Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai

About the film

Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai (transl. My Heart is Mine and My Love is for Someone Else's) is a 1960 Indian Hindi-language romantic drama film, produced by S. A. Bagar. It was written and directed by Kishore Sahu. The film stars Raaj Kumar, Meena Kumari and Nadira as leads. The film tells the story of a surgeon who is obligated to marry the daughter of a family friend, while he is in love with a colleague nurse, played by Meena Kumari. It is one of the noted acting performances of lead actress Meena Kumari's career.

The film's music is by Shankar Jaikishan, and features a hit song, "Ajeeb Dastan Hai Yeh". At the 1961 Filmfare Awards it created an upset by beating the popular musical epic, Mughal-e-Azam of Naushad, for the Best Music Director category.

Plot

Sushil Verma is a surgeon in the Shimla Hospital. He lives on the hospital grounds in a doctor's house with his aging mother and younger sister Munni. After Sushil's father died, his father's close friend paid Sushil's medical school fees, thus creating a debt that Sushil's mother feels needs to be fulfilled. Karuna is a nurse who comes to Shimla Hospital and first encounters Sushil during an emergency surgery. Both are clearly besotted with each other, but keep their feelings restrained.

By chance, on a nurses' beach day trip, Karuna meets Munni, who injures herself whilst playing. She takes Munni back to her house, not knowing that she is Dr. Verma's sister, and the house she is visiting belongs to him. She dresses Munni's wounds, sees how much work needs to be done in the house, and the fact that his mother is too ill to attend to household tasks. She immediately steps in and helps out; cooking, cleaning and taking care of everyone. Sushil comes home to see this and falls even more in love.

However, later on, his mother organises a trip to Kashmir for the whole family, and guilt-trips Sushil into marrying Kusum, the daughter of the man who paid for his medical school fees.

Soundtrack

The Hawaiian-themed song "Ajeeb Dastan Hai Yeh" is based on "My Lips Are Sealed" by Jim Reeves. All songs were written by Shailendra and Hasrat Jaipuri.

Awards

1961 Filmfare Award for Best Music Director for Shankar Jaikishan

Key details