"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.

 

Lata Mangeshkar: The Melody in Us 

Barring the immortal Kundanlal Saigal we know of no other singer who achieved near immediate recognition, at the top of a musical career as did Lata Mangeshkar. While she initially drew attention with Bombay Talkiies’ Majboor (1948) in which she sang for mentor Master Ghulam Haider the very hummable ‘Dil Mera Toda, Mujhe Kahinka Na Chhoda…’, it was the very haunting ‘Ayega, Anewala…’ that she sang for her ultimate supporter Khemchand Prakash in Mahal (1949) that drew attention to her. Raj Kapoor’s Barsaat and Mehboob Khan’s Andaz followed in quick succession in 1949 and listeners and critics alike of the late 40s did not take long to realize that a phenomenal singing sensation was beginning to emerge. She would never look back again. 

The film music world was at a crossroads. The old order was changing, gradually ceding its place to the new. In a newly independent India, the film scene too was changing, and a new breed of music directors was experimenting with the music of the world.

Little did Lata at that moment know herself and her capabilities. Groundbreaking composers like Shankar-Jaikishan, C. Ramchandra and O. P Nayyar among others were stepping into grooves of their own (although Lata and OP had nought to do with each other) each with their own brand of western concepts in music. They were quick to recognize the flexibility of Lata’s vocal cords and composed to challenge her abilities.

There was a radical ambivalence in our music of that time. Tradition bound composers like Anil Biswas, Sajjad Hussain, Naushad Ali, Husnlal-Bhagatram (the first-ever composing duo in our films) and Sachin Dev Burman on the one hand and the new breed on the other were challenging Lata in different ways so that she had to contend with genres different:  classical, folk and a wide variety of popular trends. This only helped her to evolve more rapidly. These giants in music grew to be her mentors and she learned the techniques in playback singing from all of them.

And then there was the language barrier. Critical, nay sometimes nasty remarks from film folk made her conscious of inaccuracies in her articulation of the Urdu language. This entailed hard work but over a period she mastered that language of poetry and its Persian intricacies and was able to face and articulate the works of great poets in filmland like Sahir Ludhianvi, Shakeel Badayuni, Majrooh Sultanpuri among others. Much later she even took on the works of classical poets like Mirza Ghalib (the LP ‘Lata Sings Ghalib’ is worth a mention). It was not enough for her to be able to murmur like a brook or sing like a koel. Her impending career would demand more. By its end she would have sung in every major regional language of India, with Marathi, Bangla and Gujarati topping the list!

There were professional conflicts with contemporaries! Singing legends of the previous era were still quite dominant but their market was plainly receding. The very composers who had groomed them began to fall under the Lata spell. I take no pleasure in mentioning this because the glorious Shamshad Begum who is still a personal favourite of mine began to lose ground, as did Amirbai Karnataki, Zohrabai Ambalawali and Suraiya, all of them top notch singers whose songs are still played among private collectors. There was nothing lacking in their singing even at that point. It was simply that the generation was changing, and their time was nigh. The days of Master Ghulam Haider, Khemchand Prakash (both her initial mentors and supporters), Kamal Das Gupta, and other stalwarts were waning, as would wane the days of Shankar-Jaikishan, S. D. Burman and Naushad Ali, in due course of time.  Rahul Dev Burman (scion of the legendary Sachin Dev Burman) and Lakshmikant-Pyarelal would rule the roost for about three decades in the declining period of film music.

I will not go into the songs she made popular, nay immortal. They are just too many: besides, it would be an exercise in futility to jump into her oeuvre to retrieve a few from the numerous! Let history speak for itself. Her father Dinanath Mangeshkar having died while she was still young, the mantle of familial responsibility fell upon her shoulders, and she wore it with dignity and determination.

 Of Yore

However, even while we are still reflecting upon the passing of Lata Mangeshkar my thoughts cannot help but shift gears and move back into the past. For, in her passing, Latabai has enhanced the immortality of all those who left before her. Not that we ever forgot them but thoughts of them surface more vividly at this poignant moment, even as all of us realize that the generation of great singing, music composition and lyrics in our films is slowly but surely receding into history.

For the rest of our lives, we shall draw comfort from the fact that we have lived contemporaneously with them, more than enjoyed the music they created and perhaps wipe a wistful tear as we remember the memories a song will evoke.

This music made us aware of the depths within ourselves. They will be memories of our childhood, Radio Ceylon, our teenage, the smells, the sights and the sounds of the city and its people that each of us hailed from and best, memories of our own parents who enjoyed the music of our generation long after their own was past.

We are luckier than they were in that we have a renewed access even at this late stage to most of the music of our childhood and beyond, thanks to advances in preservation technology. In the mid-60s I remember Dad, on one occasion, becoming emotional as I surprised him with a 78r.p.m. record of Pankaj Babu’s ‘guzar gaya woh zamana kaisa’. And then it was mum’s turn when one late Saturday evening I quietly slipped onto the Garrard a 45r.p.m. recording of Kanan Devi’s ‘ai chand chhup na jana’. All of us will have memories of this kind. We could not have them had we not listened to this music with our parents.

There is a certain finality in Lata-ji’s passing. It may not toll the death knell for our film music but it certainly draws the curtain across the stage against an age of music that my generation has revered for the better part of 75-odd years. We are not going to get the kind of composers and singers that we have been used to, not in the foreseeable future.

That generation is now spent but the songs that we have loved will bring, as they always have, the solace so needed to go on. We shall smile as we think back to the fabled names (I will not attempt to mention them here, for fear of missing any among them!) that we grew up with and see their faces as they swim out of the melody we may happen to be listening to. I have hanging on my living room wall a gift from a dear friend: it is a framed recording of a 78r.p.m. disc. Each groove bears testimony to so many memories both, ethereal and earthly.

And Lata leads them all. In Time, as the years go by, we will remember her singing ‘Jago Mohan Pyare’ for Salil Chaudhury, or ‘Allah Tero Naam, Ishwar Tero Naam’ for Jaidev and a declining faith will be revived.  

Even as we listen to her, other tunes will emerge from within, each asserting itself to be heard. And we will remember names of beloved music directors and her fellow singers that may otherwise have needed a stronger prod for us to recall.

I wonder if all those departed names are aware that she is now among them. 

I wonder if the great Sachin Dev Burman called out to her ‘Lota Tum Aao…’ as she was leaving us. He once had, beckoned to her when he wanted her to sing those wonderful tracks that he had created just for her for his ‘Bandini.’

I wonder…

***

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....

****

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).

****

.....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...

*****
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...

Shamshad Begum ~ Listening From A Distance

Let us not forget Shamshad Begum's teaming with the very melodious Ghulam Mohammad who followed to the end of his career, traditions in film music established by his mentor Naushad Ali. She sang a host of songs for this fine composer but was often made to play second fiddle to Lata in films like the Madhubala-Karan Dewan-Rehman starrer Pardes (1950), in which the latter sang at least four solo jewels as also a चटपटी  duet with Rafi, and Shamshad sang a mediocrity like हुआ तेरा मेरा प्यार फटा-फट  picturized on Mukri and a junior artiste. Unfortunately, there would be others of this type, too many in fact, for an artiste of her stature. However, Ghulam Mohammad and his right arm, the lyricist Shakeel Badayuni, also created in this film two diametrically opposite wonder works to test Shamshad's vocals and she came to the fore with her rendering of the rousing gypsy track मेरे घूंगरवाले बाल हो राजा   picturized on the vivacious and undulating Cuckoo and the sobering एक रुत आये एक रुत जाये picturized on one Shakuntala.

What she could not do for Ghulam Mohammad in Pardes Shamshad did in Rail Ka Dibba (1953 & Shammi Kapoor in his film debut, I believe) and we have at least three lilting solos (not to speak of the boisterous duet ला दे मोहे बालमा  with Rafi-saab's vocals also at their peak in this vocal gymnastics) written by Shakeel in छम छमा छम पायल बाजे... , पापी दुनियासे दूर ... and my personal favourite आँगन मोरे आओजी... The track is utter delight gently ushered in by the flute, wafting in on a soft breeze, almost like a cradle song lulling the listener.......

Contemporaneously with Naushad and Ghulam Mohammad there were other composers, those of the old guard like Khemchand Prakash, Ram Ganguly, Pt. Shyam Sundar, Pt. Amarnath, Sachin Dev Burman, Chitalkar Ramchandra, Sajjad Hussein, Vasant Desai, Nashad, Chitragupta, S. N. Tripathi, Hansraj Behl and others, in the post-independence era who recognized the musical depths in Shamshad's voice and plumbed them. While these names are fading memories today, their music is not. One still stops short when an echo from the past comes on. Nothing like the good old 78 r.p.m. to restore thought and remembrance to their rightful place....the heart.

Khemchand Prakash: Shamshad sang his tuning of lyricist Bharat Vyas' gentle lyric in the Kishore Sahu-Ramola starrer 'Rimjhim' (1949): न तुम आये न नींद आई  तुम्हारी याद ही आई ... 

Sawan Aya Re. There is poetry in the very title and that 're' is a lilt in itself. Pt. Shyam Sundar composed the fine duet written for Shamshad with Rafi, once again by Pt. Bharat Vyas and picturized on Kishore Sahu and Ramola. We all remember the melancholy ऐ  दिल न मुझे याद दिला बातें  पुरानी ...

Shamshad gave all she had in crooning Behzad Lakhnavi's lyric,काहे कोयल शोर मचाए रे, मोहे अपना कोई याद आये रे...tuned by Ram Ganguly and picturized on Nargis in Raj Kapoor's first ever production Aag (1948). Her three great solos on the discs for this film notwithstanding (the other two being न आंखोंमें आँसू  न होठों पे हाये, मगर एक मुद्दत हुई  मुस्कुराए..., and the less heard  दिल लूट गया... ), it's a pity that barring the rambunctious एक दो तीन आजा मौसम है रंगीन  club track in Aawara (1951), Raj and his composers, Shanker-Jaikishan, had nothing further to do with Shamshad Begum, despite his fondness for her ("ये  शमशाद  बेगम  हैं , जो बोलतीं  कम हैं , पर गाती  हैं  कुछ  ज़्यादा ",  he said of her once before an audience).

And then there was this fine solo written by Raja Mehdi Ali Khan and tuned by Sajjad Hussein for the Rehana-Prem Adeeb starrer 'Magroor' (1950): तुम्हें बागोंमें सावनके नज़ारे याद करते  हैं ...a great solo indeed.

I loved Shamshad Begum when she sang for the great C. Ramchandra! I always will: not too many songs there but the handful that this composer made her sing, quite a few among them duets that he himself sang with her will stay with us forever. But then he was that kind of composer: whether it was Shamshad and Binapani Mukherjee or Amirbai Karnataki in the early years, or Lata and Asha later on, his lady singers were special and he managed to get the best out of their vocal cords. His was a unique sense of melody: I have not forgotten how, years ago in the 60s we went hunting, often upon a whim, for the fast-disappearing 78s of his compositions, that we sought to retrieve from Twin Records and Rhythm House in old Bombay.

Despite Lata's great solos in Patanga (1949) starring Nigar Sultana, Shyam Kumar and the very funny Gope, and Nirala (1950) starring Dev Anand and Madhubala, we get very nostalgic when we listen to Rajendra Krishan's मेरे पिया गए रंगून..., ओ दिलवालों दिलका लगाना अच्छा है पर कभी-कभी..., दुनिया को प्यारे फूल और सितारे..., गोरे-गोरे मुखड़े पर गेसू जो छा गए..., बोलोजी दिल लोगे तो क्या क्या दोगे..., प्यारके जहाँ की निराली सरकार है  from the first and मुहब्बत मेरी  रंग लाने  लगी है ...,  a solo, as also दिलमें किसिके रहना हो तो किसकी  इजाज़त चाहिए , a duet with Chitalkar, from the second. And, of course, there was also P.L. Santoshi's टम-टम से  झांको न रानी जी  गाड़ी से गाड़ी लड़ जाएगी, from the Kamini Kaushal-Kishore Sahu starrer Namoona (1949). In a word: Unbelievable! 

When O.P. Nayyar stormed in with his unconventional music that set our feet (and our hearts) tap-tapping, for Guru Dutt's noir-based Aar Paar (1954), the industry was up in arms against this iconoclast who defied tradition to the end of his career. The government-owned A.I.R. refused to play a lot of  his music. To this day one does not understand what the hullabaloo was all about even for those times because the immortal C. Ramchandra had already introduced his own brand of exoticism via the Carribean beat in मोम्बासा ....रात मिलनकी ... and मैं हूँ एक खलासी... along with other numbers in his Sargam (1950), as had Shankar-Jaikishan with their Barsaat the year before, with which the western classical influence finally came to stay in our film music. (One cannot help bringing that in, here).

But O.P. had two champions: one in the fledgeling Radio Ceylon growing in popularity by the day and the other in Shamshad Begum who commanded enough status at the time to put her foot down and embrace his music recognizing its intrinsic worth. She had already sung the title song for O.P. in Aar Paar which had been picturized on a very young Kumkum, and went on to record more numbers under his baton for the next few years, despite the emerging Asha Bhonsle who would finally take over (the mellifluous Geeta Dutt was already a formidable challenge). With all his rebellion O.P. rarely, if ever, lost track of melody.
That same year 'Mangu' was released and in it Shamshad sang the flirtatious ज़रा प्यार करले बाबु... while Asha Bhonsle had her first three solos with the composer who would shape her future, including the haunting, still moving sitar-led बोल परदेसिया ये तूने क्या किया … 

Geeta Roy, now Mrs.Guru Dutt, would render most of the delightful solos and duets with Rafi in hubby's Mr. & Mrs. 55 the next year, but Shamshad still showed her mettle with अब तो जी होने लगा किसीकी सूरत का  सामना...  picturized, once again, on a junior artist.
But she went on to sing other classics (and we know them all) for O.P. after that, notably in films like the great C.I.D., Musafirkhana, Chhoo Mantar, Naya Daur (I, for one, can imagine her leading साथी हाथ बढ़ाना despite the folksy रेश्मी सलवार कुड़ता  जालिका ), Howrah Bridge, and Naya Andaz. This last carried the immortal Shamshad-Kishore duet मेरी नीन्दोंमें तुम मेरे ख्वाबोंमें तुम, हो चुके हम तुम्हारी मुहब्बत में  गुम..., the wonderful two-sided 78r.p.m. version of this song with its ultra-haunting opening (now rarely heard in its fullness). There is also a solo in the film which has always invited special attention viz. Jan Nisar Akhtar's lyric picturised on Meena Kumari: रात रंगीली गाएरे , मोहसे रहा न जाये रे ...., as also तू आजा रे , के दिल है बेक़रार...in which Shamshad leads Rafi and Kishore.

When Sahir Ludhianvi, that stormy petrel amongst our filmi poets, was not taking apart society for its many ills and holding a mirror before its face, he was intoxicating us with the controlled eroticism in his love songs. Back in the early '50s before that ill-fated one-rupee prestige issue that brought him and composer Sachin Dev Burman to a parting of the ways, the two were a formidable team. Among the many films that they teamed together in was G.P. Sippy's Shahenshah (1953), starring Ranjan and a very alluring Kamini Kaushal. The film also brought Gevacolour to filmgoers but the highlight was the intoxicating जाम थामले सोचते ही सोचते न बीते सारी रात...rendered by Shamshad. While the song was lost for many a year, I see it today on an enterprising CD here and there and on YT. It is worth a listen.

Shamshad sang other songs for SD notably in films like Baazi (1951) in which she sang Sahir's rather nondescript शरमाये काहे, the Karan Dewan-Vyjayantimala starrer Bahar (1951) in which she sang Rajendra Krishan's wistful ओ परदेसिया...प्यारकी बहार लेके and the hugely popular सैय्याँ  दिलमें आना रे  and दुनिया का मज़ा ले लो ) and the Dilip-Kamini Kaushal starrer Shabnam (1950) from which we remember Qamar Jalalabadi's hilarious ये दुनिया रूप की चोर and the soulful तू महलमें रहनेवाली with Mukesh). 

Think of the melody in Shamshad Begum's voice and you think back also to other long-forgotten composers:
(1) Nashaad and you recall the three, ethereal gems she sang for him in the Ashok Kumar-Nadira starrer Naghma (from 1953) viz. J. Naqshab'sऐ मेरे मजबूर दिल as also two others ranked amongst the best of her career viz.काहे जादू किया मुझको इतना बता, जादूगर बालमा and बड़ी मुश्किलसे दिलकी बेक़रारी को करार आया...

(2) Vasant Desai: for whom she sang in Minerva Movietone's Sheesh Mahal (1950) starring Sohrab Modi, Naseem Bano, Pushpa Hans and Pran. We still remember Shams Lucknowi's great धुप छाँव है दुनिया ...as also  the eloquent हुस्नवालोंकी गलियोंमें जाना नहीं... 

(3) The then up and coming Chitragupta who recorded at least one duet in Shamshad's voice with Rafi-saab for the Naseem Bano-Ranjan film Sindbad The Sailor (1953), and we remember with relish Anjum Jaipuri's अदासे झूमते हुए, दिलोंको चुमते हुए, यह कौन मुस्कुरा दिया. 

(4) Hansraj Behl for whom she sang with gusto songs like भीगा भीगा प्यार का समाँ, बतादे तुझे जाना है कहाँ...in a beat that might have put O.P. Nayyar to shame~a truly lively Prem Dhawan lyric that she sang with Rafi in the Bharat Bhushan-Ameeta starrer Sawan (1959). If 'gusto' were a word in Punjabi it would still not do justice to the energy bursting from this composition!

(5) S.N. Tripathi: we remember this giant among composers, largely relegated to mythology and fantasy which dwarfed his progress in the industry. Back in the early 1950s when fantasies were a rage and held their own against mainstream films Homi Wadia's Basant Pictures brought to the screen an Arabian Nights fantasy Alladin Aur Jadui Chiragh, starring Meena Kumari and Mahipal in which the joint voices of Shamshad and Rafi-saab virtually reverberated as they sang यूँ ही उल्फत के मारों पर ये दुनिया ज़ुल्म करती है. 
*****

People, I could not, not have written this. And yet I feel this was a job half achieved and a remembrance not complete. In fact, I am still discovering songs in her voice I had not heard before! I do not know at what particular moment the offers would have stopped coming to this great songstress, but am convinced they stopped even while she was still in the prime of her singing! The thrush in her vocals was stifled before its time was come! I heard her in the 60s singing snatches in bad songs for Ravi (Pyar Ka Sagar) and Kalyanji Anandji (Bluff Master, Upkaar)~composers who despite their own worth probably had no idea of what she had done before or of what she could still have done, had Naushad Ali and O.P. Nayyar remained with her. Both were pretty active almost to the end of the 60s.

The end, however, came with O.P.'s कजरा मुहब्बतवाला that Shamshad sang with Asha  (Kismat~1968)~a composition that was an insult not only to himself but also to the two great voices he had once helped nurture!

Indeed, in the light of all this, while what Shamshad Begum has given us will remain unforgettable, what happened to her will remain unforgivable!

हाफ़िज़ खुदा आपका , बेगम साहिबा !

Shamshad Begum ~ A Reverie

I remember listening to एक तेरा सहारा  from Minerva Movietone's Shama (1946) first on dad's 78 r.p.m. disc and later on as we tuned in to Radio Ceylon, that venerable storehouse of our popular music. For a long time this was the oldest song by Shamshad Begum that I was familiar with, and Master Ghulam Haider was but a name that one often heard on the radio. I would delve sporadically into his work much later after having viewed Filmistan's Shaheed and paid attention to its great tracks.

Their story was quite commonplace, yet unique:a chance introduction to an established music director, a promise to her strict father that she would never face the motion picture camera and would sing only with her face covered by the traditional burqa. Quaint by today's standards, but for the rest of our mortal lives we will listen to her in awe as her voice transports us to a different era of film making and playback singing. One has no hesitation in saying that along with her peers Noor Jahan, Amirbai Karnataki , Zohrabai Ambalawali and Khursheed, Shamshad Begum represented a coterie of female singers that tried to instill the Hindustani gayiki patterns composers often demanded of  them.

She sang for the Master a host of songs, from Khazanchi (1941) onwards to Humayun (1946) and others this writer knows very little about. Ergo, my special soft corner for the Shama number, notwithstanding its intrinsic merits. Master Ghulam Haider would move to Pakistan after the Partition (he would breathe his last in 1953) but she never forgot him. As late as 1971 at one of her rare public appearances Shamshad praised his work and named एक तेरा सहारा as one of the best songs of her career.....Despite the dramatic overtones as was the wont then, this is probably the song (penned jointly by Ehsan Rizvi and one Shamim) that our elders remember her by. Bear with it, it's beautifully sung. It was picturised on Mehtab, Mrs. Sohrab Modi and celluloid's Jhansi Ki Rani (1953).

If Master Ghulam Haider introduced Shamshad Begum to us listeners it was left largely to the late Naushad Ali to mould her and give shape to her career. One cannot talk about Shamshad and not bring him into the picture: each has given so much to the other. We heard her sing for him first in A.R. Kardar's Shahjahan in 1946 (jab usne gesu bikhraye and jawani ke damanko rangeen banale penned by Majrooh Sultanpuri, in his advent into films). Both songs became immensely popular for the subtle sensuality of the lyric, the exotic tuning (yes, Naushad-saab was not all just raaga!) and Shamshad's vibrant vocals.  In the same year she went on to record a duet with Zorabai Ambalawali for Mehboob Khan's blockbuster Anmol Ghadi. Tanvir Naqvi's duet udan khatole pe ud jaoon, main tere haath na aoon emerged a classic Naushadian composition and the sequence would become the precursor for bachpan ke din bhula na dena the more iconic duet Shamshad would sing with Lata for Filmkar's Deedar (1951) directed by Nitin Bose, some five years later.

There was no stopping her after that. To say that Naushad-saab took her under his wing would be saying the least. From 1946 until the end of the decade and beyond he would mentor her, bring out the best in her. In 1947, she went on to record for Kardar's Dard the very moving chorus hum dard ka afsana duniya ko suna denge, har dilmein muhabbatki ek aag laga denge and yeh afsana nahin zalim mere dilki haqeeqat hai written by the eloquent Shakeel Badayuni in his debut as lyricist in films.




Move forward to 1948 a seminal year for Shamshad in which we saw her give of her best in two movies both heartbreakers, musically speaking: Mehboob Khan's Anokhi Ada and Wadia Movietone's Mela. In the first, Naushad teamed her with the then emerging Mukesh as also the already established Surendranath. Her duet with the former, bhool gaye kyun deke sahara, lootnewale chain hamara, especially, remains a landmark and a vital component in every private collection, while kyun unhein dil diya haye yeh kya kiya, shishe ko pattharse takra diya, with the latter is well remembered. She also sang two solos in the film: nazar mil gai, hai kiski nazarse picturized on Naseem Bano, Saira's mom and herself an accomplished singer. More captivating, however, is this other solo with its gentle longings....I know not what the cover of Mr. Premchand's fine book is doing here....it adds to my subject, though.


Mela, as a film directed by S.U. Sunny in his debut as director, moved audiences but very touching indeed were those songs picturized on the up and coming Dilip Kumar and Nargis. The immortal dharti ko aakash pukare was done both as a duet and as a solo that plays in Shamshad's voice as the credits roll at the top. The three other duets were mera dil todnewale mere dilki dua lena, main bhanwara tu hai phool yeh din mat bhool jawani laut ke aye naa, and this very eloquent composition in a rustic setting: the simplicity of an Indian village created by its music, and the fields swaying in the breeze after the rains!
 

She sang four solos for her mentor in Mela, pardes balam tum jaoge, taqdeer bani bankar bigdi, gham ka fasana kisko sunaein and mohan ki muraliya baaje, all of which have remained lingering classics.

As with Mukesh, so with Mohammad Rafi: Naushad paired Shamshad Begum this time with Rafi-saab in Kardar's Chandni Raat (1949) and we have three unspeakably delightful duets in their joint voices. All of them, chheen ke dil kyun pher leen aankhen, khabar kya thi ke gham khana padega and the maddeningly overpowering kaise baje dilka sitar, thes lagi toot gaye taar.....move their listeners even today...



1949 saw also the advent of Lata Mangeshkar in a very big way with Mehboob Khan's Andaz in which Naushad gave her two classic solos in uthaye jaa unke sitam and tod diya dil mera tune are bewafa. Shamshad herself ended up singing for Cuckoo in the duet, darna mohabbat karle, with Lata who sang for Nargis in that iconic film.

As though to make amends for this lapse in fortunes, along came 1950 and with it, S.U.Sunny's Babul. This film in which Dilip Kumar wooed (and lost) two lady loves, Munawwar Sultana and Nargis, boasted some of the best tracks that Naushad had heretofore created and Shamshad dominated in the rendering of them, whether in solo or duet, including the always stirring bidai number chhod babulka ghar mohe peeke nagar aaj jaana pada. Every track became a hit immersed as it was in rustic simplicity and charm. However, I have yet to be at an occasion among friends where there is not pin drop silence as the Latin-based tinkle of Naushad-saab's piano comes on, lead-in for the first of three Shamshad-Talat Mehmood duets in the film, milte hi aankhen dil hua diwana kisika, afsana mera ban gaya afsana kisika. It is always an expected cliche, as the song ends, for someone (including this guy!) to sigh "काश यह गाना मैंने गाया होता …" . 
Something very ethereal about the joint voices dovetailing each other. This was, probably, the greatest singing lesson ever and Dilip and Munawwar could not not have been in love (or fallen into its pitfall!) as the song progressed. One of the 10 best all time duets indeed! Shakeel-saab outdid himself with this one. His हँसते ही  न  आजाएँ कहीं आंखोंमें आँसू , भरते ही छलक जाये न पैमाना किसीका......never fails to move no matter how many times one has listened to Talat and Shamshad articulate the line down the years.



 One cannot ignore Shamshad's solo from the same film picturised on Nargis: the always tantalizing jadoo bhare nainomein dole jiya teri qasam. It deserves a harkback: some delightful vocals here, if not the imagery in the film which, inexplicably, carries a badly edited version . The '78'  is more exhaustive.



Lata however, was gaining ground with the maestro and with Deedar (1951) she began to edge out Shamshad. She was clearly emerging Naushad's favourite. But the composer had fine numbers for Shamshad in this film and she gave voice to two of his best duets: one with Lata, the glorious bachpan ke din bhula na dena, and the other with G.M. Durrani (who was himself on the way out at that point), a delightful repartee between Nargis & Ashok Kumar, nazar phero na humse, hum hain tumpar marnewalon mein, hamara naam bhi likh do muhabbat karnewalon mein!  But the piece-de-resistance was Shamshad's full-throated rendering of Shakeel's pensive chamanmein rehke viraana mera dil hota jata hai, khushimein aaj kal kuchh gham bhi shamil hota jata hai. Once again, Naushad's piano comes in at the top with a few isolated notes, as though giving time to the character to gather her thoughts before she breaks into song.



If for nothing else the film Jadoo (1951) will always be remembered for Naushad's pulsating music as also for Nalini Jaywant's vampish performance as the femme fatale. Based loosely on the Glenn Ford-Rita Hayworth starrer The Loves of Carmen (1948), the gypsy theme demanded a Latin base in tracks for at least two of the situations and Naushad once again proved his versatility by going off on a different tangent. In turn, Shamshad proved her own artistry in the two near-flamenco numbers the master composed for her viz. roop ki dushman papi duniya and...



And, an unspoken musical tradition taken for granted dictates that one never mentions Jadoo without mentioning Dulari (1951) and vice versa. Their tracks just go hand in hand. The latter was another tale involving the gypsies and a kidnapped child growing up amongst them, with Geeta Bali and Madhubala sharing stellar honours. It was another amorphous Kardar vehicle in which the Naushad-Shakeel tandem played a big role with at least two of their tracks rendered by Shamshad Begum. My personal favourite in the entire film....



It was with Sri Prakash Pictures' Baiju Bawra (1952) that Naushad began to shy away from Shamshad and come under Lata's spell (who didn't!). She sang the mukhda and the first antara in 'door koi gaye dhun yeh sunaye', a duet otherwise dominated by Lata, with Rafi's ho-ji-ho in the background. During that same year she sang a solo (aag lagi tan-manmein and main rani hoon raja ki), a 'holi' song (khelo rung hamare sung and a chorus with Lata (gao tarane manke) in Mehboob's ruritanian Aan, based to an extent on The Prisoner of Zenda. Dilip & Nadira, victor and vanquished: the looks say it all! Just listen to Naushad's rousing chorus and Shamshad's gay, sonorous singing....



There was also the touching bidai song pi ke ghar aaj pyari dulhaniya chali and the gay, rustic choruses of  Mehboob's Mother India (1957), in which she made her presence felt one more time, along with the rarely-heard 'holi' lament. It is a pity that this 'personal other side' of the festival was never made into a disc. The qawwali in K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam (1960) ended her association with her mentor.
*****
An Aside: It will always remain a muted complaint with me that Naushad did not give Shamshad Begum, allah bachaye navjavanonse that chorus from Mere Mehboob (1963). It was tailor-made for her, one would think, a suitably old-fashioned tarz. It would have made a fine swan song to their relationship. As for Shakeel's lyric.....I would have loved to hear Shamshad articulate soz-e-muhabbat kya hai itna na jane koi at the top of the final antara.

******
Long years ago, people, in 1962 to be exact I was at a movie house and a documentary was being shown before the main feature. A part of what I heard on the voiceover (could have been Zul Vellani, he was prominent in that period) has always stayed with me, verbatim. I had promised myself then that someday I would use those words in the right context.
I did several test papers at school in Hindi after that but never got a chance to use those words. The shot was that of a double decker tram turning into the B.E.S.T. depot at Dadar (Bombay) for the last time before it was withdrawn as a means of transport on the city's street. As the camera trailed behind it I heard the words "जाओ रानी याद करेंगे ......"

Now before any of my readers jumps down my throat for drawing a bad parallel, I must defend myself by saying that the humble tram that ran the streets of Bombay had a charm as nothing since. It was quaint and it was eloquent despite the racket it made. As it came down the Grant Road bridge in those early years, it actually lulled me to sleep on many a disturbed night as I listened in the dark! Often, I gladly missed my school bus home, for a chance to hitch a ride on that double decker #10 which plied between Mazgaon and Gowalia Tank in Bombay.
Perhaps I have not vindicated myself enough by saying this, but Shamshad Begum and her voice have held the same place within us as have so many other facets of the erstwhile Bombay that move us today, as we watch the occasional black and white classic. After all, what is film music if not a relating link between your heart and your ambiance! Our music directors borrowed sights and sounds from the streets of Bombay and other cities and coalesced them into the tracks on the 78s that we have treasured. Listening to a song on the radio in your living room and listening to the same song at the corner paanwala's stall creates individual moods of experience to be stored away.

R.I.P., बेगम  साहिबा .
*****
Finally, due to the tremendous quality of Shamshad Begum's work with Naushad Ali I have devoted this first installment of my blog to what they did together. There were other composers that she sang for: my second installment will feature their output. Also, I am aware that for every song that I have mentioned in the preceding article, I have not given space to others which have been equally recognized in their time and are hummed even today. That would have stretched this writeup into infinity!
I need to acknowledge here one more time Shemaroo and others who regularly upload quality music on You Tube. If I have used them it is not for any monetary benefit but to keep alive, in my own way, the music we all love.

Effervescence

Dear शशि: For long have I wanted to write about you and your films but have not known how to approach the theme. Yours has been the most chequered of film careers right from its initial stages. Barring a movie here, a movie there, I stopped watching Hindi films around the mid-70s when I left home for foreign soil. However, I have held vivid memories of those that I had seen until then and the glorious music which was often their hallmark. Nostalgia, therefore, plays a big role in this tribute to you on your 75th.

Our earliest memories of you then, good sir, stem from Raj Kapoor's Aag (1949) and later on from his more ambitious and brilliant Aawara (1951). We remember that earnest, mobile face so beautifully photographed in both films, especially in the second, as you portrayed the young Raj Kapoor. You were in complete harmony with Raj the director's depiction of tortured childhood and lost innocence. We were moved by the plight of children cringing before an indifferent world, even as you held back your own tears in your portrayals. If I am being unfair to child performers who followed it will be out of sheer ignorance, but let me say I have never seen childhood portrayals such as yours, if only via those two films.  If Raj was able to carry character progression forward in them, it was because it was reflected from you. I know, I know people will jump down my throat for not mentioning Raj-saab's own Boot Polish (1954) based on De Sica's Shoeshine from 1946. But as good as that film was, it pulled more on the heart than it did on the mind: melodramatic in the extreme, indeed. Besides, the real scenestealer in it was the late David Abraham.

I know not what happened in the years between 1951 and 1960 but the next I heard of you was in 1960 in Krishnan Chopra's Char Diwari, in your first of several (8, perhaps?) ventures with the petite Nanda, who even then was herself emerging from childhood as a mature actress. I have yet to see that much-acclaimed film although I do remember Mukesh-ji's very gentle Kaise Manaun Piyava, Gun Mere Ek Hu Nahin under Salil Chaudhary's baton, penned by the ever wistful Shailendra. Not the kind of song that could have been picturized on you or on anyone else. In the background, perhaps?

And then you struck cinematic gold with B.R. Chopra's Dharmputra (1961) which was based on आचार्य चतुरसेन शास्त्री's novel of the same name. The film dealt with the horrors of the Partition and it was Chopra-ji's gift to his countrymen, a movie far ahead of its time that has remained, unfortunately, perennially immediate in India's context. It was rejected by his countrymen who probably saw the guilt in it, reflected on their own faces. There were stellar performers in the film including Ashok Kumar, Mala Sinha, Rehman and Nirupa Roy who gave of their best under Chopra-ji's direction.

I remember that film well, शशि, also for Sahir Ludhianvi's great lyrics set to melodious music by the incomparable N. Dutta and the fine singing of Mahendra Kapoor and Asha Bhonsle. Here you are, in one of the few light moments in this grim film, serenading the very emotive Indrani Mukherjee in her film debut. Always a pity that she did not go much further.

But you know शशि, I am to this day moved by your shattering, agonised shriek 'माँ ।।।।।।' towards the end of the film when you realize that the woman you are about to slay was your own mother, that you were born of Muslim parents. At that point your Muslim mother was a metaphor for the plight of Mother India at that juncture in Her history. Years later, as I sat watching Yash Chopra's Deewar, I was stricken by the inanity of "मेरे पास माँ है"  in that film, when compared to the mono-syllabic, gut wrenching horror of realisation in the earlier film!

"Limelight Film Deserves Twilight Burial" quipped The Times of India in its review of Limelight Films' Mehendi Lagi Mere Hath, the 1962 film in which you were paired with Nanda for the second time. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong with that film, under Suraj Prakash's direction. The saving grace was Kalyanji-Anandji's melodious music. I liked you best as you put over Anand Bakshi's fine "आपने यूँ ही दिल्लगी  की थी...." but what really bowls me over even today are the words "...हम तो दिल की लगी  समझ बैठे" which complete this couplet.
For once I liked the use of a pun in our lyrics. They normally sound very "hokey" as old Professor Majmudar would have said. This one, however, has had a lasting impact and coupled with the heartbreak in Mukesh-ji's rendering, has made this a song to cherish. I must say though that, as it happened often in those days, it sounds better as a 78 r.p.m. recording. Perhaps you would like to listen to it again......


And you did it so well, one saw traces of the old Raj Kapoor on your face.

Things began to improve though with Bimal Roy's fine, nay very fine love story 'Prem Patra' (1963) in which you starred with the very eloquent Sadhana. This fresh-as-the-morning-dew pairing gave impetus to an oft told tale depicting the trials and misunderstandings of young love. Both of you were a delight to watch as you unravelled your tangled conflicts under Bimal-da's fine direction.

Salil-da set to music the fine poems of Rajendra Krishan and Gulzar in that film and my favourite has always been Sawan Ki Raatonmein Aisa Bhi Hota Hai with your gentle soliloquy at the top. But I have already included it in one of my earlier blogs so for this one it was a toss-up between Do Ankhiyaan Jhuki-Jhuki Si and Yeh Mere Andhere Ujale Na Hote. Here is one of them for you. You do remember it, don't you?


In 1963 you found yourself treading international waters in cinema with the coming of James Ivory and Ismail Merchant and their first venture, the wonderful The Householder in which you teamed up with the beauteous Leela Naidu. The story could have been any Hindi film dealing with domestic crises but it was the treatment in a light, unassuming manner and the delightful wit that mattered. Your low-keyed role as the hapless Prem, at odds with both wife and mother, won you plaudits. You had 'arrived' as one of our earliest actors to star in an English language film (of course, The Householder was also made in Hindustani as 'Gharbaar'). It had music by the late Ustad Vilayat Khan and was lensed by Satyajit Ray's own cameraman,  Subrata Mitra. You acted in other films produced by this prolific duo among them, Shakespearewallah (1965). I remember Madhur Jaffrey and Felicity Kendal as your costars in the film which depicted life in an itinerant Shakespearen troupe. One reviewer in the US said of it: do not ask what it (the word) means, just enjoy the film. Charming.

There was another English-language film you starred in and that was Conrad Rooks' 'Siddhartha' (1972), which was based on the time honoured novella of the same name by Herman Hesse. I have a love-hate relationship with this film, in the main because of Mr. Rooks' superficial direction. The subject deserved depth and as director, Mr. Rooks was unable to impart any to it. In writing his book Hesse had recreated a page from religious and philosophical history and in transplanting it to the screen Mr. Rooks lost track of  it all. What did lend the film a modicum of dignity, though, was the mythical ambience of ancient India via Sven Nykvist's camerawork and Hemant Kumar Mukherjee's  great musical score. All the gravity that you and Simi Garewal and the boatman (the rarely seen Zul Vellani), the vital link between you and Eternity were able to generate, could not salvage the film. The loss was ours.

*******
शशि, the great thing about the passing of time is that it helps, encourages one to remember. Of course, one never knows what brings a lost memory to the surface! With 1965 you entered what I would like to call your 'age of effervescence' and honestly I liked you better during this period. Once again, it was Chopra-ji who gave you a break in his fatalistic 'Waqt' and the inevitabilities of Time, in which you held your own against Sunil Dutt's forced flamboyance and the great Raj Kumar's controlled drama. The humility in your role showed in your face, nay eyes, as you wooed and courted the girl who was socially beyond your reach. Your teaming with Sharmila Tagore, who was improving with every film she made, was youthful and mature. The two of you were a perfect foil for each other as you emoted Sahir's on-target, double-edged lyric set to music by maestro Ravi. (You would resurrect this rapport once again in Suraj Prakash's Aamne Samne, a few years later).


This was the jaunty, hail-fellow-well-met period of your career and you played it to the hilt in Jab Jab Phool Khile (also in 1965 and once again with Nanda), in which you were totally disarming as Raju who sets out to woo the 'sheheri mem' with his 'shikara' . The film plays itself out under Suraj Prakash's competent direction and was a colossal hit, thanks to Kalyanji-Anandji's  music and the Kashmir locales. Anand Bakshi wrote the a-notch-above-the-mediocre lyrics. Despite the hugely popular 'pardesiyonse na ankhiyan milana' track, my personal favourite is the 'gul-o-bulbul' ka afsana. I have loved it always for its folksy charm and the rural simplicity infused in the music by the K-A duo as also for the gentle shyness with which you and Nanda portrayed the confusion of emerging infatuation.


You probably are not aware that in the waning days of their career and by extension their relationship with Muhammad Rafi, Shankar-Jaikishan were still composing fine solos for that great singer and at least two of them were picturised on you.There was chale ja, chale ja, chale ja jahan pyar mile from Lekh Tandon's 'Jahan Pyar Mile' (1969) and this earlier composition from Mohan Segal's Kanyadaan (1968) that has retained both melody and image in the mind's eye. It was picturised on you and Asha Parekh in what I believe was the best film of Segal's career. The story line was interesting, you will remember, about made-in-heaven-lived-on-earth marriages and both of you turned in good performances.
The decade was coming to an end and composers were still creating an occasional classic.....

The two of you were also good together in Nasir Hussain's bubbly and lighweight Pyar Ka Mausam (1971) with its ebullient scoring by Rahul Dev Burman--which bore one of the absurd anomalies in our film music.  

And you had great fun with Hema Malini as the two of you romped over Laxmi-Pyare's fine tuning of  Anand Bakshi's Sa Re Ga Ma Pa from Abhinetri (1970). That fretful demeanor giving way to joyous cuddling as the raga finally sinks in.... ! I must say, Kishore Kumar suited you to a T in this endearing duet.....

I could go on and on शशि, but I have a deadline to meet. I must release this on your birthday and it is approaching that day. However, I must hark back and recapture two moments from the black and white era in which you were paired with Nanda. The one was the Rafi-Suman duet tuned by that composers' composer, Khayyam, for the film Muhabbat Isko Kehte Hain. Don't go by the title, said the TOI in its review (paraphrasing!), this is a very well acted and fine film. And a fine film indeed it was in which you played star-crossed lovers, with you finally laying down your life for the girl you loved, to prove her chastity. Ramesh Deo was the villainous husband. Majrooh Sultanpuri wrote this charmer of a lyric.

Finally, the warmest duet picturized on you and Nanda and one of the finest duets of the '60s via Kalyanji-Anandji, soulfully recorded by Mukesh and Lata for the film Juari (1968). Something very enchanting about the closeness the song makes you experience, and there is a tenderness that goes beyond the screenplay and into character. The gentleness in your faraway look says it all~two lonely people meeting upon the crossroads of life, each seeking solace from the other, each wondering if it would last.

 *****
I know you went on to greater glory in the decades after the 60s (there were awards and there was Mr. Benegal's much applauded 'Junoon' which I hope one day to view) but these were the films we identified you most by because they spoke to an era of simplicity now long gone...

To look back upon lost innocence is a bit like gazing upon a place of worship at dusk~trying to fathom its mysteries one more time. You do not, however, have to enter it to worship.

Here's to your 75th, शशिराज , I do hope you somehow stumble across this.
Salaams!