मेरे साजन

Mere Sajan (also issued under the export title Midnight Angel) is a 1941 Hindi social-musical directed by Ahmed H. Essa. Like much of the era's popular cinema, its appeal rested heavily on its songs — a seven-song score jointly composed by Hafiz Khan Mastana and Vasant Kumar Naidu to verses by Waheed Qureshi, sung by a roster of pre-playback and early-playback voices including Rafiq Ghaznavi, Amirbai Karnataki, Rajkumari, Miss Gulab and Khan Mastana himself.

The complete documented soundtrack runs to seven songs, all with lyrics by Waheed Qureshi and music jointly credited to Hafiz Khan Mastana and Vasant Kumar Naidu. Best remembered is 'Rate Thi Chandni Joban Par Thi Bahar' (Rafiq Ghaznavi and Amirbai Karnataki), whose melody was revisited decades later in the Pakistani film world.

Mere Sajan was distributed for some markets under the English title Midnight Angel, a common practice for 1940s films seeking wider reach. Its song roster mixes courtesan-style 'mehfil' numbers (Lut Le Jawani, Sharabi Aankho Se) with romantic duets, reflecting the mixed social-musical idiom of the period.

The film sits in the crucial transitional moment of the early 1940s when Hindi cinema's music was shifting from singer-actors toward the dedicated playback voice. Its surviving documentation — preserved through gramophone-era song catalogues — keeps alive the credits of voices like Amirbai Karnataki and Rafiq Ghaznavi who bridged that change.

While the film itself is largely lost to popular memory, its songs survive in gramophone-era catalogues. The standout 'Rate Thi Chandni Joban Par Thi Bahar' enjoyed a notable afterlife when its melody was reworked for a later-generation rendition across the border, a testament to the durability of Khan Mastana and Naidu's tune.