पनघट

A village social drama built around a community panghat (the village well). Durgaprasad Chaturvedi, a zamindar, builds a well for the common people; after his death his son Jamunaprasad takes charge and begins restricting access. A marriage alliance between Jamunaprasad's daughter Radha and Mohan, a supposed businessman's son, sets the plot in motion — until Mohan turns out not to be who he claims. The well becomes the recurring stage on which the village's social order, courtship and conflict play out.

The soundtrack, composed entirely by S.N. Tripathi with lyrics by Pandit Indra and Ramesh Gupta, runs to roughly a dozen songs. Rajkumari carries the bulk of the female singing, with Tripathi himself, Sumati, Afzal, Baby Tara and Rajkumari Shukla contributing solos and duets. The well-side ('panghat') songs and a 'panihari' (water-bearer) refrain give the score its village-folk character.

Panghat is a representative S.N. Tripathi score from his vintage 1940s phase, when he was establishing himself as a music director steeped in classical and folk idioms before his later devotional and mythological work. The film's chief musical conceit — song after song staged at the village well — gave Tripathi a unifying folk-pastoral frame, and made singer Rajkumari the recurring voice of the panghar (water-bearer).