आने वाले जब आएँगे

'Aanewale Jab Aayenge' is a solo by the singer credited in every source only as Naseem, composed by Sajjad Hussain for Dharm (1945) to a lyric credited to Shewan Rizvi. It is catalogued under two different names, which has caused it to be counted twice. The Hindi Film Geet Kosh prints the opening of the record as a single continuous mukhda — 'Aane vale, aane vale, aane vale jab aenge, kaise man samajhaun' — and lists it once, as the sixth of the film's seven sides, sung by Naseem to Shevan Rizvi's lyric. MySwar and hindigeetmala title the same record by its second phrase, 'Kaise Mann Samjhaoon'; the archive Songs of Yore titles it by its first, 'Aanewale jab aayenge', and gives the identical singer and lyricist. All three describe one song, not two. Songs of Yore, which surveyed Sajjad Hussain's complete output and grouped Dharm among his lesser-known films, is also the only source to post a surviving recording of it — which makes this, as far as can be established, the one side of Dharm that anyone alive has actually heard.

This entry does not describe the sound of the record, because its editor has not heard it, and an encyclopedia that invents what a recording sounds like is worth less than one that says so. What can be reported is an attributed judgement: the Songs of Yore survey of Sajjad Hussain's work, which places Dharm among his lesser-known films, calls this song typical of the period in form but distinctly better than the period average in quality — the assessment of a listener who did have the record in front of him. That is consistent with what is otherwise known of the composer at this moment in his career. Sajjad Hussain had spent nearly a decade in the Bombay studios as an instrumentalist before he was allowed to compose, and by 1945 he was already writing lines that singers found technically demanding — the trait that would later make Lata Mangeshkar name him her favourite composer, and that also kept his lifetime filmography short.

No transcription of the lyric has been traced, and none is stored here. The title alone, though, carries a specific grammatical shape worth noticing: aanewale jab aayenge — when those who are to come, come. The phrase is built entirely out of deferral. Its subject is not a person but a category of person, defined only by the fact that they have not arrived; its verb is a conditional set in a future that the sentence declines to guarantee. Whatever completes the line — and that completion is exactly what has not survived — the opening establishes a speaker suspended in waiting rather than one addressing a beloved who is present. In a film titled Dharm, meaning duty or right conduct, a song organised around what has not yet happened is likely to be carrying a moral weight as well as a romantic one, though with no scene description and no further text this can only be read from the title and not asserted.

Dharm was directed by Ramnik Desai for the Bombay banner Star Productions and released in 1945, with E. Billimoria, Rattan Bai, Leela Pande, Madhuri, Maya Devi, Jamshedji and others in the billed cast. It was only the second film Sajjad Hussain scored on his own, following two songs for Gaali and his independent debut on Dost, both in 1944. Of the film's documented songs, the majority went to Rattan Bai, who appeared in the cast and sang her own numbers in the manner of the period; this one went to the singer the sources call simply Naseem, who also shares 'Chali Pawan Purvai' with Rattan Bai. No surname is recorded for her anywhere. Two artists of the decade were credited under that name, the star Naseem Banu of Pukar (1939), who sang her own songs, and the playback singer Naseem Akhtar, who made some seventy-two recordings between 1942 and 1949; neither one's documented filmography includes Dharm, so this entry leaves the credit as the sources give it rather than choosing between them. No print of the film is known to survive and no scene description for this song exists.

This song's afterlife is a small case study in how film-music records go wrong in both directions at once. Dharm's soundtrack has been inflated online, with eight songs belonging to Din Raat (1945) — Dada Chandekar's score to Santokh Nadim's lyrics — appearing under Ramnik Desai's title and pushing its apparent song count to fifteen. In the other direction, this particular side has been double-counted, because the sources title it inconsistently: the catalogues file it under its second phrase, 'Kaise Mann Samjhaoon', while Songs of Yore files it under its first, 'Aanewale jab aayenge'. Anyone adding the two lists together arrives at eight songs where the Hindi Film Geet Kosh, printing the whole mukhda in one line, records seven. Nothing else about the song entered circulation: no reissue, no compilation, no citation in the literature on 1940s playback singing. What it does have, and no other Dharm side does, is a surviving recording, posted by the one archival blog that went looking for Sajjad Hussain's forgotten work and found it.