THE FIRST FOOTFALLS OF
MUSICAL STARDOM
‘Naushad, Naushad, chaalis karor mein ek hi Naushad!’
‘Naushad, Naushad, chaalis karor mein ek hi Naushad!’1
IN THIS EPIGRAPH IS DISPLAYED THE 1950 DASTAN FILM’S punchline, encapsulating Naushad’s captive sweep of India’s 400,000,000 population at that time. This punchline came to be recurringly echoed in the Naushad-dominated teaser trailer of Abdul Rashid Kardar’s Dastan, starring Suraiya and Raj Kapoor. A teaser trailer in which viewers caught cute audiovisual glimpses of such immortal Suraiya numbers as Nainon mein preet hai; Mohabbat badhaa kar judaa ho gaye; Yeh mausam aur yeh tanhaaii; Ae shama tuu bataa teraa parwana kaun hai; and Aaya mere dil mein tuu. As Naushad here, looking trendy in a swanky suit, was glimpsed to be personally conducting, we also got to hear a snatch, each, from Suraiya–Mohammed Rafi’s Taa ra ri aa ra ri aa ra ri and Dhadak dhadak dil dhadak dhadak dil dhadke. The tenor of that sneak 1950 Dastan preview was such that you knew, instinctively, that Naushad had arrived. And arrived big time. What manner of man behind that resplendent musical aura was this collector’s composer? Let us proceed to plot the points on the career graph of one who, aptly, came to be hailed as ‘the maestro with the Midas touch’.
As the press-fresh book came to hand during one afternoon in October 1994 and as I rejoiced in so swiftly making it a publishing reality, impromptu, I rang up Naushad. ‘It’s a very special book that I’d like to present to you, Naushad Saab. Do please name a convenient day and hour,’ I told him. ‘Come along this evening around five,’ said Naushad promptly – sounding expectant. As I duly presented myself at his Bandra villa in Bombay that is now Mumbai, Naushad Ali, wearing his near 75 years lightly, invited me into his music room. There I made over the book, duly inscribed and autographed. One look at the book’s cover and Naushad’s face fell. For what seemed an eternity, he gazed at the picture on that cover. Then, tersely reacting, he queried: ‘But why Lata Mangeshkar on the cover? Why, instead of the composer as the creator, his mere interpreter on the cover?’ My response: ‘Why not Lata Mangeshkar on the cover? A mere interpreter, maybe, but an interpreter without peer, to this day, isn’t she, Naushad Saab? Her velvety vocals, do they not epitomize, in their virtuosity, the entire range of your musical art and craft?’
‘That her vocals do and don’t,’ came back Naushad, still looking crestfallen. ‘Now that you’ve put her on the cover, tell me, in all seriousness, who made Lata Mangeshkar? I say it is we music composers, and we music composers alone, who moulded her into the super singer that she became. It was Anil Biswas who taught her that crucial thing called breath control. It was this nacheez [nonentity] going by the name of Naushad who meticulously perfected her Urdu diction, enunciation and intonation. I could name five-six other top composers, among them Husnlal [of the Husnlal–Bhagatram duo] and C. Ramchandra, who shaped her style and technique,’ noted Naushad introspectively. ‘But,’ I pointed out, ‘Lata still accords first place to Master Ghulam Haider.’
‘Highly as I respect Ghulam Haider and greatly as I am beholden to him,’ observed our maestro, ‘where in Allah’s name was that composer when Lata really happened? Away in Pakistan – already a citizen of that country. If Ghulam Haider returned to India following Partition, it was merely to complete some leftover bits of music in such [1948] films of his as Shaheed and Padmini. Ghulam Haider then was visible in India for barely 15 to 20 days at a time, being always in a hurry to complete the balance of work left. That resourceful composer might have created for the elfin Lata a certain opportunity to sing in Majboor [1948] of Bombay Talkies – they were paying very little at that studio by then. But where was there real time for Ghulam Haider to hone the vocals of a total struggler called Lata Mangeshkar? We are, remember, speaking of 1947-48, when Lata began to be first sighted as a playback prospect.’
‘But Lata,’ I chipped in, ‘is insistent that her early advance is something that she owes to Master Ghulam Haider – next to Khemchand Prakash.’
To which Naushad – this time only after deep reflection – startlingly observed: ‘Do note how Lata, once she rose to her vocal peak following her [April 1967] silver jubilee as a singer, would never ever be crediting her rise to a composer still living. Never to one Naushad; or to Anil Biswas; or to Husnlal; or to C. Ramchandra; forget S. D. Burman. Always it would be someone no more, whose name she would be putting forth in relation to her phenomenal ascent. Let her so pick and choose whom she wants but, surely, you know better. You’re well aware of my track-blazing role in polishing such a rough diamond into the complete singer that Lata became. Yet you go and put Lata Mangeshkar on the cover!’
The carefully cultivated mask of a lifetime had come off at last. It was obvious that Naushad felt it in the gut. Mind you, he certainly had cause to feel upstaged. I had discussed with him my ardent desire to do a life-and-times book on our Sangeet Samrat (emperor of music). To this end, Naushad had kept me posted with literature and photographs relevant to a biography. He had reason, therefore, to be disappointed with the subject matter of the glossy publication that I presented to him, carrying the title, Lata Mangeshkar: A Biography (UBSPD, New Delhi, Rs 295).
There was no point in telling Naushad that the decision to choose Lata as the theme had been virtually made for me by my publisher Ashok Chopra. The upshot was that I found myself unenviably placed in front of the composer who had raised the Rattan baton for other music directors to pick up from July 1944 down. I ventured to soften the blow by drawing attention to how I had devoted a whole chapter to the very special Lata–Naushad connection. ‘Do take a look, Naushad Saab,’ I said, before seeking his leave. How hurt he felt I knew; still I made bold to ring him up a couple of days later to ask if he had read that Lata–Naushad chapter. ‘It’s very well written,’ observed Naushad. ‘You have captured the whole repertoire of the music that I made for the fledgling Lata, not missing out on a single nuance of her vocalizing as explored by my musicianship.’
It was obvious that Naushad had recovered poise to be as full of savoir-faire as ever. This is the cardinal point about the man – his innate resilience in any situation. The image that we carry of the man is exclusively of one who was the zealous custodian of classical music in Indian films. While appraising him thus, Naushad we pictured as one who would break rather than bend. That was in ‘reel’ life. In real life, believe it or not, flexibility was Naushad’s watchword. Mind you, his musical bonafides were never to be questioned. Yet, behind that elaborate façade, I discovered Naushad to be among the most freewheeling of our composers – one ever ready to experiment, a trait accounting for his splendidly consistent success. A scale of success unprecedented in the film industry through 30 years – till 1970. Admittedly, his humility in the face of such singular achievement became a more pronounced happening later in his career when his clout was no longer what it used to be. But that someone coming through as the touchstone of tradition could so metamorphose in person came as a revelation to me. Diplomacy – has it not been Naushad Ali’s middle name? Never a harsh word from him, in public, about a fellow composer or a singer. The seven letters of Naushad are like the seven notes of Hindustani music – his is a stately persona setting him apart as the auteur of cinesangeet.
Unmatched in his finesse has been this virtuoso’s virtuoso. As an example, I detail what happened during a visit to this connoisseur’s Carter Road ‘nest’ – to his Ashiana – in the West Bandra sector of suburban Bombay. It came about some time late in 1955 – a stage by which this composer had already shifted to Ashiana (still sea all around) and was doing the latter part of the Mughal-e-Azam tuning in his freshly installed music room there. It was certainly my first visit to Naushad’s neo-Carter Road home. I had gone there with a terrific sense of expectation. Only later was I to find out that Naushad had shrewdly ascertained in advance about how I was already strategically placed on the editorial desk of The Illustrated Weekly of India, the 75-year-old flagship magazine of The Times Group. The whole thing to follow – I was later told – was a carefully thought-out put-on, indicating how studiously Naushad ‘prepared’ himself for the mediaperson likely to matter to him in his musical career.
Even what came to transpire with his pet poet Shakeel Badayuni, evidently, had been carefully prearranged. As I entered – stunned by the musical mahaul (atmosphere) prevailing in that room so elaborately tonally equipped – I noticed Shakeel seated by the side of Naushad. A Naushad all set to take off on that Andaz2 piano – Tuu kahe agar jeevan bhar main geet sunaata jaaun. ‘Raju Saab’s arrived!’ loftily announced Naushad (making embarrassingly sure to affix ‘saab’ to my insignificant name). ‘Let’s give it one final try, shall we, Shakeel?’ suggested Naushad. Pat came from Shakeel’s pen that line of thought set to linger forever in my head and heart as: Ae ishq yeh sab duniyaa waale bekaar ki baaten karte hain/Paayal ke ghamon ka ilm nahein jhankaar ki baaten karte hain.
What a tenderly poetic stream of romantic perceptivity! I was enraptured by it even then, the same as you viewers were going to be bewitched by it when it belatedly materialized – towards the end of the Mughal-e-Azam screen reign (a reign extending to September 1961 at Bombay’s Marathi Mandir). In fact, I had keenly looked out for this particular Raag Bihag Lata lovely in the K. Asif stunner as that opus released in the first week of August 1960. No luck! Only during the July 1961 golden jubilee week of Mughal-e-Azam did Ae ishq yeh sab duniyaa waale (along with Lata’s Humen kaash tum se mohabbat na hoti in Raag Yaman) get to be finally viewed in that film in a truly provocative scene featuring Sheila Dalaya as Anarkali Madhubala’s confidante-sister Suraiya.
Once I had moved away from our maestro’s Ashiana bungalow, I did wonder how much veracity there was to that Shakeel–Naushad demonstration of musical creativity. I did reflect upon the suggestion that it had all been quite thoughtfully worked out to impress a first-time visitor to Naushad’s Ashiana sanctum. Maybe it was all so arranged, maybe it was not – who cared? Paayal ke ghamon ka ilm nahein jhankaar ki baaten karte hain – that Shakeel sentiment – had, somehow, got etched in my mindscape. So etched in the corridor of our memory is every other Naushad composition, its beauty lying in the fact that one Shakeel Badayuni word just dovetails into the other, almost cozying up to it. Thus Amar in our imagination becomes something upon Madhubala coming through as Jaane waale se mulaqaat na hone paayi.
It is left to the purist to wonder if Jaane waale se … is scored by Naushad in Raag Yaman Kalyan or in Raag Shuddh Kalyan. As far as the everyday viewer goes, it is all about Madhubala (as Anju) losing Dilip Kumar (as Shekhar) to Nimmi (as Sonya) in a mesmeric build-up to the climax of Amar (a film event taking place in October 1954). Lata on Madhubala via Naushad – viewers know what precisely to expect. Viewers get exactly what they anticipate. Let the music academics therefore debate and dissent in the matter of which one is the superior Shakeel–Naushad Yaman – Jaane waale se … (upon ‘Anju’ Madhubala) or Na miltaa gham to barbaadi ke afsaane kahaan jaate (upon ‘Sonya’ Nimmi). Na miltaa … unwinds as a song-lyric in which Shakeel just soars in our imagination. As far as the lay listener goes, both numbers are heart-tuggers in the situations in which they unveil at the ultradeft directorial hands of an otherwise unlettered Mehboob Khan in Amar. A film whose shot-composition break-up for the day’s shooting, according to Naushad, was meticulously taken down – as dictated in Urdu by a Mehboob Khan barely able to sign his own name and therefore leaving a thumb impression upon any cheque that he endorsed.
Mehboob Khan always paid him fairly, says Naushad. But with A. R. Kardar, he had to inch his way forward. By sheer performance was Naushad to gain ascendancy in the Kardar stronghold. Indeed, from early-1949 through the 1950s, Naushad’s sway in the recording room had to be seen to be re-lived. By the 1950–51 Dastan–Jadoo Kardar crossing, our Sangeet Samrat even had his way in the matter of a truly astonishing submission. A submission that the film’s maker shall be present at the final recording but have no role whatsoever to play in the progression of the song’s taking! So remarkably consistent had been Naushad in his multiple jubilee-making feats that it was his day all the way. Imagine, at the mere mention of Naushad’s name, distributors – as the ones financing the film and therefore calling the shots – placed their palms on their ears. A gesture signalling awestruck acknowledgment of Naushad’s musical suzerainty through the 1947–57 era.
That was the propitious time – as Kardar and Naushad set up Musical Pictures come 1949 – during which our maestro summoned the gumption to strike by daringly opting to deal directly with our cinema’s distributor paymasters. Naushad pointed out to these all-powerful men holding the purse strings that totally mindless producer intervention fatally tended to affect the even flow of his music making. He insisted that he knew his job; that they well knew that he knew his job; that he always scrupulously followed the script; plus that it was a screenplay in which the film’s song situations had already been identified with the producer, the writer and the director. Naushad urged them to remember that, if the monsoon effect came to be suggested in the script, the patter of raindrops would be inevitably reflected in his interlude music. He said that he always welcomed detailed discussion with the producer, the writer and the director before he sat down to compose – so as to be able to offer the film’s maker a choice from six tunes for a song situation. But after that he wanted a free hand – and got it. His standing on the marquee was such that distributors strictly instructed the producer and the director to leave Naushad majestically alone to create unfailing hits for them in creative collaboration with Shakeel Badayuni.
The fact that this very fraternity next (by end-1949) agreed to raising Naushad’s per-film fee to a staggering Rs 100,000 (starting with Deedar, releasing in April 1951 as a Nargis-Dilip Kumar-Nimmi-Ashok Kumar starrer) underlined our maestro’s unique standing in Hindustani cinema. Naushad pragmatically discerned that such lucre-conscious businessmen would not have agreed to part with a near ransom of one lakh of rupees for him by the turn of the 1950s – when a rupee was a rupee – if his music had not been worth 10 times as much to them in the film. He now coolly determined that he wanted an even larger slice of the jubilee cake. He ruminated about how he had scored for a pittance (from 1942 to 1949) the music of as many as 14 films for A. R. Kardar Productions: Sharda, Kanoon, Namaste, Sanjog, Geet, Jeevan, Pahele Aap, Sanyasi, Keemat, Shahjehan, Dard, Natak, Dulari and Dillagi. Indeed with the Suraiya–Shyam chartbuster Dillagi (first releasing on 15 March 1949 at Kanpur in his native Uttar Pradesh), Naushad reached his jubilee apogee. He now made it startlingly clear that he was prepared to score for a Kardar film only if that seasoned maker was agreeable to parting with a 50 per cent share to him in the profits.
Kardar’s initial response was a flat no. But his financiers stepped in and virtually compelled that pioneer to go 50-50 in films to be made, from 1950 onwards, not under the Kardar Productions’ banner, but bearing the Musical Pictures’ insignia. Under the new arrangement, Dastan and Jadoo proved big-big hits through 1950-51 as two films carrying the Musical Pictures’ emblem. Yet, through those first 14 K banner films spread over seven years, how much did Abdul Rashid Kardar actually pay Naushad? ‘You’ll be amazed to hear this,’ came back Naushad. ‘For the music that I composed in 14 Kardar films from Sharda to Dillagi [1942–49], I collected a sum ranging from Rs 500 per month to Rs 1000 per month – as my gradually rising salary in that production house.’ ‘That, of course, has to be considered,’ Naushad added, ‘in the light of the fact that I had scored my 1944 diamond jubilee breakthrough film, Jaimini Dewan’s M. Sadiq-directed Rattan, for Rs 8000 – outside the Kardar fold.’
‘I’m dumbfounded, Naushad Saab!’ I responded. ‘Just Rs 500 a month – in effect Rs 6000 annually – for scoring anything up to 3-4 films in a year for Kardar Productions? Sounds plain ridiculous to me even at this distance of time.’
‘All the more so as, side by side, you got Rs 8000 in 12 months for scoring just one film in Rattan. It simply doesn’t add up,’ I pointed out.
‘It might look that way in retrospect,’ observed Naushad. ‘But allow me to sketch the scene as it prevailed at the time. By the way, that Rs 8000 for Rattan that you underpin was a payment forthcoming in convenient instalments of Rs 1000 each. Following Rattan and the unprecedented box-office waves that that Swarnalata–Karan Dewan starrer made as “each song a hit” – to use the industry jargon – I did feel like testing the waters with the tide in my favour. All the more so after the Lahore-based Ghulam Haider had taunted me as one settling for peanuts on Rattan. This was during a [late-1943] pre-Partition visit of his to Bombay for finalizing details on doing the music of Mehboob’s Humayun [the 1945 spectacle starring Chandramohan, Veena, Ashok Kumar and Nargis]. Side by side Ghulam Haider was also signed up for K. Asif’s Phool [another 1945 release starring Veena, Wasti, Suraiya, Prithviraj Kapoor and Sitara].
‘In the face of being conscious of Ghulam Haider laying down his terms for doing those two films,’ conceded Naushad, ‘the fault was entirely mine in sticking to what is known as the “service culture”. Yes, times were such – Bombay was not Lahore – that you first looked for security, then for bounty. That monthly salary became a mental crutch, given the fact that the service culture came naturally, those days, to ones like us eking out a precarious living in the big-big city of Bombay. Jobs were very very hard to come by during those World War II years. Only those who had spent months and months on the footpaths of Bombay could realistically comprehend the absolute essentiality of being gainfully employed. Short point: Ghulam Haider, away from it all in Lahore, was better placed in life to press his demand, I was not. For your enlightenment, it was while I was still working upon the music of Rattan that Ghulam Haider had first come down from Lahore and counselled me to dare rather than care. If, throwing all caution to the winds, I had listened to him then …. If after Rattan in mid-1944 I had been bold enough to turn freelance laying down my own price, I would’ve made a fortune, without doubt. Yet who knows? Simply because Ghulam Haider, adventurist in his outook as a Lahorite, insisted upon his pound of flesh was no reason for me to be foolhardy. Suppose I pitched for something big and was asked to leave Kardar’s? I had just heard about how my colleague, C. Ramchandra, after giving consecutive jubilees [Bhakta Raj, Zaban, Lalkar and Manorama] through 1943-44, had been told to pack his bags by Jayant Desai Productions for demanding a just raise in his salary of Rs 300 a month. Do understand that we humble folk, habitually sending money home, simply had to get that fixed monthly salary those days to feel mentally comfortable in the metropolis of Bombay. My thinking at the time didn’t progress beyond that.
‘Having put that in perspective, I must here gratefully acknowledge Ghulam Haider’s role in making us “aware”. Never shall I forget this master composer for the way he complimented me upon my Panchhi jaa tune for Suraiya in Sharda [1942]. Ghulam Haider, in fact, came searching for me when I was still a fresher, going into raptures over my composition. “What an asthaai,3 what a tight fit, simply superb!” he exulted. It worked wonders for my self-confidence. It was Ghulam Haider’s appreciative approach that prompted me to try something totally breakaway in the music score that I was, right then, writing for Rattan. Ghulam Haider next told us Bombay-based composers that, for scoring the music of K. Asif’s Phool, he had asked for and got a whopping Rs 20,000. We simply gaped when we heard about the astounding sum that was to be paid to this “invader” of our field from Lahore. Just think of the man’s magnanimity. It was Ghulam Haider who urged us to demand a fee befitting our contribution to a film’s sustained success – by way of the repeat value that our songs gave the movie. “Here’s the producer selling his film on the strength of your music and raking in the shekels,” he underlined. “This while he pays you a miserable 400-500 rupees a month for the evergreen songs that you create for him. Stand up and demand, I say!”
‘He aggressively charged Rs 20,000 for a film, where my Kardar contract still said Rs 500 a month! As to how I went along with such a one-sided agreement, who really cared for rewards those days? Do bear in mind that, side by side, I worked and got paid, outside Kardar’s production base, for scoring the films of Mehboob Khan and others. Young and fancy free, you worked for the sheer joy of it. Never forget that that Rs 500 a month, to start with, was more than enough for my guzaara (livelihood). Only someone moving up from the pavements of Bombay really knows what it feels like to be getting, in hand, a neat Rs 500 at the end of each month. Not until friends in the trade dinned into my ears the fact that I was getting but a fraction of my market value did I divine that I was being taken for a royal ride.
‘Still it took me time, a lot of time, to venture out on my own. They say that I take my own time to compose a tune. I do, I don’t flaunt the first composing idea that comes to my mind as my ready tune for the producer. Likewise, I need time and space to make up my mind. Therefore it was only with Rajendra Jain’s Deedar [directed by Nitin Bose and released in 1951 but starting production late in 1949] that I finally displayed the initiative to insist upon my own pre-fixed contracted price for a film. Imagine my surprise when distributors asked the film’s producer to pay up. Pay up on a highly ambitious fee that – just for the heck of it – I had quoted. From that end-1949 point, I had no illusions about my true rating in the industry. I charged the same fee for each film that I did after Deedar. Indeed, I had even summoned the nerve to demand an added Rs 10,000 as “orchestration supervision charges”, glibly claiming that this was considered to be my area of specialization in our cinema. Lo and behold, that Rs 10,000, too, came to be promptly paid.’
(Naushad had discreetly refrained from naming his actual fee for a film but I knew, for an industry fact, that it was Rs 100,000 starting with Deedar – releasing in April 1951. That made Naushad, by the turn of the 1950s, India’s first music director to be paid a six-figure fee for scoring a film’s music.)
Naushad frankly admitted that he raised his fees for Deedar, just like that, to make up for a curious feeling that he suddenly experienced – that he had been woefully underpaid by the industry from the moment he hit the jackpot with Rattan coming in July 1944. ‘Never really forgetting the stand that Ghulam Haider had then made,’ recalled Naushad, ‘I finally summoned the courage to quote a fancy price for Deedar – yes, it had taken me a full five years to do so! But now that I had taken the plunge, I went the whole hog. Before signing up for Deedar, early in 1949, I had almost enforced a 50-50 arrangement with Kardar, as we set up Musical Pictures as equal partners. That banner’s first film was Dastan [1950] and the way the “Naushad, Naushad!” spotlight came to be turned upon me in that movie’s trailer left me in no doubt about the esteem in which I was held by the paying public of India. Mind you, Kardar was not in favour of such a lopsided personal appearance focus being given to the film’s music director at the expense of others in the Dastan unit. But once again our Musical Pictures’ financiers, eager to launch the banner in a very big way, stepped in to make me get a true feel of my box-office rating. That Dastan trailer told me that it was on my name that Kardar had been selling each one of those Suraiya starrers. Suraiya-Naushad in combo meant so much more brand value.’
Gently halting Naushad in his flow, I said: ‘One thing I’d like to clear here and now, as it has me still baffled. You say that you collected Rs 8000 in eight equal instalments – of Rs 1000 each – for Rattan as early as July 1944. How come you then meekly accepted Rs 500-to-1000 a month from Kardar Productions right up to March 1949 when Dillagi released? You’ve tried to explain it away as the “service culture” dominant at the time. But it still doesn’t wash, Naushad Saab.’
‘That Rs 8000 for Rattan, remember,’ explained Naushad patiently, ‘was for a film stretching to 12 months. That’s how long a film shot at an outside studio took to complete in those unhurried times. Its producer – not being entitled to raw stock as a non-studio banner – had even to buy film for shooting from the black market. Plus the Rattan final instalment of Rs 1000 came to be made over to me only after I had finished the film’s background music too. So work it out, Kardar’s Rs 500 a month then was but a couple of thousand less [per annum] than the Rs 8000 that I got, as pocket money, for doing Rattan. Always remember that Kardar’s Rs 500 was a steady payment readily forthcoming at the end of each month. Anything more that I made, on the side, from Rattan – or from any other “outside” assignment – was at best a floating income upon which I could not for all time count. I might land such an outside film during one year, not during the year following. But about that Kardar Rs 500 at the end of the month I could always be certain.’
Sensing my feeling of outrage as abiding, Naushad cut the ground from under my feet by observing, mistily: ‘Let’s not get totally negative about a cinematic giant like A. R. Kardar. I remain eternally grateful to the man as the one who gave me my early breaks in films. I was like a family member at Kardar Productions. Kardar encouraged me to try out new ideas, all the way, in the music that I scored for his films; he rarely interfered. He gave me a free hand to create, to experiment, to grow – with timely increments of Rs 100 per year that meant a lot during those times. For all that, given the scale of success that I ultimately attained in his care, there were bound to be ego clashes. Before that happened, Kardar had been generous in letting me do the odd outside film. Provided that I always accorded precedence to his K banner by duly completing the music of the three to four movies that he produced in a year at his studios. He could produce even four movies in a year since he had his own studio, his own running establishment. Otherwise it took anything up to 12-13 months to complete a film – when you worked in hired studios.
‘Thus did I, while serving Kardar, also do – with the man’s permission – that famous 1942 film called Station Master. This was for Prakash Pictures – for Vijay Bhatt’s banner with which I had so rewardingly started out by scoring Darshan and Mala, both coming in 1941. Kardar further let me do – through my first seven years under the K banner – Rattan [1944] (for Jamuna Productions); Mela [1948] (for Wadia Films); Chandni Raat [1949] (for Tajmahal Pictures); Babul [1950] (for Sunny Art Productions); and not least (for Mehboob Productions) five films: Anmol Ghadi [1946], Elan [1947], Anokhi Ada [1948], Andaz [1949] and Aan [1952]. Ironically, it was while I was working for the first time with Mehboob Khan on Anmol Ghadi that the idea of eliminating arbitrary interference by the film’s maker, in visualizing the music of a film, occurred to me by chance. Evidently Kardar had told Mehboob to watch out for me as I was tending to grow wings after four fruitful years at K Productions.
‘I remember how it went as the first Anmol Ghadi recording that I did was in progress. It was of that lovely Raag Pahadi solo set to go upon Malka-e-Tarannum4 Noorjehan – Jawaan hai mohabbat haseen hai zamana, as written by Tanvir Naqvi. Mehboob Khan strode into the recording theatre in a proprietorial manner and began instructing my musicians and my technicians on how to go about the take. He even presumed to ask Noorjehan to change a note here, a stress there. Noorjehan was in titters as she witnessed my discomfiture. “Everything would be carried out the exact way you want it, Mehboob Saab,” I said tactfully, being still new to that veteran as my boss. Whereupon Mehboob, satisfied that he had asserted his authority, asked me to carry on and moved away.
‘The following day, I purposely walked on to the Anmol Ghadi sets as the Jawaan hai mohabbat Noorjehan solo was being shot. As I surveyed the scene, Mehboob welcomed me saying: “Look, it’s your song recorded yesterday that we are in the process of shooting.” Whereupon I said: “May I see it through the camera?” Mehboob asked me to go ahead, I peered through and, presumptuously, asked them to move this table to the left, that chair to the right and so on. Noorjehan, always sharp, saw instantly the point that I was seeking to drive home to Mehboob. She was giggling as that legendary maker caught me by the ear to say: “Hey you laatsaheb, who do you think you are? Scram, this is not your job. Your job is music direction, direction is my job.” I said that that was the very admission that I was seeking to hear from him – that his job is direction, not music direction. Mehboob instinctively latched on to my idea and said: “Iskaa jawaab hai mere paas.” [“I shall be responding to the point that you have made.”] His response was never to enter my music room again. Not once, after that, did he interfere in the music of the seven Mehboob productions for which I scored music while with his unit.’
‘Whether it be Mehboob or Kardar,’ I noted, ‘surely, by the March 1949 Andaz-Dillagi makeover in your career, the idea of asking for royalty must have crossed your mind?’
Naushad laughed at the suggestion as he observed: ‘What? When I was being paid Rs 1000 a month as a salary by Kardar, you wanted me, as his employee, to ask for royalty? You must be joking. Who knew anything about royalty as we approached the decade-ending year of 1950? Truth to tell, it was only around mid-1957 that, greatly daring, I ventured to ask Mehboob Khan for royalty on the plea that his Mother India was a very big film. Mehboob Khan, being a God-fearing man and inherently decent, was appreciative of the massive musical effort that I had put into Mother India. So, for the first time in his life, Mehboob agreed to share his 10 per cent HMV [His Master’s Voice/Gramophone Company of India Limited] royalty, on a film, equally with me. Thus it was only from [25 October] 1957 that I began charging 5 per cent royalty starting with Mother India.’
‘I feel astonished,’ I observed, ‘to learn that you began insisting upon 5 per cent royalty only around the time that C. Ramchandra started doing so. I’m referring to that snazzy music maker charging, by March 1955, a matching Rs 100,000 for a film as the one rating second only to you in creating jubilees. You just mentioned Mother India and royalty, Naushad Saab. You know what? As the Mother India disc-records came to be released six to seven weeks before the film’s advent, C. Ramchandra, as your arch-rival, called me over to his Sai Prasad Shivaji Park music room [in the Dadar sector of North Bombay], some time in September 1957, to ask: “Have you heard the songs of Naushad’s latest film? What do you think of them?”’
My response was that I never judged a Naushad music score till I saw it with the film. ‘That is as may be,’ came back CR. ‘But pray tell me what’s new in Naushad’s Mother India score? Remember, Naushad’s strength all along has been his orchestration – supposed to be one notch above each one of us. But point out to me one thing, just one thing, that’s striking about the interlude pieces accompanying the Mother India tunes as they come over today. This standard of orchestration even a comparative junior like Madan Mohan is seen to be providing by now. By contrast, listen closely to my orchestration of the M. V. Raman film Aasha – due for release [in September 1957] just before Mother India. How is my Aasha orchestration inferior in any way to Naushad’s Mother India instrumentation?
‘In fact,’ went on CR, ‘as I replaced Naushad at Kardar Studios with Yasmin [March 1955], I felt that my orchestration in that superbly photographed Vyjayanthimala–Suresh starrer was at least on a par with anything that Naushad had accomplished under the K banner before.
‘The recording equipment at Kardar Studios, the sound system there, were of such a superior technical order that I had only to gain access to those latest facilities to be able to match Naushad in the quality of Yasmin orchestration that I achieved,’ signed off C. Ramchandra.
‘Very very interesting, your C. Ramchandra quote on my interlude music pieces for Mother India,’ observed Naushad. ‘But what my highly gifted confrère forgets is that Mother India is a grass-roots theme evoking the image of pastoral Bharat. My orchestration therefore is eminently in sync with the dictates of the theme. Let Mother India be released and you would be a ready witness to how tellingly my interlude orchestration pieces go with the cadence of such a panoramically evocative song number as Dukh bhare din beete re bhaiya, as vivified by Shamshad Begum, Manna Dey, Asha Bhosle, Mohammed Rafi and chorus. Take, for instance, Duniya mein hum aaye hain to jeena hi padegaa, summing up the essence of the Mother India theme. Duniyaa mein hum aaye hain has its interlude pieces scored in faithfully apt rural strains, as the Mangeshkar sisters, Lata, Meena and Usha, give meaningful expression to the sentiment inherent in Shakeel’s thematically philosophical song-lyric. C. Ramchandra as an inventive musician is welcome to his viewpoint on my Mother India song interludes. But I tune with the theme. I don’t Westernize for the sake of Westernizing.’
The rapier thrust coming through there – in the rejoinder of an otherwise mild-mannered music personality – underscores the ultra-keen rivalry between Naushad and C. Ramchandra, as flamboyant trendsetters both. That C. Ramchandra should have singled out his own orchestration of A. R. Kardar’s 1955 Yasmin vis-à-vis Naushad’s surpassing artistry in this specialist direction is something for us connoisseur listeners to consider and ponder. Living on the Marine Drive seafront, I often ran into A. R. Kardar early in the 1980s as we both visited the Bank of Baroda at 71 Giri Kunj there. During one of our meetings, I asked Kardar to be totally objective in the matter of who was the best of the seven music makers with whom he had worked just after the 1940s. I posed that query remembering how Naushad – waiting only for his five-year (by then Rs 1000-a-month) contract to end – had prepared to leave Kardar after a run of 14 movies with that dynamic filmmaker under the K banner. This without counting that 1942 film, Nai Duniya (which Kardar had directed), plus Kardar–Naushad’s Dastan (1950) and Jadoo (1951) under the Musical Pictures’ banner. Anticipating such a move by Naushad, in June 1951 itself, Kardar had entrusted the music of his Nalini Jaywant–Premnath K Productions’ starrer, Naujawan, to S. D. Burman.
‘After Naujawan, Kardar Saab,’ I said, ‘you worked, one last time during that golden ’51–’60 decade, with Naushad in Diwana [May 1952]; with Sachin Dev Burman in your second film with that Bengal stalwart titled Jeewan Jyoti [August 1953]; side by side with Ghulam Mohammad in Dil-e-Nadan [June 1953]; with Madan Mohan in Chacha Chowdhary [November 1953]; with Roshan in Baraati [October 1954]; with O. P. Nayyar in Baap Re Baap [September 1955]; and with C. Ramchandra in Yasmin [March 1955]. From this galaxy of composers, forgetting all bitterness generated by the sad style of your parting with Naushad, which music director would you rate as the best of seven?’
‘C. Ramchandra beyond doubt!’ Kardar startled me by asserting without a moment’s hesitation. ‘The man was immersed in his music; everything else was secondary to him. I’m afraid I can’t say the same thing about Naushad, extraordinarily as this composer performed for me. I discovered C. Ramchandra to be the most talented, the most innovative and the most versatile of them all. As I booked C. Ramchandra for the spectacularly mounted Yasmin, I found one thing to be highly reassuring. Where it simply had to be Shakeel Badayuni with Naushad, I could tell CR without reserve that Jan Nisar Akhtar would be the poet teaming with him. Whereupon CR agreeably surprised me by being only too ready to go along; he had only one request to make. Upon my asking CR what that was, he said: “I know nothing about how Naushad did it for you, Kardar Saab, but I never sit down to tune until I have the poetry in hand. Let Jan Nisar come ready with the song-lyric written in any metre that pleases him and I’m ready to offer you a choice of six tunes, as is the practice.” My, how much fuss Naushad would be making in his later days about getting his Shakeel-teaming act together! Now Jan Nisar just arrived and put forth – for Lata to come and render later – Mujh pe ilzaam-e-bewafaaii hai.
‘The nimble dexterity with which CR turned that ghazal into a situationally apt tune to go upon Vyjayanthimala playing Yasmin impressed Jan Nisar and me alike. No elaborate sitting – like in the case of Naushad and Shakeel. CR did the job without fanfare. Indeed, he went on to score truly noteworthy music in the 10 songs that he did for my Yasmin. CR didn’t falter even when, just to test him, I brought in a different poet in Tanvir Naqvi on Bechaeen karne waale tuu bhi na chaeen paaye. C. Ramchandra, I say, was the best of the seven that you named, even given Naushad’s special niche in my unit.’
Where the personal vibes have gone drastically wrong, we have to rest the case. Let us pick up, afresh, the threads of the royalty issue in relation to Kardar-Naushad. ‘As far as Kardar goes,’ reminisced Naushad, ‘the royalty point never arose since, a full five years before 1957 and Mother India, we had separated. Sorry if all that I have said so far about Kardar sounds a bit negative. I must also place on sincere record the fact that Kardar too was highly inspirational for me in the first four years of our association. It was under his tutelage that I flowered. It saddened me no end therefore when I found that my 50-50 partnership in our Musical Pictures’ enterprise had been virtually a non-starter. I should have studied the partnership deed more carefully but, at 30, I was venturesome and uncaring.
‘I later discovered that Kardar could get a Musical Pictures’ movie scored by another composer too. Following the high success of Musical Pictures’ Dastan and Jadoo in 1950-51, the matter went to court. There too I found the scale to be loaded in Kardar’s favour. The Dastan-Jadoo payment dispute, in fact, was resolved only after a 20-year legal battle. Finally, in an out-of-court settlement, Kardar was asked to pay a total of just Rs 30,000 for the music of Dastan and Jadoo. The parting shot was that Kardar was accorded the facility to make good that amount to me in three easy instalments of Rs 10,000 each. For turning all nine songs of Dastan into enduring hits, for scoring similarly with each one of my ten songs for Jadoo, I got a total of 30,000 rupees after a 20-year wait. Is there any justice in this world? After Dastan and Jadoo, Musical Pictures itself had come a cropper. The banner’s films – scored by music directors no less capable – had, somehow, all flopped, so that there was only so much money left to share. For all that, my years at Kardar Studios had been memorable. Never could I forget the 13-year-old Suraiya missing classes to be able to record, for Kardar’s Sharda [1942], Panchhi jaa peechhe rahaa hai bachpan meraa [N26099]. On HMV record is this Panchhi jaa … number as sung playback by the little Suraiya to go upon heroine Mehtab in Sharda. This one proved to be a big hit in its time. You know the best part of the song? Suraiya was still so dainty that her lip-tips would not reach the microphone! She finally put over Panchhi jaa … standing upon a footstool!
‘By the time Suraiya came to render Nainon mein preet hai for Dastan [1950], she was a ravishing 21-year-old confidently hitting the mike. Get a feel of Shakeel’s all-embracing opening line for that wistful Dastan solo by Suraiya, Nainon mein preet hai hothon pe geet hai. Liltingly lyrical it sounds, doesn’t it, summing up as it does Suraiya’s singing star persona, a persona marked by a rare lucidity of expression. As captured by me in 200 revolutions of the [N36543] vintage gramophone record that you have probably preserved to this day – as a mellifluous memento of days when music in our cinema was as much about euphony as about harmony.’
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1 Naushad, Naushad [there’s] one, and only one, Naushad in 40 crore!
2 Mehboob Khan’s 1949 film featuring Dilip Kumar (born as Yusuf Khan), Nargis and Raj Kapoor in a love triangle, with a musical score by Naushad.
3 The asthaai forms one of the two parts into which the lyrical composition divides in the raag employed by the composer. The asthaai part of the composition is sung in the lower notes.
4 Queen of Melody.