बदमाश

Badmash is a 1944 Hindi feature directed by A. Karim, who also wrote its lyrics, with a score jointly composed by the singer-composer Khan Mastana and Datta Korgaonkar. Like much of the lower-budget Bombay output of the wartime years, it survives today chiefly through its gramophone records rather than as a viewable print, its plot now largely undocumented. What remains verifiable is its nine-song soundtrack — a modest, song-driven melodrama of the kind that filled the screens of mid-1940s India.

Nine songs are documented for Badmash, all credited to the Khan Mastana–Datta Korgaonkar team with lyrics by A. Karim. The recorded voices that survive in catalogue listings include Kalyani (also credited as Kalyani Das), Leela Pawar and Khan Mastana himself, singing across solos and duets in the period's familiar dholak-and-harmonium idiom.

The film's lasting interest lies in its music director credit: Khan Mastana, the itinerant singer-composer better remembered as a playback voice of the period, here takes a rare composing role alongside Datta Korgaonkar. The soundtrack is a small but real document of the second tier of 1944's film-music economy — the workmanlike, lyricist-led songs that ran beneath the year's landmark scores such as Naushad's Rattan.