गाली

A 1944 social drama directed by R. S. Choudhury for N. R. Desai Productions, built around the theme of injustice to women — its heroine, played by Nirmala Devi, is a young widow bearing the stigma (gaali, an insult) that society casts on her. Karan Dewan plays opposite her, with Yakub and Kanhaiyalal in support, in a reform-minded melodrama typical of the early-1940s Bombay studio film.

The soundtrack carries twelve songs, the bulk of them sung by the playback voice credited as Manju, with the leads Nirmala Devi and Karan Dewan taking the duets. The compositions span seasonal and festival themes — sawan (monsoon), Holi — alongside the film's emotional set-pieces of longing and separation, with Rammurti Chaturvedi credited as the principal lyricist on the song discography.

Gaali belongs to the wave of socially conscious melodramas that Bombay studios produced through the war years, using the popular musical form to argue for the dignity of women. Its score — credited across sources to Hanuman Prasad and Sajjad Hussain — sits at the moment just before Sajjad Hussain's reputation as one of Hindi cinema's most uncompromising melodists would crystallise later in the decade.