पराया धन

A 1943 social family drama directed by Nitin Bose with music by the Bengal-trained composer Gyan Prakash Ghosh. As the title — 'someone else's wealth', a phrase traditionally applied to a daughter destined to leave for her husband's home — suggests, the film belongs to the wartime cycle of domestic melodramas about family, duty and a woman's place. Leela Desai and Balwant Singh head a large ensemble cast that includes a young Baby Madhubala among the child artists.

Eleven songs are recorded for the film, set to music by Gyan Prakash Ghosh with lyrics chiefly by Rammurti Chaturvedi and, for a few numbers, Hazrat Aarzoo Lakhnavi. Radharani sings the majority of the tracks, with Bharti Bose, Dina Sanghvi and J. Ghosh contributing further numbers; several songs lean on devotional and Krishna-bhakti imagery characteristic of the Bengal melodic idiom.

Paraya Dhan is one of the comparatively rare Hindi assignments of Gyan Prakash Ghosh, a Calcutta-based composer, percussionist and guru far better known for his contribution to Hindustani classical music and Bengali film. Its songbook — dominated by the voice of Radharani and supported by Bharti Bose and Dina Sanghvi — preserves the Bengal school's melody-first, raga-coloured sensibility at the height of the wartime film-music boom.