‘Hemant Kumar literally pushed me into music direction with Devendra Goel’s 1955 Vachan which was to start a lifelong relationship with that film-maker. In fact, this you will find to be a career phenomenon in my case. Take any of my producers – Devendra Goel, S.D. Narang, Ramanand Sagar, A. A. Nadiadwala, S. S. Vasan, A. V. Meyappan, B. R. Chopra, Vasu Menon, Sivaji Ganesan – my association was lifelong. I dare anyone to point out a single instance of my ego-clashing with any film-maker.’
Is there anything more wistful than the touch that Ravi Shankar Sharma (known popularly as Ravi, inside and outside the film industry) brought to the vocals of Lata Mangeshkar with Woh dil kahaan se laaoon teree yaad jo bhulaa de (going on Asha Parekh, opposite Guru Dutt, in Vasu Menon–K. Shanker’s Bharosa, 1963)? If you argue that Lata rendered this one ethereally, do you feel that Talat Mahmood would have so crooned Woh dil kahaan se laaoon as to better our nightingale – if, perchance, the song had been a tandem? For that is what the number originally was–a tandem, as tuned by Ravi to go on a Madhubala having only a year to live opposite Ashok Kumar in Devendra Goel’s Ek Saal (release: January 1958). But Goel felt Ravi’s original tune was far from easy on the lips as a tandem. That is how it came to be recast, retaining the same metre, as Sab kuchch lootaa ke hosh mein aaye toh kyaa kiyaa. Without in any way elongating the Sub kuchch part of it, just hum Sub kuchch lootaa ke as Woh dil kahaan se and you will find the one sitting pat upon the other.
In the same Ek Saal (this time with himself as the lyricist), Ravi has Lata-Hemant so limpidly ‘languorizing’Ulajh gaye do nainaa dekho ulajh gaye do nainaa. If Hemant Kumar is heard at his spell-casting best here, one has to remember that this super singer reserved, at all times, something special for his protégé Ravi. As, for instance, in Devendra Goel’s January 1957 release Narsi Bhagat in which Hemant Kumar so ear-holdingly led the Darshan do Ghanshyam bhajan. I zero in upon this bhajan to underscore how, as far as our generation goes, music of genuine preservation value ceased being made by end-1997. I move on even while staying rooted in 1957 – by turning the Ravi–Hemant Kumar spotlight upon the Darshan do Ghanshyam bhajan that caused such a 2009 Slumdog Millionaire ruckus –after that Danny Boyle film practically swept the Golden Globes and the Oscars. Should a film factually flawed in its screenplay have qualified for an award? I refer to Anil Kapoor, as the quizmaster, posing –Amitabh Bachchan style–that ‘question of questions’ to Jamal Malik (as played by Dev Patel) about who wrote the Ravi-tuned Darshan do Ghanshyam?
‘Surdas’, as given out by Jamal Malik, was pronounced to be the right answer. However, not one of the four options offered to Jamal Malik –Surdas, Tulsidas, Meerabai or Kabir –was the correct answer. Darshan do Ghanshyam, at best, was a contextual film bhajan–as attuned by Ravi to the song-lyric of Gopal Singh Nepali –on two sides of the (N52098) 78-rpm record in the 1957 Narsi Bhagat film based on the life and times of the legendary Narsinh Mehta (with Shahu Modak in the title role). Someone should have been made accountable for failing to spot such a cultural howler. Composer Ravi since has arraigned the film’s makers on the issue of his tune for Darshan do Ghanshyam having been reproduced in their film without his prior written permission. Side by side, in a lighter vein, Ravi also revealed how it was only after a wordy duel that they could get the poet, in Gopal Singh Nepali, to rewrite, as Hey dukhnaashee re, the Hey satyanaashee re wording that that versifier had originally introduced–as a positive thought, he insisted! –into the song!
‘How did you get Hemant Kumar [who is later joined, in it, by Sudha Malhotra and Manna Dey] to render Darshan do Ghanshyam with such a profound orotund effect?’ I asked Ravi, who responded with: ‘Remember, I had been Hemant Kumar’s assistant for six years and I had got on so famously with him that I knew I could always trust him to come up with something extra for me. See how reverberatingly he’s come to vocal terms with the bhajan’s Raag Kedar notes.’ Upon viewing Darshan do Ghanshyam composition as featuring in a show so international in dimension as Slumdog Millionaire, Ravi, as its composer, said he was rendered speechless. Otherwise Ravi has plenty to say as a golden-touch composer who lasted through 112 films to create a long string of hits. Where other composers had, for instance, no end of problems in getting Guru Dutt finally to okay their tunes, Ravi – being never a confrontationist by nature –enjoyed excellent vibes, all through, with that celeb maker. Not once, noted Ravi, was there even the semblance of a tussle as our most mild-mannered composer–at all times soft and sweet in his tuning –so aptly scored, for Guru Dutt Films, the music of Chaudhwin Ka Chand (June 1960). So pleased was Guru Dutt with Chaudhwin Ka Chand’s arriving so pat as his box-office saviour–following the artistically commercial disaster that was Kaagaz Ke Phool (September 1959) –that he invited Ravi to ask for anything in a spirit of ‘It shall be given!’ Ravi’s ready response: ‘Give tome, sir, what is in your pocket and promise me, here and now, that you shall go on to help me create a tune even better than our Chaudhwin ka chand ho…’.
Mohammed Rafi was eternally grateful to Ravi as the latter’s Raag Pahadi title tune –written to Shakeel-peak as Chaudhwin ka chand ho ya aaftaab ho/Jo bhee ho tum khuda kee qasam la-jawaab ho on Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehman in Chaudhwin Ka Chand –won for the seasoned singer his maiden (1960) Filmfare Best Singer award. Ravi, as the total diplomat, balanced out this rare favour to Rafi by going on to swing his baton at its dulcet best while bestowing, upon Lata Mangeshkar via Nutan (in Vasu Menon–A. Bhimsingh’s Khandaan), the Rajendra Krishna-written Tumheen mere mandir tumheen meree pooja, fetching our diva the 1965 Filmfare Best Female Singer award. This when, during the same year under the same Ravi –on Meena Kumari in Ram Maheshwari’s Kaajal–sister Asha Bhosle had all but vocally matched Lata via Toraa man darpan kehlaaye (in Raag Jaunpuri). Indeed Ravi had this knack of lifting the Filmfare Best Music award, when least expected, from under the greyhound nose of the Trio of Duos –Shanker-Jaikishan, Kalyanji-Anandji and Laxmikant-Pyarelal. Such became Ravi’s ‘gentle clout’ in four years –between the two Filmfare awards he sealed for Gemini’s Gharana (1961) and for Vasu Films’Khandaan (1965)–that the Trio of Duos was left with no choice but to admit him, grudgingly, into the charmed circle to form the ‘Cartel of Four’ that was to hold our film music to Radio Ceylon ransom in the years to come.
Ravi never overrated himself. But we did underrate him. Once he came into the prestigious camp of B. R. Chopra, Ravi was not one to let go, surviving on sheer performance. He preferred Rafi but, if those at B. R. Films wanted Mahendra Kapoor all along the line, that too was okay by him. After all, Ravi never got any singer to perform at anything less than his best. His simple principle: ‘The producer is your employer, he is paying you. So if he wants things done in a certain way, just go along. At most, tell him how you view it. But never in strident self-righteous tones!’ That way, the Punjab’s Ravi Shankar Sharma has been the quintessential film composer. Having turned 84 on 3 March 2010, Ravi still rises early, viewing the landscape as: Aaj duniyaa badee suhaanee hai. That is Ravi going on Pritibala playing the piano in Nartakee (1963) in a tune capturing Asha Bhosle at her serene best.
Tum agar saath dene kaa waada karo … B. R. Chopra and Ravi
‘It’s a sin to associate his name with music!’ Salil Chowdhury startlingly told me once. ‘But why?’ I sought to know. ‘Because,’ argued Salil, ‘casting to the winds all self-esteem going with being a creative music maker, Ravi so ingratiates himself into the film maker’s favour as to become disgusting to behold. He fatally lowers the estimate producers have of us music makers. The man would do anything to land a film even where it boils down, meanly, to undercutting a fellow composer. I don’t rate Ravi as a composer at all, at best he is a tune smith.’ There you have the reason why Salil Chowdhury, in the face of being so surpassingly innovative, went thus far and no further in terms of ‘jubileeizing’ his rare quality music, never knowing how to market himself–like Ravi did. Salil genuinely felt that a ‘routine’ composer like Ravi had no distinctive place in the film firmament.
The contrary is true. ‘Panditji’ is how Naushad addressed this soft-toned music maker, so organized in his career. Ravi was all things to all film people and that is what making movie music is all about in this crassly commercial industry. Take the streetside novel so evocatively described – as ‘a penny dreadful’–that is what Nisar Ahmed Ansari’s 1962 Shakila-Ajit starrer, Tower House, was in effect. Yet just get a fresh feel of the Lata evergreen Ravi created, here, to go on the features-sharp Shakila – something so thematic as Ae mere dil-e-naadaan tuu gham se na ghabraana. Side by side you have Ravi, tellingly contrastingly, scoring with such a natty number as Main khushnaseeb hoon mujh ko kisee kaa pyaar milaa (Lata-Mukesh in the same Tower House) on Shakila-Ajit, not to speak of Asha’s Bhosle’s Mausam hai jawaan noor mein doobein hain nazaarein on a Shakila still unfolding as a good-looker.
Take the same N. A. Ansari’s 1965 Zindagi Aur Maut thrillerand, from it, the C. Ramchandra-tuned Mahendra Kapoor–Asha Bhosle tandem – now going on Pradeep Kumar, now on ex-air hostess Faryal–as Dil lagaa kar hum yeh samjhe zindagee kyaa cheez hai. As a test case–keeping in view Ravi’s contention that he could spot-tune ‘even a newspaper headline’–I handed to that composer the Shakeel-written Dil lagaa kar hum yeh samjhe to reshape. Inside literally a minute, Ravi had remoulded it, on the harmonium, as ano-less-catchy tune even while retaining its Shakeel ghazal format. ‘When it takes you but a couple of minutes to do the job, how could you charge Rs 10,000 per tune?’ producers demanded to know of Ravi. That was by mid-1966 after his second Filmfare Best Music Director award for the Madras-made Khandaan. In this context, Ravi explained his neo-rate of Rs 10,000 per tune, for even the small-time filmmaker, as: ‘What such a producer, paying for one song at a time, overlooks is my seasoning enabling me to get to the heart of the tuning matter inside a minute or two.’
Chalo ek baar
Mahendra Kapoor and Ravi
Ravi was among the first, by 1959-60, to emulate O. P. Nayyar in setting a price of Rs 5000 on a tune. Yet if you came to offer him (for the film’s entire music with a maximum of 8 tunes) a consolidated sum of only Rs 30,000 (inclusive of the background score), he would accept the movie on the spot, once satisfied that payment would be on the dot. The Rs 5000 per tune he retained for only the small-time film maker as he grew in award-winning stature. In Madras, he welcomed working on a Rs 35-40,000 contract for a film, the idea being to capture the producer’s movie to follow too! A far cry, you could say, from the Rs 1-to-1.25 crore that A. R. Rahman began charging for a film as early as at the turn of the century. In fact, Ravi (even in mid-1966) was miles away from the Rs 50 lakh per-film rate that, first, Nadeem-Shravan and, next, Anu Malik came to command in the 1990s. But then those were different times. There was (in the mid-1970s) resistance to paying even Lata the Rs 25,000 she demanded for a song. It was later, much later, that she began getting Rs 1.25-to-1.50 lakh for a song –in the post-1994 Hum Aapke Hain Koun phase, a stage by which Asha Bhosle did not lag far behind at Rs 1-to-1.25 lakh per song.
By this time, Ravi was clean out of the picture, having paid the price (in my esteem) for offering to record a song, when at his zenith, with as few as 10–12 musicians. This made him sound at once monotonous and repetitious, unlike in a B. R. Chopra or a Devendra Goel movie, where Ravi had the freedom to employ a much bigger orchestra. Yet Ravi would not buy my idea that he lost out sooner than the Trio of Duos because he refused to emulate the threesome in insisting upon a 50-piece orchestra to ‘hide’ the repetition of a tune–inevitable in the case of a music director doing multiple films inside a limited time-frame. ‘Remember, unlike the three duos you mention, I stayed with my more humble makers’–observed Ravi in self-defence –‘long after I hit the big time.’
Yet there came a time when even B.R. Chopra–enlisting Ravi via Gumrah (1963) with its Sahir Ludhianvi– Mahendra Kapoor punchline of Chalo ek baar phir se ajnabee ban jaaye hum donon (vis-à-vis Sunil Dutt-Mala Sinha) –moved away from him, bringing in Laxmikant-Pyarelal for Dilip Kumar–Sharmila Tagore’s Dastaan (1972). This after Ravi had further turned up trumps in his Hamraaz (1967), not to speak of the noteworthy scores created by him for those big Yash Chopra directorial ventures in the B.R. camp–Waqt (1965) and Aaadmi Aur Insaan (1969). ‘I felt guilty after I dropped Ravi in Dastaan,’ B. R. Chopra told me. ‘All the more so as Ravi said not a word –to anyone any time –about my having broken with him after an association stretching, with unfailing success, through a near decade [1963–72]. The very fact that there was not a hint of protest from Ravi prompted me to bring him back for Zeenat Aman–Sanjay Khan’s Dhund [coming in 1973]. Yet again did Ravi here deliver under my [B. R. Films] banner via Mahendra Kapoor’s title-song rendition, Sansaar kee har shay kaa itnaa hee fasaana hai, and Asha Bhosle’s Uljhan sulhje naa rastaa sujhe naa.’ (Zeenat Aman on the piano.)
But by 1974 even B.R. Chopra had to confront the reality that Ravi had lost his marquee value. He turned to R. D. Burman for Karm (1977); to Ravindra Jain for Pati Patni Aur Woh (1978) and Insaf Ka Tarazu (1980). But come Nikaah (1982) and B. R. Chopra insisted upon Pakistan heroine Salma Agha rendering her songs herself in the film–as the foil to Raj Babbar. Even Ravi was not game enough, to start with, when resummoned to score for Nikaah, arguing that Salma Agha, thematically, would be a vocal disaster. But finding B. R. Chopra to be adamant, Ravi –as always –gave the B.R. film his best shot. Ravi and only Ravi, given his amiably tolerant nature, could have got Salma Agha, in Nikaah, so strikingly to articulate Fazaa bhi hai jawaan jawaan, Dil ke armaan aansoonon mein beh gaye and Dil kee yeh aarzoo thhee koee dilruba miley (the last being a duet rendered by her with Mahendra Kapoor, the voice of Raj Babbar).
Even this link had not endured the way in which Ravi remained firmly aligned to Goel Cine Corporation through one-score years starting with the 1955 Geeta Bali–Balraj surprise hit Vachan. That Asha Bhosle came to figure in each one of his 8 compositions for the film explains how she –as under O. P. Nayyar –was always to be heard at her mesmerizingly measured best under Ravi. One talks of the new hue that Khayyam brought to Asha’s voice on the come-hither Rekha with Umrao Jaan (1981), forgetting that Ravi remains the original in the matter of exploiting the younger Mangeshkar’s marvellous vocals to masterfully controlled effect. Maybe the music of Vachan was credited to Ravi-Chandra in the film’s titles, but Devendra Goel was to set the record straight by belatedly naming (in the reissue) Ravi as the film’s music director on each one of the 78-rpm discs of the film. Thus the label ‘lucky’ came to stick to Ravi from the word go as his debut film, Vachan, saw him coming up with such perpetual Asha hits (on a Geeta Bali carrying the film) as Chanda mama door ke and Zaraa seekh lo akhiyon sharmaana, alongside Asha–Rafi’s spot scorers like Eik paisa de de (on S. K. Prem with Babu) and Jab liyaa haath mein haath (on Geeta Bali-Balraj). ‘Chandra was a nephew of mine,’ Devendra Goel was later to clarify to me. ‘But upon seeing that all eight songs in Vachan were actually composed by debutant Ravi, I later decided to credit him “solo”, not only in that 1955 film, but in each one of 11 films to follow under my banner.’
Thus did Ravi generate, in the company of Devendra Goel, highly hummable melodies in Albeli (1956). Such pleasing melodies as Lata’s Jaa jaa re chandaa teree chandnee jalaye (on a Geeta Bali recreating The Fabulous Senorita); Hemant Kumar’s Goree tujhe aanaa padegaa (on a Pradeep Kumar ‘messaging’ Geeta Bali); the same Hemant stupefyingly soliloquizing Hum toh pee ke chalein (on a hilariously sneezing Johnny Walker); not to forget Lata–Hemant’s Muskuratee huuee chaandnee jagmagaata huuaa aasmaan (on Geeta Bali-Pradeep Kumar). Acue to how the tuneful Goel–Ravi connection endured is provided by the Prem Dhavan-written Chhum chhum chalee piyaa keegalee (Lata in Ek Saal,1958) and the Shailendra-penned Kal ke chaand aaj ke sapnen (Lata-Hemant in Nai Raahen, 1959). But it was Devendra Goel’s later-1959 Meena Kumari– Rajendra Kumar starrer, Chirag Kahan Roshni Kahan, that was to signal the arrival of the modest Ravi as a potential challenge to the topmost in our composing hierarchy. The Ravi-written Tim tim karte taare; the Prem Dhavan-penned Chal mere ghode tik tik tik; and Badaa bedard jahaan hai (all three by Lata on Meena Kumari)–without taking cognizance of Prem– Ravi–Rafi’s title-scoring Ajab hai maalik teraa jahaan chirag kahan roshni kahan–marked the big come through for this composer.
Aaj duniyaa badee suhaanee hai …
Let’s hand it to Asha-Ravi
In a sense, therefore, it was Devendra Goel who did the trick for Ravi nearly four years before the formidable Chopra brothers (Bal Raj and Yash Raj) switched to him from the long-serving N. Dutta (Sahir Ludhianvi’s talented handpick–from among ‘adversary’ S. D. Burman’s assistants –for the B. R. banner’s Sadhna, 1958; Dhool Ka Phool, 1959; and Dharmputra, 1961). Indeed Ravi mentor Devendra Goel heedlessly ventured to release (at Bombay’s Roxy Cinema in September 1959) Chirag Kahan Roshni Kahan int he same hazardous week as V. Shantaram’s Navrang, Guru Dutt’s Kaagaz Ke Phool and K. A. Abbas’s Char Dil Char Rahen. What was this but a pointer to the fact that Rajendra Kumar’s – and Ravi’s –time had come? Except that the same Devendra Goel– Rajendra Kumar’s Pyar Ka Sagar (1961) astonishingly did not fare well, given the hit music yet again created by the ‘lucky’ Ravi. Mukesh’s two big Pyar Ka Sagar Ravi toppers on Rajendra Kumar, Sadaa khush rahe tuu jafaa karne waale and Wafaa jinse kee bewafaa ho gaye; Asha–Rafi’s Mujhe pyaar kee zindagee dene waale (on Rajendra Kumar-Meena Kumari); Mukesh–Asha’s Pyar kaa sagar dekha hai kisee ke chanchal nainon mein (again on Rajendra Kumar-Meena Kumari); and Asha’s Raat raat bhar jaag jaag kar intezaar karte hain (on Meena Kumari–as the sole lyric by Asad Bhopali in a Prem Dhavan-dominated film) showed Goel’s pet composer to be in fine composing fettle. ‘All eight songs were,’ Devendra Goel told me, ‘on a par with the eight numbers of Madan Mohan in the movie’s 1950 original, Nalini Jaywant– Shekhar’s Ankhen, my first film whose remake this 1961 offering was. Initially it was to have been Mala Sinha opposite Rajendra Kumar in Chirag Kahan… but on the jubilee hero’s persuasion, I finally went for Meena Kumari. No, it wasn’t Ravi but Devendra Goel who failed in Pyar Ka Sagar. The film made me reach the conclusion that remakes are mistakes. They can never capture the true flavour of the original.’
The Goel–Ravi link remains something special remembering that there was at least one huge hit in each film by the two to follow –Asha– Manna Dey–Rafi & Chorus’s Hum bhee agar bachche hotey on Johnny Walker & co. in Saira Banu–Joy Mukerji’s Door Ki Awaaz (1964); the Ravi-written Rafi–Asha’s Ghareebon kee sunon woh tumhaaree sunegaa on the lead pair of Sanjay-Babita in Dus Lakh (1966); and Manna Dey’s thematic Tujhe sooraj kahoon ya chanda on Balraj Sahni in Ek Phool Do Mali (such a successful 1969 Sadhana–Sanjay screen adaptation of Fanny). True the Goel–Ravi combo had begun to sound dated by the 1972 point of Dharkan (featuring Mumtaz-Sanjay and having Rafi rendering, vis-à-vis that pair, Mere dost tujhe teraa meet mubarak). Such a loss of freshness happens with the best of maker–composer teams as the span stretches. In Goel–Ravi’s case, it extended from the 1955 year of Vachan to as far as 1975 – with its Ek Mahal Ho Sapnon Ka refrain having Lata-Rafi sounding ‘Ravi-heard’. By this stage Ravi, in his 20-year career, had run the composing gamut–from the featherweight Kishore– Asha’s C.A.T. cat cat maane billee (on Kishore-Nutan in Dilli Ka Thug, 1958) to the distinctive exploitation of Raag Pilu in Rafi’s feelingly Rajendra Krishna-written Na jhatko zulf se paanee yeh motee phoot jaayenge (going on Biswajeet vis-à-vis Rajashree in Shehnai, 1964). The maker of Dilli Ka Thug and Shehnai, S. D. Narang –being the ex-star of Khazanchi (1941), a film signifying the man’s Lahore exposure to Master Ghulam Haider –was among the first to spot the spark in the genial Ravi, cleverly turning this tunester’s lack of true classical schooling into his lucidly catchy composing asset.
Well before S. D. Narang’s Shehnai (1964), Ravi had been ‘made’ by the 1961 Pyar Ka Sagar stage itself, having already scored big time in Gemini’s Ramanand Sagar-directed Ghunghat (1960)–hark back to Lata’s Moree chham chham baaje paayaliya (on Bina Rai) and to her Laage naa moraa jiyaa (on Asha Parekh). Ghunghat came to be followed by Ravi’s maiden Filmfare Best Music Director award clincher,‘Gemini’ Vasan’s note worthy grosser Gharana (1961), starring Rajendra Kumar opposite Asha Parekh, the heroine that our Jubilee King was to identify as: ‘Woh toh Bhagyalakshmi hai!’ Ravi says: ‘My success story started in 1950 when I came to Bombay wanting to be a playback singer. My singing career was going nowhere when a chance meeting with Hemant Kumar at Filmistan saw that illustrious composer-performer taking me on as his assistant on Bankimchandra’s Anandmath, his Hindi debut film set to arrive in 1952. Hemant Kumar, as composer and singer alike, needed an assistant who would help out with the language and my Hindi he welcomed as “Panditji Hindi”! So humble was Hemant Kumar that he, next, readily sang under my untested baton–as I passed muster under the composing name of Ravi Shankar!–the private song seeing this magnetic performer making me famous via Zamaana kyaa kahegaa tum agar hum ko bhulaa donge [GE 23064]. It was an association that was to last through such Filmistan movies scored by Hemant Kumar as Samrat, Shart and Nagin– all three spread over 1954,’ reminisced Ravi.
‘Even before I could next assist him on Bankimchandra’s Durgeshnandini (1956) and the Suchitra Sen starrer Champakali (1957), Hemant Kumar –as Filmistan’s Nagin proved a raging hit in December 1954 –magnanimously suggested that it was time I branched out as a music director. This when assistantship to Hemant Kumar had ensured for me the most important thing in the big city of Bombay –a steady monthly income providing me with a home and hearth. Hemant Kumar literally pushed me into music direction with Devendra Goel’s Vachan, the mid-1955 film that was to start a life-long relationship with that movie-maker. In fact, this you will find to be a career phenomenon in my case. Take any of my producers–Devendra Goel, S. D. Narang, Ramanand Sagar, A. A. Nadiad wala, S. S. Vasan, A. V. Meyappan, B. R. Chopra, Vasu Menon, Sivaji Ganesan–my association was lifelong. Idare anyone to point out a single instance of my ego-clashing with any film-maker. In fact, at Gemini, S. S. Vasan even relied upon my strong story sense to guide him, starting 1960 with Ghunghat, which I predicted would be a jubilee hit–the movie had Bina Rai walking away with the Filmfare Best Actress trophy,’ pointed out Ravi.
How about makers from the South insisting upon repeating Tamil or Telugu song hits in the Hindi edition? ‘You can’t know to what extent Madras producers believe in following the Tamil or Telugu original!’ smiled Ravi. ‘They would run the original Tamil or Telugu print on the movieola and then insist upon my modelling the Hindi tune, to the last detail, on the Southern original. But I had my own persuasive way of making them “see”things differently. For all their faith in the original, they were always open to friendly persuasion. The tune, alternatively suggested by me, they would finally find so catchy that they would come around in the end. As popular tastes go, I found S. S. Vasan to be the best Madras judge of a hit tune. For instance, while playing six tunes for the song situation, I would name my favourite and it would invariably be the same one as noted down, on his pad, by Vasan. As I played –out of six tunes –my pet one for the Husn waale teraa jawaab nahein situation having Rajendra Kumar extolling Asha Parekh in Gemini’s Gharana [1961], Vasan observed: “This is going to be a super hit!”So fond did Vasan grow of Husn waale as a song that, whenever he felt restless, he would sit back and watch it on his private screen.’
Here I chipped in with how come Guru Dutt picked Ravi for Chaudhwin Ka Chand (1960), considering that he had flipped first for O. P. Nayyar and then for S. D. Burman. Replied Ravi: ‘After the February 1958 release of A. A. Nadiadwala’s Mehndi starring Jayshree–a Muslim social carrying such Lata hits of mine as Apne kiye pe koee pashemaan ho gayaa and Ajab dastaan hai meree zindagee kee, not to mention Hemant Kumar–Lata’s Bedard zamaana teraa dushman hai toh kyaa hai –Guru Dutt offered me the M. Sadiq-directed Chaudhwin Ka Chand to score. Who wouldn’t welcome the opportunity to compose for such a song connoisseur? Yes, there were any number of decriers who warned: “Ravi, this is going to be your Waterloo, Guru Dutt will play merry hell with the songs you offer for selection!”If such warnings put me on my guard, I didn’t betray myself in front of Guru Dutt. It came as a pleasant surprise therefore to find him, not only readily okaying my third tune for the situation set to unfold as the Shakeel-written Bedardee mere saiyyaan shabnam hain kabhie sholay (on Minu Mumtaz), but also staying with his first selection right through the recording –contrary to what I had heard. The only point on which there was some discussion was if the Bedardee mere saiyyan song should be sung by his wife Geeta Dutt or by Asha Bhosle. A couple of rehearsals with Geeta–at that sensitive point in her career –left me in some doubt, whereupon Guru Dutt readily went with my viewpoint that it was a number predesigned for Asha’s harkatein. This would surprise you but it is a fact that Guru Dutt even coasted along with my final choice of tune, not only for Milee khaak mein mohabbat (by Rafi on him), but also for Dil kee kahaanee rang laayee hai (by Asha to go on Minu Mumtaz). Who says Guru Dutt was impossible to please? Not me –give me such a music-comprehending tune-picker each time! If there was a real debate, it was only on Jiyarvaa uljhan mein mor, cast in the Begum Akhtar mould by me for Lata, on the lines laid down by Guru Dutt. The maker, I maintain, has the total right to judge if the tune would come off, on the screen, in the song situation as it prevails. Guru Dutt here felt the tune hadn’t, finally, quite shaped the way he had audio-visualized it –even after my embellishing it with certain subtle notes he suggested. Once the maker says it doesn’t jell, that’s it for me. I instantly dropped Jiyarvaa uljhan mein mor altogether from Chaudhwin Ka Chand upon Guru Dutt’s say-so. It is when the composer presumes to query this inbuilt right of the maker to judge the tune in the context of the song-situation the man better knows that problems tend to arise. If a tune left a wizard like Guru Dutt dissatisfied, what was there left for the composer in me to say? No, Guru Dutt was the finest judge of a tune that I encountered in my entire career!’
After the cognoscente that was Guru Dutt, it could well be the female form-obsessed Ram Maheshwari ‘directing’ Ravi on Kaajal, the 1965 Kanu Desai style ‘art show’ in which, following their Radio Ceylon prehear of Rafi’s Chhoo lene do naazuk hoton ko, the aam janata expectation came to be somewhat wicked. An expectation of getting vicariously to view Dharmendra enacting the Chhoo lene do song number in the tipsily cozy company of Meena Kumari! But that Choo lene do Rafi solo, as it finally unspooled on the ruperee screen, had Raaj Kumar urging Meena Kumari to drink! Any screen disappointment felt at its turning out to be Raaj Kumar was but momentary. So well did Raaj Kumar come off in enacting the song that Chhoo lene do naazuk hoton ko is a number that abides as a Ravi–Rafi classic. From Meena (Kaajal) Kumari to the hep Helen is a screen switch only Raaj Kumar could make looking unfazed! As Raaj Kumar is seen cavorting with a Kaajal-less Helen (sporting a ghaagra-cholee), the Ravi–Rafi feel is yet again heart pulsating in the shape of Yeh zulf agar khul ke bikhar jaaye toh achchaa. Not for nothing was Raaj Kumar plain Jaani to those who gladly paid to hear Ravi-Rafi perform on his captive visage.
Take, next, a Raaj Kumar in chains having Ravi-Rafi, in Ram Maheshwari’s Neel Kamal (1968), resonantly taking off on him in the idiom of Aa jaa aa jaa aa jaa tujh ko pukaare meraa pyaar. The Neel Kamal link with Waheeda Rahman is here sustained at a fair emotional level as Rafi comes over –‘Punjabishly’ plaintively –on our Kashmiri Brahmin Jaani! Side by side, in the Ravi–Rafi team’s O. P. Nayyarish Raag Kedarized Sharmaa ke yoon na dekh adaa ke muqaam se, it is Raaj Kumar in cobalt blue, Waheeda Rehman in ornate orange –a Waheeda dancing away his blues! If Ravi thus had Raaj Kumar to flesh out the essence of his composition in the two Rafi delicacies served above, this composer–singer combo was on its own, in the same Neel Kamal, as Balraj Sahni came to be viewed as sending off Waheeda Rehman in all her bridal finery. Seen sending her off via the Baabul kee duuaaen letee jaa situation –a situation ‘made on the harmonium’ for Ravi! Maybe Rafi’s vocalizing in Baabul kee duuaaen sounded sentimentally overdone when you first got to hear the song. But –as Ravi observed –in such an intense bidaaii setting, a bit of emotional licence to the singer could work wonders. It certainly did. Even while dwelling upon Rafi’s vocals in Neel Kamal, how possibly could any Ravi movie be rated to be complete without the artistry of Asha? In Neel Kamal too, on a Waheeda accompanied by nothing better than an ektaara, Ravi has Asha delivering superbly vis-à-vis Manoj Kumar with Hey rom-rom mein basne waale Ram. In a like spirit, remember, had Asha Bhosle –on a Meena Kumari clad in a virtuous white saaree complete with the aartee kee thaal –performed notably for Ravi, in Kaajal (1965), via Mere bhaiyya mere chandaa mere anmol ratan. This style of tune verily became the Asha–Ravi staple on the Hindustani aurat-centric screen by the mid-1960s. Not once would Ravi miss out on turning up tops in such a studio ‘set’ situation.
Did Ravi then fail, by his own hit-making standards, to keep tuning pace with the runaway success of O. P. Ralhan’s Phool Aur Patthar (1966)? That is, in a film coming at the height of the Dharam–Meena low that our gossip press touched in star-pair coverage? Decide for yourself on Ravi’s musical viabiliity in Phool Aur Patthar as you relive that maudlin moment in which, while her Dharmendra lies bandaged as never before, Meena Kumari, in renewed white before the idol of Lord Krishna, has Asha dutifully going on her as Sun le pukaar aaj aayee tere duaar le ke aansooan kee dhaar mere saanwre. This Phool Aur Patthar Ravi–Asha song offering was, beyond doubt, a situational hit. As was the tantalizingly enacted Shashikala–Dharmendra crowd-puller: Sheeshe se pee ya paimaane se pee ya meree aankhon ke maikhaane se pee. But these two tunes, were they really Ravi in excelsis? Ravi did not accept my submission that Phool Aur Patthar, in terms of standards, is the one blot on his impeccable screen record. Ravi just would not go along with my suggestion that the scale of hit Phool Aur Patthar was is what ‘carried’ his music in the movie. ‘But how did I fail on any front in Phool Aur Patthar?’ Ravi –for once insistently –demanded to know. ‘Have I not musically matched each song situation in the film as sketched out to me by director O. P. Ralhan? Take Asha & Chorus’s Holi hai haaye laayee hai hazaaron rang Holi, no less Asha’s Zindagee mein pyaar karna seekh le. Tell me, are the two Asha renditions that I have noted from Phool Aur Patthar not solid instances of this versatile singer’s being heard to be in supreme vocal form under my baton? Remember, Phool Aur Patthar couldn’t have succeeded so spectacularly if my music had failed the film in any degree.’
How well, in this amber light, did Ravi (as a thematic composer) shape up, as Sunil Dutt decided to fictionalize, in the 1963 form of Yeh Raaste Hain Pyar Ke, the cause-célèbre Nanavati murder case? Yeh Raaste Hain Pyar Ke (as a film compellingly directed by R. K. Nayyar) had Ravi on the button –as Sunil Dutt, Leela Naidu and one-time hero Rehman (still looking at once suave and savvy) were viewed to fit eminently into the three vertices of the eternal triangle. Leela looked, in fact, tailormade for the tempestuous role, as this dainty dame came through, Asha typically, in a Ravi vein of Aaj yeh meree zindagee dekho khushee mein jhoomtee (on the piano in front of Sunil Dutt, before Rehman picks her up for a quick twirl). Looking no less the exotic part did Leela (against a snowy Switzerlandish backdrop) Naidu-duet with Sunil Dutt in Asha– Rafi tones of Yeh khaamosheeyaan yeh tanhaaiiyaan mohabbat kee duniyaa hai kitnee jawaan. By this 1963 Gumrah stage in his career, Ravi (already a full eight years into films) sounded seasoned enough in grappling with the forbidden-fruitful theme, as his Asha-tinted Yeh raaste hain pyaar ke chalna sambhal sambhal ke had Shashikala –lingeringly –lowering her vamping leg into the swimming pool (even as Leela Naidu and Rehman looked on with an alert Alsatian for company). Meriting further notice in the same 1963 gripper is the Rajendra Krishna written Tumjispe nazar daalo us dil kaa khuda haafiz (Rafi going Sunil-solo). Yeh Raaste Hain Pyar Ke, materializing in Sunil Dutt’s anti-hero heyday, made waves in its time –waves with which Ravi rhythmically wafted along.
Yet it is in a laidback 1963 Nanda–Sunil Dutt show, like Vasant Joglekar’s Aaj Aur Kal, that Ravi is to be heard at his soothing best. The royally vulnerable Nanda’s being in a wheelchair, here, gave Ravi just the Sahir-visioned wording he needed to be able to create such delicately crafted numbers, on her, as Maut kitnee bhee sangdil ho magar zindagee se toh meherbaan hogee and Mujhe galey se lagaa lo bahut udaas hoon main. Raag Asavari at its softest is Mujhe galey se lagaa lo, whether you are hearing Asha going solo, on Nanda, or Asha-Rafi dueting on Nanda-Sunil Dutt. Alongside the Mujhe galey se lagaa lo heart-warmer came two characteristic Sunil Dutt-personaized Rafi solos going (vis-à-vis Nanda) as Itnee haseen itnee jawaan raat kyaa karein and Yeh waadiyaan yeh fizzaayein bulaa raheen hain tumhen. In fact, in Aaj Aur Kal, Nanda looks just the hue of heroine suited to Ravi’s mood music, though in real life this lady is one of the sharpest, smartest brains I have encountered. Aaj Aur Kal was a treatment film by Vasant Joglekar on our royalty still hugging fading values (as symbolized by Ashok Kumar) and the wistful way Ravi captured the theme’s spirit, in mellow musical modes, underlined his very special quality of being, each time out, in tune with the narrative. Song-writer, singer, composer –what has Ravi not been in films? Yet not once has the composer in him imposed itself upon the film, either as a song-writer or as a singer. This is what endeared Ravi to makers ranging from Devendra Goel to A. V. Meyappan.
Another musical maker with whom this composer tuned well was Raj Khosla whose Asha Parekh–Manoj Kumar starrer, Do Badan (1966), Ravi ranks among his best three scores –the other two being Guru Dutt’s Chaudhwin Ka Chand (1960) and Vasu Menon’s Bharosa (1963). From Do Badan, Raviis particularly proud of a tune which had, some how, failed to find a place in Gemini’s Gharana (1961). Ravi, in 1966, played the same tune to Raj Khosla, who avidly plumped for it as Rahaa gar dishon mein hardam mere ishq kaa sitaaraa–as it came to be rewritten by Shakeel Badayuni to go on Manoj Kumar in Do Badan. Ravi rates Rahaa gardishon mein hardam to be among his best ever for Rafi. Does Ravi so rate it even compared to his 1963 Asad Bhopali-written Ustadon Ke Ustad Rafi ‘lifetimer’:
Sau baar janam lenge
Sau baar fanaa honge
Ae jaan-e-wafaa phir bhee
Hum tum na judaa honge
Sau baar janam lenge
Sau baar fanaa honge…