Archive for the ‘Rani dance song’ Category
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 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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In this article, I am discussing a classical dancer for whom the dancing was her passion, be it in the films or on stages. Her face was familiar to me as I had watched some of her films long back. But at that time, I did not evince interest in knowing her name. It was only after I joined the Blog in 2011 that I came to know her identity through none other than our own Prakashchandra ji, the veteran of our Blog in identifying the lesser known film artists with a high success rate. The name of the dancer is Rani.
Even after knowing her name, I still did not evince keen interest in knowing Rani’s background and the filmography. Like many lesser known film artists who worked in a few films and then went into the oblivion, I thought that Rani was one among them. But when I watched many Hindi film songs while writing my last four articles on the Hindi film dancers. I was surprised to note that Rani had danced with well known Hindi film dancers like Helen, Kumkum, Ragini, Madhumati, Bela Bose etc apart from her solo dances. This gave me an impression that Rani may have worked in more Hindi films than what her filmography on the various on-line sources indicated. After collating the data of her films from various sources and watching her dances in the films in case of doubts, I have come to a tentative figure of 54 films in which Rani had danced.
I was not sure about getting much of Rani’s background profile. However, recently, Tabassum who had worked with Rani in about half a dozen films in the 1960s, has posted a video ‘Dancer Rani – A Life Full Of Struggles’ on her Channel ‘Tabassum Talkies’. After watching the video, I felt very sad for Rani as in her later years, she has struggled a lot for her basic necessity of life. The Almighty has not been kind to her as now she is handicapped. It is really a pathetic situation for a dancer who used to say that dancing on the stage was like a worship for her and dancing in the films was means of her sustenance;
The following information has been paraphrased based on ‘Tabassum Talkies’ on Rani.
Rani (real name: Munawwar Sultana) was born in July 27, 1942 in Kolkata to Mohammed Gafoor Khan and Noorjahan Begum. She was adopted by her father’s close friend, Mohshin Khan who had no children. Since Rani was interested in dancing, her adopted father put her for training in Kathak under the tutelage of Ram Narayan Mishra and Krishna Maharaj of Lucknow Gharana.
At the age of 13, Rani started her filmy career in Bangla films. In 1960, her adopted father brought her to Mumbai to make her the Hindi film heroine. Rani flatly refused to work in Hindi films as an actor – not even in supporting roles as she was very passionate about dancing. So, she started her Hindi film career as a dancer in ‘Nai Maa’ (1960). Thereafter she got regular dancing numbers in many Hindi films mainly during 1963-69. In the 1970s, Rani’s dancing career went in downward mode and by the end of 1970s, she was almost unemployed.
During her active period of Hindi film journey, whatever she had earned was passed on to her adopted father to look after a large number of relatives who depended on her earnings. But in this milieu, a thought never occurred to her that she needed to save money for later period in her life when her dancing career in the films would come to a close. Due to failure of her love affairs when she was in Kolkata, she had decided to remain unmarried.
With almost nothing left for her subsistence, she met her former dancer colleague and the choreographer, Gopikrishna who took her as his Assistant Choreographer at a salary sufficient to take care of her minimum requirements.
As they say, when chips are down, one gets to face more problems. One day, Rani suddenly felt that her legs have lost stamina and she can no longer dance. She started using a walking stick and with this, her days of dancing were over. But her old age woes were not yet over. While catching a bus, she lost balance and fell, badly injuring her legs. She was no longer able to walk even with a stick. Instead, she now requires a walker.
As Rani was handicapped and there was no one to look after her, she got herself admitted to a charitable old age home at the outskirt of Mumbai. Presently, she is 78 years old and is an inmate of an old age home.
Rani had a younger sister, Rashida Khatoon who was a qawwali singer. She got married to Yasuf Azad Qawwal.
As I mentioned earlier, I have listed around 55 films in which Rani had danced. Some of the major films she worked were ‘Maaya’ (1961), ‘Sautela Bhai’ (1962), ‘Mere Mehboob’ (1963), ‘Dooj Ka Chaand’ (1964), ‘Ganga Ki Lahren’ (1964), ‘Jaanwar’ (1965), ‘Dil Diya Dard Liya’ (1966), ‘Sangarsh’ (1968), ‘Sambandh’ (1969), ‘Heer Ranjha’ (1970), ‘Loafer’ (1972), ‘Pathar Aur Paayal’ (1974), ‘Ham Kisi Se Kam Nahi’ (1977) etc. Most of her other films were of B grade category in the genres of stunt, action and costumes.
Rani also worked as Assistant Choreographer to Gopikrishan in ‘Khubsoorat’ (1980), ‘Aanchal’ (1980) and ‘Kudarat’ (1981).
From our Blog, I could track down 20 songs of which 5 songs are yet to be tagged to Rani. In addition, at least 4 songs, the video clips of which are available are yet to be covered on the Blog. I am hopeful that some more songs would be found on video sharing platforms. However, there are some films of Rani which are not traceable. To that extent, her dance numbers in these films are as good as lost for the present.
I am presenting Rani’s dance song, ‘bairu bichuaa bada dukh de o ram’ from ‘Ganga Ki Lahren’ (1964). This is a classical raag-based song picturised on kathak trained dancers, Kumkum and Rani. Lata Mangeshkar sings for both the dancers. The song is written by Majrooh Sultanpuri which is set to music by Chitragupt. The end of the song is followed by a dance competition between the two dancers of about one-minute duration.
This is the 6th song (out of 8) of ‘Ganga Ki Lahren’ (1964) to appear on the Blog.
Video Clip:
Audio Clip:
Song-Bairi bichhua bada dukh den ho raam (Ganga Ki Lehren)(1964) Singer-Lata, Lyrics-Majrooh Sultanpuri, MD-Chitragupta
Lyrics
aaaa aa aa
aa aa aa
aa aa aa
aa aa aa
bairi bichhuaa
bada dukh de ho raam
shor karen
jhhan jhhan jhhan
jhhan jhhan jhhan
bairi bichhuaa
bada dukh den ho raam
shor karen
jhhan jhhan jhhan
jhhan jhhan jhhan
bairi bichhuaa
main jo chaloon to uljha den ye bol ke
main jo chaloon to uljha den ye bol ke
aadhi dagar tak main to reh jaaun dol ke
paapi na samjhe jiya ki lagan
bairi bichhuaa
bada dukh den ho raam
shor karen
jhhan jhhan jhhan
jhhan jhhan jhhan
bairi bichhu…aa
baandhoon chunar se ghoonghat ka khayaal ho
baandhu chunar se ghoonghat ka khayaal ho
zulfon se baandhoon to uthhna mohaal ho
chhote se mann ko badi uljhan
bairi bichhuaa
bada dukh de ho raam
shor karen
jhhan jhhan jhhan
jhhan jhhan jhhan
bairi bichhuaa
raat chaloon to yoon loote sukh chainwaa
raat chaloon to yoon loote sukh chainwaa
din ko jo nikloon to uthhen sau sau nainwaa
raat na dekhe
dekhe na ye din
bairi bichhuaa
bada dukh de ho raam
shor karen
jhhan jhhan jhhan
jhhan jhhan jhhan
bairi bichhuaa
bada dukh den ho ram
shor karen
jhhan jhhan jhhan
jhhan jhhan jhhan
bairi bichhu..aa
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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