Aaj aana kal jaana duniya ek musaafirkhaana
Posted on: March 14, 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 from an almost 90 year old film Sunehra Sansar-1936.
The film was made by the East India Film Co.,Calcutta. It was directed by a veteran Debki Bose. The music was by K.C.Dey ( 1893-1962)- the only blind music composer of those times. Later, of course, two more such Music directors came up. One was Manoharlal Sonik (1923-1993) and the other one was Ravindra Jain (1944-2015). Te lyricist of all the 21 songs of the film was also the film’s Hero, Vijay Kumar Pandit, B.A. The other cast members were Rampyari, Menaka Devi (Debut film in Calcutta), Gul Hamid, Kamla Jharia, Azurie, Mazhar Khan, K.N.Singh (Debut film) and few others.
Because of the immense popularity of New Theatres, it is unlikely that many readers will know about the banner of today’s film- The East India Film Company. The East India Film Company was an Indian Film Production Company, based in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India. It was the first Indian film company to screen a movie at an international Film Festival. Started in 1932 in Calcutta, by R. L. Khemka, went on to be a pioneer in producing films across several regional film industries, including Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, Telugu, and Tamil in the decade after its founding; till then, production companies were restricted regionally.
The company was formed in 1932 by B. L. Khemka, a local Marwari businessman in Bengal after acquiring the RCA Photophone studio, its location recording equipment, and its Mitchell Cameras. In 1933, East India Film Company’s first Bengali Film production, Jamuna Puline, was released, with Priyanath Ganguli as the director after he left the Madon Theatres. Riding on its success, the company became the first Bengali studio to venture into not just Hindi films, but also various films in South Indian Languages. East India Film Company was soon producing a dozen movie releases per year, including several hits like Savithri (Telugu) and Ramayan (Tamil).
The East India Film Company’s Seeta, made by Debaki Bose, was the first talkie shown in an international film festival when it was shown in 1934 at the Venice Film Festival where it won an honorary diploma. Subsequently, Bose also made his noted film, Sonar Sansar (Hindi: Sunhera Sansar) in 1936 under the East India Film Company banner.
Shot in Calcutta on a lavish budget of Rs.75,000, East India Film Company’s Sati Savitri in Telugu was a huge hit. Based on a popular stage play by Mylavaram Bala Bharathi Samajam, the film was directed by debutant C.Pulliah and starred stage stalwarts Vemuri Gaggiah and Dasari Ramthilakam as Yama and Savithri, respectively. Like Seeta, this film was also shown in Venice Film Festival, where it too won an honorary diploma.
B. L. Khemka (Bajrang Lal Khemka) was from Rajasthan. He was born on 25.12.1906 in Ratangarh (Rajasthan). After completion of his education, he moved to Calcutta in the year 1923 and started the business of Sugar and Motor Car. He was very much fond of biscope, therefore he jumped into the film line. First he started a business of cinema equipment. After establishing this business, he took further steps to make movies and established his “East India Film Company” in 1931 and set up his own studio in Tollygunge. His first movie “Laxmi” was a silent movie, by that time making talkie movies started in India.
In 1932 Khemka produced the first ever Tamil movie “Ramayan”. After the success of Ramayan, East India Film Company made various movies in Hindi, Bangla, Tamil, Telugu & Malayalam by signing different artists from all over India. He has produced “Laila Majnu” in Farsi language under the joint venture of India & Iran. He produced “Mumtaz Begum” (1931) and “Bhakt Ki chela” (1936) in Tamil in which he introduced Begum Akhtar & S. Subbulakshmi in lead roles. During the period of 1931 to 1938 he produced 75 talkies movies, which includes the internationally famous movie “Sita” with Prithviraj Kapoor and Durga Khote in lead roles and directed by Devaki Bose. Looking at high demands of movies all over the country Khemka established one more film company with the name Metropolitan Pictures. He has produced many notable movies in Hindi and Bangla during World War II.
Seeta was a 1933 Indian talkie Bengali film, directed by Debaki Bose and produced by the East India Film Company. It won an honorary diploma in the 2nd Venice International Film Festival in 1934, becoming the first Indian talkie to be shown at an international film festival. The film starred Gul Hamid, Prithviraj Kapoor as Rama, and Durga Khote as Sita.
B. L. Khemka died on 11 December 1973.
It is always a pleasure for me to write about films and songs of the 1930s and the 1940s. It is a different world altogether and traversing on the path of these decades is easy, for there is no crowd here. Not many writers are interested in discussing songs or films from the 1930s in detail.
There are several reasons for this. First and foremost is lack of information. Considering what our love for recording history of old films and the artists is, one has to be lucky to a great extent to have enough material to write about, in the first place. Secondly, most artists of the 1930s and early 1940s were the lot carried forward or brought forward from the Silent Era. By the end of the first 10 years, most of these brought forward artistes went into oblivion and a new force of artistes entered the film industry.
Most artists of the 1930s seem to be faceless, with only names to go by. No details, no biographies and no other information are available for them. A select few, however, were well known with their details available, as they continued deep into the 1940s and some even into the 1950s. No information is available for most leading artistes and character artistes of the 1930s. For example, artistes like, S.M.Hadi, Miss Khatoon, Miss Ameena, Kashinath, Tara, Armelin, Nayampally, Rampyari, Master Mohd., Shanta kumari, Shantarin, Vimla, Shareefa, Prabha shankar, Zebunnisa, Sultana, Shehzadi, Zillobai, Mushtari,Khalil, Jamshed ji, Chandrarao, Iqbal, Miss Kamla, Sorabji kerawala, Laxmi, Anwari, Shankarrao Bhosle, Shankarrao Vazare, Nimbalkar, Miss Leela, Madhav Kale, Jal Merchant, Sayani, Keki Adjania, Bhagwandas, Panna, Alaknanda, Hafiz, Sunalini,Sushila, Vasantrao Pehelwan, Marutirao Pehelwan, Zohra, M.Ismail…….the list is too long. (However, I have collected bios of some of these artists)
There are hundreds of such names about whom absolutely no information is available. This makes writing on old films/artists a huge problem for students of film history ,like me. We have to be constantly on our toes to look for such information. Sometimes, Lady Luck blesses us and we come across heaps of information about an obscure name and our joy knows no bounds.
Something like this happened to me sometime back. I stumbled on an article in ” The Tribune” dated 26-5-2001, titled ” The Himachali who shone in Bollywood “, written by Ms. Anjali Mahajan. As soon as I started reading it, I realised that I was onto a discovery ! The article was based on an interview of Ms. Bimla, daughter of yesteryear actor-Hero Vijay kumar Pandit. I was not only overjoyed, but also I thanked my good luck. So, here is the information I gathered from this article as well as some other sources and HFGK of course.
As we all know, our Hindi film industry is full of Same Name Confusions. I know at least two more Vijay Kumars who acted in Hindi films. One of them was Johnny Walker’s brother, who was Hero in a few films like Wanted-61 etc.
Vijay Kumar Pandit was born on 10-3-1905 in Shageen village in Shimla. His father, Kanshiram, was a rich and prominent person in the village. Brilliant Vijay Kumar matriculated from Shimla and did F.A. from Mahindra College, Patiala. While in school and college he was doing stage dramas. He played a role in Agha Hashra Kashmiri’s play “Asir-E-Hind”. He graduated from S.D.College, Lahore in 1930 and passed his M.A. M.O.L. from Lahore only in 1932.
Handsome Vijay Kumar joined as A.D.C. to Maharaja of Patiala. His love for acting continued and in one drama, even the Music Director/Singer S.D.Batish acted with him. Based on his recommendation, Vijay Kumar got the Hero’s role in Premier Film Co.’s silent film,”Dukhtar-E-Zamana”. At Patiala, Vijay Kumar got married to Miss Tara, who was the sister-in-law (saali) of the maharaja of Patiala.
Then he moved to Bombay to enter films. His first film was Shakti Cinetone’s “Sajeev Moorti”-35, in which he was paired with Ashalata ( Mehrunnisa Bhagat-first wife of Anil Biswas). His wife Tara also acted in this film for the only time in her life. Then came the film ‘Azaadi-35’ from the same company. In this film he not only acted, he also wrote the script and gave Music. His next film was Mohan Bhavnani’s comedy film, “Shaadi ki Raat”-35, in which he was paired with actress Shareefa.
After this he moved to Calcutta, on the invitation of East India Film Co. for their film, “Sunehra Sansar”-36. Along with him Rampyari, Kamla Jharia and Menaka also acted in it. For this film, he wrote all its Lyrics also. Impressed with his performance, New Theatres called him for the film, “Abhagin”-38, opposite Molina Devi and menaka.
Vijay Kumar returned to Bombay and acted in his last film,”Asha”-38, made by Film corporation of India. His Heroine was Kamlesh Kumari. After this film, he got intimation from Shimla about the illness of his father and he returned to Shimla to look after him. After doing 6 films as a Hero, due to the protracted illness of his father, Vijay Kumar could not return to Films ever. His father died in 1947 and all the responsibility of ancestral property fell on him.
All India Radio, Shimla invited him to work for them. He wrote and directed several dramas for Radio. Same time he acted in stage dramas in Gaiety Theatre of Shimla. According to his daughter, Raj Kapoor had invited him to work in the film Jagte Raho, but he could not go. He stayed at Shimla till his death in 1977.
I was lucky to get information on this unknown hero, but there are hundreds of artists without any face or information- only names. Somehow,I seem to be lucky that some people from faraway countries contacted me and I got clues to get in touch with relatives of yesteryear actors, like Bhudo Advani, Indurani, Parshuram, Latika, Mirza Musharraf and few more.
The story of film Sunehra Sansar-36, as outlined in Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, is as follows….
This is a parable about human suffering and capitalist enterprise. The village headman has the bandits attack the house of Ramesh to settle an old dispute. His wife Roma is kidnapped and their infant son is abandoned in a forest. Years later, Roma works as a nurse to a kind millionaire and her son Raghunath lives with other unemployed youths, in a nearby house. They all dream about starting a Soap Factory. The father has become a beggar in that town only. No one is aware of others. Changed circumstances bring the family together and the kind millionaire helps to set up the Soap Factory.
Today’s song was given to me by Syed Zafar Shah ji and it was uploaded by our Sadanand Kamath ji. Thanks to both. Here is today’s song, sung by Vijay Kumar. Try to enjoy this song, sung in the 90 year old style of film songs….
Song-Aaj aana kal jaana duniya ek musaafirkhaana (Sunehra Sansaar)(1936) Singer-Vijay Kumar Pandit BA, Lyricist-Vijay Kumar Pandit BA, MD-K C Dey
Lyrics
Aaj aana kal jaana
duniya ek musaafirkhaana
Aaj aana kal jaana
duniya ek musaafirkhaana
shaam ko panchhee rain basera
basne vrikshh per jaaate
shaam ko panchhee rain basera
basne vrikshh per jaate
shaaaam ko panchhee ee
rain basera aa aa aa
basne
vrikshh per jaaaate
subah huyee to o
apna aaap ko o o o o o o
jahaan tahaan
aa aa aa aa ud jaate
dhoondhat dhoondhat aur thhikaana
dhoondhat dhoondhat aur thhikaana
aaa aaa aaa aa aa aa aa
dhoondhat dhoondhat aur thhikaana
gaya musaafir aana
duniya
ek musaafirkhaana
aa jaana kal jaana
duniya ek musaafir
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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