marathi films. Later she did side roles. She became famous as the mother of Dada Kondke in 11 of his films. She was called ‘ Aayee ‘ (आई ) in the Marathi films of Kondke.
Ratnamala was married to Marathi Producer Director Raja Pandit, when she was very young. As Ratnamala became successful and Raja became a failure, their marriage came on rocks. She had one Son-Jaikumar, who had also acted in one film. Unfortunately, he died suddenly in an accident. Ratnamala lived in her own Bungalow in Andheri, Bombay, along with her foster son-Ramesh. Ratnamala died of a heart attack on 23rd January 1989.
Here is a Video-song from this film. The singers are Sumati, S.N.Tripathi and Afzal. Enjoy….
(Part 1 and 2 combined)
Song- Door chala chal tu kaheen door chalaa chal (Panghat)(1943) Singers- Sumati, Srinath Tripathi, Afzal, Lyricist- Ramesh Gupta, MD-Shrinath Tripathi
Lyrics
———————-
Part 1
———————
door chala chal tu kaheen door chalaa chal
door chala chal tu kaheen door chalaa chal
matlabee duniya se kaheen door chalaa chal
swaarthhee duniya se kaheen door chalaa chal
jahaan pyaar ho ikraar ho
inkaar naheen ho
sachchee ho muhabbat jahaan taqraar naheen ho
dil se mila ?? taar chalaa chal
dil se mila ?? taar chalaa chal
jo dil ke taar chalaa chal
jo dil ke taar chalaa chal
door chalaa chal
————————–
Part 2
————————–
jahaan koi tawangar na ho
koi ghareeb ho
jahaan koi tawangar na ho
koi ghareeb ho
Hindu na Musalmaan ho
koi Parsi na ho
Hindu na Musalmaan ho
koi Parsi na ho
dil mein basaa ?? pyaar chalaa chal
dil mein basaa ?? pyaar chalaa chal
tu sada pyaar chalaa chal
tu sada pyaar chalaa chal
door chala chal
door chala chal
tu kaheen door chalaa chal
matlabee duniya se kaheen door chalaa chal
swaarthhee duniya se kaheen door chalaa chal
har bhai ke dil mein mere bas yehee lagan ho o
har bhai ke dil mein mere bas yehee lagan ho
aazaad chaman ho mera
aazaad watan ho
aazaad chaman ho mera
aazaad watan ho
zindagee ka dil se laga daanv chala chal
zindagee ka dil se laga daanv chala chal
tu laga daanv chala chal
tu laga daanv chala chal
door chala chal
door chala chal
tu kaheen door chalaa chal
matlabee duniya se kaheen door chalaa chal
swaarthhee duniya se kaheen door chalaa chal
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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