CLASSICAL LEGEND AND RUDE REALITY
Agar tuu hai saagar to majhdhaar main hoon majhdhaar main hoon
Tere dil ki kashti kaa patwaar main hoon patwaar main hoon
Chalegi akele na tum se yeh naiyaa na tum se yeh naiyaa
Milegi na manzil tumhe bin khewaiyaa tumhe bin khewaiyaa
Chale aao ji chale aao ji
Chale aao maujon kaa le kar sahaara
Ho rahegaa milan yeh hamaara tumhaara …
THE ABOVE NAUSHAD SOLO IN RAAG BHAIRAVI FROM BAIJU BAWRA, AS penned by Shakeel Badayuni, began with the line, Tuu Ganga ki mauj main Jamuna ka dhaara, upon ‘Baiju’ Bharat Bhooshan wooing ‘Gauri’ Meena Kumari going boating! It set the classical tone for Naushad to revolutionize the tenor and the temper of music in Hindustani cinema. Baiju Bawra also came to witness Mohammed Rafi, under his sangeet mentor’s meticulous tutelage, to be beginning his measured journey towards becoming the topmost voice of heroes on the silver screen. The film won stardom overnight for Meena Kumari and Bharat Bhooshan. It clinched for Meena Kumari, as the embodiment of Indian womanhood, the 1953 Filmfare Best Actress Award. It marked out Naushad as the composer with the finest credentials for the inaugural Filmfare Best Music Director Award. With Baiju Bawra, Naushad became a national name, a classical mascot, as the Indian maestro, mesmerizingly, moving away from the hybrid Westernizing trend pervading popular music at the turn of the 1950s.
After finding his name irretrievably linked with Dilip Kumar for virtually four years through Mela (October 1948), Andaz (March 1949), Babul (October 1950), Deedar (April 1951) and Aan (August 1952), Naushad sought a conscious change of scene. After all, any credit earned in a Dilip Kumar film remained a credit shared, a credit halved. Naushad now wanted the spotlight to be upon his music persona all the way, following the high visibility that the 1950 Dastan trailer had given him. To this end, he first daringly severed all association with Abdul Rashid Kardar (with K Productions and Musical Pictures) after having composed, for that torch-bearer, a record 178 songs through 10 years in 18 films [this without counting the 14-year hiatus between Diwana (May 1952) and Dil Diya Dard Liya (April 1966)]. As a full-fledged freelance from mid-1952, Naushad had pitched upon the idea of a fresh young pair in Meena Kumari and Bharat Bhooshan. Neither of the two then (1952) was anything but on the fringe. Meena Kumari, in fact, was languishing in mythologicals and costume dramas. Bharat Bhooshan was struggling to evolve a screen personality that he could call his own. Naushad began to give serious melodic thought to what would be the ideal screen takeoff for this emergent pair. He masterfully landed upon the Baiju Bawra theme, so renowned in Indian lore, and shared the idea with Vijay Bhatt. That stalwart – finding that what Naushad had in mind was something symptomatic of his Prakash Pictures banner – said he knew the theme inside out. After all, he had specialized in projecting, on the screen, just such a mode of story-telling over the years.
Once Baiju Bawra orbited Naushad into the top reaches of film music as a classical pursuit, our sangeet maestro, significantly, drew pointed attention to one factor. He underlined how, till then, the Baiju Bawra pattern of music had been consigned to being canalized through the mythological class of cinema. Naushad updated that traditional music of India into a well-rounded score in which the objective was to draw away from mythological trappings. Shankarrao Vyas had given a rare impetus to such music via Ram Rajya (1943), a theme eternalized on the screen by the selfsame Vijay Bhatt. Naushad now explained to Vijay Bhatt that, in the storyline that he had in view, the accent would be upon breaking with such pre-set music scoring belonging purely to its time.
The vibes between Naushad and Vijay Bhatt had been excellent all along. That is, right from the time Naushad had been groping for a musical stance in films after finishing with his maiden movie, Prem Nagar (1940). The fact that, even before that, our mood musician had walked out of Chitra Productions’ Kanchan (coming only in 1941) – as a matter of honour – had not exactly helped at such a formative stage in his career. This was when Vijay Bhatt, unforgettably for Naushad, cozily connected with him. A timely call-up leading to Naushad being generously offered Rs 600 for Prakash Pictures’ 1941 Mala, starring Anglo-Indian Rose opposite Jairaj and Jayant. The Prakash Pictures’ emblem made Naushad feel further overwhelmed as Vijay Bhatt doubled his fee to Rs 1200 for Darshan (1941), featuring one whose star was in the ascendant then, Prem Adib, opposite Miss Jyoti.
So pleased was Vijay Bhatt with Naushad’s work culture that he next entrusted the music of Station Master (1942) to the young man, after having taken special permission, for such an ‘outside’ job, from the fresher’s new employer, Kardar Productions. Vijay Bhatt now – even more magnanimously than before – paid Naushad Rs 1500 for Station Master. As Station Master (starring Prem Adib, Ratnamala and Jagdish Sethi) turned out to be a silver jubilee first for Naushad, this go-ahead composer had reason to feel all the more grateful. A total of Rs 3300 (Rs 600 + Rs 1200 + Rs 1500) from three films inside a 15-month cycle was most welcome to the 22-year-old Naushad. It facilitated his leading a cushy bachelor’s life by 1942, as he had no extravagant habits, being a non-drinker strictly observing the dictates of Islam. Short point – the Vijay Bhatt–Prakash Pictures alliance was no new one for Naushad. In fact, Vijay Bhatt, his banner by then (1951) facing a major crisis, warmly welcomed our number one music director as he returned to Prakash Pictures. Only the fact that Naushad had signed a Rs 500-a-month contract with A. R. Kardar – starting with Sharda (1942) – had kept him away from Vijay Bhatt and his emblem for so long. In fact, that filmmaker found that he had had to wait through a full decade, after such a silver jubilee hit as Station Master (1942), for Naushad to get back to his ‘alma mater’.
Naushad’s fee was up from Rs 1500 to a forbidding Rs 110,000 by this 1952 Baiju Bawra stage. But Vijay Bhatt did not grudge him the amount. He discovered distributors to be flocking to him from the instant in which he had let it be known, via the grapevineyard, that it would be Naushad scoring his Baiju Bawra theme. Not even the fact that the film had two near striplings co-starring, in Meena Kumari and Bharat Bhooshan, acted as a distributor damper; such was the aura of Naushad’s name by 1951. Naushad had this peculiar theory that, as we went into the 1950s, the era of the Hindu heroine was upon us. It was in that mantle that our Movie Midas had envisioned Meena Kumari as Gauri, viewing her as just the foil to a Bharat Bhooshan playing Baijnath in Baiju Bawra. Give credit to Naushad for spotting, so early, the courtly musician spark in Bharat Bhooshan. With Baiju Bawra, Bharat Bhooshan, on the screen, looked one born to play the tragically romanticized pensive musician. No less inspired a handpick was the mobile-of-visage Meena Kumari, looking at once slender and tender.
As it transpired, Bharat Bhooshan and Meena Kumari – with Jhoole mein pawan ke aayi bahaar – ‘swung’ it Naushad’s Baiju Bawra way from the word go. From the moment that zooming team hove to view with Jhoole mein pawan ke – as a Lata–Rafi mix of Raag Pilu and Raag Basant. Here at last was a lotus fresh hero–heroine pairing. Ethereally did ‘Gauri’ Meena Kumari team with ‘Baiju’ Bharat Bhooshan for Mohammed Rafi to begin casting his own spell, in Naushadian Bhairavi, with Tuu Ganga ki mauj main Jamuna ka dhaara. Meena Kumari as Gauri was the histrionic picture of youthful innocence as she found herself to be ferried back, willy-nilly, to her Baiju in that cute boat metaphor that has been Shakeel’s watchword. As her sakhis (companions) riled Gauri no end, the transparency in the vibrancy of Shamshad Begum’s vocals came tellingly through (upon Krishna Kumari playing Vasanti) via Duur koee gaaye dhun yeh sunaaye. A Bharat Bhooshan – periodically chipping in, here, with ‘Ho ji ho’ – lent Rafian verisimilitude to the teasing ‘O more anganaa laaj ka pehraa’ situation. That, demurely, was Lata, dulcet as ever as she intercut upon Meena Kumari. A Meena looking the picture of Hindustani auratpana – as a young lady epitomizing bashfulness. A bashfulness in tune with the Paaon padi zanjeer ke arre Rama paaon padi zanjeer ho sentiment going with her docile deportment.
For all that, it has to be regrettably recorded that there was something rickety about the texture of the sets put up by Vijay Bhatt for such an ambitious venture as Baiju Bawra. We had seen those sets at Prakash Studios before and we were bound to see them again – as Vasant Desai worked his composing magic upon an already ‘arriving’ Rajendra Kumar via that shehnai wizard of wizards, Bismillah Khan, in Goonj Uthi Shehnai (June 1959). But we were on the 1952 Baiju Bawra sets. They deserved to look far more authentic than they now appeared to do as ‘Baiju’ Bharat dramatically surrendered to Kuldip Kaur – venerably vamping it as the vividly veiled Daku Roopmati. For Mohammed Rafi to have Bharat Bhooshan, entrancingly, urging our female daku: Insaan bano insaan bano. Naushad touches his composing apogee here as he explores the contours of Raag Gurjari Todi – with all the inventiveness he could summon to honing a traditional tune unfolding in a far from conventional situation.
If the Rafi takeover on ‘Baiju’ Bharat Bhooshan has thus begun, where is Lata on Meena? Where indeed, as Rafi looks all set to wrap it up as his own Naushad show with his vocal omnipresence. This is when Lata shows her melancholy class upon ‘Gauri’ Meena Kumari with Bachpan ki mohabbat ko in the norm of sad situation that Naushad – by now near inevitably – makes his own, this time choosing to come to us in Raag Maand. Nor is Lata’s melody queenly reign upon ‘Gauri’ Meena Kumari over. Not yet. Lata goes one better with the all-transcending Mohe bhool gaye saanwariya. Here is the heart-toucher that put the imprimatur upon Meena Kumari as the neo-sensation among Hindustani cinema’s would-be heroines on the frontiers of youth. Naushad identified Mohe bhool gaye saanwariya as Raag Bhairav, though there are those who validly submit that it is in Raag Kalingada. That is the beauty of Naushad’s creativity – he offers you classical choices that leave you mellifluously guessing. Mohe bhool gaye saanwariya is one gem you get to feel as being so Naushad polished that, in its unwrapping, Lata and Meena, audio-visually, look to be made for each other.
This is the Lata–Meena signal for Rafi to reassert himself upon Baiju. The impress that Rafi now leaves upon a Baiju, pouring out his heart via Man tarpat Hari darshan ko aaj, takes Raag Malkauns to an apex rarely attained in mainstream cinema. Man tarpat Hari darshan ko aaj – as soliloquized by Baijnath before Svami Haridas (played by Rai Mohan) – is that composition and that rendition with which the Naushad–Rafi combo scales the spiritual summit in Baiju Bawra. Not even O duniya ke rakhwaale (in quintessential Raag Darbari) has the Naushad–Rafi duo achieving the same subtlety of delivery as is evidenced in Man tarpat Hari darshan ko aaj. If anything, O duniya ke rakhwaale could have been better pitched for Rafi, even if this climactic solo comes through unusually powerfully on the Baiju Bawra screen, as shot-composed by Vijay Bhatt. Naushad – could you believe it – had rehearsed Rafi, for a different tune, in this key situation. Rehearsed Rafi for a song-lyric Shakeel-going as Rulaane ko aansoo jalaane ko naale yeh kyaa de diyaa zindagi dene waale. How the Urdu-toned Shakeel measured up to the bhajan orientation of Baiju Bawra is a screen story in itself. Vijay Bhatt had felt shaky in this area despite Naushad’s pleadings that his man Shakeel was a poet for all seasons. Shakeel, for his Badayun part, now wrote so disarmingly, in Hindi, that the Baiju Bawra maker had to doff his directorial hat to that sensitive poet. What Vijay Bhatt had vitally overlooked was that Shakeel was from the same Uttar Pradesh as Naushad, a state of India in which it is a confluence of cultures.
In this context, what was it, strictly, if not ‘Hindustani music’ that you were sampling as you discovered the Naushad–Rafi twosome to be no less impressive in the sangeet sadhna segment of Baiju Bawra? A segment expounding the raags Lalit, Gaud Malhar, Puriya and Bageshri. In sum, Baiju Bawra came to exemplify as inspired a classically designed score as any that we had experienced as written by Naushad. Such was the fallout of Naushad’s Baiju Bawra feat that Anil Biswas (of the Ritu aaye ritu jaaye sakhi ri 1953 Hamdard raag-elaborating fame) sent out feelers to Bharat Bhooshan, promising an even better score. That is, if Anil Biswas came to be considered for that actor’s classically hued 1956 production on the anvil called Basant Bahaar. In point of fact, Bharat Bhooshan – sharing literary interests with the man – did book Anil Biswas for the raag-rich Basant Bahaar theme in which Nimmi (as Gopi) was set to co-star with him (playing Gopal). Sad then that those financing our Baiju Bawra hero’s prestige offering just would not countenance the notion of Anil Biswas ‘enjoying’ the spring of Basant Bahaar! This after Bharat Bhooshan had announced the name of Anil Biswas prominently through a full-page Basant Bahaar advertisement that he put out in filmindia, the fiery monthly edited by that one-man journalistic institution called Baburao Patel.
As the Shanker-Jaikishan team ‘commandeered’ Basant Bahaar from Anil Biswas, that caustic pioneer of our cinesangeet, didactically, dismissed the come-lately duo as ‘classical charlatans’. This barb stung SJ as never before. In fact, Shanker – saying ‘We will show Anil’ – would not let Jaikishan do a thing in the film. Shanker argued that, having sidelined Anil Biswas from Basant Bahaar, the challenge before SJ now was how, via this lavishly mounted Bharat Bhooshan presentation, to outclass Naushad in his own Baiju Bawra stronghold. ‘This is a task for which young Jaikishan is classically ill equipped’ – so, arbitrarily, determined Shanker while going on to produce an excellent Basant Bahaar score. Still Shanker’s anxiety to ‘do a Naushad’ showed in the fact of Basant Bahaar taking a nosedive at the turnstiles (by December 1956). A like concern, on SJ’s part, to ‘do a Baiju Bawra’ had decided the fate of Bhagwandas Varma’s Pooja (in April 1954). A class-one devotional was Pooja, starring the same Bharat Bhooshan opposite Purnima, Bhagwandas Varma’s pet elephant-eyed heroine failing to make the grade as a leading lady of any potential. Thus neither Pooja (April 1954) nor Basant Bahaar (December 1956) could get near even the (October 1952) Baiju Bawra fringe in terms of mass appeal.
Point – a Baiju Bawra happens, you cannot make it happen. As a screen pointer, look at the moulding of Radhakishan’s character as Ghasitram in Baiju Bawra – a master stroke by Vijay Bhatt. Radhakishan looks a comedian but is actually no clown; he understands music in all its finer facets. Over to the Baiju Bawra end-effect in this frame.
Naushad, in the film’s final phase, was heard at his erudite best. This as he had the eminent Dattatreya Vishnu Paluskar (going upon Surendra as Tansen) and Amir Khan (going upon Bharat Bhooshan as Baijnath). What a treat it was to hear the two tussling it out in that absorbing climax competition knowing no winner, no loser. This one came through, orotundly, as Aaj gaawat man mero jhoom ke in Raag Desi Todi – so aptly conceptualized for the occasion by Naushad.
What took your breath away was the way D. V. Paluskar’s vocals unwound upon Tansen – incredibly sweet sounding for a set-style classical musician. Amir Khan too, under Naushad in Baiju Bawra, left his own imprint via Tori jay jay kartaar, unfolding (in Raag Puriya Dhanashri) with the film’s credit titles. Not to forget the same Amir Khan’s Raag Megh mind-wrapper: Ghanana ghanana ghan barso re. His Raag Darbari sa re ga ma pa dha ni ‘sargam’ piece, too, carried its own cadence. Amir Khan was then (end-1952) still rising, but that Naushad could manage to persuade someone of the classical lineage of D. V. Paluskar to sing in films (if upon Mian Tansen) came as a revelation.
Thus did Baiju Bawra become a classical milestone in Naushad’s musical odyssey. The same Naushad, who had given our cinesangeet a refreshing folk aroma with Rattan (mid-1944), had now, with Baiju Bawra, arrested the Western sweep. This he had done by bringing to the art of popular composition a rare finesse. The hallmark of a Naushad tune is that it is as easy upon the lips as it is as upon the ears, yet embodying a heartbeat all its own. You felt the poetry in Naushad’s music. He was no tunesmith manufacturing hit tunes by the dozen in the Max Factory that is our film industry. He came across as the totally committed composer who had pride in his craft with none of its prejudices.
In person, the last word in politeness was Naushad – all Lucknowi nazakat. An elegance so authoritatively reflected in the ethos of the music that he composed. For one who hardly bothered to attend school, his reading and his breeding struck you as nothing short of extraordinary. The amazing thing about the man was that, for one who grew up on the streets, I never ever heard Naushad, in his lifetime, employing a word that was not parliamentary. In fact, the aristocratic Urdu tone distinguishing the language that he used was his strong suit. I once took up this singular trait in him, wondering how Naushad could remain unaffected by the style of language that, for instance, Mehboob Khan habitually employed on the sets. Naushad was at pains to stress that he found such language to be instinctively offensive to the ear – in fact, going against the grain of making music itself.
A foul word and Naushad – the two were as far apart as were Lala Amarnath and Vijay Merchant, those two legends of cricket as ‘the game with the beautiful name’! Lala was one renowned for the originality he brought to airing his colourfully acerbic Angrezi. Vijay, by ‘propah’ gentlemanly contrast, was more English than the English in his felicitous use of the lilting language binding cricketers the world over. Is it any cause for surprise then that, following the life of rectitude that Naushad led, his wells of inspiration did not dry up for close to 30 years in films? Maybe his quest for quality, his penchant for perfection, did tend to make Naushad something of a misfit, progressively, in a setting in which music makers knew no copyright – only the right to copy. It is a fact that they ultimately turned him into a status symbol to be pressed into service each time someone was needed to speak up for music as an art form. They would seek him out to invite him for the rostrum role that his Urdu speech (generously laced with couplets written by Naushad himself) could play in exhorting all concerned to participate more actively in elevating public taste. Taste is something to be cultivated. Naushad’s music you cultivated as the sangeet of our most cultured composer. Naushad in his heyday proved that the true composer is the master, not the servant, of public taste.
Baiju Bawra underscores this point. At a time when our film music was piteously wallowing in a jazzy celebration of the worst of the West, Naushad, by the Divali eve of 1952, had pulled it up in an idiom that put the seal upon him as a pathfinder. If with Rattan (1944) he had brought a novel orchestral dimension to that career-shaping film’s dholak motif – as explored through the performing artistry of Ghulam Mohammad – with Andaz (1949) Naushad imbued his music with a degree of sophistication that it had never known before. With Dulari, Dillagi, Dastan and Jadoo, this musician explored new vistas of instrumentation and orchestration through the 1949–51 phase. With Baiju Bawra, he demonstrated that he had the will power to get away from it all to invest our cinesangeet with a firm classical base.
Thus did Naushad ultimately ‘cross the road’ from the Dadar pavement on which he grew up. Cross it proudly to be able to look up at the Baiju Bawra marquee, a marquee now delineating his conquest of the Broadway Cinema opposite – a goal once looking way out of grasp. That the same Broadway Cinema was pulled down to make way for a shopping front signified the tempo of the times. For Naushad it was like seeing the edifice of his music coming tumbling down in the 1970s.
From Baiju Bawra (1952) to Love and God (1986), what a variety of themes Naushad tunefully explored in a span of nearly 35 years. Having underlined that, let us face facts – Baiju Bawra, in a sense, was at once Naushad’s triumph and tragedy. Before he went totally classical here, our maestro was a freewheeler composer with an open mind and an open ear. He drew enrapturingly from the musical folklore of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and the Punjab, while employing the Saurashtra slant as imaginatively as had C. Ramchandra. Naushad’s tunes were rooted in the soil but his orchestration was so updated that it showed him to be well ahead of his times. Like Bengal’s Pankaj Mullick whom Naushad admired as a ground-breaker – for the Rabindrasangeet motif that this singer-cum-composer creatively explored in his musical scores.
Coming to films as a pianist, Naushad never shied away from adapting Western modes to the Hindustani scene. Plus he was delightfully uninhibited in his choice of singers. He drew the best out of Suraiya (54 songs) in the face of her limited range. He presented Uma Devi (Tun Tun) in a featherweight vein via the nine numbers that she so specially put over for him. He exploited with telling effect the open voices of Zohrabai Ambalewali (31 songs) and Shamshad Begum (62 songs). Mukesh (26 songs) even then tended to pose complex problems of sur (note), yet Naushad was easy enough of tune to turn him into a soulful favourite upon Dilip Kumar in Mela (1948) and Andaz (1949). Naushad tapped the limitless lilt in the vocal cords of Lata Mangeshkar (167 songs) and had a big-big hand in shaping Mohammed Rafi (149 songs) into the The Great Caruso1 that he became. Even while according to Rafi and Lata pride of recording place, he adjusted to lesser singers with a resilience of mind that made him the role model for aspiring composers.
But with Baiju Bawra Naushad became too much of a perfectionist in a field in which perfection is not of the essence. Otherwise Mukesh would never have been so remarkably successful in our composing ace’s custody. If Naushad himself was more successful than all others, it was because he had turned simplicity of tune into a refined art. But after Baiju Bawra he almost began to be classical for the sake of being classical. He was at his creative peak in a milieu in which Lata and Rafi could reproduce every nuance of note that he wanted. Their May 1954 Shabab collaboration marked a musical watershed. But it also revealed a disturbing tendency, in Naushad, to subordinate the storyline to the songs. No film confirmed this assessment more graphically than did the endlessly in the making, wildly meandering Uran Khatola (at long last releasing on 20 May 1955).
Why this sudden attention to Uran Khatola? Well, the three nominations in the Filmfare Best Music Director award run during that 1955 year – a year aptly perceiving the citation to be for the whole film and not merely for one song from it – were: Hemant Kumar for Nagin; Naushad for Uran Khatola; and C. Ramchandra for Azaad in that order. That Hemant Kumar it was who whisked away the 1955 Filmfare Best Music Director statuette is a tribute, in truth, to the terpsichorean virtuosity of Vyjayanthimala in the title role of Nagin. With her ‘Sanatan’ Pradeep Kumar snake charming – as just what the conjuror ordered – as the hero ‘playing’ those piquant interlude pieces to go with heroine Mala’s Man dole meraa tan dole.2 Interlude pieces proving to be the haunting accompaniment to her twinkle-twinkle toes.
Illuminating indeed it was to get to know that Lata Mangeshkar keenly felt that Hemant Kumar came to be held back, after Nagin, by movie moneybags insisting upon his scoring hit music rather than fit music for the theme. What Hemant Kumar then fatally failed to do, Lata, was more aggressively to state his mainstream cinema position after the raging hit that his Nagin had turned out to be.
By contrast, Lata, see how much more mileage Naushad extracted from being the first one to lift the Filmfare Best Music Director Award via Baiju Bawra in 1953. Recall, Lata, how, after Baiju Bawra, our film music, as an entity, was all about the standards that Naushad had set with that one film? Standards to whose sustaining Naushad contributed right up to Sunghursh and Saathi (October-November 1968). That is, this composer preserved his stature through 25 years, starting with Rattan (mid-July 1944). His music even in Aadmi (releasing in January 1968) had in no way frustrated the film; Dilip Kumar had. Naushad’s follow-up scores in Sunghursh and Saathi (towards end-1968) were excellent. Tunes memorable they remain in our ears and eyes alike, whether they unwind upon Vyjayanthimala as Munni in Sunghursh or upon her as Shanti in Saathi. If the music of Sunghursh conformed to the Naushad idiom, Saathi happily had this seasoned campaigner orchestrally moving with the tide – in tune with the spirit of the age.
It was just hard lines that the advent of Saathi, in the case of Naushad, should have coincided with the beginning of the eclipse of Rajendra Kumar and the fadeout of Vyjayanthimala. Having said that, the nub of the matter is that Naushad only grudgingly agreed to bringing back Mukesh under his composing care with Saathi – at the prodding of Rajendra Kumar. Having so got back to Mukesh, Naushad clearly tended to feel frustrated by the spectacle of this singer not being able to take the high notes. But when had Mukesh ever taken the high notes for Naushad? Yet Naushad had transformed Mukesh into a charismatic legend upon Dilip Kumar in Andaz. In fact, Naushad had fixed Mukesh upon Dilip (Andaz) Kumar – by March 1949 – long before Shanker-Jaikishan had got around to immortalizing Mukesh upon Raj (Awaara) Kapoor in December 1951. In his March 1949 prime Naushad could bring a rewarding ring even to the vocals of the Dillagi villain Shyam Kumar singing playback, in that Kardar film, for hero Shyam – Zaalim zamaana mujh ko tum se chhudaa rahaa hai. Therefore sending for Mahendra Kapoor in Saathi to take the high notes of a song’s opening line3 was nothing if not a professional affront to Mukesh. An affront not to be easily pocketed, an affront hardly helping to add to Mukesh’s comeback confidence under Naushad. In fact, the outcome of Naushad’s general lack of warmth towards Mukesh – during that early-1967 recording morning – had already showed in the ‘comeover’ of Husn-e-jaanan idhar aa aaina hoon main teraa (Rajendra Kumar, playing Ravi, comforting an ailing Shanti, in a role essayed by Vyjayanthimala). Mukesh here verily appeared to be struggling to make Naushad feel reassured. That Husn-e-jaanan idhar aa, going upon Rajendra Kumar, was written by Majrooh Sultanpuri and was cast in Raag Bhairavi – as had been the same Majrooh–Mukesh’s Toote na dil toote na upon Dilip Kumar in Andaz – lent a tinge of grim irony to it all.
Mention of Andaz is a reminder of Naushad enlarging upon his Dilip Kumar connection enlighteningly as he said, late in 1968: ‘I don’t sign 25-30 films at a time. Like Yusuf Khan [Dilip Kumar], I do only one film at a time. Therefore I know my reputation to be at stake in that one film. In the circumstances, how could I give of anything but my best in that one film? I have done as many as 15 films through 20 years with Dilip Kumar. Yet not once has he asked me what I’m doing. If he hasn’t asked, it’s not only because I’m his senior. It’s no less because he knows that I study my music with the same sincerity and dedication as he does his acting.’
Fair enough. In fact, what mystified contending composers was how Naushad could consistently beat them to it while doing only one film at a time. I know of their calling an informal conference to discuss the ‘sad situation’! Was it then the sad situation that, ultimately, proved Naushad’s undoing? Here is a diverting sidelight involving that well-known writer-publicist, V. P. Sathe. That gentleman was present at S. U. Sunny–Naushad’s May 1967 Palki press show. The same V. P. Sathe’s camaraderie vis-à-vis Raj Kapoor had extended through that matchless all-rounder’s lifetime. Raj trusted Sathe’s box-office instinct implicitly. In fact, it was Sathe who had accurately foretold the final fate of each RK film from Barsaat (1949) to Sangam (1964) – occupying, as always, a first-day, first-show front seat in the release theatre.
The same V. P. Sathe, now, was sitting just behind Girija and me during the May 1967 Kalamandir press-cum-public show of Palki in Bombay’s Bandra suburb. The ladies tailor-made Naushad sad situation in Palki, predictably, was upon us soon enough, as Waheeda Rehman burst into Lata song – in Raag Kaafi tones of Jaane waale teraa khuda haafiz. Sathe thereupon tapped me on the shoulder to say: ‘See this situation in which the Waheeda Rehman–Rajendra Kumar parting song has been placed? In this [sad] situation, there has not been a composer to beat Naushad yet. Just wait and hear how the public in this theatre lap it up.’
But, for once, V. P. Sathe was off the mark. Jaane waale teraa khuda haafiz failed to turn on the Mr Everyman Kalamandir audience that afternoon. Worse, Lata’s surpassingly shaded Dil ki kashti bhanwar mein aayi hai, in Raag Narayani, next went abegging, similarly dismayingly, upon Waheeda Rehman. I concluded, there and then, that this was the beginning of the end for the time-worn, weather-beaten sad situation in Naushad’s career as a popular composer.
While reflecting upon V. P. Sathe being off target this once, a relevant question to pose: Did Raj Kapoor and Naushad ever come together again after that October 1950 release of Suraiya’s Dastan? Yes they did – in a film that remained incomplete. I am talking of the Sohrab Modi remake of his 1939 landmark Pukar. A remake for which Naushad recorded (in mid-1976) two songs to be picturized upon Raj Kapoor. The first one was a solo by Mukesh going upon Raj Kapoor playing Ramu Dhobi to Raakhee’s Rami Dhoban. That Mukesh solo upon Raj Kapoor went thus (as given to me by Naushad): Tori nazariyaa se hiraniyaa laage man ma kaata re/Kaahe dhobiyaa ko dhobaniyaa maare dhobiyaa paata re.
The second number recorded for that Pukar remake was an Asha–Mukesh duet having Raj Kapoor telling Raakhee how sizzlingly sexy she was looking as Rami Dhoban – Tore kurte se toraa tan jhalke/Kaahe dhoyaa dhobaniyaa malmalke. Who but Naushad could have come to Pukar grips with such ‘nativised’ wording as the handiwork of Jan Nisar Akhtar – regarded by Khayyam to be, every inch, on a par with Sahir Ludhianvi? Maybe a shelved show is what the Pukar remake ended up as, yet just take a peek at the casting announced here – Raj Kapoor, Raakhee, Dilip Kumar, Saira Banu, Shashi Kapoor and, of course, Sohrab Modi.
In that Pukar that never was, you had Naushad returning to his folk forte. This therefore is the opportunity to drive home that Naushad’s enduring classicism after Baiju Bawra, if conferring upon him a stately status all his own, soon came to be misplaced in an O. P. Nayyaric atmosphere in which the accent, growingly, was upon the coarse and the meretricious. That Naushad’s classicism worked even in such environs, through 1955–60, is a measure of his abiding personalized hold on the public pulse. Conceded that such classicism, by 1955–60, was his composing raison d’être. Still Naushad would perhaps not have come to the pass that he did, by the November 1958 Sohni Mahiwal stage, if he had – by opting to do at least two films in a year instead of settling for one – endeavoured to infuse a little more elbow room into his baton wielding.
After all, he was still the same composer who had imaged the music of Andaz, Dillagi, Chandni Raat and Dulari inside 12 months of 1949. In the process he had created, in those four films, hit songs totalling 43. In drawing attention to such an accomplishment, no way am I suggesting that Naushad’s classicism, through the 1955–60 period, was misplaced. All that I am underpinning is that, as one foreseeing enough, he could have adopted a two-pronged strategy – where it became a one-way ticket – in an effort to anticipate the kind of late-1958 crisis that enveloped his career following Sohni Mahiwal. Such a crunch saw Naushad left, consecutively through 1960–61, with but three Dilip Kumar shows upon which to lean for a lifeline – Mughal-e-Azam, Kohinoor and Gunga Jumna. True that such a threat to his career, a threat extending to a full 21 months – Sohni Mahiwal to Mughal-e-Azam – ultimately saw Naushad to be still resourceful enough to ward off the crisis. But that only in the last possible stretch via the sheer calibre of the 1960–63 scores that he lined up for Mughal-e-Azam, Kohinoor and Gunga Jumna alongside Mere Mehboob. Yet, five years down the Mere Mehboob line, by the November 1968 Saathi sinking juncture, Naushad had made the discovery that O. P. Nayyar hit the nail on the foot when he said: ‘It’s not the man, but his time, that does the hit film running for him!’ (‘Aadmi nahein, uska time chaltaa hai!’) Lady Luck, as an old flame by then, no longer glowed so bright in Naushad’s life and times.
Thus, after having faced, unprecedentedly, seven box-office setbacks inside a five-year canvas (1964–68), Naushad opened up to say by the beginning of 1969: ‘How can I create when every other producer comes to me and says that he wants half a dozen hit tunes? “You’ve always given hit tunes, so do it for us again!” they argue. How do you explain to them that the very concept of composing a hit tune is a bar to creativity? You don’t think in terms of a hit tune or a flop tune as you compose. You stick to your style and leave the rest to destiny.
‘I need peace and quiet to create,’ emphasized Naushad, as the arena growingly came to belong to grocer composers with not a grain of originality. ‘So often do I hear that Naushad’s stock is over. Is this a provision store or something that I run out of stock? This is an insult. The true composer knows no age bar; he improves, not deteriorates, as he grows in years. Another parrot cry that I hear is that Naushad should “change his style”! God, what’s a composer minus his style? Take Sunghursh and Saathi, the one is totally in my style, the other faithfully retains my composing strengths while merely modernizing the orchestration outlook. Upon the same Vyjayanthimala in those two films, fine-tune to my Bhairavi in Sunghursh as Mere paas aao nazar to milaao and, in Saathi, as Main to pyaar se tere piyaa. How is my base style different in either Bhairavi?’ queried Naushad.
That naturally brings me to Lata’s sincere April 1967 comment about Naushad being confused and just not knowing what to give. But Dada Burman was never so baffled, was he? He took the paying public into composing confidence, understood their craving for a change and jazzed up his orchestration to give his tunes a veneer of modernity even while preserving his sweet Bangla base. Dada seldom spoke critically of colleagues; even so I once got him talking on Naushad in the November of 1968. ‘You want my view?’ said Dada. ‘It’s strange that I should be asked to express a viewpoint upon one who’s been a signpost to each one of us. Frankly, I learnt the art of popular composition from Naushad. I created so many fine tunes in my first [Hindi] movie: Filmistan’s Shikari [1946]. Yet my servant never cared for those tunes! He was humming, as late as 1946, Naushad’s tunes from Rattan [1944]. “Can’t you hum my tunes from Shikari?” I asked. “He said he could try but he found it so much easier to sing Naushad tunes from Rattan like O jaane waale baalamva and Akhiyaan milaa ke.” The same Naushad, who instinctively struck the right note, why does he falter now? Take his Sunghursh just released – a film showing two blood-feuding Hindu families on a vendetta spree. In the scene in which Vyjayanthimala and Dilip Kumar meet beyond the mandir steps, why, in such a situation, a contextually inapt tune like Jab dil se dil takraata hai?’
As I took the Sachin Dev Burman appraisal to Naushad, that composing auteur opened his mouth to say something. But, as always, better manners prevailed. Thus Naushad ended up saying nothing. Just as Naushad had said nothing when, sitting next to me, he had watched Dada Burman’s snake dance in Guide (May 1966) – a dance number so inimitably enacted by Waheeda Rehman. ‘They consider this to be the best ever snake-dance composition in our cinema …’ I began, but stopped midway. I realized in a flash that Naushad wore a wry grin as I started suggesting that Dada Burman’s Guide snake dance was the best ever. After all, had not Naushad – similarly engrossingly – composed just such a snake dance, nearly 16 years earlier, for director A. R. Kardar in Musical Pictures’ Dastan (October 1950)?
In fact, Naushad’s dazzlingly sinuous piece in Dastan – N15931: ‘Orchestra: Snake Charmer Dance Music’ – formed, for long, the arresting introduction to Radio Ceylon’s 8.00 a.m. Aap Hi Ke Geet (Your Own Songs) programme. That snake-dance debating point with chief guest Naushad cropped up at a condolence meeting called, upon my initiative, by the Cinegoers Club in a mini Marine Drive auditorium, following Dada Burman’s demise on 31 October 1975. The showing of Guide then was in the nature of a ‘bow low’ to Sachin Dev Burman. Now that Naushad himself is no more (that icon having passed away on 5 May 2006), which film, from the repertoire of that connoisseurs’ composer, do we hold up as a lifetime testimony to his art and craft? If you chorus ‘Mughal-e-Azam’, you would be merely putting the stamp upon Naushad Ali as the Grand Mughal of Hindustani Film Music. A grandstander then was Naushad – in the testing 1960s – as the emperor composer all set to move, right royally, from the songless Dilip Kumar in Mughal-e-Azam to the songful Rajendra Kumar in Mere Mehboob.
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1 The Great Caruso is the title of the 1951 MGM film based on the life of Enrico Caruso, the master tenor. Mario Lanza essayed the title role of The Great Caruso.
2 This is the Rajendra Krishna-written theme song of Filmistan’s Nagin. The title role (in that Nandlal Jashwantlal-directed cult movie) is played by Vyjayanthimala. She is viewed to be dancing, in this Man dole meraa tan dole solo number, to the strains of Lata Mangeshkar ghost singing it – on ‘Mala’ as Nagin. The song’s mould-breaking interlude pieces (on the been-hooked hero Pradeep Kumar as Sanatan) are executed by the duo of Kalyanji Virji (on the claviolin) and Ravi Shankar (on the harmonium). Ravi was chief assistant to music director Hemant Kumar in Nagin. Such a spellbinding effect did these interlude pieces create on the Nagin audience that this segment of the score came to be later ‘pressed’ as a special disc record styled Been Music: N51432 (original)/FT17683 (reissue).
3 The high notes of the first line, Bhool jaa bhool jaa … are in the voice of Mahendra Kapoor. The rest of the song, Jo chalaa gayaa usey bhool jaa, has been rendered by Mukesh as Saathi hero Rajendra Kumar’s main playback singer in the film.