Lockdown Legends (Day 9) : Deserted Diva

 

Hindi film industry is an amazing place. True to the plots of many of its films, there are as many rags- to- riches stories as those of the reverse kind. Today's story is about a singing sensation who created history and was , in times to come, relegated to history ! 

Rajkumari joined hindi films at the tender age of 8, as a child actor in Radhe Shyam aur Zulmi Hans (1932), thus becoming one of the pioneering figures in the Indian talkies. She worked in theatre for few years, before returning to films, joining Prakash Pictures as actor and singer. In the meantime, she had recorded her first song for HMV, at the age of 10 !

She had much softer and sweeter voice with a narrow range than the leading singers of the time. In the next two decades she sang for 100 films, till the early 1950s.

In the 30s, she acted and sang  ( as was the norm at that point of time) and had many films to her credit which kept the box office busy. She began getting fed up with having to watch on her figure and decided to stick to just singing as a career. By the time she quit Prakash Pictures, playback singing was introduced with and she began playback singing for leading actresses , becoming the first female playback singer of Indian cinema.

The 40s was a busy time for the singer. She was competing with Zohrabhai Ambalewali, Amirbai Karnataki, Shamshad Begum, Uma Devi ( aka Tuntun)  and Suraiyya and giving them a tough time. She was working with the leading composers and was a respected name in filmdom.
                                      



From late 40s and upto mid-50s, changes took place in the hindi film music world. New singers such as Lata Mangeshkar, Geeta Roy and  Asha Bhonsle had their own distinct vocal qualities and were racing ahead at a fast pace. Rajkumari had her hits too such as Sun bairi balam sach bol re..ib kya hoga, kajrari matwari madbhari do ankhiyan, tumhe apna banaya tha and a couple of songs from Mahal (1949).

Incidentally, this was the beginning of the end of road for Rajkumari because it was from  this film that Lata Mangeshkar had arrived with Aaayega aanewala. The Rajkumari songs were equally fascinating and hence,  it was a big loss for the Hindi film music that she lost out to new singers.



                                       


Rajkumari all but ended her career in 1955 and in the whole of 60s she was practically out of the hindi film music scene. While composing the background score for the film Pakeezah 
(Work on this film started in 1956 but it was released only in 1971), music director Naushad spotted her singing in the chorus.
 The original music director Ghulam Mohammad passed away during this period and Naushad was brought in to complete the remaining songs. He was taken aback by this, having greatly respected her in her heydays, and heartbroken to hear that she was reduced to singing in the chorus to make ends meet. As a result, he helped to give her an entire song to herself, Though the song was recorded, it could not find a place in the released version of the film and remained in the LPs. This was the song composed by Naushad for Rajkumari after 30 years

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However, Pakeezah was not the last film of Rajkumari. In the 70s, R.D.Burman was composing for a Gulzar film, Kitaab ( 1977) and he recalled Rajkumari to sing a bhajan in the film. The song has been picturised on Dina Pathak . Based on the Bengali kirtan "Hari Din Toh Gelo Sandhya Holo" written by Kangal Harinath in the 1800s, the song is known for Chunibala Devi's rendition in Satyajit Ray's classic "Pather Panchali" (1955).

The bhajan brought down the curtains of a fantastic career of 45 years, punctuated with successes, failures and a third element......... isloation !

PS: While on Rajkumari, it is not out of the way to state that there were 4 artistes named Rajkumari !
This article was about Rajkumari Dubey ( she had married one V.K.Dubey who was also from Benares, her birthplace).

 There was one Rajkumari from Calcutta and was thus called Kalkattewali. She acted with Saigal in Devdas and also sang songs in the film and was active till 1938 only.
The third Rajkumari was known as Rajkumari Shukla. Basically she was an actress. Making matters complicated, she sang a song in  a movie Panghat ( 1943)  dominated by Rajkumari Dubey !). Both of them acted together in a few films.

The fourth Rajkumari, was T R Rajkumari (her actual name being Thanjavur Ranganayaki Rajayee). She was a famous Tamil film actress who had acted in the Hindi as well as Tamil version of Chandralekha(1948), essaying the title role of Chandralekha, a village belle and a circus artiste (Uma Devi had sung most of the songs of that movie). This was her only Hindi movie.