निशानी

A Shorey Pictures social drama built on the device of the nishani — the identifying birthmark or token. The plot turns on two look-alikes who are not twins; their tangled identities are finally untangled, and the right partners reunited, by the telltale marks the title names.

All ten songs were composed by Master Amarnath (Pt. Amarnath Batish) in his very first assignment and written entirely by the poet Aziz Kashmiri. The playback was carried chiefly by Shamshad Begum, the debutante Naseem Akhtar, and Zeenat Begum — voices of the Lahore studios of the early 1940s.

Shorey Pictures was Roop K. Shorey's Lahore banner, and Nishani was produced and directed by Shorey himself. The film belongs to the 1942 moment when the Hindi industry was restructuring and many producers and artists were launching independent ventures and careers — a context in which a brand-new music director and two newcomer performers could all debut on a single picture.

Nishani is best remembered as a film of debuts. It was the first Hindi film of music director Master Amarnath (Pt. Amarnath Batish) — father of the family that would later include Pt. Amarnath's pupils and the Batish musical lineage — and it introduced the singer Naseem Akhtar and the actress Rooplekha. Its ten songs, all written by Aziz Kashmiri, mark the launch of an important Lahore-school composer.

The lasting footnote of Nishani is Master Amarnath: launched here, he would go on to compose for the Lahore and post-Partition film scene, and his family carried forward a distinctive musical tradition. For singer Naseem Akhtar too, the film was the doorway into film playback.