आज कहना एक कहानी

Poornima's single contribution to the Raj Laxmi album and the only song in the film not sung by Kanan Devi or Talat Mahmood. HindiGeetMala and MySwar both credit her and both stop there; no transfer of the recording has been traced, and the song has not been found in circulation in any form. MySwar lists the singer as 'Poornima - I', its disambiguation index for performers who share a name, which is a caution worth carrying forward.

Nothing is said here about the sound of this recording, because no copy of it has been traced. The title's announcement — today a story is to be told — is the frame of the narrative or 'story' song, a type that the Hindi film of the 1940s used often and that generally implies a longer verse structure and a plainer, more speech-like setting than a love lyric would take. That is a general observation about the type and not a claim about this disc.

'Aaj kehna ek kahani' — today, to tell a story. The line is a frame rather than a subject: it promises a narrative without naming it, which is exactly what the opening of a story-song is supposed to do. Whose story, and whether it turned out to be the singer's own or someone else's, cannot be established. Neither HindiGeetMala nor MySwar carries a lyric text for this side, and no other source traced carries one, so the poem is left here at its first line and no further.

Raj Laxmi was made in Calcutta by M.P. Productions, written and directed by the Bengali writer Premendra Mitra, with Kanan Devi and Jahar as its principal actors and Talat Mahmood appearing both on screen and on the soundtrack. No plot summary of the film survives in any reference listing traced, so nothing is said here about the scene this song belonged to. Poornima is listed in the film's cast by both MySwar and Indiancine.ma, so she was an actor in it as well as a voice on the soundtrack.

There is no afterlife to report. The side has not been reissued, does not appear on any streaming catalogue traced, and is not among the five Raj Laxmi songs that collectors have put online. It is recorded here because the credit is documented in two independent listings, and because a song that is only a catalogue line is still part of the film's soundtrack and belongs in its record.