Songs The River Sang

They made the rivers sing in those days. The waters were as hoary and dusky as the history of the country itself. They had kept the plains and farmlands alive and fruitful for centuries. For, it was in this bucolic earth and its soil that love was born and was nurtured.  In the dawn the waters rushed about their business quenching the thirst of the land and acting as waterways,  and in the quiet of the evenings while the river undulated  its own song it listened to the sweet nothings the swain whispered in his playmate's ears as they flitted about on its grassy banks in the dusk....
Naushad Ali was at the peak of his powers by the late 40s (चालीस करोड़ में एक नौशाद  they said of him in those far off days-one Naushad in 40 million) and as he took firmer hold over his ragas, he harnessed wonderful voices to the song of the river: voices as deep and profound as the river itself.

S U Sunny's  Babul (1950), a precursor to Mehboob Khan's more ambitious and nobler Amar of a few years later, told the tale of a शहरी डाक बाबु  (a post master-Dilip Kumar in an eloquent, understated performance) who finds himself, during a transfer to a small village, in disparate relationships with two belles (Nargis & Munawar Sultana) and ends up losing both. This becomes the background for a number of good lyrics set to fine music in the voices of Talat, Shamshad Begum and Lata, not to speak of Mohammad Rafi often echoing in the background.....The banks of a placid river flowing by the village are a meeting place for Dilip and Munawar deeply in love and on one of the evenings, Talat and Shamshad lend their voices to the lovers and the river, in an eloquent tryst.

While they merge in complete vocal harmony (as they did in the other two duets for this film), Rafi-saab adds a romantic touch to this jhinjoti-based folk ditty, with the setting sun in the background. And the river listened....

The Naushad-Shakeel tandem was in full swing by now, for along with Babul, they had scored memorable music for Dard (their first), Mela & Anokhi Ada. The best, however, was yet to come....and come it did with Sri Prakash Pictures' and director Vijay Bhatt's Baiju Bawra (1952). The term 'classic' is often loosely applied to art, literature or musical composition of the highest quality that helps it to become a model for other inspiration to follow. In the 60 years that have passed since the release of this once-in-a-lifetime film, its immortal musical soundtrack remains a shining example of how uplifting classical music in films can be when it is devoid of pedantry.

And it stands alone.

Naushad-saab himself never again did anything like his tracks for this film, at any time in his distinguished career. Shakeel Badayuni's village-simple, yet eloquent lyrics, were poetry at its best. All those who lent their voices to his songs, Rafi and Lata and Shamshad and Ustad Amir Khan and Pandit D.V. Paluskar, took a step closer to immortality. Composer Naushad won the first-ever Filmfare award for best music and (unfortunately) his only one, while Meena Kumari won the first Best Actress award, as Baiju's tender foil, Gauri.. She would go on to win three more and bag at least eight other nominations for best actress before her very tragic career was done.

Bharat Bhushan's portrayal of the music-crazed, vengeance-bound Baijnath ('Baiju') has often been ridiculed as being over-the-top but to see him perform in the dramatic song sequences (man tarpat Hari darshan ko aaj,... insaan bano,...o duniyake rakhwale...) is to see a study in unbridled, poetic madness. The ambivalence in his role was complete in the same wild ecstasy he was able to project in the more romantic songs in the film like tu ganga ki mauj, main jamuna ka dhara,...door koi gaye,....jhulemein pavanke ayi bahar...). Baiju's moral defeat at the hands of Tansen (Surendranath in a dignified role) is a sequence better watched than reviewed! He never repeated his histrionics from Baiju Bawra, in any of the three similar films he did in the later 50s. This is a track for the ages, as iconic as the raga in which it has been immersed~the bhairavi. 

Another memorable 'river' song deserves a mention and revisit, if not for the forgettable film (Sunny's Udan Khatola-1955), then surely for the memorable lyric and tuning. Naushad and Shakeel, this time with Lata crooning the more wistful 'more saiyanji utrenge paar' (my beloved will come ashore, safe), have given us a composition that we still hold dear. In her legendary association with this maestro, it would be difficult to give this pilu-based song (or any other song, for that matter) a rank, but it certainly is among her best for him. Lata's articulation of Shakeel's simple Hindi (ताल तलैया दुनिया माने....मनका सागर कोहू न जाने....one can fathom the bottom of the lake, but not that of the mind) gives the song an unique depth, as Nimmi beseeches the river to ease its flow, to ensure the safety of her lover (a drugged Dilip Kumar)~a metaphor for the current predicament (Surya Kumari) that he faces. Nobody, nobody sings like this anymore!..

It is interesting that while the film version of the song ends with the boat crashing against the rocks, the 78rpm recording ends on a gentler note on the piano. Both are valid depending on who you are. 

And the Chenab sang its own song of torment in Chaudhury Brothers' Sohni-Mahiwal (1958),  which recounts the tragedy of  Sayed Fazal Shah's ill-fated lovers.  It is never a cliche for anyone to say that the poet-composer teams of yesteryears 'knew what they were doing'.  Indeed, one can never say that enough! They delved into culture and folklore and came up with verse and tune that befit the themes of the film, even if the direction and plotting of it fell short of expectation. It was Raja Nawathe's unskilled direction that never quite lifted the Sohni-Mahiwal  saga to the heights where it belonged.

Shakeel Badayuni's ballad chand chhupa aur tare dube, raat ghazabki ayi--the moon and the stars have faded and a night of terror has descended), which climaxes the film was Mahendra Kapoor's breakout song and his fresh voice, the winner of the Murphy Radio contest that year (at which Naushad-saab was one of the judges), did full justice to the poem, and the cadences he lets loose seem to rise and fall with the surge and ebb in the eddying, live river. The lyric is a distinct two-parter with the first setting the mood for what is to come in the second. It is replete with metaphor. A moaning wind, spelling ultimate doom right after the aalaap helps set the pace, coupled with the dark of the night which stands for the fear and betrayal interjected by man and God alike in which the lovers flounder, albeit in defiance.

But it is in the second segment as things move towards a climax that poet and composer are jointly at their best. Naushad's composition and arrangement lend an epic dimension to the poem. Indeed, his  genius lay in weaving the raga jogia as closely into western symphonic garb as was coherently possible.  The river takes on an ugly turn and the deafening crash of its waters signal the end--which in itself is unnerving and eerie in its anticlimax, as the waters settle after taking their toll, with the cello carrying the softer dulcimer, as the maelstrom closes over the lovers.

(Lest any of my readers feels I have suddenly become a musicologist of sorts doing a name-dropping stint with the ragas, let me hasten to say I have not. Friend Anand Padgaonkar has offered his knowledge in identifying them for me. Thank you. After all, one cannot talk about mian-Naushad even in brief, without naming the ragas). 

*****

I recently came across a song that I had always associated only with Conrad Rooks' Siddhartha (1972), the  largely ineffective retelling (via Shashi Kapoor & Simi Garewal) of Herman Hesse's great novella of self realization ("drivel" they called it here, in this part of the world) probing the never-ending nature of life, in Buddhism. Hemant Kumar's scoring of the two theme songs, and Sven Nykvist's camerawork lifted the film a bit above the commonplace, giving it a vagous place in film history. There is a sequence in the book where the lonely boatman muses upon the river, a metaphor for life, comparing the immortality of the soul to the everlasting flow of the waters. In the film the beautiful O Nodi Re rendered by that great composer in his eternal voice, plays in the background.

Hemant-da had originally recorded this song for a 1959 Bangla film called Neel Akasher Neeche, which told the story of a Chinese refugee in India, who fled his country from aggressive powers circa 1930. The sequence is a reflective black and white in the gathering dusk, with the lonely immigrant musing upon the river and by extension, his life.....the mood is accentuated further by the harbour lights in the distance. O Nodi Re projects a a deeper sadness than it did in Siddhartha.

(PS: Hemant-babu would record this tune one more time with mesmerizing effect in a song he composed for Lata (ओ बेक़रार दिल ) in the film 'Kohraa' (1964).

And Hemant Kumar gave his voice and music to the river in two other notable songs of the 50s. 

A fisherman out with his nets at night, is essentially Man in isolation under the star-filled universe and as he waits for his catch he muses upon his Maker and eternity, and his own place in it.....Bandish (1955) was Daisy Irani's debut film. She is a waif who 'adopts' Ashok Kumar and Meena Kumari perforce as surrogate parents and gives them a tough time all through the film. It's all in a light vein under Satyen Bose's direction and in one sequence a harried Ashok Kumar finds himself with her by the river....setting the stage for a deeply philosophical song penned by Prem Dhawan, driving home one of life's important lessons to Ashok-babu's character....(note: that's Mehmood in one of his earlier screen appearances, as the boatman).

And it was a year before this last that the ever-eloquent Rajendra Krishan had penned this song of the river for Hemant Kumar in the Dev Anand-Geeta Bali starrer 'Ferry'. In the voiced introduction to the song, though, the accent is on the riverboat which is being borne by the waters and which ferries people towards one another and sometimes away. Again, the majhi (or the boatman) philosophises upon life in the universe.....The kid in the picture is Hemant Kumar's son Ritesh whom we saw briefly in 'Kacche Dhage' with Moushumi Chatterjee. He walked away with her in that film and also in real life and I, for one, have not heard of him since then.

As the 'Kabuliwala' in the film of the same name (1961) Balraj Sahni found himself in pretty much the same situation as that Chinese immigrant in Neel Akasher Neeche. Gurudev Tagore's immortal story of the Pathan from Kabul is heartbreaking to say the least and was transferred to celluloid with average results. Hemen Gupta directed the film under the Bimal Roy banner. The Khan reflects upon the song the holy man is singing upon the banks of the Ganga~the conversation between the two that follows, unfortunately missing from this clip, is one of the very moving sequences in the film.

This is very early Gulzar giving us flashes of the genius that was to come. And as eloquent as Salil Chaudhury's compositions are it is Hemant Kumar and Manna Dey who touch us with their rendering of the two pivotal songs in the film. Cameraman Kamal Bose has captured beautifully the dusk that shrouds the banks of the Ganga as the song wafts over to us in Hemant Kumar's voice...... 

I have long held a very fortunate opinion that when Majrooh Sultanpuri wrote his 'मचलती हुई हवामें छम छम हमारे संग-संग चले गंगा की लहरें' he was not just rising to an occasion that a bad Hindi film demanded. It is a बा-अदब  (respectful) bow that a gentle poet born under one faith makes in  acknowledgement of another, thus uplifting both. There is reverence in the voices of Lata and Kishore (her "सर को झुका  के नाम लो इनका " moves you emotionally) as they go through the three antaras in Chitragupta's fine melody, in praise of the waves of the Ganga.

However, Devi Sharma's direction of the visuals makes a mockery of the song and divests it of the dignity that Majrooh had imparted to it. Ergo, I will spare you the video showing Kum Kum and Kishore Kumar cavorting in the waters.

And one can never forget Manna Dey's monumental rendering of Indivar-ji's great lyric for Safar (The Journey), tuned by Kalyanji-Anandji.  Coming as it did in the wake of Hrishikesh Mukherjee's very gentle Anand that same year (1970), Rajesh Khanna more or less reprises his role in the earlier film as a cancer patient with the same tragic end. But as cliche-ridden as the earlier film was it was deep and soul-penetrating unlike this one saturated in bathos. Of course, that does not take away from the fine histrionics put in by both Sharmila Tagore and Rajesh Khanna, not to speak of Ashok Kumar and Feroze Khan in important roles. Indiver's poetry excelled in all the songs but especially in this chorus led by Manna Dey (a bit marred by Rajesh's sad soliloquy halfway) and the title song by Kishore. This one, however, seeks to philosophise as deeply as Indiver's other great poem for 'Anokhi Raat', taal miley nadi ke jalmein: the same river that is life, moving, rushing towards an unknown destination....

                                                                                ******

Finally, it was the 50s. The age of Pankaj Mallik and Raichand Boral was coming to an end and the age of Shankar-Jaikishan and C. Ramchandra had set in. We were growing up with it. In time, dad would grow to love this new music of SJ and SDB and the rest, which was being permeated by the outside world, but he would still love the old guard. Pankaj-babu and KLS and Juthika Roy and Jagmohan and the rest would still have a fond place on the turntable. Because of this attachment that lingered in that generation (and Radio Ceylon--let's not forget that!), we of the new breed learned to listen to them all and be awed by them.

However, there was still one song left in Pankaj-babu and it came to us via the film 'Zalzala' (Earthquake-1954), which depicted the tepid underground stirrings in the country against the British, not that this is intended to belittle the revolutionaries (Gandhi's non-violence movement was stronger). It starred Dev Anand and Geeta Bali and that's all I remember of it.....that and Pankaj Mallik's deep chorus 'haiyyo, haiyyo' as the river makes its presence felt one more time. Ali Sardar Jafri's homage to a tottering mankind still in bondage is encouraging and the great, cadenced singing of composer Pankaj Mallik was deep....like the river .....