यतीम

No plot summary for Yateem survives in the accessible record, and none is invented here. What is documented is the production itself. The film was made at Central Studios, Bombay, directed by Zia Sarhadi, produced by C.L. Divan and photographed by Keki Mistry, with a cast headed by the comedian-actor Yakub alongside Chandraprabha, Lalita Pawar, Uday Kumar, David Abraham, Eddie Billimoria, Bhudo Advani, T.N. Charlie, Leela Pawar and the young Suraiya. The title is the one clue the record offers to its subject: 'yateem' is Urdu for orphan. That subject sits naturally alongside its director's documented preoccupations. Sarhadi was a Peshawar-born writer who came to Bombay in 1933, wrote screenplays for Mehboob Khan, and was later described as an 'unaffiliated Marxist' whose films took up the social questions of their period — most famously Hum Log (1951) and Footpath (1953). Yateem is an early directorial credit within that arc. Its unusual feature is a divided score: eight songs split between Khwaja Khurshid Anwar, who composed five, and Datta Korgaonkar, who composed three, with Sarhadi — a practising film lyricist since the mid-1930s — writing every lyric himself. Rajkumari and G.M. Durrani carry the four tracks whose singers are recorded; the singers of the remaining four are not documented in the surviving catalogues.

The eight documented songs split five to Khurshid Anwar (Main Usse Karoon Pyar, Jhoom Rahi Baghon Mein Bheegi Hui Daaliyan, Aa Aa Aayi Aha Holi Aayi, So Ja Mere Pyare, Ya Ilahi De Lugai) and three to Datta Korgaonkar (Qayamat Hai Ki Hum Ek Bewafa Se Pyar Karte Hain, Shuru Hone Lagi Hai, Ummeed Mein Behti Hui Nadi Ke). Zia Sarhadi is credited as lyricist on every track by both surviving catalogues. Rajkumari is the documented voice on three songs and G.M. Durrani on two (they share the duet); for the other four the singer is simply not recorded. The catalogue spans a Holi number, a lullaby, a ghazal-inflected lament and a comic prayer — the standard spread of a mid-1940s programme picture. Saregama is listed as the label.

Yateem is documented chiefly as a structural curiosity of the mid-1940s Bombay industry: a single film whose eight songs were divided between two music directors of very different backgrounds — Khwaja Khurshid Anwar, the Government College Lahore philosophy topper and former All India Radio music producer, and Datta Korgaonkar, a working Bombay studio composer — while the director wrote every lyric himself. It is also an early directing credit for Zia Sarhadi, six years before Hum Log made him a name in socially engaged Hindi cinema.