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The Talkie in Its Walkie Teens

The enduring appeal of film music lies in the fact that composers from every nook and corner of India gravitate to Bombay, each bringing with him his own style. It is this concentration of the nation’s finest composing talents that brought to film music a rare vintage value.

Unputdownable in his enthusiasm to broadbase the scope of his awards was ‘Sangeetdas’ Brijnarain in whose office we had gathered (in the first week of January 1967) to finalize the panel for the Sur-Singar Samsad’s annual film citations. As we were comparing notes, who should be dropping in but Ustad Amir Khan. Having met him before, I invited his suggestions, whereupon he flared up and asked: ‘But what have these names you’re flaunting to do with music as an art form?’ Saying that, the icon proceeded to strike down film composer after film composer, so that, in the end, we were left with but the names of Naushad Ali, S. N. Tripathi and Vasant Desai. It was only grudgingly that he let us add the name of C. Ramchandra. As a parting shot, he said: ‘But I maintain, these people have nothing to do with real music!’ Ustad Amir Khan’s attitude accurately reflected the thinking of each classical musician, each serious music critic, to the film song, as an entity, as late as the late 1960s. Every other critic, during those days, had formally trained in music so that, to his eyes and ears, the film song was nothing if not a hybrid monstrosity. If any music critic deigned to write on Hindustani film music – as distinct from Hindustani music – it was only in the most deprecatory terms.

No music critic was prepared to give the Hindustani film song a second hearing. The point was totally missed that this was pre-eminently music made to go with the visuals and, to that extent, it imposed severe limitations upon the composer’s creativity. To compress into the bare three minutes of a 78-rpm (revolutions per minute) record what is the joy of a lifetime was, after all, an art given only to a Kundan Lal Saigal or a Noorjehan. Behind K. L. Saigal or Noorjehan was a wide variety of composers who, even while performing in a predominantly commercial setting, were dedicated, in their own way, to their craft. A craft – that is what film music was and is. It is not to be confused with art, per se. Satyajit Ray summed it up precisely when he noted that, even with his limited knowledge of music, he began to compose himself for his films as he needed his scoring to be within a strict time-frame. A point not one of the classical wizards he engaged to score music really grasped. On a trip to Bombay (now Mumbai), Satyajit Ray found the Goan and Anglo-Indian musicians – those providing the orchestral accompaniment to the Hindustani film song – to be the most scientific players in the business. ‘They play no more, no less, than what I want them to do. That is exactly what I wanted and couldn’t ever get from our topmost performing musicians.’

In films, a tune is hewn, not created. It has been so ever since the sound of music came to the Hindustani screen on 14 March 1931 at Majestic Cinema (in the Girgaum sector of South Bombay) through the Alam Ara vocals of Wazir Muhammad Khan singing: De de Khudaa ke naam pe pyaare taaqat ho gar dene kee/Kuchch chaahe agar toh maang le mujh se himmat ho gar lene kee.

That was nearly eight decades ago and it marked the advent of the 1931–46 span, launching an era in which each studio, each banner, had a music director on its permanent staff. This studio-based music director worked from 10 to 5 and, dutifully, collected his pay packet at the end of each month, whether the movie for which he scored the music had 11 songs or 71 – as did Madan Theatres’Indrasabha (starring the legendary Jahanara Kajjan and Master Nissar). Indrasabha (a story told in mime) had a fair share of its 71 songs picturized on the Jahanara Kajjan–Master Nissar pair. Sadly, no records were issued of those 71 songs – the idea of ‘discing’ Hindustani film music was to come later. When Indrasabha arrived in 1932, our films were barely beginning to talk, the hero and the heroine, as must-be singers, were just picking up the first notes of the experimental music score.

It was in such a setting that music became an entity apart in our films. Till then, in the silent movies, the music director – if he could be so called – had been artificially orchestrating the action, on the screen, from inside a ‘hollow’ in front of the makeshift screen. Now he had a whole new section in the talkie studio assigned to him. Under him were men playing a variety of instruments. ‘Music is your department,’ he was told and left to shape it according to his own aesthetics, keeping in mind the still vague needs of The Talkie in India. It was this system of an independent composing section that, in course of time, gave rise to schools of regional music that coalesced – from films in different parts of India – into what we came to know as Hindustani cinesangeet. ‘Hindustani’ because this was the only music that, through All India Radio (Akashvani), reached every nook and cranny of the country.

This Hindustani film music, in its salad years, was distinctly identifiable with that part of India in which it came to be scored. Thus the music of films coming from Lahore in the undivided Punjab was distinguishable as the scoring of either Master Ghulam Haider, or Pandit Amarnath, or Ghulam Ahmed Chishti. The music made by New Theatres in Bengal was perceptible as the handiwork of Rai Chand Boral, or Pankaj Mullick, or Timir Baran. The music emanating from Prabhat in Kolhapur and Poona (now Pune) was instantly to be earmarked as the input of Govindrao Tembe, or Keshavrao Bhole, or Master Krishnarao.

Only in cosmopolitan Bombay, with its multiplicity of studios and banners, did one get music that, albeit subconsciously, ventured to steer clear of the regional stream. This process began with pathfinder Himansu Rai’s search for a nascent composer to head the Music Section of his Bombay Talkies. Probably, given his exposure to the West, he discerned, fairly early, that a different idiom of music would have to be made for his films, based in multilingual Bombay. His quest for this cosmopolitan quality took him to Lucknow’s Marris (today Bhatkhande) College of Music, where he picked up the seniormost pupil, a young Parsee lady called Khorshed Minocher-Homji, as one ideally equipped to give a contemporary flavour to the music of Bombay Talkies. Thus was born India’s first woman music director, one whom Himansu Rai initially christened as Sharada but finally settled on Saraswati Devi. This lady’s job it was to see that the tunes of Bombay Talkies did not have an overlay of Bengal. They had to stand apart from the music that Rai Chand Boral and Pankaj Mullick were already so identifiably pioneering at New Theatres in Calcutta.

The scene from 1931 to roughly 1940 thus belonged, almost exclusively, to the singing-star. Ashok Kumar might have wanted first to be a scientist, but certainly not a singer. He had, willy-nilly, to sing his own songs opposite Devika Rani or Leela Chitnis. ‘It was a real problem bringing either Devika Rani or Ashok Kumar into some kind of sur,’ I recall Saraswati Devi once telling me. ‘Take my very famous duet from Achhut Kanya [1936] – Main ban ki chidiya ban ke ban-ban doloon re. The song might have finally caught your fancy, the way it unfolded on the ruperee [silver] screen, but only I know the problems I had keeping Devika Rani and Ashok Kumar simultaneously in tune!’ Yet the same Ashok Kumar went on to become a charismatic singingstar. He sang on, simplistically, for over a decade – a decade in which our vocal touchstone was Kundan Lal Saigal. Where K. L. Saigal represented ‘The Ultimate in Film Song’, the voice of Ashok Kumar came as a package deal with his special slot as a hero. Only after he had been a reluctant singing-star for close to 11 years did C. Ramchandra, greatly daring, venture to show Ashok his no-mike place. Following a communal riot in Bombay City, on a certain fixed recording date, Ashok Kumar was unable to make it to the suburb of Goregaon, where Filmistan was located. C. Ramchandra promptly replaced him with the ghost voice of a freelance playback performer, Mohammed Rafi, for the Hum ko tumhaara hee aasra number in Filmistan’s Sajan. (A freelance playback as distinct from the singer on the studio’s monthly payroll.)

Rafi’s Hum ko tumhaara hee aasra (on two 78-rpm sides of the N35301 disc) – marginally accompanied by Lalita Dewoolkar on the other side of the two-way record – proved an instant hit. By the time Sajan was released in 1947, the idea of a freelance playback performer had taken root, as a wisp of a girl called Lata Dinanath Mangeshkar was already scouring the studios of Bombay for songs to render – as one who was soon to displace the reigning voices, like Zohrabai Ambalawali, Amirbai Karnataki, Parul Ghose, Rajkumari and, not least, Shamshad Begum.

While they ruled, the singing-stars were monarchs of all they purveyed – even if they were mediocre singers. The Khursheed–Saigal Ranjit Studios phase in our cinema really stands out because most of the other heroes and heroines of the time were not singers at all. But they sang on, all the same, because we looked at the face first, only then heard the voice. You liked Suraiya’s face, so you also fell in love with her voice with its tender tang of Beech bhanwar mein aan phansa hai in hoi-polloi Darbari, as envisioned by Naushad in A. R. Kardar’s Dard (1947). ‘You know, I never wanted to sing, it was Naushad Saab who compelled me to do so,’ admitted Suraiya. ‘Suraiya, she was like blotting paper, she had the gift of absorbing the ‘‘notes’’ exactly as I gave them to her in spite of the fact that she knew no music at all!’ wrote ace composer Khurshid Anwar, after he had stood on the 1936 point of emerging as an ICS officer (no less!) in undivided India. For the same Khurshid Anwar, tending to be intellectually arrogant, Suraiya sang in Parwana (1947) and Singaar (1949), her appeal lying in her lucidity of expression.

It is this lucidity of expression that is the essence of film music as a commercio-art form, whether the performer is Suraiya or Noorjehan, Lata Mangeshkar or Asha Bhosle. Only in a visual medium like films, it is pertinent to remember, could a vocal simpleton like Suraiya take over, as a singing-star, from a performer so accomplished as Malka-e-Tarannum Noorjehan. The truth is that Suraiya had the looks – and her voice, it was at least far better than the vocals of any other young heroine of her time. So much so that she could pass vocal muster opposite even K. L. Saigal in Khurshid Anwar’s Parwana. But even as she reached her 1950 Dastan vocal peak with Nainon mein preet hai, Suraiya sensed that the scene was changing, that she was definitely the last of our singing-stars: ‘I had my first inkling of it when I recorded Naushad’s [1952] Diwana duet, Mere chaand mere laal tum jiyo hazaaron saal, with Lata. Vocally, I saw that I was nowhere near her.’

Anil Biswas tellingly articulated this sea change that had come about in our film music when he said: ‘With the advent of Lata, for the first time I, as a composer, could feel free to create. I could mould the tune in any scale I wanted, confident in the knowledge that Lata would take the murkis [vocal curves] in her stride. The tunes of my Aankhon se door jaa ke from Arzoo [1950]; my Woh din kahaan gaye bataa from Tarana [1951]; my Aankhon mein chitchor samaye from Mehman [1953]; my Allah bhee hai mallaah bhee hai kashtee hai kee doobee jaatee hai from Maan [1954] could not have been conceptualized without the multishaded vocals of Lata Mangeshkar to give them spot expression.’ To the same Anil Biswas goes the credit for being the first of our studio-based composers to discern that his stock of Rabindra Sangeet could take him thus far and no further in the swiftly changing 1940s’ world of films: ‘I was happy with my literary Bengali background, until a tidal wave called Ghulam Haider swept our films, come the’ forties. I tell you, no one shook me as this Punjab innovator did, the way he exploited the vocals of Shamshad Begum in Dalsukh Pancholi’s Khazanchi [1941] to bring us such infectious numbers as Saawan ke nazaare hain aaha aaha; Laut gayee laut gayee paapan andhiyaaree; Divali phir aa gayee sajnee; Ek kalee naazon ki palee; and Peene ke din aaye peeye jaa. Here was something so refreshingly freewheeling that I suddenly felt like a frog in a well. Instinctually I got this feeling that, unless I opened out the windows of my mind, I would remain a very limited composer, one who, in next to no time, would be overtaken by impulses beyond his control. It was thanks to Ghulam Haider that I broadened my mental horizons and readily absorbed the Arabic influence that was going to be the dominant new force in our film music.’

Anil Biswas tuned neither with Shamshad Begum nor with Mohammed Rafi, two voices from the Punjab that were set to determine the shape and substance of Hindustani film music in the years to come. Yet he had the wit to realize that a change, when it comes, just comes. It is upon you even before you realize it. Indeed the history of Hindustani film music shows that, on the silver screen, no composer could ever presume to be King Canute and venture to roll back the waves. Naushad eventually got stuck in a classical groove. C. Ramchandra paid the price for venturing to be a more serious musician after making his name as the Westernizer nonpareil in Hindustani cinema. O. P. Nayyar was swallowed by the very hybridism that he had made his signature tune. Shanker-Jaikishan – prominent through two decades starting 1951 – discovered that they could not, indefinitely, be the arbiters of public taste, fickle at the best of times.

Likewise, come 1991, a similar challenge confronted Laxmikant-Pyarelal, our last link with the era when melody was queen. Once Amitabh Bachchan came to lose his punch, a whole new generation of listeners had grown up. This generation’s musical craving might look, to ‘vintagers’, a craving for vacuity unlimited. Yet a generation has to be recognized for what it is – a generation vibing with, not Alla Rakha, but his son Zakir Husain. Those making music for this ‘Now’ generation might have had even less to do with Ustad Amir Khan’s idea of sangeet than did the Naushads, the Sajjad Husains, the C. Ramchandras, the Roshans, the Burmans and the Madan Mohans.

Awaaz de kahaan hai … An Anmol Ghadi, as ‘Sangeet Samrat’ Naushad
conducts and Malka-e-Tarannum Noorjehan performs during her
February 1981 visit to India

Yaad rakhna … Anil Biswas taught Lata breath control at the mike

Different times, faster trends, so that the name most prominent on the marquee, as I write this, is that of A. R. Rahman, alongside Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. Gone (along with many others) are Rajesh Roshan and Anand-Milind, Jatin-Lalit and Nadeem-Shravan, a breed whose entire music technique was formatted upon the repertoire of Laxmikant-Pyarelal. But then did not Laxmikant-Pyarelal, in their formative years, patent their style upon that of Shanker-Jaikishan? No music might be more imitative than film music. Still, to survive as a composer in films, you have to be intrinsically original. That is why Muhammad Zahoor Khayyam Hashmi is still viable currency after 57 years in the field. He might have initially modelled himself upon Naushad. But only initially. That way Naushad was subtly influencing even someone so creative as Roshan (Roshan Lal Nagrath) in his early tuning. But Roshan swiftly took a grip on himself by evolving his own folk and classical style. Yet your classicism is of value only if you know how to fine-tune it to the peculiar visual needs of instant cinema. Thus the Ahir Bhairav we got from Manna Dey, under Sachin Dev Burman, was exceptional for films in the shape of Puchcho na kaise maine rain bitaayee. But that did not prevent the film, Meri Surat Teri Ankhen (1963), from collapsing at the box office.

In terms of classical background, Manna Dey came to be rated as the best in playback artistry. Yet Manna Dey never quite made it to the top. Why? Because, in the recording room, you have to modulate your classicism to the adolescent needs of mainstream cinema. No one, for instance, came better trained from the South than K. J. Yesudas, a disciple of Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavathar. But, somewhere, Yesudas’s classicism tended to intrude – at least in Hindustani cinema — so that, for all his Ka karun sajnee* virtuosity, he could not quite make the impact that Manna Dey did. In films, you can not wear your classicism as a badge. You have to draw upon this facet of your singing personality only when the theme specially requires you to do so, as the supremely versatile Rafi so resourcefully did, in Baiju Bawra (1952), under the comprehending tutelage of Naushad.

Alternatively, you have to occupy a slot that is vocally clearly identifiable as your own. It was such a distinct slot that gave Talat Mahmood, Mukesh and Hemant Kumar their very special niches. Even Kishore Kumar, while commanding a committed following early on, could make a Rafi-rattling breakthrough only after 20 years in films when, by sheer accident, he discovered a new young audience that empathized with him as the cult voice of Rajesh Khanna. A Rajesh Khanna for whom S. D. Burman composed the Lata–Kishore duet, Koraa kaagaz thha yeh man meraa, with a touch of Raag Pahadi in Aradhana (1969). Yet few in the philistine Aradhana audience knew anything about Raag Pahadi. They just responded to the mood of the song.

It is this ability to capture the mood of the song that determines a music director’s success or failure in films. Only when this mood is captured can the song blend arrestingly with the visuals. Therefore, when you find a whiff of Raag Pahadi in Rafi’s Suhanee raat dhal chukee (from Dulari,1949); of Raag Darbari Kaanada in Mukesh’s Teree duniya mein dil lagtaa nahein (from Bawre Nain,1950); of Raag Nat Bihag in Lata Mangeshkar’s Jhan jhan jhan paayal baaje (from Buzdil, 1951); of Raag Adana in Manna Dey’s Lapak jhapak tuu aa re badarvaa (from Boot Polish,1954); of Raag Tilang in Asha Bhosle’s Chhota sa baalama (from Raagini, 1958); of Raag Sindhura in Talat Mahmood’s Jalte hain jis ke liye (from Sujata, 1959), be sure that, with the composer, the mood came first, the raag after.

Shanker (of the Shanker-Jaikishan team) put it neatly when he once told me: ‘The knowledgeable musician always plays in sur. After that, the tune he is trying to evoke, to match the mood on the screen, could go into any raag. Take my Tuu pyaar ka saagar hai in Seema [1955]. As far as I was concerned, this bhajan’s mood, as mirrored by Balraj Sahni on the screen, was to determine the focus of the theme. For my part, I was essentially concentrating upon creating the mood. In the process, it just so happened that Tuu pyaar ka saagar hai went into Raag Todi. Likewise, it was the tone and temper of Bharat Bhooshan – playing the mood musician in Basant Bahaar [1956] – that I was venturing to reflect when I composed Duniya na bhaaye mohe. Only after composing it did I realize that I had set it in Raag Todi – that Mohammed Rafi would suit the song better than Manna Dey.’

Shanker might have felt the raag is incidental, but Salil Chowdhury had an extreme viewpoint here: ‘I studiously try to avoid employing any distinct emphasis on any raag while scoring the background music of a film. My function here, as a musician, is to reflect the mood of the moment, nothing more. Background music has, at all times, to be unobtrusive, merely accenting something you are already viewing on the screen. If therefore I employ a distinct raag to communicate the mood of the moment, it can take the viewer’s mind away from what he is seeing on the screen. This certainly is not the function of background music.’

Naushad, on the other hand, took exactly the opposite view, averring: ‘I wasn’t thinking of the listener, I was only thinking of the character, when I composed Bekas pe karam keejiye to go on Madhubala in Mughal-e-Azam [1960] based on Raag Kedara. I knew that, so long as my tune matched Madhubala’s agonized character on the screen, the song would be accepted by the viewer-listener, whether or not he knew it to be in Raag Kedara. To me therefore it does not matter, yet it does matter, whether you, the viewer, recognize Rafi to be performing in Raag Jaijaiwanti when his vocals sit so pat on Dilip Kumar as Mohabbat kee raahon mein chalnaa sambhal ke in Uran Khatola [1955]. As a music director, you have necessarily to draw upon our classical tradition. But you have, at all times, to do so thinking of the sequence; of its place in the matrix of the theme; of the mood in which you have to capture the character. For instance, in Mughal-e-Azam, everyone kept asking me whether I could, even on Madhubala, match the effect already created by C. Ramchandra, on Bina Rai as Anarkali [1953], through Yeh zindagee usee kee hai. But I, for my part, thought of only Madhubala – not of Bina Rai– as Anarkali. The picture of Madhubala as Anarkali – parted for ever from her Salim – thus became etched in my mind. Once Madhubala became so transfixed, I had no difficulty in wrapping her in the Raag Yaman mantle of Khudaa nigehbaan ho tumhaara. For anyone to suggest that my Raag Yaman is misplaced here is to ignore the pull of our classical tradition, which alone accounts for the sustained appeal of my tunes through 60 years.’

How composed as a class they look – (L to R): Roshan, Jaikishan, Anil
Biswas, Hemant Kumar, C. Ramchandra, sitar prodigy Mohammed Shafi,
Naushad and Madan Mohan

Naushad represents tradition, Salil Chowdhury symbolizes modernity, yet there is a place for both in films. The enduring appeal of film music lies in the fact that composers from every nook and corner of India gravitate to Bombay, each bringing with him his own style. It is this concentration of the nation’s finest composing talents that has brought to our film music a rare vintage value, thus creating a distinct culture.

Dr B. V. Keskar, as India’s Information and Broadcasting Minister (starting 26 January 1950), viewed this culture as a disturbing social influence, so he virtually banished film music from Akashvani (All India Radio). The outcome was the advance of first Radio Goa and then Radio Ceylon. The crass commercialization that our film music consequently underwent brutalized it to a point of no return. For the first time, around 1956, music directors even began to pay for the farmaishing of their own songs on the alien radio station. C. Ramchandra was aghast at this turn of events. Said he: ‘I come up with what I think is an original blend in Dil kee duniyaa basaa ke saanwariya for Amar Deep [1958]. I proceed to record the number in Lata’s voice. From the recording room, my tune moves to the radio station. At this point, I reason that the verdict has passed into the custody of the listener. I have to respect the listener’s verdict, whether it is for or against, since I perform in a mass medium like films. But if I have to pay to hear my own song over the radio, where is the joy in having conjured the tune? Sorry, I can’t pay to hear my own song playing.’

Fair enough. Yet those who paid forged ahead; those who demurred got left behind. Akashvani itself woke up to the rude reality of Radio Ceylon and tried to retrieve lost ground with the introduction of Vividh Bharati on 3 October 1957. But the damage was already done. Music had come to be ruled by the market forces. ‘Pay and play’ became the juke-box trend. The cut-throat competition, the omnipresent call to ‘perform’ on Radio Ceylon and the media blitz led by Ameen Sayani in his sponsored programmes, put new pressures on music directors to show spot results. No longer could a song grow on you. The stage, suddenly, belonged to the man who could make instant music.

It was in such a forbidding milieu that Rai Chand Boral and Pankaj Mullick came down from Calcutta to find themselves to be total misfits in the freebooting freelance atmosphere that prevailed in ‘artless’ Bombay. Minus the crutch of New Theatres – where they could work in peace and collect their monthly salaries on the dot – both these trendsetters found themselves to be powerless in Bombay’s Beauty Jungle, their wells of inspiration soon drying up. For it was the ability to sell music, rather than the skill to score music, that determined a composer’s standing in the quicksands of Bombay’s filmdom. Of the old guard, only Ghulam Haider managed to grasp his true value in a fiercely competitive set-up. Alternating between Lahore and Bombay after Partition, at the time he came down to score for Filmistan’s Shaheed (Dilip Kumar-Kamini Kaushal), Ghulam Haider straightway demanded, as early as 1948, a fee of Rs 50,000 and got it. This when Naushad, though already No. 1, was still content to collect a monthly stipend from Kardar Studios. ‘You were responsible for the trail-blazing music of Rattan [1944],’ Ghulam Haider told Naushad. ‘Yet, tell me, how much did you get for the effort?’ When Naushad confessed that he had done Rattan for Rs 8000, Ghulam Haider taunted: ‘You Bombay composers, you don’t know your own true value. I just come down from Lahore and collect Rs 50,000 for a film. While you slog it out, producing hit after hit, for a pittance.’

The shot went home. Naushad, by 1950, started to charge a lakh of rupees for a film and C. Ramchandra, with Azaad in 1955, began to command the same price. O. P. Nayyar took this price zooming up to Rs 150,000, following his 1957 Naya Daur windfall, before Shanker-Jaikishan raised the peak to a staggering Rs 250,000. The irony was that, while the top three or four set their own prices, S. D. Burman, Roshan and Madan Mohan were still, each, worth – in the purely commercial eyes of this industry – no more than Rs 20,000 for a film. Your price was determined by the number of silver jubilees you gave, not by the number of quality tunes you produced. But all of them worked diligently to produce music that, in its totality, cast a spell. They worked in the Golden Age of Melody – in contrast to the Golden Age of Mediocrity through which we are passing today.

Such was the impact of the music made in the 1946–57 span that there were, by 1953, whole groups of listeners, like me, who put in a solid six hours of Radio Ceylon listening – morning and evening taken together. While going through this rewarding ritual each day, I discovered that, minus its meretricious value, there was something in Hindustani film music that stayed in the recesses of my mind. Even today, I find that each worthwhile song I heard then has a time, a place and a niche in my memory – as it is a part of the mindscape of millions. That is why you cannot dismiss Hindustani film music, as Dr B. V. Keskar did, as cacophonous ventriloquism. It is music that lives, in my mind and heart, 60 years after it was audio-visualized. Any music that abides for decades and more, surely, has a place in history? As part of this tune history, the moment I hear Shaam-egham kee qasam from Footpath (1953), I am transported to another era altogether. To an era when Talat Mahmood was king and the ghazal his queen.

Nostalgia is a hazardous trip, I know. Did Pothan Joseph not warn that the most dangerous stage in a writer’s life is when he begins to preface his thoughts with ‘I remember …?’ But what if I still cannot help remembering? What if I cannot help recalling the case history of each golden melody as it comes over the air? Surely I have a right to stay with such history that is not going to repeat itself? Stay with Dil Ek Mandir as 1963-history made by the Shailendra–Shanker-Jaikishan– Rafi combo as:

Yaad na jaaye beete dinon kee
Jaa ke na aaye jo din
Dil kyon bulaaye unhein
Dil kyon bulaaye…

* From Swami (1977), based by Rajesh Roshan on the Bade Ghulam Ali Khan thumri.