मेरी ख़्वाहिश

A 1941 Hindi social-musical directed by Harbanslal and R. D. Rajput, with a cast led by Ramesh, Kokila, Mirajkar, A. Karim and Sharifa. Like many independently produced films of the early talkie era, Meri Khwahish survives in the record chiefly through its eight-song score; its full plot is not documented in surviving references. The title — 'My Desire' — and its songbook of monsoon, longing and devotion place it firmly in the romantic-social idiom that dominated Hindi screens on the eve of the 1940s.

The score is credited to the composer pair Vasant and Shanti Kumar, with lyrics by Baalam Pardesi and A. K. Sindhu. Eight songs are documented in the gramophone-era song records, ranging from monsoon imagery ('Kale Kale Badal Chaye') to philosophical and devotional verse ('Sukh Pakar Jo Dukh Paaye'). Individual playback-singer attributions for the songs have not survived in available references.

Detailed production history for Meri Khwahish has not survived in mainstream film references; the film is recorded as a stub even on Wikipedia. What is documented is its creative spine — directors Harbanslal and R. D. Rajput, the Vasant–Shanti Kumar music team, lyricists Baalam Pardesi and A. K. Sindhu, and a cast headed by Ramesh, Kokila, Mirajkar, A. Karim and Sharifa.

Meri Khwahish is one of the many modestly budgeted 1941 productions that together formed the broad base of Hindi cinema's pre-Independence output. Its surviving value is documentary: an eight-song score scored by the lesser-chronicled team of Vasant and Shanti Kumar, with verse by Baalam Pardesi and A. K. Sindhu, it is a data-point for mapping the working composers, lyricists and players who kept the studios running just below the famous names.

Today Meri Khwahish is remembered, if at all, as a title in the 1941 release lists and a song-page on the gramophone-era archives. Its preservation on a discovery database matters precisely because it represents the long tail of Hindi cinema — the working films and working artists who never became legends but whose collective labour built the industry the legends inherited.