Of Fervour & Euphoria

It was a cool evening on that mountainside in Igatpuri, in May of 1967. The day had started warmly enough as befitted the time of year. Nandu (as Nandlal Rajput was affectionately known to us) and I had rented bikes to stroll down the curvy road to the plains below. It had been fun all the way because the morning had been fine as only a spring morning in the Ghats, outside Bombay, can be. Even as we raced downhill we were wondering how we were going back up again. The sandwiches that Gul, Nandu's excellent wife, had packed for us lay forgotten in our knapsacks as we scratched our heads, looking up at the road we had so gleefully come down. Besides, it was now afternoon, the day was warming up and we were just catching our second wind on the grass we had plopped down upon.

We found ourselves by Kasara Station on the Central Railway at the foothills of the Ghats. After a brief respite we dusted ourselves and started pushing our bikes up the small road that ran parallel to the tracks. Providence was on our side though, because before long we heard a chugging and presently a small goods train was trudging alongside us. The genial Parsi engineer who was blowing the horn took in our predicament and helped us hoist our bikes onto the caboose at the end of his train. "Not all the way to Igatpuri you know," he said, "just to a point".

Not all the way to the top, but close enough. 'The point', as it turned out, was very near a small toll pass that Nandu and I immediately recognized. We waved our thanks and goodbyes to the kindly train driver and started on the last lap of our trip back. Toll gates then, back home, were not the big plazas we are accustomed to in this part of the world. This one along the backroads, allowing only pedestrian traffic, was manned by two security men and a shortwave radio that was weaving its own spell on the darkening environment. For, by now the sun was sinking and the cool of the evening was creeping in with the lengthening of the shadows. The deeper knolls in the hills were already in darkness. There is magic in all this, believe me. As we neared the gate....

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I wonder how many of my readers remember Manohar Mahajan on Radio Ceylon during the 60s. He was a worthy successor to Gopal Sharma who had left the station as the 50s gave way to the 60s. He has left his mark on us radio lovers and in my contemplative moments he still makes his presence felt. This time around, fleeting thoughts of him have inspired this blog.

Manohar-जी specialized in brief radio programmes, always thoughtful, always musical. Among them was the very moving Jab aap gaa uthe (when you broke into song...). The 30-minute programme Thursday evenings invited listeners to recount real-life experiences that had made them break into song. As emotional as that half-hour was, it was its signature tune that prepared his listeners for the treat that was to follow. The introduction was ushered in by Madan Mohan's melodious lead-in to his Ajaa Kahinse Ajaa... (from Samundar), giving way to Lata's alaap in Mera Qaraar Leja... (Ashiana), culminating in Rafi-saab's intoxicating hum at the top of  Zindagibhar Nahin Bhulegi... (Barsaat Ki Raat).

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.....Manohar was at it once again that evening in the hills. I suddenly realised it was Thursday and the preamble to the Samundar classic was just coming on. I was at the right spot for the song to play itself out. And it did, for some reason. Perhaps a listener had sung it upon an occasion...

Although the song was picturised at sea the lonely peaks around us were an ideal locale in which to listen to
it. Friend Nandu and I paused by the tollgate and its keepers allowed us to stand by. Lata-bai is at her best when she evokes isolation. The shadows themselves seemed to pause in their lengthening and the stillness of the evening deepened. Rajendra Krishan's gentle lyric of quiet desolation was beginning to cast its spell in the growing dusk with O mere sajana, dhundun kahan..., one more time.

Cast as it is in the bhairav, one remembers even today Madan Mohan's eloquent juxtaposing of that Hindustani raga to depict the torment in the human breast (Bina Rai's), and western classical movements to symbolise the raging storms at sea. It has had few peers over the years, if any. In those hills that evening both elements reached a symbiosis for me as I stood transfixed, listening once again to one of the best this beloved singer has given us. In the decades that have rolled by since, I have never again listened to it quite the same way as I listened to it on that lonely toll road. Its glow weaves in and out of the subconscious as I lose myself in it. While the depiction on the screen leaves much to be desired, it is the 78r.p.m. track that does full justice to this composition. Here it is...

So much of our film music of the time was elusive, like ghost lamps flitting through the countryside in the twilight. It created a wistful mood but many a song often suffered due to bad picturisation like the one above and so many others. That did not, however, rob it of its intrinsic merit.

In 1960 we delighted in one more gem created by the then already-fading Jamal Sen, who in his prime during the 50s had given us wonder compositions like Devta Tum Ho Mera Sahara the wistful Rafi-Mubarak Begum duet in Kamal Amrohi's Daera (1953), Lata's Sapna Ban Sajan Aaye in Shokhiyan (1951) and others too numerous to mention here. He had disappeared for a few years but suddenly made a comeback of sorts, and finally faded with the dubbed-into-Hindi-from the-original-Telugu film, Amar Shaheed. 

This is a happy song, a truly joyous one. A Lata-Manna Dey duet (this great singer's voice was indeed 'manna' from the heavens!), it is an erotic, euphoric romp through the mind and has been sensually sung, the two voices complete as one in harmony, in flight after the Mishr-Pilu and an eclectic blend of other ragas. If you can stand the garish colour and the bad editing of this aged video Padmini is the one to watch, for the sheer abandon that she imparts to the sequence. The listener gets a better grip, though, on the composition via the '78' below. The segues are particularly striking because they are anti-climactic, and the simple strumming of the murchunga along with softer notes on the xylophone, move the composition through its antaras. One Arjun Joshi wrote the lyric in the classical style of the late Pandit Bharat Vyas just the year before in V. Shantaram's Navrang. It's a pity he was never heard from again!

It was an era that spelled great poetry in our films and Sahir Ludhianvi towered over other lyricists of the day. He had a telling lyric for every human mood and some of our music directors often had a tough time creating the right tune to embed his lyrics in.

Not so Sachin Dev Burman with whom he had a pulsating, if rocky, relationship. Between the two of them was created one of Lata's all time classics, Faili hui hain sapnonki bahein, ajaa chaldein kahin door (The pathways of our dreams beckon to us, their arms wide open, come let us tread upon them) for Navketan's House No. 44. For this writer, the lyrical visual beauty of the sequence remains unsurpassed. Kalpana Kartik who flits in and out among the trees on the hillside in the full moon mouthing the lyric makes an elusive will-o'-the wisp indeed, playing hide and seek with her own shadow! An immortal piece of cine-photographic art, from cameraman V. Ratra.

 In sharp contrast to his use of the moonlit chiaroscuro in the preceding, Sahir's use of day and night as metaphors for the rise and fall in the fortunes of man yielded a Rafi solo (with Asha in the tandem) that today still resonates amongst private collectors and in the mind of those with long memories. I do not remember when I heard it first, but I still cannot have enough of Raatbharka Hai Mehmaan Andhera, Kiske Roke Ruqa Hai Savera (the darkness lasts but until the night wanes, it cannot stave the approach of the dawn!). But in 1957, it was not enough for me to listen to this song on Radio Ceylon. I would walk over on an evening, whenever I could, to the Lamington Cinema (later the Apsara, and now I know-not-what!) near home, where Shahid Latif's Sone Ki Chidiya (1958) was showing, await the jingle of the rings as the curtains were pulled back announcing the interval, and listen to the record being played from the projection room! I have lost count of the number of times I walked those 15 minutes from home, to spend three more just to listen to this classic during the run of the film at the Lamington!  I was all of 12 years old, beginning to familiarize myself with the language. It was the fine Mr. Riaz Ahmed at school who explained the song to me. Here is the reverberating first segment of this song...

Sahir's gentle but tough admonishment to Nutan in 1958 became Shailendra's heartbreaking plaint to that brilliant actress a few years later in Bimal Roy's Bandini (1963). The film remains a superior achievement in black and white cinematography, as also in other departments of movie making, not the least of which was Sachin Dev Burman's moving, evocative soundtrack and the songs beautifully rendered by Lata, Asha, Manna Dey & Mukesh, as also the climactic O re majhi sung by that revered composer himself.

What we will remember above all, though, is the very haunting and ethereal O janewale ho sake to laut ke aana which remains the quintessential Mukesh song. Photographed to the end in deep shadow (love those receding ripples and the disappearing boat at the gentle fadeout), his voice attained a sadness that defied the best he had done until then, as he delivered Shailendra's great lyric of longing for lost innocence and nostalgia. Nutan in the delineation of her role as the hapless Kalyani and Kamal Bose in his lensing of the film, added a poetic pathos to the sequence in their own way. Both carried away the Filmfare awards for their work that year. Where Mukesh-ji fell short in garnering an award, I have never been able to understand. As great as Mahendra Kapoor was in his award-winning rendering of Sahir's angry Chalo Ek Baar Phirse in BR's Gumrah that year, his voice had still not attained melody and one cannot not believe that Mukesh deserved the statuette more. Always an admirer of that very gentle singer, I still remember what the melody did to me when it first fell upon my ears, as I stood on a neighbour's balcony studying for my prelims...

I have always loved the adaptation of folk music to our films. Most composers did it well but to my mind the Bengalis, from Pankaj Mallik to Rahul Dev Burman, were best in transferring the sights and sounds of their countryside to the film soundtrack.

I am not quite sure if cameraman-turned-director Fali Mistry managed to explore to good effect the rudiments of the psychodrama that had then begun to come into vogue in films, thanks to Mr. Hitchcock's trailblazing Gregory Peck-Ingrid Bergman starrer Spellbound.  The beautiful images notwithstanding, I believe he did a bad job in unravelling the tangles in Nimmi's mind in G. P. Sippy's Sazaa (1951).

They were a few minutes of delight that led straight to a song that has remained with us through the decades. That climactic sequence in the psychologist's office gives way to meanderings of the mind. Here's where Sachin Dev Burman came in with one of the best voiced duets, ever. In an age where duets vied with one another to hit the listener where it hurt, Hemant Kumar and Sandhya Mukherjee beautifully dovetailed into crooning Rajendra Krishan's very spontaneous gup-chup, gup-chup pyar karein. Sandhya's aalap at the top remains unforgettable, as she sets the pace for the song that follows. 'Tis a pity indeed that we heard her so little on the Hindi film milieu.Together and individually the two vocalists are at their best, with the folksy chorus adding to the charm.


And then there was Anil Biswas with an unforgettable duet from Hamid Butt's Heer (1956). In this, amongst the earliest retellings of the folk legend, Nutan and Pradeep Kumar movingly portrayed the starcrossed lovers. The beautiful, sad smiles on Nutan's face as her doli weaves its way in the night to its predictable destination, are wonderfully matched by Pradeep's for-once-mobile face as he sends his hopeless duayein after her.

This is the stuff that love epics are made of, very distant in the world of today and Majrooh Sultanpuri came up with a lyric in the purest sense of the term, comparable to Shakeel's great poetry in Sohni Mahiwal of a few years later. All of nature, as a wag once put it, weeps for lost love in Thomas Hardy's novels...and in our films! Here, in Heer, it appears to be accompanying her to her doom and in their rendering of the song Hemant Kumar and Geeta Dutt have given us a duet that is still emotionally moving. It remains one of Anil-da's best compositions.




Perhaps the reason why Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Anupama (1966) has withstood the test of time is because of the superb control exhibited in the making of this great minimalist film, by all involved. Never mind that six years earlier, Hrishi-da's own Anuradha  had already won the President's Gold Medal as the best picture of 1960.  Anupama remains the crowning achievement in his career. With it, Hrishida became the standard bearer of the Bimal Roy school, a year after the passing of that giant of a film-maker. He would go on to make one delight after another but Anupama is still more than an immensely watchable film almost 50 years after its initial release.

Barring Jaywant Pathare's cinematography the movie went largely unrecognized at the FilmFare Awards for that year. Sharmila Tagore, Dharmendra and David Abraham, along with Tarun Bose in the unforgettable role of the father (just one parallel to that elsewhere in our filmdom~Ashok Kumar in Hrishikesh's Aashirwaad!), were at the peak of their talent here. Hemant Kumar Mukherjee's deep, very deep indeed, musical soundtrack for the film, especially in the background soundtrack, remains among that composer's best. That one refrain recurring through the film is shattering, while the moody, haunting scoring of the finale at the train station still creates a lump in one's throat. It must have been tough capturing the moment musically and cinematically and reflecting it in the shattered expressions on Tarun Bose's face, finally leaving us with one of the great endings in film!!

Hemant-da also set to music some very eloquent lyrics penned for the film by Kaifi Azmi. The piece de resistance was Lata's immortal rendering of Azmi-saab's kuchh dil ne kaha, kuchh bhi nahin. It took a while for this song to catch on pitted as it was against dheere, dheere machal ai dil-e-beqaraar and Hemant's own ya dil ki suno duniya walo, but it wasn't long before the gentle flute and the idyllic setting of the song began to create an unmatched mood in the listener, even when one was not necessarily viewing the clip. More a monologue than a song, it is one of Lata's best for this gifted composer. It remains, as Wordsworth would have said, "an emotion recollected in tranquility." 

 



For so many years now I have been totally in love with the Asha-Rafi duets in Filmalaya's Ek Musafir Ek Hasina (1962). Badly directed by R.K. Nayyar (Sadhana's hubby) the film boasted wonderful outdoor shooting for two of the three duets composed (the third, main pyar ka rahi hoon, never found its niche in the film), and was a comeback vehicle for maestro O.P. Nayyar whose career had hit the skids in the late 50s.

Amazing, how the air-conditioning wafted out to you on a hot summer's afternoon when the theatre (the palatial Maratha Mandir in Bombay, in this case) opened its doors for the first show of the day, along with the heady flavour of freshly-fried samosas waiting in the tiny cafe! Amazing also, how the subconscious tucks away a vestige of remembrance, for expression more than 50 years later. Unbeknownst to us we were already laying the sinkholes of nostalgia. To largely inexperienced teenaged filmgoers the film was an immediate classic thanks to a fresh Sadhana and Joy Mukherjee gambolling like lambs in the hills. Of course, the phenomenal singing of Asha-ji and Rafi-saab, has remained with us film music lovers down the decades and will stay with us for all Time to come.




Shailendra-ji's immortal 'aa ab laut chalein' for Raj Kapoor's Sarvodaya inspired Jis Deshmein Ganga Behti Hai, was a clarion call for the dacoits in the film, led by the immortal Pran's character, to mend their ways and come back into the fold.

But by extension it also remains a plea for those of us who are abroad to come back to the Mother. The difference between the film version of this great song tuned by Shankar-Jaikishan, and its more appealing '78' version is startling. Whereas, to suit the climax of the film the movie version is replete with a full reverberating orchestra that only the SJ team could command in those days, the '78' version is more impactful thanks to the first 'antara'  on it that was never recorded for the film. It has rarely been heard except via a private collection but when it first came out on the radio and then onto the gramophone disc, the impact was immediate. Both versions, though, are totally devoid of the bathos that often is an integral component of such songs. They create a patriotic fervour that has rarely been felt (barring the social comments of the great Sahir Ludhianvi in his lyrics), in our films. Indeed, I remember seeing one audience member kneeling in the aisle during a matinee of the film at the Alankar in Bombay.

Both, Mukesh and Lata, have given this song their best, with the former extremely moving as he brings in the two antaras. Lata, of course, is superb in the taans. Here it is...the version we were once familiar with...

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So, I am undoubtedly going to be asked, why this particular handful of songs at the cost of so many others! I really have no answer to this question. Random, fleeting thoughts in the mind, give rise to random images from random songs, as I walk the numerous trails here in the northeast on many an afternoon or evening. Each bears its own memories: at some I burst outright into laughter (like the one associated with Ek Musafir Ek Haseena), while others make me want to relive the moments and yet others create a certain wistfulness. (Send me some of your own thoughts or outpourings: it will be interesting to read them).There is no magic hat from which I pull out the songs but yes there is that wellspring, you-know-where, from which they frequently emerge...