… in Mughal-e-Azam, Dilip Kumar had reason to articulate anew his oft-stated plaint that Naushad reserved his best songs for his heroine. It is a measure of Dilip Kumar’s performing stature that he left such a lasting impress, in Mughal-e-Azam as in Amar, with no direct musical support from Naushad.
Reinvent herself she could not –because of an abiding heart condition–in front of her very first (1947) Neel Kamal hero, Raj Kapoor, playing Chalaak opposite her in the mid-60s. After just a day’s brief shooting, she never turned up again. Away from it all, Venus Madhubala was keenly watching, at home on the projector, the Mohe panghat pe Nandlal chhed gayo re song sequence from Mughal-e-Azam (1960). Kishore Kumar (Ganguly) naturally resented his beauteous wife’s still viewing, time and again, thespian Dilip Kumar in the film. The point Kishore Kumar had to make to his Madhubala was straightforward. He would rather have his vivacious wife watching, via the same projector, her husband enacting Haal kaisaa hai janaab kaa opposite his wife in Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi (1958).
It was as a cloudburst that Madhubala descended upon the Mughal-e-Azam screen, as pictured through the Sheesh Mahal prism that even today has cinegoers marvelling at the technical virtuosity that K. Asif attained 50 years ago. Aptly did Madhubala come to us, in that epic scene, as Jab pyaar kiyaa toh darnaa kyaa in Raag Megh. As this number unwound on the silver screen, with Prithviraj Kapoor as Akbar on one side and Dilip Kumar as Salim on the other, there was in between, somewhere and everywhere, Madhubala as Anarkali, spinning a Jab pyaar kiyaa toh web all her own.
By way of instant countenance comparison, over to Aishwarya Rai and Jodhaa Akbar. In fact –as in fiction –the 2008 Jodhaa Akbar connection enjoys the visual sanction of so many Anarkali remakes that I really saw no ‘Rajputani’ controversy here. In fact, the beauty of being Ash, with no grey areas in the screen development of her role by Ashutosh Gowariker, stood out from the word go. Jodhaa, in Mughal-e-Azam, opposite Prithviraj Kapoor as Akbar, was, of course, Durga Khote, looking a picture of regal dignity. While, in Filmistan’s 1953 Anarkali, it had been Sulochana (Anglo-Indian Ruby Mayers in real life), still impressive of gait, playing Jodhaa to Mubarak’s Akbar. In fact, before so strikingly scoring as Salim Pradeep Kumar’s Rajput mother, Sulochana had distinguished herself, in her heroine-peak days, as Anarkali, not once but twice. First as Anarkali in the 1928 silent movie. Then as Anarkali in the 1935 talkie era. D. Bilimoria was her Salim both times. Directing Sulochana, in these two Anarkali productions of Ardeshir (Alam Ara) Irani, was R. S. Choudhury.
You think controversy surrounded only Jodhaa Akbar? Let us then rewind to K. Asif’s announcing, in 1944 itself, Nargis in the plum role of Anarkali, with Anil Biswas composing the ambitious ‘period’ film’s music. Opposite Nargis, in Salim’s garb, was Sapru, that young lady’s Kashmiri leading man-to-be in Romeo & Juliet (1947). Akbar was to be played by Chandramohan of the fiery eyes. Nargis even donned make-up at Bombay Talkies Studios for this Anarkali role. But Partition saw K. Asif drop the whole idea, as Shiraz Ali Hakim, the Anarkali-theme originator, moved to Pakistan. When K. Asif revived the grand ‘period’ project in 1952, Nutan replaced Nargis in the Anarkali title role, while ‘Mauseeqaar-e-Azam’ Naushad, as a bigger crowd-puller by then, came into the picture in place of Anil Biswas. But Nutan, slim and still lacking vim, insisted she looked a misfit as Anarkali; she felt the role should be reverting to Nargis as her senior. This when Malka-e-Tarannum Noorjehan was to make bold to play the title role of Anarkali (music: Rashid Attre) as late as 1958 in a Pakistan film! By the same token, if Suraiya had materialized, by 1954, as Chaudhvin Begum in Mirza Ghalib, Noorjehan retained the singing-star ‘privilege’, inside Pakistan, to do Ghalib (music: Tassaduq) while moving into 1961.
In India, alongside K. Asif in 1952, Kamal Amrohi announced his own Anarkali with Meena Kumari in the title role! Amidst all this rolled-gold rush, Filmistan chief S. Mukerji quietly picked Bina Rai as his Max-Factory Anarkali, following that willowy collegian’s sensational 1951 Kali Ghata debut as Sonia. Sashadhar Mukerji’s seasoned director, Nandlal Jashwantlal, a master at shot composition, completed the film in record time for Filmistan’s Anarkali to release in the first week of January 1953. Its ear-arresting music was scored by none other than our fastest composer, C. Ramchandra. This while K. Asif and Kamal Amrohi were still installing their first sets. Lata Mangeshkar turned Filmistan’s Anarkali into an all-time screen legend.
Halim Jaffer it was playing the rapturous sitar, as Yeh zindagee usee kee hai unrolled in the Kaafi thhaat –in the sense that the komaldhaivat is in Kaafi, from where C. Ramchandra had Lata smoothly sliding into Raag Kirvani, finally to settle in Raag Bhimpalasi. Did anything created by A. R. Rahman, on Aishwarya Rai as Jodhaa, match Yeh zindagee usee kee hai as it unwound on Bina Rai? Your gush is as good as mine.
If A. R. Rahman wondered how his music would be accepted in Jodhaa Akbar, Naushad spent similar anxious moments after K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam finally mounted the screen in the first week of August 1960. His concern, as the Madhubala-centric classic became a point of national debate, arose from the fact that Ameen Sayani, in the Binaca Geetmala, had remained a monument of inaction through two Wednesday-weeks following Mughal-e-Azam’s advent. This was when K. Asif sent for Ameen Sayani and let him have an earful about the quality of music obtaining in his extravaganza. Outcome–Naushad and Mughal-e-Azam instantly surfaced on the Binaca Geetmala scene (during the Wednesday ‘8 p.m.’ following), with the Shakeel Badayuni-written, Madhubala still-in-chains beauty, Mohabbat kee jhootee kahanee pe roye.
If Madhubala’s standing up histrionically to Dilip Kumar came as a revelation in Mughal-e-Azam, the film was no less remarkable for the fact that it had Prince Salim going songless, even as Bade Ghulam Ali Khan vocalized (from the background) Prem jogan ban ke (Raag Sohani in the Marwa thhaat), during that memorable Anarkali–Salim, Madhubala– Dilip romancing sequence. Dilip Kumar had gone through a similar bewilderingly songless experience with Naushad in Mehboob’s Amar, six years earlier. Then, Naushad had made up for it by so voice-casting Mohammed Rafi–in his pet Raag Bhairavi mode of Insaaf ka mandir hai yeh Bhagvaan kaa ghar hai–as for the ‘Tragedy King’ to become audio-visually Amar in the 1954 Mehboob film. But, in Mughal-e-Azam, Dilip Kumar had reason to articulate a new his oft-stated plaint that Naushad reserved his best songs for his heroine. It is a measure of Dilip Kumar’s performing stature that he left such a lasting impress, in Mughal-e-Azam as in Amar, with no direct musical support from Naushad.
I did ask Naushad if a Mohammed Rafi solo going on Dilip Kumar was not considered in the film. ‘It was,’ revealed Naushad, ‘and composing something for Rafi to match my seven Madhubala-oriented creations for Lata in that landmark film would have been a challenge –a challenge I would have welcomed. But K. Asif felt that he just could not thematically fit in a Rafi solo on Prince Salim.’ To compare Dilip Kumar as Prince Salim with Pradeep Kumar (doing that parallel role in Anarkali) would be to indulge in sadistic grotesquerie. Yet the odd fact remains that there was no C. Ramchandra composition viewed to be going, directly, on Pradeep Kumar, either, in Filmistan’s Anarkali. Hemant Kumar’s Zindagee pyaar kee do chaar ghadee hotee hai (in Raag Khamaj), towards the end of the film, is purely atmospheric, seeing how it comes from the background, via Bina Rai-Pradeep Kumar, in the boat sequence. In the aristocratic voice of the same Hemant Kumar, we have Ae baad-e-sabaa aahistaa chal, unfolding rather abruptly –via the Anarkali credit-titles! Cinematically, Nandlal Jashwantlal’s Anarkali is not a patch on K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam. And, technologically, the beauty of viewing Ash-Hrithik Roshan, in such tender Jodhaa Akbar love, is what results in Madhubala-Dilip Kumar’s just refusing to date in Mughal-e-Azam!
Mughal-e-Azam’s golden jubilee remains a misty reminder of our marvellous Bohra technicians sitting down to hand-colour, meticulously, each frame of Jab pyaar kiyaa toh darnaa kyaa. This Naushad–Shakeel dainty, bringing us an old Poorbi strand of thought, is but a delicious detail forming a part of our Madhubala-viewing folklore. But Mughal-e-Azam’s diamond jubilee it is, at Bombay’s Maratha Mandir, that now has me rewardingly rewinding. It saw two fresh Lata lovelies added to the shimmery show. First, in the Madhubalancing’ Raag Yaman shape of Humein kaash tum se mohabbat na hotee, a number one never stopped hearing in the Radio Ceylon farmaish format, as Madhubala looked a vision afresh. By way of a second diamond jubilee offering, unveiled the ultra-cute Raag Bihag beguiler, Ae ishq yeh sub duniyaa waale bekaar kee baatein karte hain, lilted by Lata on Sheila Dalaya, so disarmingly mischievous in her playing of Anarkali’s sakhee-sister Suraiya in the film. What crafting by K. Asif, as Sheila invites Durjan Singh Ajit to fall in love (‘Mohabbat kar ke dekhiye!’) to conquer all fear of being caught!
There are those who even today argue that Naushad’s Raag Yaman tuning with Madhubala, via Khudaa nigehbaan ho tumhaara, did not quite match C. Ramchandra’s immortalizing Bina Rai as Anarkali in a Raag Bhimpalas vein of Alwidaa Alwidaa Alwidaa Alwidaa … It is a matter of opinion. But what is indisputable is that Naushad made Madhubala look evergreen, in black-and-white, via Humein kaash tum se mohabbat na hotee. Unless you argue that there is nothing more provocative than Anarkali Madhubala’s looking a veritable gopi arrayed in Naushadian Gaara, tantalizingly teasing Salim Dilip Kumar as Mohe panghat pe Nandlal chhed gayo re. The Janmashtami setting, noted Naushad, was K. Asif’s idea. But Naushad’s imagery it was to turn Mohe panghat pe into a choral number with sisters Meena Mangeshkar and Usha Mangeshkar accompanying Lata –a fact little known. Naushad, initially, set this Madhubala beauty in Raag Pilu, which naturally slipped into Raag Gaara with as many as ten sitars in different octaves. What grabs our aural attention, here, is the transcendental way Pannalal Ghose comes through on the flute. No less misty, in our moony mindset, is Yeh dil kee lagee kam kyaa hogee, the way it is framed in Raag Jaijaiwanti by Naushad. Reflect upon each antaraa (stanza), here, carrying a different tune–according to the evening mood prevailing–and the audio-visual Mughal-e-Azam experience is complete. Madhubala as the true-blue Anarkali and Dilip Kumar as the full-blooded Salim do look made for each other, don’t they? The twosome’s being in love off-screen, too, is part of our cine lore.
Does Mughal-e-Azam revisited suggest that the memory of Dilip Kumar abided, in Madhubala’s ailing heart, as her pet love? As Tarana, Madhubalahad certainly looked Dilip Kumar’s 1951 ‘match’ as she dueted with him in tones of Seene mein sulagte hain armaan – the Lata–Talat duet tuned by Anil Biswas, the man originally set to score K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam (then titled Anarkali). On the same Tarana Madhubala, Lata’s Beimaan tore nainva nindiyaa na aaye is compositional proof that Anil Biswas, very likely, would have left his own distinctive stamp on the music of K. Asif’s Anarkali. On even Nargis as Anarkali? Remember, K. Asif had told his original Anarkali that he would opt for Madhubala, in Mughal-e-Azam, only after Nargis refused the role. Yes, there would have been no Madhubala, as Anarkali, if Nargis had nodded assent!
Musically speaking, did then Majrooh Sultanpuri have a point when he told me in all seriousness that, in terms of sheer spontaneity and sustained quality, Naushad’s Mughal-e-Azam score had failed to match C. Ramchandra’s music in Anarkali? Majrooh certainly believed that no composer excelled Anil Biswas’s one-time assistant, C. Ramchandra, in articulating the Anarkali theme. Naushad had himself graciously conceded: ‘I knew that, unless my songs went on an ethereal beauty like Madhubala, they had no chance in the face of the fine tunes created by C. Ramchandra to go on the beauteous visage of Bina Rai.’ Majrooh or no Majrooh, the music made by Naushad in Mughal-e-Azam carries a Madhubala tang all its own.
Na miltaa gham toh….
The Naushad song at Lata’s fingertips
Now let us see how it compares with Naushad’s one-time chief assistant Ghulam Mohammed’s oral score for Kamal Amrohi’s Pakeezah (Naushad did the film’s background music)? On the 31st day of March 1972, a very sick Meena Kumari passed into legend, giving a rare impetus, at the box office, to Pakeezah. Sentimentally overlooked, overnight, was the fact that Meena Kumari appeared well past her prime while enacting something musically so compelling as Thaade rahiyo o baanke yaar re– set in Rajasthani Maand by Ghulam Mohammed as one hailing from that part of India. Yet the one Pakeezah memory enduring –of Meena Kumari’s still looking stunning enough –is via Inhein logon ne, inhein logon ne, inhein logon ne le leena dupatta meraa, so superbly orchestrated. Cast in Raag Yaman was her crucial Pakeezah Sahib Jaan ‘runaway’ number opposite Raaj Kumar, coming over, as written by Kamal Amrohi himself, in satin-smooth Lata tones of Mausam hai aashiqaana.
Yet Meena Kumari, in Mausam hai aashiqaana, sadly looked a near negation of Yaman as the sampoorna raag. In a similar Raag Yaman setting created by Naushad in Amar, would not the still slim-and-trim Meena Kumari have impacted as an eye-holding beauty, in 1954, lip-synching Lata’s Jaane waale se mulaqaat na hone paayee? But that Yaman heart wrencher, evidently, was predestined to unveil on Madhubala who upon hearing it, on the sets of Amar, instantly burst into tears, moved by the thought content behind Shakeel Badayuni’s lyricizing the wispy Naushad tune. How surpassingly lovely is the snow-white Madhubala image to hug, the way Faredoon Irani’s camera captures the breath-taking beauty! Meena Kumari too, I feel, would have certainly scored tellingly, if only she had not quit Amar in frenzy, saying she wanted Nimmi’s Soniya role in the film. In effect, the Amar Yaman that Meena Kumari wanted, going on her rather than on Nimmi, was nothing less than Na miltaa gham toh barbaadee ke afsaane kahaan jaate. But Nimmi had a special niche in Mehboob Khan’s heart. ‘No way was Meena Kumari going to seize Nimmi’s role in Amar,’ Naushad told me. ‘Mehboob wove the Amar plot around the persona of Nimmi as his Soniya.’ Lata’s Na miltaa gham, going on a Nimmi looking touchingly forlorn, is the superior Naushadian Yaman bringing out all the traumatized agony of Soniya– a Soniya now looking ravishing, now ravished. Our thespian –even while succumbing to the impulse of the moment upon viewing Soniya as being rain-washed during that rain-lashed night –was at his moody best in Amar. Lyrically-musically, the Shakeel–Naushad teaming was as impressive in Amar as had been the Majrooh–Naushad Words and Music alliance in Mehboob’s Andaz. For all that, Naushad chose not to stay with Majrooh after Andaz ran for a full six months, and more, at Bombay’s Liberty (starting March 1949). Just as Naushad had, after achieving that 1944 Rattan diamond-jubilee breakthrough with Dina Nath Madhok, decided to delink from that famous song-writer. In that 1944 instance, the problem was Madhok’s spelling out the tunes, too, for his own lyrics on a well-rounded tin of 50 cigarettes! Being numero uno, Naushad had already transfixed Shakeel Badayuni as the young poet he could mould to his musical weave.
Thaade rahiyo o baanke yaar re was tuned in Rajasthani Maand by
Ghulam Mohammed (left) for Kamal Amrohi (right) to turn
Pakeezah (1972) into a Meena swan song
Majrooh, being a true freelance, was a match to any poet in films. Yet even he developed a complex about Sahir Ludhianvi. When I commended Majrooh upon the sheer flair he had brought to that Roshan ghazal’s emerging as Rehte thhe kabhee jin ke dil mein (as picturized on Suchitra Sen in Mamta, 1966), Majrooh surprised me by observing: ‘Still I’mnot as popular as Sahir, am I?’ Majrooh had written the Mohammed Rafi-sung Ab kyaa misaal doonmain tumhaare shabab kee, for Roshan, to extol Aarti Meena Kumari in literary hues calculated to match Sahir–Rafi’s Zindagee bhar nahein bhulegee woh (Barsaat Ki Raat), vivifying Madhubala. But Meena Kumari as Aarti, by 1962, hardly came through as the scale of beauty Madhubala had looked in Barsaat Ki Raat (October 1960). To this extent, Majrooh’s Ab kyaa misaal doon… suffered on the visage of Meena Kumari in comparison with Sahir’s Zindagee bhar nahein bhulegee …on the countenance of Madhubala.
Sahir Ludhianvi, a couple of years later, in a totally unforeseen change of poetic guard, was commissioned to write the song-lyrics, for Naushad, in Dilip Kumar’s Leader (1964), set to be made under the S. Mukerji Film Syndicate banner. After just one Leader sitting in mid-1962, Naushad had to make it clear to Dilip Kumar and S. Mukerji that he just could not tune with Sahir. ‘Yeh sub yahaan nahein chalegaa!’ (‘All this will not work with me!’) stormed Naushad in that straight showdown with Sahir. That super poet, in penning the song-lyric in question, had studiedly garbed it – revealed a chagrined Naushad–as: Ek shahenshah ne daulat ka sahaara le kar/Hum gharibon kee mohabbat ka udaaya hai mazaaq …
Mere mehboob kahein aur milaa kar mujhse… was Sahir’s Naushad cutting further line of thinking! This Sahir sentiment ran radically counter to even Dilip Kumar’s grandiloquently Mughalized outlook. Sahir, expediently, had invoked the Leader theme (of socialism vs princedom) to go Marxist-Leninist in his anti-Naushad ‘line’ of lyricizing. Sahir’s ‘have not’ idea– as Naushad put it tome –was to annoy, as a ‘have’, that stately composer from the word go. Dilip Kumar, who had been the force behind Sahir’s Leader-teaming with Naushad, should have known that Sahir’s leftism would not wash with a Naushad right there with royalty! At this critical point, the Leader film’s influential distributors, still fascinated by Naushad’s jubilee name, ruled that this yeoman composer should be allowed to have his way by S. Mukerji, even during mid-1962, in persuasive consultation with Dilip Kumar–in the wake of Gunga Jumna. As gentle a hint as any, from the movie moneybags, to let Naushad be!
Telling proof, this, that Naushad wanted only a poet of his choice, more than ever before, at that Leader-launching point. His Sahir substitute, eminently predictably, turned out to be his very own Shakeel Badayuni. Naushad-Shakeel–the two formed a combo yielding a music trove best epitomized as: ‘For Your Ears Only’. Shakeel wrote well, very well, in English too, though there his concentration was purely on prose! He lived close to Naushad to be on ready call. In fact, Shakeel, Naushad and Rafi resided within a mutually convenient radius. If you passed Padmashree Mohammed Rafi Marg, could Sangeet Samrat Naushad Ali Marg be far away? That is what Carter Road, where Naushad’s ‘Ashiana’ bungalow is snugly located, became – to mark the mauseeqaar’s second death anniversary on 5 May 2008.
A sentimental journey Down Melody Lane is what ‘Ashiana’ is for me. For it was there Naushad illuminingly told me: ‘You already have such a fine grip on cinesangeet. Why don’t you add to it the raagdaari part to make your repertoire complete?’ I had been, all along, conscious of this major lacuna in my music writing.
Naushad’s ‘Ashiana’ is where I determined that I would acquire at least a basic knowledge of raags and raaginis. I must have been to Naushad’s ‘Ashiana’ music room any number of times. Each time I came away with my musical landscape enriched. The piano occupying a nook, in his music room, was a reminder that he had launched himself as an instrumentalist in this industry at Rs 40 a month. From such humble beginnings did Naushad become the first music director to charge one lakh rupees for a film and build a bungalow of his own, complete with a music room –a music room to which Lata, Asha, Rafi, et al, came to rehearse. ‘At a social level, I would call on them any number of times,’ insisted Naushad. ‘But, for rehearsals, even Lata’s got to come to this room.’ Naushad once revealed how thoroughly he had rehearsed Lata, in that room, for the 1966 Dil Diya Dard Liya classic, Phir teree kahaanee yaad aayee, going on Waheeda Rehman. Here was a rare blue-mood exploitation of Raag Maand excelling even Naushad’s Bachpan kee mohabbat ko dil se na judaa karnaa on a more vulnerable-looking Meena Kumari in Baiju Bawra (1952).
A R. Kardar’s 1949 Dulari (with Madhubala in the title role) was the film with which Naushad was heard to shift major vocal gear. Here, for the first time, while the two songs on the semi-vamping Geeta Bali were by his 1948 golden jubilee Mela scorer, Shamshad Begum, no fewer than six Lata solos, alongside one chorus-backed Lata number and two Lata–Rafi duets, were –significantly for the Mangeshkar as early as1949 –picturized on Madhubala playing Dulari.
It was a major voice switch by a Naushad grown commercially powerful enough to set the vocal norm for other composers to follow. From among the Lata solos just noted, Naushad one soiree-evening warmed to my identification of Ae dil tujhe qasam hai tuu himmat na haarna (going on Dulari Madhubala) as being cast in his typical Raag Bhairavi. At least Naushad correctly identified Ae dil tujhe qasam hai as being from Dulari. For there was the shock hour in which, as we played Lata’s Mar gaye hum jeete jee and Jo main jaantee bisarat hai saiyyan, he named those two 1954 Lata enrapturers as being from the 1951 Deedar! ‘How on earth, Naushad Saab,’ I wondered, ‘when it is on Nutan, in your own M. Sadiq-collaborated 1954 production, Shabab, that Lata explores those Raag Maand notes?’ Naushad reflected before responding: ‘Yes, on Nutan in Shabab it is–as you say. Remember, I compose and I dispose. You impose restraints on me by expecting me to remember the film’s name all the time, all the way!’
That piano in the ‘Ashiana’ corner catches my attention yet again (during a pleasantly drizzling June 1971 afternoon) and I persuade Naushad to play a few notes for the spot delectation of the brother-sister team of Giridhari Dore and Nirupama Subramanyam (his sworn fans from Udaipur) accompanying me. Such is Naushad’s piano wizardry, after all those years, that his playing leaves Nirupama-Giridhari tonguetied, as the Mukeshian notes flow, in a ‘key’ stream, as Hum aaj kahein dil kho baithe, Tu kahe agar jeevan bhar, Toote na dil toote na and Jhoom jhoom ke naacho aaj. Nirupama and Giridhari can but stare at that piano in thrall, overwhelmed by the playing-composing magic enduring in Naushad’s tapering fingers. They would have continued staring thus, if Naushad had not got up, saying: ‘Remember, I’m slightly out of practice!’ Out of practice? Out of this world the man had sounded to Nirupama-Giridhari! That piano, the three of us, Nirupama, Giridhari and I, mentally carried with us, as we took Naushad’s leave. Today, nearly three decades later, I look, longingly, at that piano Naushad has left behind as his priceless heritage. Eldest son Rahman Naushad, now occupying the music room, is one well versed in his father’s ornate art. He is one who knows that piano’s true value. It is a Naushad piano that just plays on in our head and heart:
Tuu kahe agar jeevan bhar main geet sunaata jaaon …
Naushad started out as a pianist and some of his finest
tunes were done on the piano
Ae husn zaraa jaag tujhe ishq jagaaye
Ae husn zaraa jaag tujhe ishq jagaaye
Badle meree taqdeer jo tuu hosh mein aaye …*
* Mohammed Rafi on a Rajendra Kumar singing of ‘Husna’ Sadhana in the Naushad-composed Mere Mehboob (1963).