Maaya ka saara kaam hai
Posted by: Atul on: April 24, 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 88 year old film jailor-1938.
The film was made by Minerva Movietone, Bombay, owned by the producer and director of this film. The music Director was Mir Saheb, who had an assistant named Ramchandra Narhar Chitalkar, who became famous as C.Ramchandra in later years. The cast of the film was Sohrab Modi, Leela Chitnis, Sadiq Ali, Eruch Tarapore, Sheela, Shareefa, Kusum Deshpande and many others. The Lyricist was Amir Haider Kamaal ‘ Amrohavi’, who later became famous as Kamaal Amrohi and husband of actress Meena Kumari.
The film had a totally different type of story. the story of a sadist and Psycho- neurotic person, who spoils not only his family life but also loses his child. He changes himself, but rather too late.
This was the early period of talkie films and different experiments were tried by filmmakers. Not only the film stories had a variety, but also some daring acts were shown for the first time – like a heroine in Swimsuit (Meenakshi Shirodkar in the film Brahmachari). Stories from western authors were used in films like Billi (Damsel in Distress by P.G.Wodehouse), film Duniya kya hai (Tolstoy’s Resurrection), film Prof. Waman M.Sc. (H.G.Wells’ Travel in Time) etc.
Some social problems were tackled like a Psycho neurotic person in the film Jailor, marital discord in the film Divorce, Unwed Mother in the film Mera Ladka etc. Some artistes made their Debuts in films like Abhagin (Chaman Puri), Baghbaan (Ram Avatar), Bahadur Kissan (Master Bhagwan as a Director), Brahmachari (Meenakshi Shirodkar), Lalita Pawar as a producer etc. Also 1938 saw the sad end of imperial Film Co. with their last film Vasant bengali. Imperial was the maker of India’s First Hindi Talkie film Alam Ara in 1931. Imperial made 109 Silent films and 52 talkie films during their existence.
Film Jailor-1938 was a reasonably successful film. Later in his career and on the downhill in late 50’s, he made this film again with the same story and the same title in 1958. Jailor-1958 was an outdated theme and people were no more interested in such stories. The audience’s tastes had changed over the years. However the music by Madan Mohan was very popular.
The story of Jailor-1938 was….
Dilip (Sohrab Modi) is a good natured kind hearted jailor. He has a good looking wife Kanwal and a doting girl child – Bali. Kanwal likes to enjoy modern life , like attending clubs etc, which Dilip does not like. Kanwal does not like her husband. She contacts her ex-lover Dr. Ramesh and they both elope. She is not worried about her child either. This shock changes the life of Dilip and he becomes cruel, hot tempered and a nasty person, as if to avenge the world for what happened to him.
Kanwal and her lover meet with an accident. Ramesh loses his sight and Kanwal’s face is badly injured. When Dilip learns about her accident, he brings a repentant Kanwal back home. However he locks her in a room and tortures her, taunts her and tries to take revenge. She is not allowed to meet her daughter, who is told that her mother has died. Once the daughter Bali falls sick, but Dilip does not allow Kanwal to tend her daughter also. Frustrated and sad Kanwal commits suicide. Due to illness the daughter also dies.
This is another shock for Dilip, but it changes him to his old good nature. He becomes more kind, loving and helpful to others. One of his ex-convicts Prem kills the village rowdy when he tries to trouble his blind sister Chhaya. In the jail, Prem requests Dilip to look after his sister. Dilip meets and helps her. He starts loving Chhaya. Unknown to him, Dr. Ramesh, now blind, comes to the same temple in which Chhaaya lives. They get to know each other and develop love.
When Dilip comes to know about their love, he spends his savings and helps both blind people to get operated upon. They regain sight. Dilip ensures that they are united.
Music Director C.Ramchandra had served in Minerva Movietone for 3 years in his early career. he had learned a lot here from MDs like Bundu Khan, Meer Saheb and B.S. Hoogan. He has mentioned this in his Marathi autobiography- Jeevanachi Sargam ( जीवनाची सरगम ). It was here that he also met his dear friend Master Bhagwan. After 12 years, when C.Ramchandra was called by Modi, this is what happened….
When Sohrab Modi sent a call to him to come composing songs for one of his films – Mera Munna-1948, C. Ramchandra remembered his initial training in Minerva. While in Minerva, he knew Modi as a strict disciplinarian and a kind soul. In the subsequent period, C Ramchandra was impressed with the extraordinary success of Minerva movies like Pukar-39, Sikander-41 and Prithwi Vallabh-43. Afterall, his and Minerva’s careers had started together only ! Though he had become a famous and a successful Music Director now with films like Shehnai, Saajan, Nadiya kepaar and Khidki etc amongst his 30 odd films, he went to meet Modi.
There was a tremendous change in circumstances when he left Minerva in 1936 and today when Minerva requested him to work for them in 1948. He had become so big that he could have easily refused to work for them, but he was not ungrateful. C Ramchandra has described this meeting to one of his friends, author Isak Mujawar thus…” When I entered the office of Minerva, after 12 years, I realised that while I had grown in my stature, Minerva had lost some of its sheen and its place among the top studios. Whatever I had learned while working here had made my foundation so strong that I could never repay Minerva’s debt fully. As I entered, I saw the same tall, well built Sohrab Modi and by his side Mehtab was sitting next to him. As soon as I crossed at the door, both of them stood up. I was embarrassed. I went ahead and touched his feet. He murmured something and hugged me. I did Namaste to Mehtab ji. Modi talked briefly about his film and their expectations about music. Then with a little hesitation, he asked me my fees. I smiled and said, “Give me just One Rupee, sir. That’s my fee for Minerva”. However, they did not agree and a nominal token fee was fixed. I signed the contract “.
Those were the days when artistes gratefully acknowledged the help they received in their early careers !
Thousands and thousands of actors, directors and musicians have worked in this film industry, since films started. Not all of them are known or remembered by people. 95 % of these people are not remembered today. Most names had no faces. They were in the films without any specific personal identity. 5% names are known to many, but it is the special few names which became permanently etched in the minds of people.
You can ask 10 persons to list out 10 names of film personalities, who gave their major contribution or were famous so much that they can not be forgotten. On checking this list of 100 people, you will find certain names repeated in almost every list. Names like Saigal, Dilip kumar, Dev Anand, Rajkapoor, Ashok kumar and Sohrab Modi are certain to be in all the lists. Their contribution to Hindi cinema is unmatched.
Sohrab Modi is remembered fondly by the film buffs for his towering personality, solid voice and his forceful dialogue delivery. Actually, Modi was much more than that. He was the first and the only film maker who took up Historical subjects to make films that left a long lasting impression on the film goers. He loved to do the roles of Historical persons ( actual or mythical) and deliver long dialogues in his resonant voice, clear diction and superb voice modulation.
The heroine of the film was Leela Chitnis. Born in Dharwad, Karnataka in South India on September 30, 1914, Leela, the daughter of an English Professor, was initially involved with the vanguard Marathi Theatre group Natyamanwantar. The Group was founded by the Hindi and Marathi Director Keshav Narayan Kale, Music Director of several Prabhat films – Keshavrao Waman Bhole and that great actor of early Marathi Cinema Keshavrao Date. Natyamanwantar’s works were influenced by Ibsen, Shaw and Stanislavski, whose theoretical writings were translated by Kale in Marathi. Chitnis’s early stage work at Natyamanwantar include the comedy Usna Navra (1934) and with her own theatre group Natyasadhana’s Udyacha Sansar.
Films were Chitnis’s last resort to support her children from her first marriage. She started as an extra at Sagar Movietone and moved on to mythological films and Ram Daryani’s stunt films. In the latter’s Gentleman Daku (1937), she played a thief attired in male apparel and was publicized in the Times of India then as being the first graduate society-lady on the screen from Maharashtra. By then, she had already made her first major mark as an actress on the silver screen in Master Vinayak’s Chhaya (1936) playing the role of a woman who betrays her lover when she hears of his family history and his father, a bank employee who steals money to buy medicines for his dying wife and is subsequently caught and sent to prison where he dies in shame. Chitnis then worked at Prabhat Pictures, Pune and Ranjit Movietone notably playing Ratnavali in the latter’s Sant Tulsidas (1939) before entering her best phase as a leading lady with Bombay Talkies.
Chitnis will always be remembered for her films at Bombay Talkies. Her association with Bombay Talkies saw her scale the top rung of stardom and she made a particularly good pair with Devika Rani’s earlier hero and Bombay Talkies’ best and most well known leading man, Ashok Kumar. In fact Chitnis’s quartet of films with Kumar – Kangan (1939), Azad (1940), Bandhan (1940) and Jhoola (1941) represent her best oeuvre of work in Hindi films as a heroine. Ashok Kumar was most impressed by her acting abilities and admitted to learning the technique of emoting with the eyes from her.Chitnis entered films when it was a profession looked down upon and actresses were often compared with prostitutes. She was one of the first educated women in films. In fact, was said of her,“She was liberated before it was fashionable for Indian women to be liberated.”
By the mid 1940s however her career as leading lady was starting to go downhill. Bollywood had conventional rules and roles for its leading women and there were few forthcoming roles of substances for actresses in their 30s. Even a re-pairing with Ashok Kumar – Kiran (1944) failed to evoke the magic of the earlier hits.
Chitnis entered the next and perhaps the most well known phase of her acting career with Filmistan’s Shaheed (1948), playing the suffering mother of Dilip Kumar. For 22 years after that Chitnis excelled playing the suffering ailing mother to the entire range of leading men of the day, often widowed or abandoned and struggling to bring up her offspring with dignity in the face of abject poverty. In fact, it is in this image that moviegoers remember her rather then her leading lady days. The very name Leela Chitnis conjures up the widow in white, coughing and slaving away. To quote RM Vijayakar in India-West magazine, 1997, “If she appeared on screen it was to cough consumptively, gobble spoonfuls of syrup from bottles perched so precariously on bedside tables that they overturned and crashed to the floor when there was no money to buy another.”
In fact, she created the archetype of the Hindi Film mother that was later personified by the likes of Achala Sachdev, Sulochana and most famously Nirupa Roy. Some well-known films showcasing Chitnis’ maternal histrionics include Raj Kapoor’s Awara (1951), the title role in Bimal Roy’s Maa (1952), BR Chopra’s Sadhna (1958), Dilip Kumar’s Gunga Jumna (1961) and Dev Anand’s Guide (1965).
After a lot of films in 1970 – Man ki Aankhen, Jeevan Mrityu and Bhai Bhai – Chitnis was seen on the screen after a gap of a few years, first with Mehman (1973) and then in Palkhon ki Chhaon Mein (1977). She continued to make sporadic appearances on the silver screen, her last film being Dil Tujhko Diya (1985). She then migrated to the United States to join her children.
Apart from acting, Chitnis created history of sorts when in 1941 she became the first Indian film star to endorse Lux soap, a privalege that only the top Hollywood heroines had till then.
Chitnis also briefly dabbled in movie-making, producing Kisise Na Kehna(“Don’t Tell Anybody”, 1942) and directing Aaj ki Baat (“The Talk of Today”, 1955). She also wrote and directed a stage adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s Sacred Flame and published her autobiography, Chanderi Duniyet, in 1981, in Marathi. I have this book.
Some other films of Chitnis include Wahan (1938), Kanchan (1942), Bhakta Prahlad (1946), Ghar Ghar ki Kahani (1948), Sangdil (1952), Awaaz (1956), Naya Daur (1957), Sadhana (1958), Phir Subah Hogi (1958), Dhool ka Phool (1959), Kala Bazar (1960), Hum Dono (1961), Dosti (1964) and Waqt (1965).
Leela Chitnis passed away in the United States on July 14, 2003 at a nursing home in Danbury, Connecticut.
When she moved to the US to join her children, by all accounts her twilight years were lonely. A younger Bollywood colleague (Mehmood) who visited Chitnis in her Connecticut nursing home found her in a wretched state, forlorn and penurious, attended to by a kindly nurse in a situation tragically reminiscent of the roles Chitnis popularised in her heyday.
When I learnt about the sad demise of my favourite actress Leela Chitnis, I was in London. After about a month or so, an Obituary on Leela Chitnis appeared in the Newspaper The Independent, dated 7-8-2003. I was impressed by it and preserved that article with me. I will reproduce it some other time. (Partly based on the Article by Mr. Karan Bali. Also thanks to http://www.mymarathicinema,www.marathifilmdata and my notes.)
Here is a song, sung by Sheela. Enjoy….
Song- Maaya ka saara kaam hai (Jailor)(1938) Singer- Sheela, Lyricist- Kamal Amrohi, MD- Meer Sahib (asstt. C.Ramchandra)
Lyrics
Maaya ka saara kaam hai
maaya ka saara kaam hai
paise ka sab naam hai
paise ka sab naam hai
maaya ka saara kaam hai
maaya ka
sastee(?) ko indhan kahat hain
sastee(?) ko indhan kahat hain
chaltee ka gaadee naam hai
chaltee ka gaadee naam hai
maaya ka saara kaam hai
maaya ka saara kaam hai
paise ka sab naam hai
paise ka sab naam hai
maaya ka
baaba ye teree bhool hai
baaba ye teree bhool hai
kaante ko samjha phool hai
baaba ye teree bhool hai
kaante ko samjha phool hai
mat bhool ki jo bhee sundar hai
mat bhool ki jo bhee sundar hai
wo haddiyon ka pinjar hai
wo haddiyon ka pinjar hai
maaya ka saara kaam hai
maaya ka
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