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

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 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.

Today’s song is from an old film School Master-1943. This was a Sun Art Pictures film, produced and Directed by the veteran C M Luhar. The Music director was Ninu Majumdar. There were 10 songs in the film. 5 were by Pt. Indra and 5 were by Pt. Bharat Vyas. Our today’s song is by Bharat Vyas. It is a duet sung by Karan Dewan and Rajkumari. The cast of the film was Jeevan, Maya Banerjee, Karan Dewan, Kaushalya,Gope, Rajkumari Shukla, Susheel kumar and others.

I have not seen this film, but have seen the same name film of 1959. I do not know if their stories were same, but the Hero was same- Karan Dewan. Actor Jeevan was in contract with Prakash Pictures during this period and was taken on loan from them officially for this film. The film of 1959 was a remake of a Kannada film of the same name made in 1958. The film was so popular that besides Hindi a remake in Telugu was made in 72, Tamil in 73, Malayalam in 64 and in Odiya in 85. It was also remade in Kannada in 2010. All these films had the same title School Master. The first Kannada film was inspired by a Marathi film ” Oon Paus ” ( ?? ???? ), which was, in turn, inspired by a Hollywood movie “Make way for Tomorrow”-1937. So much for the originality of Indian film makers !

Believe it or not,but LUCK plays a great role in Film Industry.

I am not talking about the ‘Rags to Riches’ or ‘Riches to Rags’ stories in the film industry. They are there,ofcourse,for everyone to see.

I am thinking about all those geniuses and and born actors,who could never make it to the top.I am thinking of those extras,who came all the way from far off places,with a dream in their eyes and finally ended up as ‘Junior Artists’ -a respectful term for Extras.

I am also thinking of all those Talented Composers,like Sajjad Hussain,Daan Singh,Vinod,Sardar Malik,C.Arjun,Shridhar Parsekar and few others,who,despite their Talents and art could never make it great in the Film Industry.

I am also talking about those superfine actors who were sensitive,talented,hardworking but could not make it to the Top in their lives.

I am also talking about those actors, who were very good looking, but not very good in expressions and acting,but still made it to the Top for some period.Those actors, after whom the producers were running with fat moneybags and those actors who got much more than what they actually deserved for their ‘acting’.

Interestingly,in each decade of the 40s, 50s and 60s there was at least one actor who had an extraordinary luck which took him to the top-but not for long.These actors worked with Top actresses of their times,got the best songs and films were made only for them.

In the 40s, it was KARAN DEWAN. he came to the Silver screen with Punjabi film ‘Puran Bahadur’,but it was Ratan -44 which made his life.The music of Ratan made history and he became a STAR overnight.He was a good-looker,but acting wise he was nothing.His luck was so strong that after Ratan-44,roles came to him in scores and he acted with the best Heroines of his days-like Nargis, Meena Kumari, Nalini Jaywant, Suraiya, Madhubala, Noorjahan, Munawwar Sultana, Swarnalata, Meena Shorey, Kamini Kaushal, Geetabali, Vaijayantimala, Sandhya etc etc….

Once his luck worn out, he had to work as a Production Manager with B R Chopra.When he died, only his colleagues from the Cine Artists’ Association, Chandrasekhar and Manmohan Krishna attended his funeral-nobody else from the film industry !

The ‘Chikana’ Hero of the 50’s was BHARAT BHUSHAN. Though he started with Chitralekha -1941 ( he was in the role of a disciple in the Ashram and was No 17 in the credits of the film!),he became famous because of the musical films of the 50s. He did about 180 films in his career and worked,without exception,with all leading Heroines of his times.he also got the best songs of the decade.
However he never won any acclaim for his acting skills.He always survived with best music and beautiful heroines. Once this supply receded,his days were numbered and he spent his last days in difficult times.

In the 60s and the third in this list was PRADEEP KUMAR,whose top period was late 50s and all 60s, though his last film came in 1994-2 years after his death. Acting wise he was most ordinary,but in looks he always looked Royal. Roles of Princes and Kings suited him best. I don’t remember the film name,but in one film he is shown begging on the road,but even there he was looking like as if he was the king of beggars ! He did many films as a Police Officer,but even in that role he looked a ‘Raees” policeman !

Handsome all Three-they also had one thing common amongst them- Their brothers produced many films (not all) for them, and everyone died in conditions not befitting their images.

Jaimini Dewan made films( including Ratan) for Karan Dewan.

R.Chandra produced films for Bharat Bhushan

and

Kalidas was the producer for many of Pradeep Kumar’s films.

Dewan Karan Chopra aka Karan Dewan ( 6-11-1917 to 2-8-1979 ) youngest of three brothers was born at Gujranwala, Punjab (now in Pakistan), British India. He studied in Lahore, where he became interested in Journalism and started editing a film magazine in Urdu, Jagat Lakshmi. One of the local distributors he met was Tarachand Barjatya, who was then the Manager of Chandanmal Inder Kumar’s distribution office at Lahore. Through his connection with Barjatya he landed in Calcutta, and in 1939, made his acting debut as Puran in the Punjabi feature film Puran Bhagat

Dewan started his film career with the role of Puran in Puran Bhagat in Punjabi in 1939 in Calcutta. It was produced by Raisaheb Sukhlal Karnani and directed by Roop K. Shorey’s father R. L. Shorey. His second film Mera Maahi (1941) was also a Punjabi film, directed by Shankar Mehta at Lahore and starring Ragini and Manorama. This was the movie in which he sang songs for the first time in the movies under the baton of legendary music director Shyam Sunder. Later, in Rattan, he sang for the first time in Hindi movies for Naushad. B R Chopra, then working as a film journalist in Lahore, helped Karan Dewan to get in touch with Devika Rani, who invited Dewan to come to Bombay. When this did not help Dewan get films, he taught “Urdu pronunciation to actors and actresses”.

In 1944, Karan Dewan acted in Rattan, a musical romantic drama, directed by M. Sadiq, which became one of the most popular films of that year. “A tremendous hit”, it paired Dewan with Swarnalata. His decisive film was Rattan (1944), which was produced by his brother Jaimini Diwan, and this movie had turned out to be the biggest hit of 1944. He also sang songs in this movie under music director Naushad, and his song “Jab Tum Hi Chale Pardes” became popular. He sang in films such as Piya Ghar Aaja (1947), Mitti Ke Khiloune (1948) and Lahore (1949). His other important films were Zeenat (1945), Lahore (1949), Dahej (1950), Bahar (1951) and Teen Batti Char Rasta (1953). Known as a “jubilee star”, about twenty of his films are stated to have been jubilee (twenty-five weeks or more) hits.

Dewan married co-actress Manju in 1944 following the release of Rattan, in which she had a character role. By 1966, he was working as a casting agent for the film unit of Maya (1966). He continued to work in the 1960s and 1970s playing supporting parts in films such as Apna Ghar (1960), Shaheed(1965), Jeene Ki Raah (1969) and Nadaan (1971), with the last film in which he was credited being Sohanlal Kanwar’s Atmaram (1979).

He worked in 73 films and sang 18 songs in 9 films. He worked with all leading actresses of his times,including Noorjehan and Nargis. At the end of his career, however, he was down financially and had to work as a Manager with B R Chopra’s company. When he died, except two workers of Cine artistes association, no one else from Film industry was present.

Film industry is one industry where men and women have to work together. Whether it is Actor-director or Singer-Composer, for the sake of work they have to spend much time together. No wonder then that Cupid does his work overtime. Sometimes there are mutual attraction and at times there are one sided fires burning. In most cases the one sided fire is extinguished in a very painful way, like what P L Santoshi faced with actress Rehana or the slap Sanjiv Kumar got from actress Nutan.

There were cases when love of Dilip kumar for Madhubala, died in the High court witness Box, when he gave evidence against her father in the ‘ Naya Daur ‘ legal case. Dev Anand’s love with Suraiyya ended happily for Dev Anand with him marrying Kalpana Kartik, but Suraiyya stayed “Unmarried”, in his ” yaad”, throughout her life. Here the villain was her so called ” Grand mother “, who actually was her own mother, as documented in the book “Stars from another sky” by Saadat Hasan Manto !

The successful 2-way traffic usually ended with a marriage. We can see marriages between producers and Actresses( Himanshu Rai-Devika rani and W Z Khan and actress Nina), directors and singers/actresses ( Nalini jaywant-Virendra Desai, Shaukat Hussain-Noorjehan, Geeta Dutt-Guru Dutt, Lalita Pawar-G.P.Pawar, Rattanbai-Hafiz Khan), Actors and Actresses ( Arun Ahuja-Nirmala devi, Snehprabha Pradhan-Kishore Sahu, Dev Anand-Kalpana Kartik, Dharmendra- Hema Malini, Rajesh Khanna-Dimple Kapadiya, Amitabh Bachchan-Jaya, Abhishek-Aishwarya, Kishore Kumar-Madhubala, Premnath-Bina Rai, Karan Dewan-Manju Desai, Marutirao Pehlwan-Tara Devi.)

There were some odd combinations like Satyendranath Athiah-Bhanu Athaiya (Lyricist-Costume designer),Lyricist-Singer (Amar Verma-Manik Verma), Singer-villain (Shakti Kapoor- Shivangi Kolhapure),Music teacher-student ( Roshan-Ira Moitra, Hemant Kumar-Bela Mukherjee, C.Ramchandra-‘Ben’ Ratan Thakur), and even a singer-Orchestra player (Vinita Amladi-Krishna Chakravarty) and lastly between singer-singers ( Jyoti-G M Durani, Gauhar Karnataki- Bal Gandharva). There were those pairs who were singers-actors ( Amirbai- Himalayawala,Rafiq Gazanavi- Anwari bai).

The interesting group, however,was that of Composer-Singers ( Sudhir Phadke-Lalita Deulkar, Asha Bhosle-R D Burman, Naashad-Premlata, Anil Biswas-Meena Kapoor, Pannalal Ghosh-Parul Ghosh, Khayyam-Jagjit Kaur, Ghulam Haider-Umrao Zia begum, Kamal Dasgupta-Firoza begum, Ninu Majumdar-Kaumudi Munshi).

Ninu (Niranjan) Majumdar was born on 9-9-1915 in a Gujarati Nagar Brahmin family of Baroda (Vadodara). Ninu was a pet name that he became famous by. His real name was Niranjan, which he later used as a pen name in his Gazals. His father, Nagendra Mazumdar made silent films. He was also a Music Director and Lyricist in his times. Ninu Majumdar’s name is variously written as Mujumdar, Muzumdar, Majumdar and Mazumdar.

After the early influence of Faiyaz Khan, Mazumdar’s search took him to various routes and he studied different kinds of music before he came into his own to become one of the first Gujarati Sugam Sangeet (light music) singer. He soon graduated to composing his own music and writing songs. Apart from classical music, the earlier influence was also of Ravindra Sangeet. This was at the time when Bengali language enjoyed prestige among Gujaratis of a kind that was comparable to the status of French among the English speaking nations. He grew out of it in a few years.

The more lasting influence on his music was that of folk songs and semi-classical music of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) like the Hori, Chaiti, Barkha Biraha as well asThumri and Dadra. He learned these during his stint in U.P. where he did farming for some years and also kept in touch through association with people like Satyendra Trivedi, a connoisseur of music and the “Thumri Queen”, Siddheshwari Devi, a family friend and his wife Kaumudi’s Guru.

Ninu’s ambition, even when he started his schooling in music at Baroda, was to become a music director in films. From 1937 onwards he participated in light Gujarati musical programmes. He also produced several features for All India Radio. From 1954, Mazumdar worked with all India Radio in Mumbai for over 20 years as Light Music Producer. He would have liked to take part in Hindi programmes too but the shortage of Gujarati artists forced him to concentrate on programmes in that language.

When in charge of music for the newly launched Vividh Bharati, that had to compete with Radio Ceylon without using any film music (film music was not played on AIR for several years due to conflicts over contracts and royalties), he successfully produced programmes inviting Salil Chaudhary, Kanu Ghosh and others from Bombay Youth Choir or IPTA and using voices of Manna Dey and other well known artists. Later when the issue of royalties was settled between the film producers and AIR, Mazumdar was the first to produce the popular Jaymala Programme by interviewing eminent persons from the film industry.

A career in films was also cut out for Ninu Mazumdar, as his father, Nagendra Mazumdar, was a dramatist and film producer. Nagendra was not much of a musician but he imparted his son training in music from the very early days.

Ninu found the field restricted, in a way in films, because of the need of working at a very fast pace and with view to pleasing the majority among the public. Ninu tried to introduce a new trend in film music, that of, adding a classical touch by borrowing from the old masters like Surdas. These attempts met with considerable success in Gopinath, a picture in which Ninu had interest as a producer as well.

It was in films made in the forties that a young Ninu Mazumdar’s voice could be heard. He sang with Sardar Akhtar in “Uljhan”, with Amirbai Karnataki in “Paristan” and Meena Kapoor in “Gopinath”.

He provided music for Jail Yatra and Gopinath, two of the earliest Raj Kapoor films. It is well documented by now that the Yashomati Maiyase Poochhe Nandlala song in RK movie Satyam Shivam Sundaram is a direct lift from Mazumdar’s Aai Gori Radhika in Gopinath.

He also composed music for several Gujarati Films like “Jeevano Jugari”, “Okha Haran”, “Sharad Poonam” etc.

He sang and penned quite a few of his songs. Amongst others who sang for him were Meena Kapoor, Shamshad Begum, Geeta Dutt, Suraiya, Hameedabanu, Pradeepji, C.H.Atma, Ameerbai Karnataki, Raj Kapoor, Shankar Dasgupta, S.D.Batish, Lakshmi Shankar, Talat Mehmood, Siddheshwari Devi, Rajkumar, Nalini Mulgaonkar, Dilip Dholakia, Ajeet Merchant, Shobha Gurtu, Sarla Bhide, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosale, Manna Dey, Kishori Amonkar, Usha Mangeshkar, Leela Mehta, Premlata Naik, Kishori Ghia, Suman Kalyanpur, Kaumudi Munshi,etc.

Vetern composer Ninu Mazumdar passed away on March 3 2000. Some of his songs have become so popular that people often do not even remember who wrote or composed them.

He gave music to 19 Hindi films – Black out-1942,Amanat, Masterjee, School Master, Kiran, Paristan, Rangila Dost, Main kya karun, Gudiya, Jail yatra, Gopinath, Kuch naya, Aflatoon, Pul, Raj ratan, Ram Shastri, Teen Tasweeren, Bhai Saheb-54 and Punam ka chaand-67.

He sang 28 songs in 13 films and directed 1 film-Kuchh naya-48

His son Uday gave music to TV serial ” Buniyaad ” in the 80s.

The Director CHIMANLAL MULJIBHOY LUHAR ( 1901-1948) was a Chemistry graduate from Bombay University. He started writing as a critic and author in journals like Beesvin sadee, Navchetan and Bombay Chronicle. He joined film line as a lab Assistant in Kohinoor studios in early 20s. Soon he became a noted cameraman for several documentaries, with K.D.Brothers, Bombay,under a British cameraman of Prince of Wales’ official entourage. After a brief stint at Rajkot with Saurashtra Films and a longer one at Krishna Films-where he shot 20 films, he joined Sharada Studios with ‘Dagabaz Duniya-1926 and several stunt films by Master Vithal. He turned a producer for a few stunt films. Later he was a partner in Sharda films and a Director with Sagar Movietone(1934-1940). From 1941 to 46 he worked for Prakash Pictures. He directed Sassi Punnu-32,Silver King-35 Talash-E-haq (first film of Nargis, made by Jaddanbai)-35, Do deewane, Kharab Jaan, Capt. Kirtikumar, Dynamite, Kaun kisika, Sewa Samaj, Saubhagya, Darshan, Station master, School Master, Uss paar and Bindiya. He died at the young age of 47 years,in 1948. He had established his own production outfit ‘Sun Art Pictures’ in 1943, but he made only 3 films with it -School Master-43, Uss Paar-44 and Bindiya-46, before he died, after a prolonged illness.

I have heard 6 songs of this film and I was,honestly,impressed with the songs. There are 2 songs by Ninu Majumdar himself and 2 duets of Karan Dewan and Rajkumari. Both the duets are light comedies. With today’s song the film School Master – 1943 makes its Debut on the Blog.

(credits- HFGK,wiki, Prof.Yadav’s book, star portraits,encyclopedia of Indian Cinema, Filmdom-46, inhe na bhulana, Filmindia-43 and my notes)

Lyrics

Mera khuli hawa mein bangla
mera khuli hawa mein bangla
bangle mein balam akela
kahaan hai meri banglewaali

kahaan hai teri banglewaali
pardesi des paraaya
jahaan teri kahin banglewaali

ho aisi banglewaali
ho aisi banglewaali
roop ho kaali
chaal matwaali
kahaan hai teri banglewaali
pardesi des paraaya
jahaan teri kahin banglewaali

bangle de(?) baanke sanwariya
bangle de(?) baanke sanwariya
?? aankh milaaye najariya
?? aankh milaaye najariya
hamre dil mein unki maala
unke munh mein gaali
kahaan hai meri banglewaali
bangle mein balam akela
kahaan hai meri banglewaali

dilon beech deewaar na kheencho
dilon beech deewaar na kheencho
phool chaaho to kaliyaan seencho
phool chaaho to kaliyaan seencho
aao pujaari khadi pujaarin
aao pujaari khadi pujaarin
liye prem ki thhaali
haan liye prem ki thhaali
haan liye prem ki thhaali
kahaan hai meri banglewaali
bangle mein balam akela
kahaan hai meri banglewaali