Not to talk of the latter-day fly-by-night music operators like Bappi Lahiri, Anu Malik and Pritam, who have notoriously plagiarized by blatantly lifting tunes, almost all our ‘great grand composers’ (not least the Trio of Duos: Shanker-Jaikishan, Kalyanji-Anandji, Laxmikant-Pyarelal) excelled at selective copying in their times…. A stroll down tinpan alley to discover Gore gore o baanke chhore to be a soundboard for Chico Chico Puerto Rico.
How many of you know that, originally, there was no Jaikishan in the picture at all, as the music of RK’s Barsaat was all ready to be made by end-1948? Yet Shanker, as a prominent assistant to the jubilee team of Husnlal-Bhagatram, had set his heart upon forming a duo, if ever he came to receive an offer to compose music independently. Therefore, when handpicked by Raj Kapoor to score, solo, the music of Barsaat, Shanker decided that he wanted Jaikishan, as an equal partner, from the word go. Upon his approaching Raj Kapoor with the proposal, the music-guzzling movie maker, at first, got it all wrong. ‘Go ahead and take on young Jaikishan as an assistant by all means,’ said Raj Kapoor. This was when Shanker sprung the idea of his having envisioned ‘Shanker-Jaikishan’ as a team on the lines of Husnlal-Bhagatram. Caught unawares, Raj Kapoor said he needed an evening to think it over. The then 24-year-old RK head, never one to dwell on any matter for too long, agreed to go along the very next morning.
Thus was born the Shanker-Jaikishan team which was to shake the best established of our music directors in the decade to come. Imagine, striplings Nutan–Nasir Khan’s Nagina; off-screen lovers Madhubala– Premnath’s Badal; plus debutante Bina Rai’s Kali Ghata (teaming its actor-maker Kishore Sahu with this willowy beauty) arrived as three films, in a glorious six-week span, during April-May 1951 – as a followup to Barsaat (released in March 1950). Thus did it become transparent by the turn of the half-century that Shanker-Jaikishan had brought ‘style’ to Hindustani film music. A tuning style totally fresh with sheer novelty of orchestration for its keynote.
Come December 1951 and Shanker-Jaikishan metamorphosed the sound of music itself in the Awaara custody of a Raj Kapoor emerging as our cinema’s new talisman in the charismatic company of Nargis. Shanker-Jaikishan thus became the new musical beacon in Hindustani cinema. This was the pinpoint at which Naushad and C. Ramchandra – as the two highest paid music directors in our films by then – discerned that they had to watch their composing step, if they were not to be overtaken, altogether, by this deadly duo in the silver jubilee run to the ‘HMV White Dog’ stakes. Let us face it, no matter who was your favourite music director at the time, you knew, in your hearing heart of hearing hearts, that you just could not ignore ‘Shanker-Jaikishani Sangeet’ in its swing and sweep.
This precisely was when Shanker dropped a rolled-gold brick as he let it be known, through the industry grapevine, that he was toying with the idea of going it alone. Just what came over Shanker, at this 1952 new year point in the team’s life, is difficult to say, considering that, as the one of the duo nearly seven years older, it was he who had brought Jaikishan into the RK stream. Raj Kapoor swiftly took Shanker aside and told him, in the choicest RK language, that film financiers, especially after the path-breaking success of Awaara, would look at Shanker-Jaikishan only so long as they came as a package deal. Others, too, intervened to urge Shanker not to self-destruct in the duo’s moment of singular RK triumph. Jaikishan, for one, was aghast at the split prospect. A truce was honourably brokered in the end. But this was the first sign of ‘the hyphen’ in Shanker-Jaikishan – a hyphen punctuating our music with notes never heard before – being in danger of suffering a knockout, at some stage, in the future.
Shanker had so much music in his system that he was the total simpleton in other matters. A personality liable to get carried away by suggestions that he was actually doing all the hard work while Jaikishan, as the glamour patronizer of Marine Drive restaurants, was being seen to ‘Gay Lord’ it on the Churchgate promenade noted for its night-clubbish atmosphere. But even Shanker had to admit that Jaikishan was always there, looking as refreshed as ever, at the stroke of nine in their Famous Studios music room at Mahalaxmi (in South Bombay). A music room Shanker never seemed to leave until ‘Titlee Udee’ Sharda came into his life with the 1965 Nanda–Manoj Kumar starrer Gumnaam, the Raja Nawathe-directed mystery thriller witnessing her debut as a singer with the solo, Aayegaa kaun yahaan kis ko sadaayein detaa hai (going on Nanda) plus the Sharda–Rafi duet, Jaan-e-chaman sholaa badan pehloo mein aa jaao (on Nanda-Manoj Kumar). On the SJ flip side, scoring background music was a job at which no one, just no one, in Hindustani cinema excelled the way Jaikishan did. All that he needed was the exact footage (to the last inch) of the visual sequence set to be ‘backgrounded’. Given the footage (correct to the nth inch), Jaikishan Panchal, clutching a stopwatch in the magic palm of his Gujjar-carpentering left hand, would straightaway dictate – for playing, there and then, by his orchestra – the clockwork precise length of background music required. Sequence after sequence was completed in this astoundingly rapid-fire manner by a Jaikishan invisibly, yet unerringly, employing his stopwatch for ‘spotwatch’. It would be no left-handed compliment to say that there was nothing orchestrated about the event. Jaikishan came, he ‘saw’, he conducted.
Any abiding SJ misunderstanding was swiftly cleared in a Raj Kapoor initiative taken to explain rationally to Shanker that, for all the work he put in, Jaikishan’s immense creative contribution could not be ignored, even if he quietly slipped out of the duo’s Famous Mahalaxmi music room by 2.45 p. m. each day for the 3.30 show with his latest girl-friend. It was snidely suggested that dating was a girl-friendly RK tradition and that, if the joyous Jaikishan, as one belonging to the Hum matwaale naujawaan brigade, did sneak away each afternoon, it was to engage in the style of PR work crucial to burnishing Shanker-Jaikishan’s immaculate image in the public eye. Shanker had not viewed it that way at all. He said that, from this reconciliation point, he saw the duo’ sworkload in perspective. How far would Shanker have gone without Jaikishan? ‘Nowhere!’ is the tempting answer. Maybe Shanker was a solo idea whose time had not yet come, even if the senior duo partner, right then, was bubbling with musical ideas. Lyricist Hasrat Jaipuri once told me: ‘There never was anything to choose between Shanker and Jaikishan in the matter of speedy composition.’ Even today I strongly feel that, in a split scenario, Shanker by himself would have been a PR disaster, like Pyarelal (of the Laxmikant-Pyarelal team) was later, after the more flamboyant duopartner’s premature death on 25 May 1998.
Here my mind mistily harks back to the ‘Shanker-Jaikishan of the South’, the iconic Viswanathan-Ramamurthy team, which had ultimately split. But that was only after a clutch of noteworthy films together. Certainly not after just five movies, as feared in Shanker-Jaikishan’s case. Even in the face of eager counselling by well-meaning friends, M. S. Viswanathan – like Shanker after Awaara – insisted upon going it alone, citing ‘irreconcilable differences’ between the two. M. S. Viswanathan, for his solo part, went on to demonstrate, against all odds, that he was even more of a force when going it alone – sans T. K. Ramamurthy. Mind you, in the South, it was the enormously gifted Ramamurthy who lost out in the final analysis. Well may you ask: ‘But why cite a Southern break-up as any sort of a guideline when we are dealing with all-India Hindustani cinema?’ My answer is that M. S. Viswanathan’s enduringly sweet music was in no way confined merely to Tamil cinema – as the Tamil film in question was often shot also in Telugu and Kannada, even in Malayalam. There were separate recordings done in each language for each song. How, in the circumstances, we dismissed such a musically prolific movie territory of India as ‘purely regional cinema’ defies comprehension.
Hindustani music buffs too – unless they were from the South – totally ignored the highly significant box-office music-modes discernible in tunes coming from this part of the country. Significantly, I found even Naushad not well up with trends in the South. For O. P. Nayyar, this segment of India was never the bhangraa target. He had not heard of Rukmini Arundale and Balasaraswathi at all, till I told the chauvinist ‘Rhythm King’ that some of his more loyal fan clubs were in the South. For the 1950s ‘musiconnoisseurs’ it all began and ended with Hindustani film music made in Bombay. Not until A. R. Rahman Hindi-happened in the early 1990s would these addicts take belated cognizance of musical prodigies in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam cinema. Their filmi knowledge of the South only encompassed ‘The Madras Formula’. That is why Hindustani cinema pitiably floundered when A. R. Rahman, in his approach to scoring, underlined how the South had overtaken Bollywood in becoming technologically far more savvy. Hindustani cinema buffs, for instance, were merrily unaware of the fact that Ilaiyarajaa, from being an accomplished guitar player in Salil Chowdhury’s orchestra, was all set to revolutionize film music in his part of India by trendily taking S. Janaki – the ‘Asha Bhosle of the South’– under his baton-wing. Even the well-entrenched M. S. Viswanathan initially faltered in his tuning response to this new threat to his suzerainty – a suzerainty attained via Vani Jairam and P. Susheela (the ‘Lata of the South’ whom the ‘Bole Re Papihara’ Girl successfully challenged).
Such apathy towards the South endured even as the Viswanathan-Ramamurthy team got Lata to all but vocally replicate Geeta as early as mid-1956 with Paanch miniit aur bus paanch miniit aur (N74545) in Naya Aadmi (starring N. T. Rama Rao in the title role). Even C. Ramchandra – by whose name Southern sangeet makers swore – got Lata, only after the Viswanathan-Ramamurthy duo had done so, to venture to out-Geeta Geeta with Zaalim teree aankhon ne kyaa cheez peelaa dee hai on an ultra-seductively vamping Vyjayanthimala looking a netherworld-beater in Devta (1956). A couple of years after that did Kalyanji Veerji Shah (Anandji’s elder brother going solo) get Lata to be Geeta’s replica with Arra ra ra main toh giree re giree re giree re (in the 1958 Post Box 999). As for Kalyanji-Anandji’s supremely gifted assistants, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, coming up with the Lata-laced Kaise rahoon chup ke maine pee hi kyaa hai – going on a tipsy-toned Sadhana in R. K. Nayyar’s Inteqam (1969) – this number came nearly 11 years later. Indeed, by the time Nargis-Raj Kapoor took Shanker-Jaikishan to their neo-1956 Chori Chori lovenest in Madras, composers from the South had already grasped Hindustani musical nodes – as SJ made it a point to innovate the kind of music that impelled Madras composers to look up to this RK duo as the wave-makers of the morrow. Impelling them to view SJ as the calibre of music makers perhaps set to take over from a C. Ramchandra they till then considered insuperable.
Mukesh specialists Kalyanji-Anandji – Mere toote huue dil se …
When you hear the perennially fresh music of Chori Chori, there is such harmony in the scoring that you could not possibly think of either Shanker or Jaikishan ever going solo. It is easy to surmise that Shanker, even when at his inventive peak as a composer, would have nuclear bombed going it alone, for he would have groped all the way sans the showmanship accompanying Jaikishan’s God-given gifts as a background music maker. Naushad and Vasant Desai (by January 1952) were considered the absolute masters in scoring background music, until Salil Chowdhury arrived in Bombay later during that year. But neither Naushad nor Vasant Desai, nor even Salil Chowdhury, achieved the jet-speed precision that Jaikishan went on to do – in the years following. Shanker, for his part, was the total artist in scoring dance music as a trained Kathak exponent himself. Once, on the sets of Patrani (1956), Shanker even danced out the todaa, upon heroine Vyjayanthimala’s querying a dance movement suggested by him for Paawan Gangaa sar par sohe. Shanker virtually monopolized the Patrani music show, reasoning that Vyjayanthimala, as the dancing Patrani from the South, was his Andhra pickle preserve! Still, where it came to scoring background music, Shanker was ever ready to abdicate in favour of Jaikishan who held the passport to the duo’s collecting the final instalment of the film’s fee – swelling to Rs 350,000 (for J. Om Prakash’s 1964 Ayee Milan Ki Bela – Saira Banu-Rajendra Kumar); next to Rs 450,000 (for S. S. Vasan’s 1964 Zindagi – Vyjayanthimala-Rajendra Kumar); finally to a round Rs 500,000 for Ramanand Sagar’s 1965 Arzoo – Sadhana-Rajendra Kumar. Note how producing a hit on the Jubilee Kumar was the key to raising your fee by as much as a lakh of rupees each year. Do further remember that ready collection of musical dues was, increasingly, becoming a hazardous business in an industry of slickers on the lookout for suckers. This is where Jaikishan’s doing the film’s background music last and fast helped the SJ duo collect on the dot. So precisely divided was the duo’s definition of work (by September 1971) that there were problems galore when Jaikishan left ahead of his time. Raj Kapoor, particularly, felt Jaikishan’s absence in his background music-scoring room. Just as the same Raj Kapoor would have found the dance going tough, very tough, if Shanker had gone first – the Shanker who had brought to RK, with the first song that the duo recorded for Barsaat (1950) as Jiyaa beqaraar hai, the smooth-flowing Husnlal touch in orchestration.
Ha, Husnlal, how the petite Lata fell for this superfast composer! Only for the man to be a totally broken human – when the affair soured as Husnlal-Bhagatram lost crucial ground. If Asha Bhosle was at all opportunistic in moving (after nine lovey-dovey years) from O. P. Nayyar to R. D. Burman, the way was perhaps shown by elder sister Lata who switched, far more nimbly, from Husnlal to C. Ramchandra. Upon my querying C. Ramchandra on the Lata–Husi proximity after his macho persona’s coming into the love picture, this never-say-why romantic sportively noted: ‘That also went on side by side for a while! After all, Lata wasn’t still the only woman in my life.’ Clearly C. Ramchandra was yet to reach the totally infatuated stage where he noted: ‘Dil se uttar gaee duniyaa kee sooratein sab/Kuchch aesaa chadh gayaa hai koee meree nazar mein…’
C. Ramchandra came early in 1950 into the picture – before that, ‘I will never forget Husnlal-Bhagatram for giving me Chup-chup khade ho!’ is how Lata exulted, as D. D. Kashyap’s Badi Bahen (April 1949) became a landmark Pahelee mulaqaat hai film in her life and chimes. She was also generous when the man passed away in Delhi. ‘Do mention Royenge hum hazaar baar koee humein sataye kyun from the Aadhi Raat film [1950] among the Husnlal-Bhagatram’s duo’s noteworthy creations for me,’ Lata told me on the phone. Lata was zapped as I reminded her about her Aansoo ab tum kabhee na bahnaa apnaa dard kisee se na kehnaa for the same duo in Kafila (1952). Lata’s Chup-chup khade ho; Chale jaanaa nahein; and Jo dil mein khushee ban kar aaye became hits well before Badi Bahen released on 8 April 1949. However, once Badi Bahen hit the screen, Suraiya saw to it that Lata got a true feel of her reigning singing-star clout with such chart-smashers as Bigdee banane waale bigdee banaa de; O likhne waale ne; Woh paas rahein ya door rahein; and, not least, Tum mujh ko bhool jaao ab hum na mil sakenge – a Qamar Jalalabadi-written mood song that drove the nation’s cloistered youth, male and female, ‘each-other longingly’ crazy at the time. Lata never really forgot the highly gunee Husi. Even after their break, she readily agreed to help the Husnlal-Bhagatram duo with some of her best singing in the duo’s own production, Ansoo, the 1953 Kamini Kaushal–Shekhar starrer in which the Lata solo, Kyaa sukh paaya tuu ne dil meraa tod ke, plus Lata–Rafi’s Din pyaar ke aaye re and Sun mere saajana ho (with its divine flute effect) remain etched in the mindset even today. These and other Ansoo songs oddly saw Bhagatram alone rehearsing Lata, as Husnlal chose, discreetly, to keep himself in the background.
Yet, for all of Lata’s vocal help, it was no Husnlal-Bhagatram go. In fact, as C. Ramchandra came ‘bangon’ to capture the No. 2 ‘after-Naushad’ slot, Husnlal drew sour-grapes attention to how that wave-maker composer’s 1950 super hit from Samadhi, Lata–Amirbai’s Gore gore o baanke chhore, was purely a copy. Whereupon C. Ramchandra responded with the plea that his Gore gore had its base in Punjabi folk. ‘Which Punjabi folk song?’ came back Husnlal, dagger thrustingly. ‘We learnt all our music in the Punjab and never heard this one!’ Of course, Gore gore o baanke chhore was a straight lift of Chico Chico Puerto Rico.
Seeing how the delicate matter of plagiarism has cropped up, what about moving on to the piquant theme song of how ‘True Copy’ after ‘True Copy’ became the pattern on the Hindustani screen? Not to talk of the latter-day fly-by-night music operators like Bappi Lahiri, Anu Malik and Pritam, who have notoriously plagiarized by blatantly lifting tunes, almost all our ‘great grand composers’ (not least the Trio of Duos: Shanker-Jaikishan, Kalyanji-Anandji, Laxmikant-Pyarelal) excelled at selective copying in their times. Once during a visit down South I was struck by the number of Tamil songs turned, verbatim, into Hindi hits. For instance, Chitragupta’s 1962 Main Chup Rahungi Lata & Chorus Raag Bhairavi number, Tumhein ho maataa tumhein pitaa ho, re-emerged as the Tamil Ammavum neeye appavum neeye from Kalathur Kannamma (1960). The same Chitragupta’s 1964 Main Bhi Ladki Hoon Lata–P. B. Srinivos duet, Chandaa se hogaa woh pyaara (on the still sizzling Meena Kumari– Dharmendra pair), what is it if not Poopole poopole pirakkum from Naanum Oru Penn (1963)? Take, next, the Hemant Kumar-‘composed’ Raag Pahadi Miss Mary duet (1957) on Rekha’s dad, Gemini Ganesan, pairing with Meena Kumari – for the two to come over, on the screen, as Brindavan ka Krishna Kanhaiya (Rafi-Lata). This one has its total origin in A. M. Rajah–P. Susheela’s Brindavanatil Nandakumaran from Missiamma (1955). What came as a culture shock was to find Madan Mohan passing off M. S. Rajeswari’s Miow miow punnakutti (from the 1962 Tamil Kumudam) as Lata’s Miow miow meree sakhee on Nimmi (in the 1964 Pooja Ke Phool)! Any plaint then about that Tamil-tongued Muslim from the South, Mehmood, getting Asha Bhosle to collaborate with him on replicating the 1967 Anubhavi Raja Anubhavi duet, Muthukulikka vaarigala, ‘as it is’, on Aruna Irani and himself in Do Phool (1973)?
Against such a backdrop, what could R. D. Burman do if Mehmood, as his 1962 Chhote Nawab break giver, left him with no choice but to lift a Tamil tune in Do Phool? Of course Pancham himself is on glorious plagiarized record as saying: ‘I had a tendency to pinch tunes!’ Thus did we find If it’s Tuesday it must be Belgium turning into Churaa liyaa hai tum ne jo dil ko by Asha-Rafi (on Zeenat Aman-Vijay Arora) in R. D. Burman’s Yaadon Ki Baraat (1973). Likewise did Pancham palm off ABBA’s Mamma mia as Mil gayaa (on Rishi Kapoor and new find Kajal Kiran via Kishore-Asha) in Hum Kisise Kam Naheen (1977). But why blame son Pancham when S. D. Burman showed the way by turning the Mexican Hat Dance into Kishore Kumar’s Jeevan ke safar mein raahee on Dev Anand in Munimji (1955)? In fact, Pancham, when he was doing nothing after Chhote Nawab (1962); Bhoot Bungla (1965); and Teesra Kaun? (1965), had Roshan approaching him to convey – by proxy to Papa Burman – that the composer had merely recast SD’s Thandee hawaayein (on Nalini Jaywant in Naujawan, 1951) as Rahein na rahein hum (on Suchitra Sen in Mamta – a film to come by mid-1966). Pancham promptly carried the Roshan-copy message to Dada Burman, who shocked RD by observing: ‘Learn from Roshan, Pancham! What he’s done is to take the metre of my Thandee hawayein, itself a copy, to create a possible hit tune in Rahein na rahein hum. Always remember to borrow the metre of a hit tune.’ So there you are, SD saw nothing wrong in Roshan’s doing something he himself habitually tried! What about the one who was senior to even Dada Burman, Trojan Anil Biswas, letting himself be stampeded at Filmistan, by 1957, into presenting Doris Day’s Que sera sera as Jeevan hai madhuban, employing Talat Mahmood’s velvety vocals for such unabashed copying in the censor-troubled, never-released Jasoos?
Even Naushad, for all that Hindustaniat, was not above seeking inspiration from the Song of India in his famous Raag Pahadi Noorjehan– Surendra Anmol Ghadi duet: Awaaz de kahaan hai. True Naushad smartly covered ‘track’ by noting that the tune came to him in a dream! Some dream seeing that it stretched back (when Naushad was not even born) to the year 1898 when Nikolai Rimsky-Koraskov (score-writer of the first Russian symphony) created the Song of the Indian Guest for it to be adapted, with great success in 1937 (music arranged by Tommy Dorsey), as the Song of India. Naushad’s Awaaz de kahaan hai (from Anmol Ghadi) at least was in 1946 when our maestro was but 27 years old and more receptive to alien influences – even if his original source of inspiration, here in Awaaz de kahaan hai, was Russian classical. The same ‘Sangeet Samrat’ had all but emerged as the celluloid guardian of Hindustani sangeet, 14 years later, when I heard, wonder of wonders, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart surfacing – if but momentarily – in Naushad’s background score for K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam (1960)! The otherwise creative Madan Mohan perhaps outdid them all by only thinly disguising the fact that Kishore Kumar’s ready-made 1956 Mem Sahib hit, Dil dil se milaa kar dekho, was nothing if not ’ Twas from the Isle of Capri. Salil Chowdhury, for his part, was a card-holding Communist strangely uninhibited in turning to the West for moral musical support. Salil readily conceded that his catchy 1955 Tangawali Lata–Hemant Kumar duet, picturized on Anita Guha-Shammi Kapoor as Halke halke chalo saanwre, was but a nativized transcription of Wedding samba.
Asha has Bappi Lahiri to thank for nearing a
‘Hindustani highest’ of 13,000 songs
So much for originality – at least, in each example quoted above, the wells of ‘inspiration’ were not Hindi based. For even less forgivable it is, I say, if a Bollywood music maker lifts from a fellow Bollywood composer. How, for instance, do you excuse Madan Mohan’s palming off Suman Kalyanpur’s superbly sung Mere mehboob na jaa aaj kee raat na jaa – from Jani Babu Qawwal’s Noor Mahal (1965) – as Rafi’s Meree awaaz suno pyaar ka raaz suno in Naunihal (1967)? This with Meree awaaz suno being so memorably written by Kaifi Azmi as an ode to the late Jawaharlal Nehru. An oddball was Madan Mohan, now highly inventive, now highly imitative. How could we possibly excuse Madan Mohan’s bringing to us, in Rafi’s voice on Shekhar (vis-à-vis Nutan) via Aakhiri Daao (1958), Tujhe kyaa sunaaon main dilrubaa? How to endure such a straight lift from Sajjad Husain’s Raag Jaunpuri Talat classic, Yeh hawaa yeh raat yeh chaandnee, unravelling in 1952 on Sangdil Dilip Kumar? Talat Mahmood himself amusedly narrated to me how Sajjad Husain caught up with Madan Mohan – in the plagiarized matter – at a music directors’ get-together. Madan Mohan was walking ahead of Sajjad Husain when that composing genius, dripping sarcasm, noted: ‘Aajkal gaanaa toh kyaaa uskee parchhain tak chalne lagee hai!’ Madan Mohan did not like that one bit – Talat added. In fact, I confronted Madan Mohan himself on this blatant bit of Aakhiri Daao copying. Madan left me tongue-tied by arguing that no way was his Tujhe kyaa sunaaon a copy of Yeh hawaa yeh raat!
Our ghazal ace, in this respect. was in no way like Nayyar who, while I was ghosting a ‘My Favourite Singers’Filmfare article for him, insisted upon my making a special mention of Madan Mohan’s Raag Lalit lovely, Preetam daras dikhaao (Lata-Manna Dey), from Chacha Zindabad (1959), if only because OP had re-presented it as Tuu hai meraa prem devtaa (Manna Dey, Rafi & Chorus) in his 1960 Kalpana! Another oddball – O. P. Nayyar. There was this instance in which he sought to modify small-timer N. Dutta’s 1959 Mahendra Kapoor–Lata duet, unspooling on Rajendra Kumar and Mala Sinha as Tere pyaar ka aasraa chahtaa hoon in Yash Chopra’s debut film Dhool Ka Phool. OP found N. Dutta’s bandish, here, to be so tight that he just could not shake it. Thereupon OP straightaway rang up N. Dutta and told him that he was bodily lifting his Tere pyaar ka aasraa chaahta hoon as Rafi–Asha’s Bahut shukriyaa badee meherbanee on Joy Mukerji-Sadhana in Ek Musafir Ek Haseena (1962). N. Dutta, long venturing to emulate OP, said he felt it to be an honour to be copied by Nayyar! Yet where is N. Dutta’s original Tere pyaar ka compared to O. P. Nayyar’s copied Bahut shukriyaa?
Yet another example. In one and the same 1958 year, Dilip Kumar’s Yahudi released earlier than the Sivaji Ganesan-made Amar Deep. In the instance of the latter Hindi film from Madras, it was C. Ramchandra who recorded, first, the splendid Asha–Rafi duet to go on Vyjayanthimala-Dev Anand as Dekh humein awaaz na denaa. Shanker recorded the memorable Yeh meraa deewaanapan hai (to go on Yahudi Dilip Kumar) a full month later – in February 1958. Yet Yahudi released first that year, so the public impression was that C. Ramchandra had copied SJ’s Yeh meraa deewaanapan hai – as Dekh humein awaaz na denaa! Truth to tell, both Shanker and C. Ramchandra had based the tune upon the same folk number. It was Vasant Desai who pinpointed this to me. Upon my once querying the same C. Ramchandra about his orchestral accompaniment, in the case of the 1955 Yasmin Talat Mahmood solo, Bechaeein nazar betaab jigar, sounding similar to Jaikishan’s interlude piece in Ghar aayaa meraa pardesee from Awaara (1951), that Nagpur stalwart asked me to pause awhile: ‘Before putting me in the dock, first check up on how, at RK, they copied the Ghar aayaa meraa pardesee tune (complete with the orchestral arrangement) from that legendary singer Umm Kalthoum’s Egyptian original,’ C. Ramchandra underscored. ‘Bahut copy kiyaa, Shanker-Jaikishan ne’, Lata had (in mid-April 1967) told me – loud enough for others to hear – in the little reception hall below her first-floor Prabhu Kunj home. Yet should we really mind the Jim Reeves’ 1956 My lips are sealed copying if the final Shanker tune – picturized on the nurse-white Meena Kumari in Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai, 1960 (vis-à-vis Raaj Kumar and Nadira) – unveils, Shailendra-written and Lata-sung, as:
Ajeeb daastaan hai yeh
Kahaan shuru kahaan khatam
Yeh manzilein hain kaunsee
Na woh samajh sakein na hum…
Kisee ka pyaar le ke tum
Nayaa jahaan basaaonge
Yeh shaam jab bhee aayegee
Tum hum ko yaad aaoge