Satram Rohra

Sindhi singer and film producer behind Rocky Mera Naam and Jai Santoshi Maa · 1939–2024

Satram Rohra was born in Sukkur, Sindh, on 16 June 1939 and became a figure in Sindhi culture as a stage performer and a singer of Sufi kalams, folk songs and comic songs, with records and cassettes on HMV and TIPS. In films he produced Shera Daku (1966) and produced and directed Rocky Mera Naam (1973), in which Sanjeev Kumar plays two lookalikes.

The banner he worked under, Bhagyalakshmi Chitra Mandir, also made one of the oddest hits in Indian film history: Jai Santoshi Maa (1975), a devotional film with no stars and a tiny budget. When Sholay opened a few months later and flattened most of the competition, Jai Santoshi Maa kept on running, and it is reported to have earned more than a hundred times its cost. He also made Hal Ta Bhaji Haloon (1984), described as the first Sindhi film in colour, and sang in it.

Satram Rohra died on 18 July 2024, aged 85; Radio Sindhi remembered him as a singer who gave Sindhi listeners many superhit songs alongside Dada Ram Panjwani, Bhagwanti Navani and Kamla Keswani.