As one of the most celebrated, quoted and inspirational Indian film, Mehboob Khan’s MOTHER INDIA needs no introduction of any kind to a lover of Hindi cinema. And it actually remains the film sowing the seeds of the famous ‘Angry Young Man’ era in Hindi cinema resulting in classic gems such as GANGA JAMUNA, DEEWAAR and many more.
Being the remake of Mehboob Khan’s own 1940 creation AURAT, the film had a powerful, socially relevant plot with a message and also became the first Indian film to be nominated in the Academy Awards in the category of Best Foreign Language film. Unfortunately it lost the contest by just a single vote. However the film did win many major awards both for Mehboob Khan and Nargis giving their deserving due.
Interestingly moving beyond the widely known famous stories about the film, its making, the early choice of actors, personal relationships between the leading stars and more, there exists a highly surprising as well as interesting glitch in the picturisation of its song “Dukh Bhare Din Beetey Re Bhaiya” featuring four of the film’s key actors.
It’s the only song sung by four singers Shamshad Begum, Asha Bhosle, Mohd. Rafi and Manna Dey together in the entire soundtrack but the voices are not lip-synced accordingly on the screen coming as big surprise. In other words the voice changes from Mohd.Rafi to Manna Dey when the shot has only Raaj Kumar singing on the screen and from Shamshad Begum to Asha Bhosle when only Nargis is lip-syncing the words without any intercuts. Plus the same continues when we have Rajendra Kumar-Kumkum enacting the verses in the later part of the song shot in the same manner.
Admittedly there have been instances when voices of two male or female singers interchange in a song in its onscreen presentation, but it’s really rare and unusual if the voices change in the same shot of an artist coming as a clear glitch.
However with a name like Mehboob Khan behind the project, this has to be due to some inevitable last moment alteration on the location instead of a casual mistake (left as it is). Perhaps at times even masters have to let-go and ignore such unintentional glitches happening beyond their personal control. Reportedly Naushad did notice the mistake after watching the song and mentioned the same to Mehboob Khan, who decided to ignore saying that it will not be noticed by the general public. And the director was largely proved right by his viewers.
Apart from the above amazing feature, another amusing fact related with the classic is about Kanhaiya Lal, who remained the only common actor in both Mehboob’s AURAT (1940) and MOTHER INDIA (1957) playing the same role twice.
Also the film’s titles had the name of both Nargis and Sunil Dutt coming in individual slides written in a big decorative font, whereas names of Rajendra Kumar, Raaj Kumar, Kanhaiya Lal and Jilloo Maa were written all together in a single slide in a normal font and size. Besides the titles surprisingly had no mention of any playback singers at all as prominently seen in the films of the later decades.
Cheers!
(An edited form of the article also got featured in UC News Mobile App in October 2017)
