When mighty egos clash, the sound of music is not always harmonious … Ravi Shankar never quite forgot the 1960 Anuradha-related recording rebuff from Lata … Anil Biswas never forgave Lata for having kept him out of her 1967 ‘Ten Best Ever’ Silver Jubilee listing … O. P. Nayyar never ever recorded with Lata and still became a huge success … What was it, if not ‘Shanker-Jaikishani Sangeet’ manipulation, that cost Naushad (Mughal-e-Azam, 1960) and S. D. Burman (Guide, 1966) the Filmfare Best Music awards … The ego scuffles were in plenty …
Way back in 1967, literally overnight, poor R. D. Burman was stripped of the ‘Best Classical Film Song of the Year’ award by the prestigious Sur-Singar Samsad for the Lata-rendered Chandan Ka Palna solo unveiling on character actress Meena Kumari as: O Gangaa Maiyaa paar lagaa de meree sapnon kee naiyaa, ear-holdingly cast by Pancham in Raag Jogiya. R. D. Burman was on the point of being awarded that rare honour, with a 4–1 mandate, when the 5 committee members retired for the evening to meet the following day to concretize the selection. Early in the morning, I got a desperate call from Sur-Singar ‘Sangeetdas’ Brijnarain, agitatedly enquiring if I had a hidden agenda to destroy his institution. ‘The year’s best classical film song is there for the choosing and you go and award it to R. D. Burman! Is it to bring Sur-Singar to this pass, Raju, that I roped you in as convener of our Awards Committee? Please use all your musical resources to get the award convincingly, yet discreetly, amended. I have asked HMV’s G. N. Joshi [technical adviser] to come half an hour early to talk it out with you and present the committee members with a near fait accompli. Remember, Sur-Singar’s citation being in the style of a shastriya award, R. D. Burman just does not qualify, given the overall tone of his music.’
Basically Brijnarain had a problem, not with O Gangaa Maiyaa as a classically qualifying song, but with R. D. Burman’s public image. An image standing for anything but classical. There was a guarded last-minute relook by which the award finally went in favour of Ravi for his routine Raag Malkauns Asha Bhosle solo, from AVM’s Nutan–Sunil Dutt– Ashok Kumar starrer Meharban, going as Saawan kee raat kaaree kaaree jiyaraa sataaye moraa piyara na aaye. The gut Sur-Singar problem, I later discovered, had been the actress Nutan. In 1966, before I came in as the committee convener, the award had controversially gone to Madan Mohan for his noteworthy Raag Pilu composition, Maine rang lee aaj chunariyaa sajanaa tore rang mein, the Lata solo picturized on Nutan in Dulhan Ek Raat Ki. While the 4 judges present were split 2–2, the fifth judge Nutan, who had not attended the meeting till then, made it a point to turn up the following day to vote, without any compunction, for her own song. After this embarrassing glitch, Brijnarain insisted upon my becoming the convener, only to find himself, face to face, with the RD quandary. Set against Brijnarain’s reflex reaction line of reasoning, we have the viewpoint of Manna Dey, as one so well versed in raags and raaginis:
It would be unfair to assume that Pancham looked to Western music simply because his exposure to Indian classical music was minimal. On the contrary, it was his outstanding knowledge of Indian classical music that accounted for the precision with which Pancham synthesized its notes with those of Western music. His [1971] composition, Aayo kahaan se Ghanshyam (which I happened to sing for Buddha Mil Gaya), is perhaps the most convincing evidence of the young music director’s thorough grasp of Indian ragas.
It was against such a Burman background that I felt for Pancham as never before. I recalled how Pancham earlier in the year (1967) had urged me to watch out for O Gangaa Maiyaa as a composition set for the climax of the film Chandan Ka Palna. Set against Brijnarain’s rationale, Manna Dey’s viewpoint, quoted earlier, is all-important because, if this weighty singer respected the father, he never underestimated the son. Lata too was all for Pancham who had composed something classically so well rounded as Ghar aa jaa ghir aaye badraa saanwariya to go on Ameeta in Chhote Nawab (1962). For all that, having woven Ghar aa jaa ghir aaye so enchantingly in Raag Malgunji a full six years before he conceptualized O Gangaa Maiyaa in Raag Jogiya, RD’s public standing went against his being decorated with that blue-riband 1967 Sur-Singar award. Crestfallen was Pancham when, some 15 years later, I banteringly told him about how he had lost out as a prisoner of his own popular image: ‘Dada Burman trained me to score for any subject. He trained me for the classical job too. I have my roots in Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Annapurnaji and Samta Prasad. What more can I say? You saw the quality of my scoring for the complex [1976 ] Shakti Samanta Mehbooba theme. You bring me the classical theme and I will create the score to go with it.’
If in the case of O Gangaa Maiyaa, it was the chaste Sur-Singar up against the hybrid R. D. Burman, in Meera (1979) it was a clash of egos between Lata Mangeshkar and Ravi Shankar, following something that happened on the final day of a recording due for Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s 1960 Anuradha. Leela Naidu is no more and, therefore, Ravi Shankar’s Anuradha compositions for that delicate beauty, as rendered by Lata, acquire a rare poignance. Jaane kaise sapnon mein kho gayee akhiyaan (in Raag Tilak Shyam), Haaye re woh din kyun na aaye (in Raag Jansamohini) and Kaise din beete kaise beetee ratiyaan piyaa jaane naa (in Raag Maanj Khamaj) bring the silhouette of Leela Naidu, as Anuradha, lissomely to mind. Mind-soothing were Ravi Shankar’s compositions for Lata in Anuradha, a show that, at best, was an artistic success, fetching its mentor, Hrishikesh (‘Lata is Saraswati’) Mukherjee, the 1960 President’s Gold Medal by way of the National Award. Yet there was pending, as the Anuradha recordings were set to conclude, an old-world number (cast in the vocal image of Bengal’s renowned bhajan singer Juthika Ray and going as Saanwre saanwre kaahe mose karo joraa joree). This Raag Sindhubhairavi-based recording was the one for which Lata, without notice, failed to turn up, leaving Ravi Shankar rubbing his baton-free hands. It had to be later dubbed by Lata under the supervision of Vijay Raghav Rao as Ravi Shankar’s chief assistant in Anuradha. I personally feel that Ravi Shankar never quite forgot that Saanwre saanwre recording rebuff from Lata, with his thinking probably being: ‘If you have a world reputation, so do I!’ In this recording studio light, Ravi Shankar, logically, expected a more conciliatory approach from Lata on Meera. Such an approach never came and it obviously became a point of personal prestige with Pandit Ravi Shankar to record Meera in the voice of Vani Jairam, one whose vocals he had tested before. Gulzar’s Meera did not do all that well but its music, in its international edition, was a total sellout with 7 songs and 7 songlets, all in the renouncingly mood-capturing voice of Vani. Such was the magic of Pandit Ravi Shankar’s name outside India.
Who says ‘Lata is Meera and Meera is Lata’? Not Pandit Ravi Shankar. The Meera foursome of Gulzar, Ravi Shankar, Hema Malini and Vani Jairam at the first recording (Mere toh Girdhar Gopal) for that 1979 film
Panditji’s wry sense of humour came through even in the otherwise sombre atmosphere obtaining at Bandra’s Mehboob Studios. There were different passages of interlude music being tried out for an atmospheric Vani recording when, in response to a piece played by Vijay Raghav Rao through the mike, Ravi Shankar quipped: ‘It sounds too much like your Films Division music!’ At another point, as Ravi Shankar remarked, ‘Komalnishaad thodaa nangaa lag rahaa hai’ (The Komalnishaad appears a bit bare), who should come curvaceously traipsing in but Jayshree T in the mode of attire and style of carriage calculated to accentuate her body language all the way. Jayshree Talpade had been shooting at Mehboob Studios and was, as the sexiest thing on a couple of legs this or that side of the recording room, merely seeking Ravi Shankar’s darshan. This while carrying herself in a manner designed to have those present questing for her darshan. An even greater stir there was as the Beatles turned up during one afternoon at the recordings. George Harrison, for his iconic part, could only gaze in amazement at the massive recording equipment behind which Ravi Shankar was Big Uncle-lookingly seated. ‘It works, you know!’ said Panditji and there were smiles all around.
Since Ravi Shankar was the one chosen to score the Apu Trilogy (in the period 1955–59) by Satyajit Ray, I asked as to what were the special demands made by that master from this master. ‘Oh, things worked out fine until Satyajit Ray became a little too conscious of his six-foot-plus stature!’ remarked Ravi Shankar. Later, encountering Ray in cinema critic Iqbal Masud’s Marine Drive home, I narrated what Ravi Shankar had said. Ray looked to be on the point of reacting sharply when he thought better of it. Cryptically, he responded that the Goan musicians in Bombay unfailingly played to the exact footage he wanted, not so Ravi Shankar & co.
When mighty egos collide, the sound of music is not always harmonious to the ear. Take Salil Chowdhury vis-à-vis Ravi Shankar. Meeting up with him in his Calcutta apartment, I told Salil how Ravi Shankar had felt that he tended to make the orchestra needlessly complicated, also how the sitar ace felt there was no call to employ a Western tune for Lata’s O sajanaa barkhaa bahaar aayee on Sadhana in Bimal Roy’s Parakh (August 1960). This had Salil instantly up in arms, stridently observing: What does Ravi Shankar, originally an instrumentalist, know about composing music?’ That might sound outrageous, but read what Manna Dey has to say: ‘His compositions were a class apart. My tribute to Salil Chowdhury would be to place him, in terms of sheer potential, in the same category as [Rabindranath] Tagore and [Kazi] Nazrul Islam.’ Yes, Salil was an exceptional talent, one who believed that it is only dead fish that swim with the current. You had to be at a Salil Chowdhury recording, based entirely on the chords’ system, to divine what orchestral integration really meant. Everything would be sounding great, just great, when the man would chip in with: ‘Cut, cut!’ A cut above the rest was Salil Chowdhury, a composer who could evoke, from the sitar of a day-to-day performer like Jairam Acharya, the stunning opening notes following O sajanaa. To my suggestion that the only competition to Lata’s vocals, in the transcendental opening notes struck, was the sitar of Jairam Acharya, Salil would come back with: ‘No one, just no one, could compete with Lata in O sajanaa barkhaa bahaar aayee. Or in Zulmee sang aankh ladee, my pet [1957] composition from Madhumati, so sweet, so Kumaoni!’
Salil Chowdhury had the entire musical folklore of India at his fingertips as he picked up the baton. When asked to comment on the music of the peerless Anil Biswas, his telling observation was: ‘What could be more tragic than that people have all but forgotten such a titan?’ The same Anil Biswas had no ego, at least this one time, as he sat down to play the tabla in Salil Chowdhury’s celebrated Bombay Youth Choir. Anil Biswas finally fell from composing favour when, in K. A. Abbas’s Char Dil Char Rahen (September 1959), he failed to produce a hit on Raj Kapoor via Mukesh with Nahein kiyaa toh kar ke dekh. O. P. Nayyar considered Anil Biswas to be our finest composer ever; C. Ramchandra and Vasant Desai swore by his musical name.
Machaltee aarzoo …Creatively yours – Salil Chowdhury,
Lata and Shailendra
Anil Biswas always had Dilip Kumar’s ear, so much so that he persuaded the thespian to overrule the film’s music director team, Shanker-Jaikishan, in the vital matter of Mukesh’s being the playback performer chosen to go on the tragedian playing Nimmi’s hero Shankar in Amiya Chakraborty’s Daag (July 1952). Yes, Hum dard ke maaron ka and Ae mere dil kahein aur chal (male editions, fast and slow) were originally to be in the voice of Mukesh as composer Shanker had set his heart upon him as the voice of Dilip Kumar. But Anil Biswas interceded on behalf of Talat Mahmood, out of turn, and Shanker-Jaikishan never ever forgave him for meddling in their specialist area of work. Shanker-Jaikishan thus jumped at the opportunity to compose the score for Bharat Bhooshan’s Basant Bahaar (December 1956), when distributor pressure impelled the film’s hero-producer to replace Anil Biswas, a musician with whom he otherwise tuned at a literary level.
There was no theme that Anil Biswas scored anything less than brilliantly at that mid-1950s point in his career. Then why did Anil Biswas fail so miserably in Filmistan’s 1956 Heer with Nutan in the title role opposite Pradeep Kumar? Anil failed to Heer-deliver because he never felt at home in the company of Filmistan chief S. Mukerji, the bad blood between the two flowing back to their Bombay Talkies days. ‘No man shook my confidence, during the music making for Heer, as S. Mukerji did!’ Anil told me. But how, I ask, could Anil Biswas have expected S. Mukerji to go along in the adamant line that this composer took on Mohammed Rafi being in no way needed to sing such a gut-touching theme as Heer? When Rafi was, none the less, summoned by S. Mukerji, in Heer, to render Preet ka rogee ho ya jogee Allah teree khair kare and Le jaa uskee duuaaen ho.o.o.o.o jo teraa ho na sakaa, alongside O khamosh zamaana hai (duet with Asha), Anil Biswas rudely abstained from these three recordings, asking his assistant, saxophone player Ram Singh, to supervise the proceedings. Anil was in effect telling S. Mukerji: ‘I wanted Lata to sing the Heer theme all the way on Nutan but you wouldn’t give me the chanteuse supreme, so how could you have your way with Rafi?’ A composing law unto himself was Anil Biswas. Could you believe that, in the 1952 Shekhar–Nalini Jaywant starrer, Doraha, Anil first recorded Mohabbat tark kee maine gharebaan see leeyaa maine; Teraa khayal dil se mitayaa nahein abhee; and Dil mein basaa ke meet banaa ke bhool naa jaana preet puraanee in the voice of Rafi? Then, arbitrarily, replaced the sincere singer with Talat Mahmood in all three songs? True, Talat sang each one of those three solos like a dream, yet this is not to say there were any takers for Anil Biswas’s idea of being totally Rafi-dismissive. But for this kind of whimsicality, a composer of such a remarkable creative calibre would not have faded away the way he did. There are those who still consider Anil Biswas to be the Denis Compton of music for his ability to score in a breakaway style non conformingly his very own.
Anil Biswas and O. P. Nayyar, after being in deadly combat following OP’s ego stand-off with Lata in the aftermath of Guru Dutt’s Aar Paar (May 1954), were brought together – for us to be able to ZEE-view the two in tow– through a shared animus against the Melody Queen. Doyen Anil Biswas never really forgave Lata for having kept him out of her ‘Ten Best Ever’ during her 1967 silver jubilee listing. There was not much Anil could do about it then, as he was out of the film industry by 1967. But how did someone of Anil Biswas’s stature start losing musical caste in the first place? It came about through Kavi Pradeep and Anil Biswas – Trojans both – being, each, on an ego trip in Amiya Chakraborty’s Girls School (1949). Anil Biswas felt that Pradeep, as its song-writer, was interfering a little too much on the theme’s tuning front. Both Pradeep and Anil Biswas were from Bombay Talkies, as was director Amiya Chakraborty who well knew that the two no longer enjoyed the 1943 Kismet-days Aaj Himalay kee chotee se vibes. Girls School was an odd assembly of musical talents, bringing old boys Anil, Pradeep, Amiya and Chitalkar together. Why would the last-named, a full-fledged jubilee-scoring music director by 1949 under the celeb name of C. Ramchandra, have agreed to serve as ‘a mere assistant’ to Anil Biswas in Girls School? ‘For old times sake,’ contended C. Ramchandra, ‘such was my regard for Anil Dada.’ That very regard Pradeep – wielding a certain clout with Girls School director Amiya Chakraborty – brought into embarrassing question as he insisted upon the more forward-looking C. Ramchandra taking over the entire film’s music from the ‘fast-dating’ Anil Biswas. Actually, far from dating, Anil was at his serene peak in 1949. Still the crunch came as Anil – following the Pradeep-written Lata solo, Naye raaste pe rakhaa hai maine qadam, and the Lata duet with Shankar Dasgupta, Baar baar tum soch rahein ho man mein kaun see baat, being somehow recorded for the film– readied Lata’s best one, Tumhein kaho meraa man kyun rahe udaas nahein. Pradeep spot-pronounced the tune to be too ‘slow moving’ whereupon Anil Biswas quit Girls School in sheer disgust, telling off our Kaviraj in a tone and temper that would not bear repetition here. Reluctantly therefore did C. Ramchandra come to record Tumhein kaho meraa man kyun rahe udaas nahein. It was next Lata’s turn to throw a fit, saying Anil Biswas had been unethically replaced by C. Ramchandra in the film– that she would not have come and done the recording had she known it was going to be officially under the baton of the film’s ‘assistant music director’ (C. Ramchandra)! Remember, Lata then (early 1949) was still sweet on Husnlal (of the Husnlal–Bhagatram team), the switch of emotional allegiance to C. Ramchandra had yet to take place.
I have gone into the Girls School ego backlash in detail because later Lata, when refusing to sing for O. P. Nayyar following their mid-1954 post-Aar Paar skirmish, was to cite, as her ‘principled’ alibi, this very 1949 Girls School instance – of her not being prepared to oblige any music director who took over the scoring of a film, midway through, without proper written permission from the outgoing composer. When Lata on such a basis would not entertain the idea of performing for Nayyar as he replaced Roshan in Mehbooba (August 1954), who should be presiding over the Cine Music Directors Association (CMDA) but one Anil Biswas! Anil’s role here was unenviable – he was supposed to act as ‘Nayyar executioner’ as the Rhythm King had shot through (by May 1954) with Guru Dutt’s Aar Paar.
To be fair to such a respected upholder of standards as Anil Biswas, he did genuinely feel that at least 5 of those 8 Aar Paar-OP compositions to be a hybrid intrusion on the Hindustani film scene. Anil therefore had no compunction in going along with a Lata (operating from behind the scenes) in getting his CMDA to ban O. P. Nayyar’s recordings there and then. By contrast OP always esteemed Anil Biswas as the fountainhead of Hindustani film music. To me therefore it was no surprise to discover the two, Anil and OP, to be so avuncularly posturing together, by the end-90s, in an effort to marginalize Naushad on ZEE’s Sa Re Ga Ma podium, since I knew the Biswas–Nayyar twosome to be nursing a mutual ego hang-up about our ‘Sangeet Samrat’ for the unique niche he occupied in Hindustani film music’!
As for Naushad, the biggest blow to his ego was when the year 1981 saw his own Uttar Pradesh Film Journalists’ Association bypassing him to proclaim Khayyam as having composed ‘The Best Music of the Quarter Century’ in Umrao Jaan. Almost side by side, in 1981, a Special Trophy came to be awarded to Naushad from UP’s prestigious Sahitya Award Committee – by way of recognizing his signal contribution, in Hindi and Urdu, to poetry-oriented music. Moving on, even as the 1982 hour approached for vintager Khayyam to be personally bestowed, on the New Delhi podium, with the National Award – as Best Music Director for Umrao Jaan (1981) – news arrived that Naushad had been decorated with the 1981 Dadasaheb Phalke Award for Lifetime Achievement in Films. Lucklessly for our super Umrao Jaan scorer, Naushad got to be awarded on the same 1982 New Delhi stage as Khayyam! This was to lead to an ego tussle between the two by which, regrettably, I heard Khayyam speaking up, for the first time in his life, against Naushad, his musical inspiration. Khayyam felt he had been pre-empted on the New Delhi podium by Naushad, but the truth is that the then Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting, Vasant Sathe, had– as the one who was a supericon to him– eyes only for Naushad; and for Best Actress Rekha as Umrao Jaan! You come with your own luck into this industry. If Khayyam in 1982 felt upstaged, had the position been different when he at last so deservedly won his maiden Filmfare Best Music award for Kabhi Kabhie (1976)? How come the key musicians due to play during the occasion failed to turn up?
What was it if not ‘Shanker-Jaikishani Sangeet’ manipulation that cost Naushad (Mughal-e-Azam, 1960) and S. D. Burman (Guide, 1966) the Filmfare Best Music awards they richly merited? You had to meet Naushad at the time to get a true feel of how the Shanker-Jaikishan duo had struck at his ego in managing to steal a 1960 Filmfare Best Music march over Mughal-e-Azam via Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai. Naushad did not just sulk; his ego impelled him to seek an appointment with J. C. Jain in the general manager’s office – to apprise the all-dominant Times Group head-honcho of the precise position in the Mughal-e-Azam matter. ‘Jain Saab,’ surmised Naushad, ‘the award has been handed out and nothing can change that. Therefore I come here with but one request – that never again, in any one of your multiple publications, carry an article wondering why the standard of Hindustani film music is going down. If your Times institution feels that the music of Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai is superior to my lifetime score in Mughal-e-Azam, I want you to reflect upon whether it is true Hindustaniat you are encouraging in our cinema.’
To think Naushad never won a second statuette after the inaugural Filmfare Best Music award for Baiju Bawra. If Naushad was just once so awarded (in 1953), O. P. Nayyar too, after first bagging the prize in 1957 for Naya Daur, never ever won the Filmfare citation again. Sahir Ludhianvi’s lyrics in Naya Daur, if you remember, went practically unnoticed, it was O. P. Nayyar all over. The ego scuffle that followed, between O. P. Nayyar and Sahir Ludhianvi (on the 1957 sets of Sone Ki Chidiya), was like none other. As they finished recording Talat–Asha’s Pyaar par bas toh nahein hai meraa lekin phir bhee for Sone Ki Chidiya (to come in 1958), Sahir said it was satisfying to work with someone with a feel for Urdu poetry. Side by side, Sahir also said something derogatory about Sachin Dev Burman – about how, after a working lifetime in the industry, the man remained a Bengali at heart with nil knowledge of Urdu in terms of picking up the nuances of the song’s wording. Whereupon OP, in an outburst typical of him, inveighed: ‘If you could speak so lightly of someone so senior as Dada Burman, tomorrow who knows what you would not say about me? Take it, Sahir, that Sone Ki Chidiya is the last film on which we are working together!’
OP told me later that he actually fought SD’s battle for him! Did he really? OP himself had detailed to me how there had been ego flashes between Sahir and him over certain song-wordings in Naya Daur. But OP had not pursued the matter, shrewdly sensing that Sahir had Naya Daur maker B. R. Chopra’s ear. OP had signed B. R. Films’ Sadhna (the Vyjayanthimala–Sunil Dutt starrer to come in 1958) alongside Naya Daur and wanted to back out of that film since, by contract, it meant working again with Sahir. It is this factor, I feel, that made OP pick a Burman bone with Sahir. B. R. Chopra told me OP later rang, requesting to be paid more for Sadhna. BR merely reminded him that the payment terms of the contract applied to Naya Daur and Sadhna alike. When OP rang yet again, BR informed him that he was freeing Nayyar from the Sadhna contract since a word with Sahir had revealed ego hassles between the music director and the song writer. Against this backdrop, have you ever tried to figure out why Sahir Ludhianvi always nursed a bruised ego after his first few years in the industry? I say it happened because the Filmfare Best Lyricist bauble came to Sahir’s hand only as late as 1963 (with the Roshan-scored Taj Mahal). Just look at the song writer winners before Sahir and determine if I have a point. From the time the Filmfare Best Lyricist award came to be introduced, the winners have been – 1958: Shailendra for Shanker-Jaikishan-Mukesh’s Yeh meraa deewaanapan hai in Yahudi on Dilip Kumar); 1959: Shailendra (for Shanker-Jaikishan-Mukesh’s Sub kuchch seekhaa hum ne on Raj Kapoor in Anari); 1960: Shakeel Badayuni (for Ravi–Rafi’s Chaudhwin ka chand ho on Guru Dutt in Chaudhwin Ka Chand); 1961: Shakeel Badayuni (for Ravi–Rafi’s Husn waale teraa jawaab nahein on Rajendra Kumar in Gharana); 1962: Shakeel Badayuni (for Lata’s Hemant Kumar-scored Raag Sohani-based Kahein deep jale kahein dil, voiced over on Waheeda Rehman in Bees Saal Baad). Only after those 5 years does Sahir clinch the 1963 Filmfare Best Lyricist prize, for the first time, via Roshan’s Lata–Rafi Taj Mahal duet (in Raag Pahadi), Jo vaadaa kiyaa woh nibhaana padegaa. For ‘one Shakeel’ to have won it thrice in succession before Sahir– you have to assess that in terms of what Ludhiana thought of Badayun as a poetry-reciting centre! In such a ‘hat-tricky’ Shakeel–Sahir face off, just imagine how Majrooh Sultanpuri must have felt, as he had to wait, for his first Filmfare Best Lyricist award, a year longer than Sahir Ludhianvi (with whom he was in a ceaseless ego confrontation). Note that Majrooh’s maiden statuette came as late as 1964 – for Laxmikant-Pyarelal– Mohammed Rafi’s Raag Pahadi Dosti stunner:Chaahungaa main tujhe saanjh savere. Yet, no matter how discordant be the notes for a while, music is all about harmonizing. Thus, if Dada Burman comprehended little Urdu, Majrooh main tained that SD still understood poetry, ‘which is the same in any language’. It is such a harmonized writer–composer outlook that had Majrooh-S. D. Burman coming up – via Talat Mahmood on Sunil Dutt in Bimal Roy’s 1959 Sujata –with the Raag Sindhura beauty unveiling as:
Dil mein rakh lenaa eese haathon se yeh chhoote na kahein
Geet naazuk hai meraa sheeshe se bhee toote na kahein
Dil mein rakh lenaa eese haathon se yeh chhoote na kahein
Geet naazuk hai meraa sheeshe se bhee toote na kahein
Gungunaaoongaa yahee geet main tere liye
Jalte hain jis ke liye …