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

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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Blog 10-Year Challenge (2009-19) – Song No. 6
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When Atul ji introduced a new series, ‘Blog 10-Year Challenge (2009-19) on February 2, 2019 with a song intaha ho gayi intzaar ki, I was a bit skeptical about the availability of the songs for the series on a sustainable basis. After all, 10 year was a long period. I felt that most of the films for which the first song appeared 10 years back may have been already ‘yippied’. Also in respect of songs from the films released in the 1930s and 40s, most of the remaining songs of such films may not be available on-line. Nonetheless, the advantage of the new series is that the films and songs which have inadvertently gone out of our attention for a long time would come into our focus once again on a regular basis.

I had a quick browse through the songs covered in the Blog since its inception i.e., July 19, 2008 till March 31, 2009 with random checks for the rest of the months in 2009. The results gave me some hope that the captioned series can have songs for posting at least some days of the months. The reason is that during the early years of the Blog, most of the songs covered pertained to the films released in 1960s and 70s. There are some films of these years for which songs are available for posting in the Blog

I found that during July 19, 2008 to December 31, 2008, an overwhelming number of songs covered were of the films released in the 1960s and 70s with few songs from the 1950s and 1980s. However, the representation of songs from the films released in the 1930s and 40s were negligible. For instance, out of 475 songs covered during the period under reference, only 5 songs pertained to the films released in the 1940s – that too the late 1940s. Not a single songs of films released in the 1930s were covered during the period under reference.

These trends were, however, on the expected lines for two reasons. First, Atul ji, considering his age profile at the time of starting of the Blog, has virtually grown up in the midst of popular songs of the films of 1960s and 70s. Obviously, as a ‘start-up venture’ of his Blog, he would have been influenced by such songs. Secondly, and most importantly, even if he intended to cover the songs of the 1930s and 40s, I doubt whether these songs were available in good numbers on the video sharing platforms in 2008. Youtube was set up in 2005 as a video sharing platform. A random browsing of videos on YT gives me an impression that videos of Hindi film songs were uploaded in good numbers only from 2007 onward and the videos of old film songs (1930s and 40s) were getting uploaded mainly from 2009 onward. This trend has reflected in the Blog also. I have noted some of the popular singers of the 1930s and 40s who made debut in the Blog in 2009:

The songs covered in the Blog during the month of February 2009 continued to be on the expected lines. i.e., from the films released during 1960s and 70s. However, some significant additions were made during the month. On February 16, 2009, K L Saigal made a debut on the Blog with the song as mentioned in the table. With this song, for the first time since the inception of the Blog, a song from the film released in the 1930s – ‘Devdas’ (1935) also made the debut on the Blog. Thereafter, during the rest of the month with some spill-over to the succeeding month, one song of K L Saigal was covered almost on a daily basis for the next few days.

10 years ago on this date (Febraury 18, 2009), the Blog had covered 6 songs from films ‘Suraj’ (1966), ‘Hamraahi’ (1963), ‘Anaadi’ (1959), ‘Sangam’ (1964), ‘Sweekar Kiya Maine’ (1983) and ‘President’ (1937). Of these, the first four listed films have already been ‘yippied’. 3 songs of ‘Sweekar Kiya Maine’ (1983) are yet to be covered. In regard to ‘President’ (1937), 4 songs out of 7 songs have been covered in the Blog. One song ‘door bahut door phir bhi tum itne nahin door’ is a short song of about 40 seconds. Of the remaining two songs, ‘Maya rani ki nagri hai’ is not available on line to the best of my efforts. So that leaves only one song, which I intend to present today in this series.

‘President’ aka ‘Badi Bahen’ (1937) was produced under the banner of New Theatres (NT) and was directed by the Cinematographer and screen-play writer, Nitin Bose. The star cast included K L Saigal, Leela Desai, Kamlesh Kumari, Jagdish Sethi, Nawab Kashmiri, Bikram Kapoor, Dev Bala, Bikram Nahar etc. Probably, it was NT’s first attempt to make a film on the subject of industrialisation and the conflict between the management and the workers.

The gist of the story of the film based on the publicity material (song book) is as under:

A young Prabhavati (Kamlesh Kumari) becomes the President of the Prabhavati Cotton Mill Ltd due to the sudden and untimely death of her father. She is known to be strict disciplinarian with good workers rewarded and inefficient workers punished. With her hard work, she converts a small and modest organisation to a bigger establishment.

One day, Prakash (K L Saigal), an ordinary worker in the organisation points out to the President the faults in a machine which if not corrected can be dangerous to the workers. He takes liberty in advising the President that the machine designed by him takes care of faulty design. This is not liked by the President and Prakash is dismissed from the service.

Prakash needs to get some employment to take care of his widowed sister (Dev Bala) and her son. During one of his searches for employment, Prakash takes some rest near the Girls’ Hostel where he accidentally meets a beautiful girl, Sheila (Leela Desai) who is none other than the younger sister of Prabhavati, the President of the Mill. Both of them like each other.

In the meanwhile, a worker who has been employed in place of Prakash meets with an accident due to faulty machine. For the first time, Prabhavati, the President was thinking about Prakash and was wondering whether she had dismissed him wrongly. Dr Sethi (Jagdish Sethi), a friend, who secretly has a tender feeling for Prabhavati, advises her to approach Prakash for re-instatement. The President visits Prakash and appoints him as a Head of the Design Department.

Slowly, a love triangle is developing around Prakash. Sheila is already in love with Prakash and Prabhavati also develops a soft corner for Prakash. The sisters are unaware of this developments. What will be the outcome of the love triangle? The synopsis of the story ends as usual with suspense.

On the basis of the some snippets of the film available on-line and some guess work on my part, Sheila comes to know that Prabhavati also loves Prakash. Sheila respects her elder sister who has taken care not only of her but also of the Cotton Mill. Sheila’s attitude towards Prakash changes which he is not able to understand. He gets frustrated and this affects his relationship with co-workers. I have seen a film’s snippet in which the agitated workers revolts against Prakash and the work in the Mill has been affected. Prabhavati gets to know as to what is troubling Prakash. Probably, when she comes to know of the love triangle, Prabhavati locks herself in her office and collapses. Obviously, Prabhavati sacrifices her love in favour of her younger sister, Sheila.

Nitin Bose (26/04/1897 – 14/04/1986), the director of the film has been associated with NT since its inception in February 1931 as Chief Technical Adviser and the Head of Camera Department. His younger brother, Mukul Bose too joined NT as the Chief of Sound Recordings and was principally involved in introducing the playback singing system in both the Bengali and Hindi versions of ‘Bhagya Chakra/Dhoop Chaaon’ (1935). The box office successes of his directorial ventures like ‘Chandidas’ (1934), ‘Dhhop Chhaaon’ (1935), ‘President’ (1937), ‘Dhartimata’ (1938), ‘Dushman’ (1939) – all under NT banner made him one of the top directors of Hindi films.

Nitin Bose’s innings with NT ended when he had differences with B N Sircar, the boss of NT while shooting for ‘Kashinath’ (1943). He completed the film but did not return to NT thereafter but shifted Bombay (Mumbai). ‘Mujrim’ (1944) was his first film in Mumbai which he produced jointly with Vishnu Cinetone and directed it. The film did not fare well at the box office. Thereafter, he directed Filmistan’s ‘Mazdoor’ (1945), Bombay Talkies’s ‘ Milan’ (1946) in which he worked with Dilip Kumar for the first time. Some of the well known films which he directed included ‘Mashaal’ (1950). ‘Deedar’ (1951), ‘Waaris’ (1954) ‘Ganga-Jamuna’ (1961), ‘Nartaki’ (1963), ‘Dooj Ka Chaand’ (1964), ‘Hum Kahaan Jaa Rahen Hain’ (1966). ‘Saamanta’ (1972) was his last Hindi film as a director. In all, Nitin Bose directed 27 Hindi films between 1934 and 1972.

Although Nitin Bose spent nearly 3 decades in Mumbai as against about a decade in Calcutta (Kolkata), I personally feel that he received a much greater appreciation of his work as a Cinematographer, Writer and Director for films in NT than in Mumbai. The reason could be that in NT, directors had full freedom. If I go by what is stated in Kidar Sharma’s autobiography, B N Sircar did not interfere in the making of the film. As against this, ‘Ganga Jamuna’ (1961), which was one of his most successful films in Mumbai both in terms of critics’ reviews and the box office collections, it is alleged that Dilip Kumar, the producer of the film interfered in the direction of Nitin Bose. In his autobiography, Diip Kumar acknowledged that it was Nitin Bose in ‘Milan’ (1946) who thought him that emotions can be expressed by silence. Later, his style of dialogue delivery with pauses in between became his trade mark style.

Khwaja Ahmed Abbas, in his article, ‘Three Great Directors of India’ which appeared in June 1940 issue of ‘Filmindia’, had rated P C Barua, V Shantaram and Nitin Bose in that order as the greatest directors. Let us read below as to what K A Abbas had said about Nitin Bose and how effectively he used camera angles in ‘President’ (1937).

Nitin Bose is essentially a cameraman and his interest in a photo play is primarily pictorial. He also possesses a strong sense of drama and he can construct a vigorous scenario out of the slenderest story material. He rarely touches stories from well known classics and novels. He picks up an idea and a detailed script is written by him or some one else under his supervision. To him, the story of the author or the plot situations of the story is of no value unless they can be effectively expressed in photographic sense.

In the film ‘President’ (1937), the crazy camera angles in the opening scene create suspense. A meeting of the Board of Directors of the Mills is to start at 9.30 a.m. to be presided over by the President (who is the President?). The camera hitherto focused on the clock is suddenly swung to the door which opens and a woman (Kamlesh Kumari) walks in. If the director had tried any other way to shoot this scene, the realism would have been lost. But Nitin Bose, with the magic of his camera, makes the scene intensely dramatic. Towards the end of the film, in a climax situation wherein Kamlesh Kumari confines herself in a empty room (when she comes to know that her sister, Sheila is also in love with Prakash). In this situation, Nitin Bose created a terrific suspense by giving some crazy camera angles in quick succession of the empty room.

Nitin Bose received Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1977 for his outstanding contributions to the film industry. Seven years later, his nephew, Satyajit Ray received the same award in 1984. It is said that during the making of Bombay Talkies’ ‘Mashaal’ (1950) and its Bengali version ‘Samar’ (1950) which were directed by Nitin Bose, Satyajit Ray was present on the sets assisting Nitin Bose (Source: ‘Satyajit’s Sansar’ by Partha Chatterjee). However, he had not been officially accredited in these films.

I now present the song ‘Chandramukhi ki shaadi ke gagan ne deep jalaaye’ from ‘President’ (1937). I have made the video out of mp3 clip of the song. It is basically a chorus song. The lyricist of the song is unattributed. There were two music directors for the film – R C Boral and Pankaj Mullick. This song is composed by Pankaj Mullick.

I liked this song for the interlude orchestrations. Probably, such orchestrations which sound like a symphony in Western classical music, have been used for the first time in Hindi film music. I will not be surprised if Francisco Casanovas, the Spanish musician who used to play western musical instruments and conduct the musical band in the Grand Hotel, Calcutta those days, had assisted Pankaj Mullick in the composition of interlude orchestrations. My guess is based on a non-filmy song, praan chaahe nain na chahe composed and sung by Pankaj Mullick around the same time for which Francisco Casanovas has been accredited for the orchestration of the song.

Enjoy this choir like song with unique orchestration.

Audio Clip:

Song-Chandramukhi ki shaadi mein (President)(1937)Singers- Unknown female voice-1, Unknown female voice-2, MD-Pankaj Mullick
Chorus

Lyrics

chandarmukhi ki shaadi mein
gagan ne deep jalaaye
charankamal waale mukh ki hansi
shaadi dikhti(?) jaaye
charankamal waale mukh ki hansi
shaadhi dikhti(?) jaaye”

kaali aaj (??) ban mein saji
bin phoolon ki maala pade
kaali aaj (??) ban mein saji
bin phoolon ki maala pade
basant ritu mein kahat chale
khilat phool sunhare
basant ritu mein kahat chale
khilat phool sunhare
jahaan jharnon ke chhalchhal kal par
jal pariyaan naachen gaayen
jahaan jharnon ke chhalchhal kal par
jal pariyaan naachen gaayen
jal pariyaan naachen gaayen

phool wahaan se laayen
tanik door sajaayen
phool wahaan se laayen
tanik door sajaayen
taaron ki duniya se
hum phool chun ke laayen
taaron ki duniya se
hum phool chun ke laayen
tan k?? komal haathhon mein
un phool ko chadhaayen
chandarmukhi ki shaadi mein
gagan ne deep jalaaye
charankamal waale mukh ki hansi
??nikhri jaaye

aaj nayi ek baat suno
mann naache
aaj nayi ek baat suno
mann naache
raja rani to ek singhaasan baithenge kaise
raja rani to ek singhaasan baithenge kaise
sinhaasan par raani
charnon mein raja baithe