Archive for the ‘Padma Devi Solo Songs’ Category
Dil Bas Mein Nahin Hai Mera
Posted on: January 2, 2018
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, 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 sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.
| Blog Day : | 3455 | Post No. : | 13856 |
Ardeshir Irani and his film production company, Imperial Movietone was associated with India’s first talkie film ‘Alam Ara’ (1931). In the same year, he was also associated with the first Tamil talkie film ‘Kalidas’ (1931) as a producer. Ardeshir Irani had another ‘first’ to his credit. He produced ‘Kisaan Kanya’ (1937) which was the first indigenously processed full colour film in India using Cinecolour process. Ardeshir Irani acquired the processing rights from an American Company. The film was processed in India with Imperial Movietone’s technicians under the supervision of a foreigner, WM Henius.
All these years, I was under the impression that Prabhat Film Company’s Marathi film, ‘Sairandhri’ (1933) directed by V Shantaram was the first Indian colour film. However, it transpired that this film had only some scenes in colour and the film was processed and printed in Germany.
‘Kisaan Kanya’ was directed by Moti B Gidwani. The star cast included Padma Devi, Master Nissar, Ghani, Ghulam Mohammed, Jilloo Bai, Sayed Ahmed etc. The film took one year to complete. The film was released on Saturday, January 8, 1938 at the Majestic Cinema, Mumbai. A report in Filmindia magazine mentions that there was a mad rush around the theatre for the tickets. A large number of cinegoers were disappointed as they could not get tickets. The next day, the Sunday, the scene at the theatres was no different. There was a terrible traffic jam for hours on the road leading to Majestic Cinema. Trams and cars were held up as crowd refused to move away. All the four shows of the day were houseful. The film ran for six weeks in this theatre.
The film was based on a story written by Professor Ziauddin of Shanti Niketan. Sadat Hasan Manto wrote the scenarios and dialogues. The gist of the story of the film based on a review which appeared in January 1938 issue of ‘Filmindia’ magazine is given below:
In a village, a landlord (Ghani) exploits the farmers and leaves no opportunity to rob them of their legitimate earnings. Ramu (Master Nissar), the farmer is no exception. He has been regularly exploited by the landlord. Ramdai (Zilloo Bai), the landlord’s wife is a religiously inclined and resents her husband’s actions. Bansari (Padma Devi) is a maid servant in the house of the landlord who is in love with Ramu. The romance of Bansari and Ramu go on smoothly until Ramu is arrested on a false charge of murdering the landlord. Ramdai, the landlord’s wife is aware as to who had murdered her husband. Realising that the innocent Ramu’s life would be taken away, she goes to Randhir (Ghulam Mohammed), a villain with a heart, who had actually murdered the landlord. Ramdai pleads with him to confess for the sake of Bansari, the girl who is also loved by Randhir.
In the climax, Randhir in the bravado character, confesses his crime of murdering the landlord. Ramu is released. The final scenes of the film depict the the need for the wealthy persons to come forwards to help the poor villagers of India.
The critical part of the film’s review was that the title of the film itself was not reflective of the film’s main theme as it portrayed more of the plights of village life as a whole than just of a ‘kisaan kanya’. Padma Devi had only a limited role in the film. In the film’s publicity, she was portrayed as ‘Colour Queen of India’. In spite of huge publicity drive that preceded the release of the film and superb technical aspects, the film did not meet the high expectation from the cinegoers due to the weak story line and dialogues as the reviewer said. Probably, this film was an early attempt to portray the poverty and crime in Indian villages and the film audience were not ready for this theme.
With this film, things became clear that unless the film had robust story and dialogues to go with it, colouration of the film would not add value for the producers and distributors of the films. Nonetheless, ‘Kisaan Kanya’ was regarded as ‘moderately successful film’ at the box office. Ardeshir Irani once again tried the colour in ‘Mother India’ (1938) after which the colour processing was abandoned. The box office success of Mehboob Khan’s ‘Aan’ (1951) revived the interest of film makers to produce the colour films. However, it took another decade for the film producers to shift to colour films in large numbers.
The film has 10 songs composed by Ram Gopal Pandey. Name of the song writer is not known. None of the songs were available on YT and similar websites until I made a video of one song from the film with mp3 clip with me and uploaded on YT. So, here is the first song “Dil Bas Mein Nahin Hai Mera” from the film sung by Padma Devi who had donned the role of Bansari, the ‘kisaan kanya’ in the film. The prelude to the song starts with a vilambit laya dhun (slow tempo tune) on sitar. The prelude is of the duration of 1:15 which leaves the time for the song of just two stanzas.
I could not get much information on Padma Devi’s background and her later life. I got some tit bits from a letters to the editor column of ‘Filmindia’ magazine. Padma Devi (real name: Neelima) was a Bengali artist who came to Bombay (Mumbai) sometime in 1930. She initially worked in the silent films, first as a junior artist then as a stunt actress. If I go by her early talkie films and the way she got publicity in ‘Filmindia’ magazine, I guess, Baburao Patel had a role in promoting her filmy career. Her first four talkie films were directed by Baburao Patel. Sadat Hasan Manto, in his book ‘Stars from Another Sky’ also mentioned about the ‘puppet on a string’ like relationship between Baburao Patel and Padma Devi. In the 1940s, her filmy career seems to have declined considerably.
With this song, ‘Kisaan Kanya’ (1937) and Padma Devi make debut in the blog.
[Ed Note: Although the name of the music director, Ramgopal Pandey, is also appearing for the first time. However, there is one more music director with the name Ramgopal, who has already made his debut on the blog. A quick scrutiny of the Geet Kosh reveals that starting with 1931, the two music director names viz., Ramgopal and Ramgopal Pandey, appear contemporaneously. We request knowledgable readers to please add more information about this music director(s), and clarify whether these two names are of the same individual, or two different people.]
Song – Dil Bas Mein Nahin Hai Mera (Kisaan Kanya) (1937) Singer – Padma Devi, Lyrics – [Unattributed], MD – Ramgopal Pandey
Lyrics
dil bas mein nahi hai meraa
dil meraa
haan
dil bas mein nahi hai meraa
dil meraa
andhiyaare ne aakar gheraa
andhiyaare ne aakar gheraa aa
dil meraa aa
dil bas mein nahi hai meraa
dil meraa
haan
dil bas mein nahi hai meraa
dil meraa
bholaai huyi main
chidiya hoon main
bholaai huyi main
chidiya hoon main
dhoond rahi hoon deraa
main dhoond rahi hoon deraa
haan
dil meraa aa
dil bas mein nahi hai meraa
dil meraa
haan
dil bas mein nahi hai meraa
dil meraa
———————————————————
Hindi script lyrics (Provided by Sudhir)
———————————————————
दिल बस में नहीं है मेरा
दिल मेरा
हाँ
दिल बस में नहीं है मेरा
दिल मेरा
अँधियारे ने आकर घेरा
अँधियारे ने आकर घेरा॰॰आ
दिल मेरा॰॰आ
दिल बस में नहीं है मेरा
दिल मेरा
हाँ
दिल बस में नहीं है मेरा
दिल मेरा
भुलाई हुई मैं
चिड़िया हूँ मैं
भुलाई हुई मैं
चिड़िया हूँ मैं
ढूंढ रही हूँ डेरा
मैं ढूंढ रही हूँ डेरा
हाँ
दिल मेरा॰॰आ
दिल बस में नहीं है मेरा
दिल मेरा
हाँ
दिल बस में नहीं है मेरा
दिल मेरा
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