Chhal chhal chhalkey ras kee gagariya
Posted by: Atul on: June 18, 2026
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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 a very obscure film Aakhri Paigham aka The Last message-1949. Earlier to the release of the film, the film’s title was ‘Message of Mahatma Gandhi’, which was changed on government’s warning.
Produced by Filmland Ltd., Bombay, the film was directed by Muzammil, who also did the leading actor’s role in this film. The Music Directors were Abid Hussain Khan and Sushant Banerjee. For the film’s 12 songs, 6 Lyricists and 9 singers were used. The lyricists were Josh Malihabadi, Sharin Bhopali,Mahmood Sarosh, Behzad lucknowi, Ehsan Rizvi and J.K.Chugtai. The singers were Shamshad, Vinod, Uma Devi, Sailesh, Sudha Malhotra, Abid Hussain, Sushant Banerjee, Zohra Jaan and Rafi.
The cast included Leela Chitnis, Muzammil, Shashikala, Jillobai, Niranjan Sharma and others. The film was a typical propaganda film for Gandhi.
After the killing of Gandhi in 1948, there was a wave all over India To deify him. The film industry and the musical fraternity was not behind. There were many documentaries on Gandhi shown in theatres. There are 2 glaring examples of his musical glorification.
The first example is that of the film Sona Chandi-1946. The M.D. was Tufail Faruqui, who migrated to Utopian Pakistan, after the Partition. Sona Chandi was censored on 19-7-1946 with Censor Certificate 34253 and released. After Gandhi’s death, 2 additional new songs – ‘Pyare Bapu ki kahani” sung by Lata Mangeshkar and ” Jai Jai Ghanashyam” sung by Saroj Borkar were recorded hurriedly by Music Director D.C.Dutt and included in this film. The film was re censored on 9-4-1948 with Censor Certificate No.39154 and the film was re-released.
The second example is today’s film. As per information available from The Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, this film was a story of 2 lovers among Gandhi’s entourage. Gandhi’s speeches and songs about him were studded in this film.
Besides this, there were two unnoticed facts about this film. The famous comedian Johnny Walker (Badruddin Kazi) made his debut in this film without getting a credit. However, this fact was always hidden. Secondly, singer Sudha Malhotra used to declare Arzoo-50 as her first film, under Anil Biswas,but she never said that earlier she had sung 3 songs in film Aakhri paigham-49, under the baton of Abid Hussein Khan, a less known composer.
It is very unfortunate that once the artist becomes famous, he tends to forget his humble beginning with a less known film or a composer. This is because they are ashamed of it. Shri Girdharilal Vishwakarma ji,famous collector and a film Historian,rues that they do so. He feels the blame also goes to people who take their interview,because the interview takers do not do proper homework. Many times they do not know anything and simply listen to whatever is told by the artist.
I have no information about the M.D. Abid Hussain Khan, but composer Sushant Banerjee was one music director who is hard to be remembered for his songs. Adding further, there is hardly any information about him available.
Sushant Banerjee’s career started with films like ” Jungle ki pukar” and ‘ Kuldeep’-both of 46. His songs in ‘The Last Message’-49, a film based on Gandhi ‘s teachings were somewhat famous in those days. In Deewanji-48, Geeta Roy’s song ‘Kise apna ghum sunaun’ was very good. His 2 unreleased films,’Monica’ and ‘Piyaa’ in the 50s had some good but not very popular songs. Then ‘Harischandra-58,Ghar grihasthi-58 and swarg se sundar desh hamara-59 came and went,without much noise. He ended his career with ‘Matlabi Duniya’-61,in which he gave his best patriotic song- jai jai Bharat Desh hamara,sung by Talat and Amirbai.
Actually Sushant Banerjee had used famous and popular singers for his songs like Talat,Mukesh,Rafi,Shankar Dasgupta,shailesh Mukherjee,Mohantara Talpade,Asha Bhosle,Shamshad,Amirbai,Zohrabai,Nirmala,Geeta Roy,Sudha Malhotra etc etc but somehow he failed to create any everlasting melody from his music. One reason could be that he had only one song from Lata Mangeshkar.
The lead actress of this film was Leela Chitnis. She died on 14-7-2003. 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.
Leela Chitnis, actress: born Dharwar, India 9 September 1909; twice married (three sons, and one son and one daughter deceased); died Danbury, Connecticut 14 July 2003.
One of the first educated ladies in Bollywood, India’s film capital city Bombay, Leela Chitnis was a feminist long before the word was even popular. With her trademark eyebrows, eloquent eyes, delicate features and tremendous screen presence, she defied tradition by entering Indian films in the 1930s at a time actresses were considered prostitutes.
By “speaking through her eyes”, first as a heroine and later in well-scripted character roles, Chitnis captivated generations of moviegoers for almost five decades till the 1980s. She portrayed the archetypal sacrificing, sometimes shrill but almost always victimised Bollywood mother, a personification that is characterised by others in similar roles today. Ironically, however, in a tragic case of life imitating art, Chitnis died obscurely in a nursing home in the United States, where she had moved to be with her children.
Born in 1909 in Dharwar in southern Karnataka state, Chitnis was the daughter of an English- literature professor. After graduating locally she joined Natyamanwantar, a progressive theatre group that produced plays in her native Marathi language. The group’s works were greatly influenced by Ibsen, Shaw and Stanislavsky and, after playing the lead role in a series of comedies and tragedies and even founding her own repertory, Chitnis gravitated to Bombay to act in films, in order to support four children from her first marriage that ended in the 1930s.
She started as an extra, before moving on to playing bit roles in mythological and stunt films that were hugely popular with Indian audiences. In Gentleman Daku(“Gentleman Thief”) in 1937, Chitnis plays a polished crook dressed in male apparel and featured prominently in the local Times of India newspaper as Bollywood’s first graduate society lady.
After a brief stint with Prabhat Pictures at Poona, 120 miles south-west of Bombay, Chitnis’s golden period began in 1939 after she joined Bombay Talkies, founded five years earlier as a state-of-the-art studio with echo-proof stages, automatic laboratories, a preview theatre and highly skilled staff, mostly Germans.
Specialising in controversial films that challenged accepted societal norms, especially those regarding marriage and the invidious caste system, Bombay Talkies was having limited luck at the box office. But it bounced back with Kangan (“Bangles”, 1939), which introduced Chitnis playing the lead role as the adopted daughter of a Hindu priest in love with the son of a local landlord who opposes the relationship and threatens the holy man. Her love, however, stands up to his father’s prejudices, an unusual theme for the time, but one that appealed to the public imagination enough to ensure its success at the box office.
The film was still under production when the Second World War began and Franz Osten, the film’s German director, the cameraman Josef Wirsching and several other technicians were detained by the colonial administration as prisoners of war. It was eventually completed by two of Osten’s assistants and its success is attributed largely to its music, which experimented creatively with Western instruments. Osten directed 14 Indian films under the Bombay Talkies banner, greatly influencing Indian cinematography.
With Kangan’s success, Chitnis replaced Bombay Talkies’ ravishing leading lady Devika Rani and successfully teamed up with Bollywood’s leading man Ashok Kumar for a series of box-office hits such as Azad (Free, 1940), Bandhan (Ties, 1940) and Jhoola (“Swing”, 1941) that broadly deal with societal issues. In 1941 Chitnis, at the height of her popularity and glamour, created history of sorts by becoming the first Indian film star to endorse the popular Lux soap brand, a concession then only granted to top Hollywood heroines.
By the mid-1940s Chitnis’s career as leading lady was waning. After a brief renaissance, Bollywood was once again typecasting female actresses in traditional roles and unwilling to compromise. Chitnis accepted reality and in 1948 entered the next, and perhaps most renowned, phase of her career in Shaheed (“Martyr”). Cast as the hero’s suffering, ailing mother, she played this role to perfection.
For the next four decades Chitnis emerged as Bollywood’s best-known mother, mostly widowed or abandoned, but always struggling to bring up her offspring with dignity despite abject poverty. Even today, the very mention of her name conjures up an image of the long-suffering widow in white, coughing consumptive and feebly feeding herself a spoonful of life-supporting cough syrup from a bottle that is always perched so precariously that it invariably overturns and crashes to the floor. There was never ever any money for “Mother” Chitnis to buy another.
Chitnis’s maternal histrionics were portrayed in a range of films such as Awaara(The Vagabond, 1951), Ganga Jamuna (The Confluence, 1961) and, in 1965, the runaway success Guide, based on the award-winning novel of the same name by R.K. Narayan. She was busy through the 1970s, but cut down her appearances thereafter before taking the final curtain call in Dil Tujhko Diya (“I Give My Heart to You”) in 1985.
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. 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.
Here is a duet by two talented but unlucky singers – Uma Devi and Sailesh Mukherjee. Enjoy….
Song-Chhal chhal chhalkey ras kee gagariya (Aakhri Paighaam)(Last Message)(1949) Singers- Sailesh Mukherjee, Uma Devi, Lyricist- Mahmood Sarosh, MD- Abid Hussain Khan and Sushant Banerjee
Lyrics:
o o oo o o
Chhal chhal chhalke
Chhal chhal chhalke
Chhal chhal chhal chhal chhalke hoy
chhal chhal chhalke
Chhal chhal chhalke
ras kee gagariya
Chhal chhal chhal chhal chhalke
hoy
Chhal chhal chhalke ras kee gagariya
Chhal chhal chhal chhal chhalke
hoy
jhoom jhoom khele rang
sakhee sang sajna
chalo sajaniya sambhal ke
jhoom jhoom khele rang
sakhee sang sajna
chalo sajaniya sambhal ke
ho Chhal chhal chhalke
ras kee gagariya
Chhal chhal chhal chhal chhalke hay
sarararararara
holi aayee
holi aayee
holi aayee
jamuna kinare jal sakhiyon ke ??
jamuna kinare jal sakhiyon ke ??
nain se aasha jhhalke
morey nain se aasha jhhalke jhhalke
haay nain se aasha jhhalke
rang tarang mein chetey na manwa
rang tarang mein chetey na manwa
goree ka ghoonghat dhhalke
ho goree ka ghoonghat dhhalke dhhalke
ho goree ka ghoonghat dhhalke
hoy chhal chhal chhalke ras kee gagariya
Chhal chhal chhal chhal chhalke
haay
sarararararara
holi aayee
holi aayee
holi aayee
horee mein manwa har re
pichkaaree rang se bhar le
horee mein manwa har re
pichkaaree rang se bhar re
horee khele goree sang apne piya ke
horee khele horee khele apne piya ke
horee khele goree sang apne piya ke
goliya maare jal jal ke
dekho duniya marey jal jal ke jal ke
haay duniya marey jal jal ke
ho chhal chhal chhalke ras kee gagariya
Chhal chhal chhal chhal chhalke
haay
sarararararara
holi aayee
holi aayee
holi aayee
manmauji phaguwa gaaye re
manmauji phaguwa gaaye re
gaaye re
mora manmauji phaguwa gaaye re
saanwariya raas rachaaye re
rachaaye re
manmauji phaguwa gaaye re
Radha par rang udaaye re Mohanwa
abir gulaal mal mal ke
Radha par rang udaaye re Mohanwa
abir gulaal mal mal ke
rang chunaree re bheeje jal jal se
rang gayee sundaree re
bheej gayee chunaree
rang gayee sundaree re
bheej gayee chunaree
bheej ke jamuna jal se
ho bheej ke jamuna jal se
ho bheej ke jamuna jal se
ho chhal chhal chhalke ras kee gagariya
Chhal chhal chhal chhal chhalke
hoy
hoy
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