Deleted Songs: Anari Anari Re

Geeta Dutt was particularly unlucky when it came to her already recorded songs being deleted from films or not being picturised at all. We have already visited Rut Phire Par Din Humare, which was cut from Pyaasa (1957) a week after the film’s release. One of her most popular songs, Jaata Kahan Hain Deewane from CID (1956) too found itself out of the film due to the whims and fancies of the censor board of the times.

Another song beautifully sung by Geeta Dutt that doesn’t find place in the final picture, in this case Filmistan’s superhit film Munimji (1955), starring Nalini Jaywant and Dev Anand, is Anari Anari Re. That the song, composed by SD Burman, was recorded is a certainty as it has always been included in cassettes/LPs/CDs that feature Munimji‘s songs. However, only the instrumental version of the song is heard in the background in the early part of Munimji as part of a montage, wherein Pran the dreaded dacoit, Kala Ghoda, conducts his robberies with the help of his girlfriend, Ameeta. Here is the audio version of the song.

Interestingly, the tune for Anari Anari Re was already composed by SD Burman earlier for the 1950 Bombay Talkies Bengali film, Samar, which starred Ashok Kumar and Sumitra Devi. Samar was the Bengali counterpart of Mashal (1950), made by Bombay Talkies in Hindi and which also starred Ashok Kumar and Sumitra Devi but SD Burman did not use the tune in this version. The song, Sundari Lo Sundari, in Samar was rendered by Geeta Dutt and Kishore Kumar among others. Hear the song here.

The original tune, Sundari Lo Sundari, was finally used in a Hindi film decades later when RD Burman re-worked his father’s composition as Manchali O Manhcali from Shakti Samanta’s Amitabh Bachchan-Raakhee-Amjad Khan starrer, Barsaat Ki Ek Raat (1981) sung by Kishore Kumar and Asha Bhosle. See the song here.