"अच्छा, तो बहेनों और भाईयों . . . "

  My Two Hours With Ameen Sayani 

 As school children we lived from Wednesday to Wednesday waiting for that voice to take over our lives for a full hour midweek, from 8 until 9pm. It was a voice that helped us cherish the wealth in our film music. In a traditionally hide bound society where “flippancy” was frowned upon, Radio Ceylon was taking up cudgels against mediocrity and in a way Ameen sahab’s voice as he ran the gamut of 16 tracks on any given Wednesday was easy listening at its best.

It was not enough that we got to understand how our beloved songs were doing, whether they were edging up to the top rung of the ladder or not, but his casual mention of the composer and the lyricist of songs made us more familiar with what went into the making of a film song. That was the age of great composers and singers and lyricists, and their memory persists vastly because of him and those who followed in his footsteps.

The first time I met Ameen Sayani was in December of 1996 during a visit to Mumbai, at probably the most well-known address on Radio: Cecil Court, Landsdowne Road!

A while before that I had written to him giving him my thoughts on a couple of CDs (which I now realize were produced in the early 80s, but to which my attention was drawn only at the top of the 90s). He had given me a lengthy response and had invited me to meet him when next I was in Bombay. I had asked him for an autographed picture of himself and older brother Hamid, and he sent me one of himself. To quote that letter: “…I never send photographs but…I am making an exception (for you). Here it is!”  

He called me in the morning of the day and gave me the time when he could be with me. He cautioned me though that he would not be able to stay with me for more than a half hour at best. We sat in his office, myself and he, with me totally tongue-tied in his presence seeing in the mind thoughts and echoes from way past when. He finally broke the ice:

“That was a fine letter you wrote me, Kersi”.

“Thank you…”, the voice trailing off.

“Ameen”, he smiled.  I settled for Ameenji (if I can recall it correctly) “Tell me all that you want to say”. We lapsed into Hindi and English, but mostly chatted in English.

The rest of that chat is historic in my mind.

I told him of my love of film music and my new-found affection for Radio Ceylon as a child, not yet within sight of teenage. “And”, I continued, “my rather strict mom instructed my tutor in math and science to let me off at 07:30 pm every Wednesday so I could walk home to catch the Binaca Geetmala at 8pm and also the programme before it that ran from 07:45 until 8:00, which was…”

He saw my pause, and “Dumex Gharwa Pyara” he said, helping me along by filling in the blanks. For years I had tried in vain to recall the name of that programme.

He asked me then a question that he would phrase one more time in a future exchange. “Tell me, Kersi”, and he saw the delight in my face as he uttered these words, “how old are you that you remember so much!”

I did not have a proper, well-constructed answer to that question and just blurted out, “it’s because I associate and remember events, both significant and insignificant, by the songs that I listened to at the time.”

 I have always wondered if he understood the import of that one!

The ice between us was finally crumbling. “Why…” he questioned with his eyes.

Besides, “My mother used to work for Dumex since its inception in Bombay and later on for Pfizer, and the programme meant a lot to me, among friends at school the next day”.

Then, at some point he got up, went away for a few minutes and returned. “this is it”, I remember telling myself. “Chat over.”

But, “come with me,” he said when he returned and I followed him into his recording studio on the premises. My joy at meeting him was turning to ecstasy.

“Leave your shoes by the door”, he said, and “please, do not interrupt”. There was one other person in the studio, I remember, the sound recordist. The taping commenced and his demeanor had completely changed. The softness in his voice was now brisk and commanding. As my good luck would have it, he was doing something on the immortal Anil Biswas and that was the first time ever that I heard the term bhishmapitamah being applied to Anil-da or to anybody else, for that matter. He had added immortality to my vocabulary. The brief recording stint came to an end.

“Time for tea”, he said after a while. It had been a good session.

We went to the café in his building and spent some more time chatting. Oddly he had very few questions about my life in the US of A and the radio show I was part of in those days. That was for later exchanges. He was more interested in my younger days on home soil. After a while he looked at the time: “I really must be getting along,” he said. More than two hours had passed since I had entered his office.

I thanked him for the time he had given me. Cursory, not at all. Meaningful for me, a wish realized.

“One last question bhai sahab”, I said, “during all those years that you were doing the original Binaca Geetmala, did you ever think of the in-roads your words and your thoughts were making into the minds of listeners, younger listeners especially?”

He became pensive at that. Then, slowly he said to me "I was myself barely in my 20s Kersi, and I was earning my bread.” Cryptic. I thought.

“Goodbye, come visit me whenever you are in town.”

I would make four more visits to Bombay after that. I met him briefly. The last one was in March of 2017. Things were changing for him. Ill health was taking over. A good childhood friend of his, and mine since long, helped him to recognize me. He asked me if I could send him copies of our e-mail exchanges. I did.

Yes, goodbye Ameen sahab.

Hafiz khuda rahe, aapka.

****

Finally, I have culled this writeup from memories that linger. I have also tried to reproduce my conversations with Ameenji as they happened during my visit, and most of the dialogues are verbatim.

Ameen Sayani was a rare personality. All through the aforegoing, he was patient, kind and almost indulgent. He was enjoying our exchanges, adding to my own knowledge facts of the eloquent radio station that was Radio Ceylon. Most of its personalities that my generation grew up with have departed.

Also, I have not written this from an adult point of view because I never knew of him during most of the 70s and the 80s.

My memories of him cease to be after the 60s. Thus, I have written of him and RC as through the eyes of one of a younger generation. That’s when I gathered my impressions of him, lasting impressions that allowed me to recount to him his impact, during those two brief hours.

It feels good to remember and to recall.