Naushadnama

Naushad was obsessed with carving a career in music from his earliest years. He was interested in no play; only in playing musical instruments. And Naushad played it by the ear. (As detailed in Chapter 18, he raptly watched one Laddan Sahab orchestrating the silent movie at Lucknow’s Royal Cinema.)

He had been born into a highly conservative Muslim family, at Kandhari Bazar in Lucknow; his father Waheed Ali, a court munshi, being deadly against music as not likely to provide his son with a living. Their home was as good as next door to Lucknow’s Royal Cinema, where the music that accompanied the silent film, as conducted by Laddan Sahab, was Naushad’s early inspiration. From Waheed Ali’s abode, located between Aminabad Market and Nazar Bagh, young Naushad would trudge to S. Bhondu & Sons, a big music shop on Lucknow’s La Touche Road. It was a place to which Naushad was repeatedly drawn as a teenager. (See also Chapter 18.)

An encounter with the shop’s proprietor, Ghurbat Ali, proved fortuitous. Ghurbat Ali had seen this 15-year-old coming to the shop each day and standing outside, just watching the variety of instruments showcased there. Upon Ghurbat Ali enquiring as to how noble his intentions were, Naushad had responded: ‘Let me just sit for a while in your shop, sir, I am prepared to serve you in whichever capacity you desire.’

Ghurbat Ali found young Naushad to be serious and diligent. So much so that he soon entrusted to Naushad the responsibility of opening the shop an hour before he arrived (by taking the key from a source close by). Naushad would come to the place early in the morning and tidy up things. The music-adoring one’s idea of how to ‘tidy up things’ included trying his nimble hand at instrument after instrument inside the shop. Proprietor Ghurbat Ali once caught Naushad so lost in playing the shop piano that, after a mock chiding, he appreciatively presented the youngster with a much less expensive musical instrument.

From Ghurbat Ali’s brother, sitar player Yusuf Ali, Naushad learned valuable lessons. As Yusuf Ali trained him to play the sitar, he also gave the youngster certain vital musical contacts through which Naushad could venture to try and pick up the rudiments of composing.

Later, he learnt from Babban Saheb how to play the harmonium, soon becoming adept at repairing that keyboard instrument. He drew his early lessons in Urdu poetry from Umar Ansari. His knowledge of classical music and raagdaari, he said, evolved entirely from insights into Laddan Sahab improvising – on the spot – the music to go with the scene, even with a classically oriented musical scene.

The youngster, as a logical follow-up, tested his skill, vaguely, at composing for certain amateur plays. Side by side, those music shop people made a valiant attempt to have a dialogue with Naushad’s father about the boy’s inclinations – only to be rebuffed by Waheed Ali.

There was, in Lucknow, this Hero’s Association of Graduates and Lawyers; Naushad became its sole ‘non-qualifying’ member given his musical prowess. These were influential folk in Lucknow and, through their good offices, Naushad formed a club of his own called Windsor Music Entertainers. Already, the lad had made it a ritual to try and reproduce, in the shop on various instruments, the tunes that he had heard Laddan Sahab creating – to go with the silent films. Ghurbat Ali had spoken about his musical flair to Laddan Sahab, even getting that highly resourceful composer, secretly, to watch Naushad playing. What Laddan Sahab heard prompted him to create a strategic Royal Cinema seating position, just behind him, for Naushad to be able to follow his impromptu artistry better.

Meanwhile, Windsor Music Entertainers was beginning to acquire an identity of its own. That instrument gifted by Ghurbat Ali, in the circumstances, had become an acquisition all the more to value. Even while carefully hiding it from his father – who still saw no place for music in his son’s future – Naushad quietly began playing on the thing at home too. Waheed Ali, eagle-eyed, one day surprised his ‘no-good’ son, so playing, and just stamped upon the instrument. He proceeded sharply to ask his heart-broken son as to why he was observed to be omnipresent at the Royal Cinema (next door). In short, as to why he was seen to be everywhere in Lucknow city except at school, where he lagged hopelessly behind. Naushad had no answer to that, so that he received the hiding of his life.

Still he would be invariably returning home after stopping to hear all the music orchestrated by Laddan Sahab at the Royal Cinema. The doors of his home were slammed shut by 8 p.m.; it would be beyond 9 p.m. by the time the lad got back. Thus, almost every other night, he would fall foul of his father.

His mother, Marium, would quietly come to his rescue and see to it that at least the lad did not go to bed hungry. Marium never forgot how, at the age of three, they had all but lost little Naushad – how he had been given up for dead. Naushad clearly had that occurrence in mind as he narrated in detail how an acquaintance’s child – lying absolutely still in bed through 24 hours – would momentarily show signs of life. The kid would display such symptoms as soon as they played – from Saathi, the 1968 Naushad film – Aankhen khuli thhin aaye thhe woh bhi nazar mujhe/Phir kyaa huuaa nahein hain kuchh iski khabar mujhe (a solo in the voice of Mukesh, as written by Majrooh Sultanpuri).

Sometime in 1936, after yet another dressing-down by his father – for even more actively pursuing his musical ideas while totally neglecting his studies – the teenaged Naushad just disappeared from home. Disappeared for a rather ambitious tour of India with his Windsor Music Entertainers. Naushad hugely enjoyed the experience, as they visited Delhi, Moradabad (in Uttar Pradesh), Jaipur, Jodhpur, Sikar, Mount Abu and Sirohi (all in Rajasthan), before ending up at Viramgam (in Gujarat). If it had been smooth sailing and rewarding composing so far, the troupe was now cheated by the Windsor Music Entertainers’ agent – after he had exploited Naushad & co. to the hilt. Naushad had to sell everything, musical and otherwise, that he had as the group broke up and he was on his own at a sensitive age.

Followed weeks and weeks of totally frustrating wandering from place to place during which it was a miracle that he survived. Seeing nothing going his way, he boldly travelled to Bombay, ticketless. Fortunately, before coming away from Lucknow, he had managed to obtain a recommendatory letter to one Dr A. Aleem Naami Saheb, whom he finally traced, with some difficulty, as living in the Colaba segment of Bombay city. Naami Saheb, after going through the letter brought by Naushad, assisted at every turn, even letting the lad stay with him while he found his feet. Too self-respecting to accept such hospitality for long, Naushad moved out, saying that he had got a job. That saw him ending up on the infamous pavement opposite the famous Broadway Cinema in the Dadar East sector of Bombay.

Naami Saheb, getting to know of his worsening plight, directed Naushad to New India Pictures with a helpful letter. Naushad never ever lost sight of these months of penury that conditioned his attitude to money matters in the years to come. He now landed – after months of privation while doing odd jobs – an assignment with New India Pictures, as a pianist-turned-assistant to music director Jhande Khan, at Rs 40 a month. This was for the film Sunehri Makdi (The Golden Spider), directed by Rafiq Rizvi. The film’s producer, Henry Dorgvoch, subsequently even provided Naushad with a Class III railway pass – a major source of relief at that point. The Rs 40-a-month pianist job had come about through the timely aid of Naushad’s senior Ghulam Mohammad who, alongside, had been engaged as a tabla player, by New India Pictures, at Rs 60 a month. Ghulam Mohammad, given his vaster urban exposure, proved a near saviour for our fresher in his ceaseless quest for more stable employment in the city of Bombay. Naushad remained grateful, all the way, for this to Ghulam Mohammad. That benefactor, himself a seasoned job hunter in the city of Bombay, had materialized as his support when young Naushad was down and out – something that our maestro never forgot.

Naushad showed early promise as Ustad Jhande Khan’s understudy, but was helpless after Sunehri Makdi was complete in just four months of 1937 (though there is no Hindi Film Geet Kosh trace of such a film ever being released). Thus rendered jobless anew, Naushad’s footpath journey of Bombay began with renewed vigour. He stayed during these terribly trying months with a kindly sales assistant, one Akhtar Saheb from Lucknow, inside a little shop opposite Broadway Cinema. At times, when the atmosphere inside the shop became too stuffy, he would sleep under the staircase of a building close by. Naushad would relate with relish how, in the morning, he even beheld the Bombay Talkies’ superstar, Leela Chitnis, coming down that very building’s staircase!

Desperate by this juncture, he joined a so-called friend in setting up the Rainbow Recording Company at Bombay’s Lamington Road lined by cinema houses. Confronted by a giant like HMV (His Master’s Voice), Rainbow was almost a non-starter, so that Naushad only lost further ground and time. This was when he met up with writer-director-lyricist Pyare Lal Santoshi, who offered him succour for a while. But nothing really clicked for him, so that Naushad turned to the setting of Baghbaan (1938). That was a movie being directed at Tardeo’s Film City by A. R. Kardar. Somehow, Kardar then was not too impressed by Naushad as a musical possibility. So the youngster had to make his own way. He, next, contrived to join the music director of Kardar’s Baghbaan, Mushtaq Hussain, as a piano player – this was on another 1938 film, Industrial India (Nirala Hindustan), again at Rs 40 a month.

The co-music director of Industrial India, the legendary Harish Chandra Bali, found Naushad to be totally committed. So much so that that composer engaged him as an assistant on Pati Patni (1939) too. But H. C. Bali developed differences with the makers and left Pati Patni, a movie being made under the same General Films banner as Baghbaan at Film City. Outcome: Kardar now saw Naushad ably filling in for H. C. Bali and helping the Pati Patni co-music director, Mushtaq Hussain, to complete the film’s score within a month. This when Naushad’s enhanced pay was Rs 50 a month, so that he was yet again jobless after Pati Patni was completed inside months.

Pati Patni flopped – as had Industrial India – so that the portents looked none too bright for the would-be composer. Followed months of struggle, before he found an opening, as an assistant at Rs 75 a month, to Manohar Kapoor, the music director and the hero of Mirza Sahibaan (1939), being shot at Ranjit Studios with Iladevi as its heroine. The driving force behind this Punjabi film was Dina Nath Madhok. Directing Mirza Sahibaan and writing its songs, the man had a keen eye for those musically accomplished.

Thus came the big break, as D. N. Madhok introduced Naushad, at Ranjit Studios, to that composing phenomenon, Khemchand Prakash. This musician, sensing promise in the young man, commissioned him as his first assistant on Gazi Salauddin and Meri Ankhen (both 1939). Khemchand Prakash found Naushad to be well up in scientifically writing the music that he had composed. Naushad, for his part, has acknowledged how much he absorbed from the creative approach of so gifted a composer as Khemchand Prakash. Sadly, neither Gazi Salauddin nor Meri Ankhen prospered at the box office.

Fortunately, Dina Nath Madhok still saw great potential in Naushad. He got him – upon a personal assurance – signed up as the music director for Mohan Bhavnani’s Prem Nagar (1940) at Rs 100 a month, later enhanced to Rs 150 a month. An earlier meeting with the famed Ranjit Movietone chief, Chandulal Shah, had led to Naushad signing, at D. N. Madhok’s instance, to compose for Chitra Productions’ Kanchan (eventually released in 1941). But Naushad quit the film upon failing to equate with Chandulal Shah. Fortunately, in the interim, he had started work upon Prem Nagar, highly encouraged by D. N. Madhok. Thus began, after no end of heartache, Naushad’s quest for the highway to success. The association with D. N. Madhok was to prove career determinant, leading up to Swarnalata–Karan Dewan’s Rattan (1944), a diamond jubilee hit, nothing less.

Well before he attained such renown, A. R. Kardar had approached Naushad through S. U. Sunny to join him. Kardar – having already seen Naushad at work as a deft assistant – proceeded to spot the composing spark in the young man while directing Circo’s Nai Duniya (1942), scored by our maestro. Naushad, even while being by then committed to Vijay Bhatt and his Prakash Pictures on Station Master (1942), was seeking a more secure posting. It was in this light that he opted to sign a long-term contract with Kardar Productions to score for Sharda (1942) as the first of a series of films for that big banner. Bidding that Dadar footpath a fond goodbye, Naushad geared himself for his first job carrying a monthly pay packet. By this stage, his family in Lucknow had moved to a house in Ghasiyari Mandi (a byway opening out on Liberty Cinema). The proximity to the Liberty in Lucknow is significant. For it was at Bombay’s Liberty Cinema (then almost a pilgrimage centre for moviegoers as the ‘showplace of the nation’) that Naushad was to taste true triumph. His jubilee releases at the Liberty tell his success story – Mehboob’s Andaz (31 March 1949); Kardar’s Dillagi (30 September 1949) as but the prelude to his Dastan (27 October 1950); next, Mehboob’s Amar (7 October 1954); to be followed by nothing less than Mehboob’s Mother India (25 October 1957).

Naushad’s successes – unmatched in the annals of the Hindi film industry – include three diamond jubilees (Rattan; Baiju Bawra; and Mughal-e-Azam); six golden jubilees (Mela, Andaz, Deedar, Aan, Mother India and Gunga Jumna); plus 23 silver jubilees (Station Master, Sharda, Namaste, Sanjog, Pahele Aap, Kanoon, Keemat, Sanyasi, Anmol Ghadi, Shahjehan, Natak, Dard, Anokhi Ada, Dillagi, Dulari, Babul, Dastan, Jadoo, Diwana, Uran Khatola, Kohinoor, Mere Mehboob and Ram Aur Shyam).