Nightscapes

When I was growing up in Bombay evenings were the time of day I looked forward to the most, if only for the lights that gradually began to come up on the buildings on distant Altamount Road on the hill, directly to the west of where I stood on my neighbour's balcony.

Needless to say and to borrow a line from Mr. Rowse's 'A Cornish Childhood', "those lights have held my eyes ever since", as has the dusk that filtered down before it turned into night. The moon had a great way of shining over Bombay in those days, as it captured that period of transition, whether it streamed down upon the Hanging Gardens, or shimmered upon the undulating waves off Marine Drive or the Gateway, and the other sea faces of Bombay. The resulting ambience was the stuff that film poetry was made of. It would not be inaccurate to say that after the mandatory rain song in our films it was the 'moonlit' solo, duet or chorus that stole our hearts.

Oddly enough, before the telescopic lens started zooming skyward and gave us the real thing, it was the black and white photography that created an out-of-this-world euphoria, aided by the quaintness of  studio sets  and art decor and the often 'spotless' (if you know what I mean!) watching full moon, hanging above it all, that gave us musical memories that will stay with us forever! Not all of them can be profiled in one blog despite ample room on cyberspace, but here are some...

The moon was witness, as it were, to joy and sorrow as also to the arrival and departure of star careers. For instance.....

By 1955, Bina Rai's career was hovering between a stumble and closure. The star who had earlier done such memorable work in Anarkali and Kali Ghata was beginning to lose her command at the box office. In 1956 we would see her doing one more fine role in Filmistan's Durgesh Nandini, and another in Nadiadwala's historical romance, Taj Mahal (1963), before finally going her way.

But back to 1955 and G P Sippy's crime thriller, Marine Drive, in which she starred opposite hero-soon-to-turn-villain, Ajit. The film is eminently forgettable but at least two tracks have remained memorable and are still with us, including this lilting solo by Lata. The song patches in a romantic mood right from the beginning, as you see that big orb in the heavens peering down into the bedroom, with the track getting off to a hesitant start as though unable to decide where to go and then picking up melody: it's not a flaw either in the composition or the recording, just the music seeking to reflect itself in the hesitant eyes of the heroine.



That was the much under-rated N. Dutta for you, doing his magic in only his third independent outing as composer (Chandrakanta and Milap being the first two that same year) after a long period of assisting mentor SD Burman. And Sahir Ludhianvi's fine lyric is erotic without being vulgar. One does not see such subtlety anymore...A good friend helped me recall this song after all these years, during a memorable train ride in India in 2008.

Cinema in the South  had a funny way of juxtaposing one ludicrous family situation against another until everyone got together in the last five minutes of a movie for the climactic family photograph, lauding domesticity and exuding happiness. We sat through film after film from AVM and Gemini lapping it all up in the 60s, along with the occasional sly touch of humour that directors from Madras often infused their films with, as comic relief from the bathos.

AVM's Miss Mary (1957) was one such film: a full length attempt at humour bordering often on slapstick thanks to Kishore Kumar and Om Prakash, with Gemini Ganesan (Rekha's dad) and Meena Kumari playing second fiddle via the romantic roles. At least two of the tracks have a pretty setup with the moon and stars in the night and almost genuine-looking garden props.That immortal Lata-Rafi duet O Raatke Musafir was picturised on Meena and Gemini in a pretty detailed set, with mock-drama being the catalyst for the song. For once the pathos on Meena Kumari's face is tongue-in-cheek and not tragic, even as Gemini launches his mock-complaint before the moon. That funny moment as Lata comes in after Rafi-saab's first antara is unforgettable.





There is another track in Miss Mary, a solo in Lata's voice that creates a truly romantic mood as Gemini and Meena act out their charade of being newly-weds before the unsuspecting Om Prakash, at the same time drifting emotionally closer, in time for the denouement. This is one of Lata's best for Hemant-da. Both lyrics were penned by Rajendra Krishan and set to music by Hemant Kumar Mukherjee.






I have always loved the moon above the minaret of a mosque: something very eastern about the image, a picture you will probably never see elsewhere in the world with the same feeling of romance. Add to that a lonesome belle with almond eyes about to give vent to her sorrow, and you have a poem written by Majrooh Sultanpuri, tuned by the great Sachin Dev Burman with the clarionet leading the crooning, with one of Nutan's most effective lip synching: the medium closeups say it all! Lata's voice weaves through the dusk her ethereal magic in a timeless classic....Once again, studio props in silhouette transported us beyond the realms of reality. The film was Filmistan's Paying Guest (1957).



Hrishikesh Mukherjee was one film director who improved with every film he made. Coming as he did from the Bimal Roy camp (he was first assistant to Bimal-da), he retained that master's poetic hold on cinema right to the very end. In Asli Naqli (1962) he was fresh from his success with Anari and Anuradha and was given a trite tale to handle by LB Lachman, with Dev Anand playing the disgusted scion of a rich home casting his lot with the not-so-rich of Bombay. Sadhana was his lady love, a school teacher from the wrong side of the tracks, except that she looked like anything but a poor school teacher from the wrong side of the tracks.

The film was a hit thanks to Shankar Jaikishan's superb musical score and lensman Jaywant Pathare, who captured (for posterity as it were) scenes from the wayside Bombay of the time. The best lensing, however, was reserved for the song sequence towards the end, a Lata solo filmed on Sadhana. Something subliminal about that terrace drenched in the moonlight with the strings, the harp and the accordion in complete harmony, spreading a musical aura all around. All this climaxes as Sadhana turns around and catches the moon fully on the face and the accordion brings the song to its end, and us back to reality....a brilliant Shankar-Jaikishan-Lata-Shailendra symbiosis, if ever there was one. (I'm sure we can all live with the slight off-synch on this fine Shemaroo DVD).



But perhaps the most erotic nightscape in our films was shot by Radhu Karmakar (assisted by a very young Jaywant Pathare who was to later carve a niche for himself  via Hrishikesh Mukherjee's films) in Raj Kapoor's immortal, Awara (1951). Sixty years after we first heard it, the Lata-Mukesh duet Dum Bhar Jo Udhar Munh Phere, remains one of film music's most enduring legacies. Both Lata and Mukesh knew what was expected of them by the director in Raj Kapoor and both rose to the occasion: Lata with the proper abandon reflecting the passion in Nargis' face and the very gentle Mukesh, with the controlled, pensive, hesitation Raj's character demanded at that crucial point in the film. Yes, it was a difficult, unlikely chiaroscuro of sound and expression. And yes, like so much of our other great music it would have fallen by the wayside, just hummed, listened to and not remembered as a visual treat, but for the evocative camerawork. There is not enough subtlety in the English language to capture the nuances of this song sequence in translation.

K. A. Abbas, who penned so many of Raj Kapoor's films, has dwelt at length upon this particular song sequence in an article he once wrote in Filmfare and while his actual words need not be included here they are worth a trip to that magazine's archives if they do exist. Suffice it to say that the English poet Alfred Noyes' "ghostly galleon" of the "cloudy seas" saw it all. That last exchange between the two lovers is amazingly captured with cloud and moon, and a mere lilt from SJ's bass in the background bringing Shailendra's great lyric and its followup to a close.



While Raj Kapoor's long affair with romance reached its peak in Awara, it had its roots in his very first venture as producer-director in 1948's Aag. Whatever the other drawbacks of Aag as a film might be, it remains unsurpassed for its experimentation with light and shade. His photographer at the time was V.N.Reddy and we have a film with exquisite closeups in black and white....especially in the song sequences....with the moon playing hide and seek in the clouds...



Saraswati Kumar 'Deepak' wrote this metaphorical lyric for composer Ram Ganguly (Shankar-Jaikishan were still a year away, with Barsaat) who created and recorded the duet in the voices of Meena Kapoor and Sailesh Mukherjee for the movie. However, as good as Meena Kapoor was, Shamshad Begum proved to be better when the discs were ultimately cut and she with Sailesh Mukherjee have stood the test of time on the 78s.

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And there were other attempts at fine evocative mood photography but the industry was beginning to experiment in colour. Guru Dutt tried it with mediocre results in filming Waheeda Rehman in colour for the title song of his own Chaudhvin Ka Chand (1959): the only oddity in an otherwise great black and white film. Even Mohammad Rafi's rendering of Shakeel Badayuni's fine lyric and Ravi's subtle 'tarz' do not salvage the sequence. Guru Dutt never had the time to attempt colour again before death tragically claimed him.


And then there was V. Shantaram's Navrang (1960), with the fabulous C. Ramchandra giving us his immortal 'aadha hai chandrama raat aadhi' penned by Pt. Bharat Vyas. But the splashes of colour in that sequence reduced the moon to a dot in the sky: besides, audiences were too busy watching Sandhya balancing all those 'matkas' on her head with neither she nor costar, Mahipal, casting a second glance towards the celestial orb above.

The 60s had dawned.