Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs

This article is written by Sudhir, 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.

Missing Films of 1960s – 112
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Cricket is a distraction par excellence. 🙂  I am sure most of us bandwagoneers will agree.

That we are approaching the 151^st century of songs on the blog, was being exchanged between Atul ji and myself for quite some days now. But the fact that we are also approaching the completion of the 4^th millennium of no. of days of existence, almost went completely un-noticed by either of us. It was like just three or four days ago, that the tubelight came on in my mind. I immediately wrote to Atul ji. And equally immediately we agreed that we are on a threshold milestone that is more significant than the 151^st century of songs.

Pondering on how to impress the importance of this event, we went back and forth with a couple of ideas. Of course, the idea that we should combine the 4^th mega-day with the 151^st C, was the immediate conclusion. And the century song was then scheduled for 1^st July, and we decided to pace out the required interim posts so that we accomplish this combination.

Now we had already identified the century song, and Atul ji was already in preparation with the environment friendly post. The song – I had already suggested to Atul ji, and we had agreed to bring on “Main Mar Gai Garmi Se” as the crucial link in this scheme to bring home the message of global warming and connect it to the environment friendliness objective. But then Atul ji came up with a counter thought. The song itself is a June song, and we will be overstepping into July if we post it on the 4,000^th day. Now what to do? After a brief exchange, we agreed that we will post this song on 30^th June, on the 3,999^th day and then figure out another special for 1^st July. The decision then also put us in a scramble, because then we had four more posts to make this June song hit the date of 30^th June. So then both of us weighed in, in favor of making these four posts (plus the century post, making it five) happen on Sunday, split as three posts by me and two by Atul ji.

I prepared the current latest post by Arun ji, and scheduled it for early morning release on Sunday. And then I worked the afternoon and evening to make two more posts, adding into two of my ongoing series – one for the repeat songs and one for the sleepless nights.

And then, of course we know what transpired on Sunday. India lost by 30 runs against England – personally I believe it could have been done, but then that is me, commenting, watching from thousands of miles away. In short, cricket otherwise consumed the attention and our combined target of 5 posts slipped by 2.

So in the morning, I get an email from Atul ji. Quite matter of fact indeed, that he was not able to make any posts yesterday, and that although it is July now, but the garmi still justifies the song, and that we are happy we combine 4M + 151C today. So the following is what I wrote back to him reassuringly –

Yes, in our part of the country, where monsoons have not yet arrived, the heat is sweltering and quite intense. The song is still very appropriate.

And btw, it is still June in the US. It will be June in Midway Islands, Samoa till 4.30 pm (IST) today. And overall, the month of June 2019 will remain on this planet till 5.30 (IST) pm, when finally midnight crosses over the International Date Line. :D) :D)

Atul ji agreed. If you notice the time of posting of the 151C song – it is 4.50 PM (IST). We made it well within the transmogrified target, with 40 minutes to spare. Meaning that the month of June was still alive on this planet when 151C got posted. The final edge of the midnight crossed over the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean 40 minutes after the posting, finally closing the month of June 2019 from everywhere on earth. Talk about close shaves. 😀 😀

But another notable mention still needs to be made.  In this exchange, Atul ji also expressed that he was not feeling very good about the amount of significance that he wants to bring in to this milestone of 4M days. He said it is not feeling weighty enough. So then I suggested that let us follow this 151C post with another post that brings is one more very significant song, and celebration, to add to the 4M festivities. And that I have the very thing planned for the 151C+1 post in any case, to be brought on to blog on 2^nd July. So let me explain. Maybe some of you may have noticed. Whenever we reach a century post milestone, that milestone stays on for that entire day. Meaning we don’t follow up with any other post that day, to ensure that the century celebration stays on for at least one full day. When I explained the content I had planned for this 151C+1 post, he readily agreed to make an exception to this convention of keeping the day free after publishing a century post.

So excuse me for the long drawn intro – I believe the prelude circumstances were quite interesting enough to merit this story being told. 🙂 🙂

So what is special about this post – the 112^th in the series of ‘Missing Films of 1960s?

Two reasons. Firstly, based on all the research and explorations that I have been able to make regarding the missing films list of 1960s that Ben Katie prepared as my homework, and based on all the material that I have been able to trace and ferret out, today’s post is the grand finale, of this series. Meaning that, given everything that I have been able to lay my hands on, this is truly the last film that can be presented in this series. So we have a marathon series of 112 episodes, lasting for 3 years, 9 months and 2 days, coming to a close today.

And secondly, the rarity of the song that is being presented today. The quality of rarity of this song in my opinion, actually goes beyond the rarest of the rare. Today’s song, for whatever it is worth, comes into play, where everyone related to Hindi film music has been resigned to the fact that this film, ‘Hawa Mahal’ of 1962 – it does not have any, and I mean ANY, surviving songs available. In a situation where the absence of songs is an established and accepted fact, when one is able to trace out something, even a partial song, that is indeed a matter of a resounding celebration. A little later in this post, I will explain the how this came about.

Let us quickly get over with the numbers first. Ben Katie started work on compiling the list of missing films from 1960s (1961-1970) by comparing the listing in GK Vol 4 and the list of songs posted on our blog. That was in November of 2014. She sent out the first draft listing to myself, Arun ji and the rest of the team for a quick review and update cycle. The review and update part did happen, but the ‘quick’ part did not. 🙂 Anyways, after setting up, reviewing and inserting special remarks for some films as required, we came up with the following numbers,

Total listed as released films               >>          942

No. of films present on blog                 >>          695
(at the time of finalizing the list)

No. of films still to be posted               >>          247
(at the time of finalizing the list)

So 247 was the count to be tackled, when I started working on this series. The first episode was aired on 30^th Sep, 2015, and the movie presented in that first episode is ‘Muraad’ of 1961. Initially, I tried to stick to the sequence in which these films appear in the Geet Kosh. But not strictly all the way through – quite a few times I would break the sequence, based on availability issues or demands of some special event such as anniversaries etc.

As is apparent from the episode number, I have been able to bring onboard 112 films (including today’s ‘Hawa Mahal’). The following table gives the details of this analysis, by year within this decade.

The first three columns (after the year column) give the status as of the compilation and analysis done by Ben Katie, at the beginning of this exercise, i.e. November of 2014. The next two columns give the data on postings for the particular year, after this exercise is set in motion. Interesting to note that at total of 56 songs of this decade got posted on the blog, outside of this series, during the same period. The last column gives the no. of films which are not yet available, and I mean, not available from any source, period. As far as my search of the past almost four years reveals, songs of these films are not available anywhere in public domain. I could be wrong, and oh boy, I will be the happiest person to be told that I am wrong 🙂 .

As per the last column, we are still short by 79 films from this decade. I am giving below the list of films that have remained untraceable even after continued effort of almost 4 years. The listing is by year in the decade.

The request for all readers and friends is to please check the above list. In case there is any information available about the songs of any of these 79 films, please, please, please share it with us.

So having dealt with the numbers and having told the story of pending films, let me now come to the song being presented today.  The film ‘Hawa Mahal’ of 1962 is produced by Ramesh Vyas, under the banner of Navkala Niketan, Bombay and is directed by BJ Patel. The main cast of actors is listed as Ranjan, Helen, Tiwari, Baboo Raje, Ramavtar, Bela Bose, Jugnu, Shyam, and Prakash amongst others.

There are six songs listed in the Geet Kosh. The name of lyricist is not given. Also, the names of the singers are not listed. Music direction is by Avinash Vyas. The singing voices used in this film are of Asha Bhosle and Mahendra Kapoor, however assignment to individual songs is not indicated.

Now coming to the mystery of songs of this film. In my search for the songs of this film, I could establish one thing. No gramophone records of the songs of this film are available anywhere. The general response from the premier collectors is that no 78 rpm records of this film were created. I was quite disappointed. With names like Helen and Bela Bose in the cast of actors, the film being of the ‘jaadugar saiyyaan’ types abracadabra of magic and fantasy, the music of Avinash Vyas, the singing voices identified – I was eagerly expecting some wonderful songs to be harvested from a film like this. But my search kept turning up a naught wherever I would be inquiring.

Then maybe three or so years ago, I espied a VCD release of this film with a VCD/DVD dealer in Chandni Chowk in Delhi. I just pounced at it, and bought it. Getting home, with an anxious expectation, I put on my laptop to play. I could not believe my eyes. The film runs its complete length, and NOT A SINGLE SONG is existing in the film. I was devastated. I ran the film again – maybe I had dozed off when the songs were playing. But no, even the second more careful screening did not turn up any songs. I ran the disc a third time, and carefully looked at sequence of scenes. And sure enough, I was able to detect three or four places, where the narrative jumps, and the scene makes up as if there would have been a song here. The realization struck me – all the songs had been edited out of the film. I was furious, cursing the VCD manufacturer’s apathy towards lovers of music, trying to cut down run time of the film to fit on the disk, वगैरह, वगैरह.

I tried once again – bought another disc, but still no songs. Now I was obsessed in trying to get to the source material of this film – the VHS tapes. In my search for the same, in India, as well as outside India, I was successful in procuring three different copies of the VHS tapes of this film from different sources. Imagine my horror, when I found that even the VHS tapes were bereft of any songs.

I was confused, angry and anxious. I started talking to my collector friends, asking them if they had any information on why such a fate had befallen this film. No one had any clue. The Geet Kosh does not carry any additional footnotes, remarks or corrigenda about this film. I was in total despair. Six songs listed, the film is available, and not one song is traceable.

The Geet Kosh lists only three actors – Ranjan, Helen and Tiwari. Just came to my mind, and I carefully viewed the credits at the beginning to get more complete information. One thing struck me as very peculiar. The name of the MD is given, names of two playback singers are given. But there is no name listed for the songwriter. I carefully checked it twice – sure enough the name of the lyricist is not in the credits. My mind then surmised this possibility that before the release of this film, some trouble must have brewed between the producer and the songwriter. No settlement could be reached through mediation, and the songwriter probably took the legal recourse, and got an order from the courts to disallow use of the songs written by him, in the film. The producer must have been forced to give up the rights to the songs. The same got deleted from the film, and as well, no gramophone records were manufactured. And the producer then also deleted the reference to the songwriter’s name in the credits. All well for them, but the music lovers have lost an unheard treasure.

Some month ago, for no reason, I picked up this disc, and started viewing it, simply as timepass, and to get the hang of the storyline. There is an evil magician living at the bottom of the ocean. He has fairies and mermaids as his attendants. He is collecting human skulls – when he will get to 100, he will achieve power to conquer the three worlds. Helen is one of the fairies that lures unsuspecting ‘aadam jaat’ male humans with her charm, and once entrapped, they are tied up and taken to the bottom of the ocean. One day, she lays a trap, and who would walk in but the hero of the film – Ranjan. She promptly falls in love with him, and sets him free, does not take him to her magician master. The news spreads in the underwater world, and the magician imprisons her. Her human beloved gets to know the story, and with his friends, goes down to free Helen. There is standard stuff of fights, fist fights and sword fights which seem to go on and on and on. There is a spaceship which is shaped like a palace – ‘Hawa Mahal’ for you. Ranjan defeats the magician and escapes from the underwater world in this spaceship, with Helen, and his friends. A happy ending for all. Lot of magic stuff happens throughout the film.

This time around, I watched this film in its entirety, right up to ‘THE END’. And that is where the magic happened. I discovered a partial song, right at the end of the film. It seems when the editor spliced out the songs from the main body of the film, he simply forgot that one partial song has been used in the closing minutes of the film. The discovery flabbergasted me – at least now we have one sampler from this film.

The singing voice is Mahendra Kapoor. The clip is a segment of the song, just over a minute in length. But goodness what a wonderful melody this turns out to be. One can only imagine what may have been the quality of songs if this is a representative sample. Wonderful, simply wonderful.

So then I upload this one minute clip, containing one complete stanza, and make for this post. This discovery is no less than any other rarest of rare songs. The world of collectors had given up on this film and its songs. But then we now have one half song, discovered quite by accident, giving a flavor of what could have been.

And with this startling discovery, I suspend further publications in this series. I say suspend, because I want to leave the door open for the possibility that any of the remaining 79 films of this decade, may turn up, only God knows where and when.

The wait will never end.

Song – Taaron Bhari Raat Hai  (Hawa Mahal) (1962) Singer – Mahendra Kapoor, Lyrics – [Unattributed], MD – Avinash Vyas

Lyrics

nai nai manzil hai
naya naya geet hai
poori hui aarzoo
mann ka mila meet hai
miley aaj humsafar
kal ki hai kya khabar
miley aaj humsafar
kal ki hai kya khabar
palken jhuka ke keh de
mann mein kya baat hai

taaron bhari raat hai
ghunghat mein chaand hai
akhiyaan mila ke keh de
mann mein kya baat hai. . .
taaron bhari raat hai

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Hindi script lyrics (Provided by Sudhir)
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नई नई मंज़िल है
नया नया गीत है
पूरी हुई आरज़ू
मन का मिला मीत है
मिले आज हमसफर
कल की है क्या खबर
मिले आज हमसफर
कल की है क्या खबर
पलकें झुका के कह दे
मन में जो बात है

तारों भरी रात है
घूँघट में चाँद है
अखियाँ मिला के कह दे
मन में क्या बात है॰ ॰ ॰
तारों भरी रात है