Happy birthday,Mowgli

‘Jungle Jungle baat chali hai pata chala hai…arre chaddi pahan ke phool khila…hai phool khila hai…’ Yes folks, it’s time to refresh some old memories for all of you who used to be glued to the telly every Sunday morning in the early 90s to watch Mowgli and the cartoon film, The Jungle Book. Today, the first original animated film The Jungle Book (dated October 18, 1967) based on the novel by Rudyard Kipling and produced by Walt Disney completes 42 years.

The Jungle Book we saw on TV was actually a Japanese adaptation of the novel. The soundtrack for the dubbed Hindi version was written by Gulzar. The music was given by music director and filmmaker Vishal Bharadwaj. Singer and wife Rekha Bharadwaj, who assisted Vishal and Gulzar during the making of the soundtrack, recalls how the track was made in less than a day.

“The lyrics came very naturally to Gulzarsaab because he was always experimenting with so many songs for children. Gulzarsaab was having a casual conversation with Vishal when this phrase ‘chaddi pahan ke phool khila hai’ came up. They laughed about it and got some child artistes to sing the song. And it turned out that the child who sang the song pronounced the word Pehan ke (to wear) as Pahan ke. And I guess it was his twisted accent which really gave that magical effect to the soundtrack,” she says.

This animated version  set a benchmark for Indian animation films that followed. “How do you tell a story that’s so simple yet so magical? When we make animation films in India, The Jungle Book is something that will always be considered as a great example to draw inspiration,” says Suresh Seetharaman, president Liquid Studios (formerly Virgin Comics).


It sure has been an inspiration for many a film in India, but the animation film Industry in the country is still slacking and 2-D animation films like Hanuman or Bal Ganesh which cost about Rs8 to 10 crore to produce, barely recovered costs. While the cost of Disney’s animated version of The Jungle Book was itself 10 times 42 years ago, it cost 20 million dollars (Rs100 crore approx) and made profits of 73 million dollars (Rs350 crore approx).

However, ad film-maker Prahlad Kakkar feels that the infulence of The Jungle Book on Indian culture has been very limited. “I beleive that its appeal was not that widespread across the country because of the fact that there were no efforts made to commercialise it. A film like Haathi Mere Saathi was more popular amongst the kids than Mowgli,” he says.