THE MURKY SCENE BEHIND THE SILVER SCREEN
Kitne majboor ho gaye dil se haay
Kitne majboor ho gaye dil se
Soche samjhe baghair qaatil se
Soche samjhe baghair qaatil se
Zindagi ka sawaal kar baithe
Bekhudi mein kamaal kar baithe haay
Tum se izhaar-e-haal kar baithe …
THERE YOU HAVE ‘ANWAR’ RAJENDRA KUMAR – AS CROONED BY MOHAMMED Rafi via the pen of Shakeel and via the wand of Naushad – veil-lifting and visage-glimpsing Sadhana as Husna. Instantly beginning to idolize her as his dream love now and forever! That is the misty moment to re-live from Mere Mehboob. How ‘Husna’ Sadhana took our breath away – via G. Singh’s cameo camera – in that 1963 H. S. Rawail colour classic. In fact, Mere Mehboob broke the ‘chum’ chain by which you could think of Naushad creating music only in terms of Dilip Kumar. That ultra-glam Sadhana show saw that charismatinee idol, Rajendra Kumar, emerging as Naushad’s new touchstone. Yet such success for our maestro came only after a long battle, behind the curtain, to keep his highly envied status intact. This had Naushad agonizing about how the intrinsic worth of your work no longer did the public speaking for you. How Naushad finally came to be signed for Mere Mehboob and how, before that, Radio Ceylon played momentary spoilsport on K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam (1960) opens up a narrative that makes for edifying chronicling. A close peep into the backroom manoeuvres that make or mar mellifluous musicianship in mainstreamlined cinema in India.
The 1961–70 decade saw Naushad and Dilip Kumar, alike, being rocked by an ill wind that blew no cine-seasoned one any good. Such an era, how exactly did it work for the quality of Hindustani film music? For a quality splendidly sustained through 30 years? It is something that resonates to the eternal credit of our composers as a clan – including Shanker-Jaikishan, O. P. Nayyar, Kalyanji-Anandji and Laxmikant-Pyarelal – that they never let the tone of film music degenerate into thunder and lightning all the way. In other words, there was still an honoured place, in the rapidly transforming film songscape, for Naushad and S. D. Burman; Roshan and Madan Mohan; Khayyam and Jaidev; Salil Chowdhury and Hemant Kumar; Ravi and N. Dutta; Chitragupta and Usha Khanna; and, fulfillingly, Vasant Desai and S. N. Tripathi. Not even R. D. Burman’s Shammi Kapoor collaborating 1966 leap – to the head-spinning Teesri Manzil top – had proved a game swinger here. Melodious music continued to be made right through the 1961–70 decade by the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ alike. So much so that even a laidback Naushad could sense a belated opening for him quite early in the decade. This as prices soared in the 1961–66 SJ-orchestrated Junglee-Janwar-Budtameez era bringing Shammi Kapoor to the body-twisting fore as the heroine bender without peer on the Eastmancolorful Indian screen. A screen still ruled at the turnstiles – for all the 1969 gyrations of our Prince prancing – by Rajendra Kumar as the Jubilee King. Even if Shammi Kapoor’s image had grown, through 1962–68, as one answering to the screen brand name of Professor-Raj Kumar-Brahmachari! Of course such euphoria was to be truly experienced by Rajendra Kumar, Shammi Kapoor and co. only until Rajesh Khanna came to show his true Aradhana colours towards the end of September 1969. Even after that movie revolution, Shammi Kapoor and Rajendra Kumar, each, remained a force as they kept helming hits. But this without either of them ever being allowed by our rapacious film trade to forget that Rajesh Khanna was the neo-neo superstar for the two now to catch!
Even given such a transmogrifying scenario through 1961–70, do bear in mind that, here, we are talking of the picture as it prevailed a full nine years before our cinema turned ino a Rajesh Khannaradhana. Thus, as it came to negotiating the 1960s corner, it no longer was Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand all the way. Maybe Dilip Kumar still held top-of-the-troika sway following the spectacular November 1961 screen dacoity gains that he made via Gunga Jumna. Still, if our method actor nonpareil was as resplendent as ever towards the end of 1961, he was viewed, on the Hindustani screen now, as one cast in the thespian mould. The mould that gave Sivaji Ganesan in the South his very special hold.
In such a metamorphosing milieu obtaining all through the 1960s, where, precisely, did Our Man Naushad stand? At a point in time by which our Movie Midas was slotted, by the cine trade, as a mere camp follower of Dilip Kumar? This going by the highly successful 1960–61 running trail left by Mughal-e-Azam, Kohinoor and Gunga Jumna.
Maybe that is how the film trade saw Naushad. But Naushad, for his part, did not share such ‘a one-idead’ outlook. An outlook all but reducing Naushad to a screen apologist for Dilip Kumar. Our sangeet monarch, in fact, maintained that, alongside Dilip Kumar, his music, in its own classy way, had been the standout feature of Mughal-e-Azam and Kohinoor alike; of even Gunga Jumna considering the scant scope that the theme afforded him for really tuneful interplay.
In any case, if Dilip Kumar was the standard for the standing of Naushad to be queried in any manner, our composing suzerain now had his rejoinder ready in Rajendra Kumar. So much so that, in a remarkable hop, step and jump from Kohinoor to Mughal-e-Azam to Gunga Jumna (1960–61), the still nimble-of-mind Naushad – upbeat and upfront – coolly proceeded to ask for Rs 225,000 for Mere Mehboob (due for release some time in 1963). Armed with the latest hero phenomenon in Rajendra Kumar, Naushad – glibly arguing that it was the Mere Mehboob makers who had approached him first for the film – would agree to scoring the theme only at such an exalted fee.
This – with a touch of genius – at a time when Messrs Shanker–Jaikishan had created a sensation all their own by uplifting their fee to Rs 175,000 per film. That SJ were planning to so upraise themselves had become apparent following the high-profile end-September 1961 jubilee success of their Asha Parekh–Dev Anand starrer, Jab Pyar Kisise Hota Hai, under the benign wing of writer-director Nasir Husain. Inside a month of such a noteworthy musical triumph for the duo, Shanker-Jaikishan just sprinted away – far ahead of the rest – as Subodh Mukerji’s Junglee hummingly happened (by the middle of October 1961). Shammi Kapoor’s Junglee, in fact, now unfolded as a grosser without screen parallel, all set to excel, at the gates, even a Mughal-e-Azam just finishing (by the middle of October 1961) its diamond jubilee run at the Maratha Mandir in Central Bombay. As the Subodh Mukerji surprise packet poised to view Shammi Kapoor crowning – as Beauty Queen – the demurely debuting Saira Banu, Junglee had SJ taking a quantum leap from Rs 125,000 to Rs 175,000 per film. This Rs 175,000 marked, do note, a Rs 100,000 jump by SJ in just 30 months. That is to say, SJ’s Rs 175,000 after Junglee – at Rs 50,000 more than their February 1961-set fee of Rs 125,000 for Aas Ka Panchhi – signified a truly incredible advance of Rs 100,000. From the Rs 75,000 that the duo had so opportunely collected (in the March of 1959) on L. V. Prasad’s Chhoti Bahen had SJ gone zooming to Rs 175,000 following Junglee (by October 1961).
That made the November of 1961 not the happiest hour in which to ask for Rs 225,000 as far as one Naushad went. SJ’s mid-October 1961 arriving Junglee, in fact, became the prime reason for our cine trade to just refuse to bite as Naushad, disconcertingly, flipped for Rs 225,000. That much as the big pay-off for Naushad having completed a remarkable jubilee hat-trick – Gunga Jumna having come as a cult film follow-up to Mughal-e-Azam and Kohinoor.
Consequently, for a fair length of time, Naushad’s name remained as ‘yet to be finalized’ for the music direction of Mere Mehboob. This even after Rajendra Kumar and Sadhana had been announced as that film’s leading pair. With other key Mere Mehboob roles due to be played by Ashok Kumar (of the roving eye) and by Nimmi – as the one claiming to be unkissed for eons after she came to films with RK’s Barsaat, late in 1949. (Such a diverting interpolation by me, here, is intended to be but a light-veined rewind to something that I unexpectedly got to view, and risibly got to hear being uttered, while on the studio round, by sheer chance, as early as 1952.) But the more germane point, now, for us to ponder was as to why the Mere Mehboob brains trust was not quite for Naushad at that Rs 225,000 price – a demand representing, in one shot, Rs 115,000 more than his decade-long surviving fee of Rs 110,000. Such an overnight near doubling of fees apart, resistance built, perhaps, also because, on top of a whopping Rs 20 lakh to Rajendra Kumar and Rs 4 lakh to Sadhana, Naushad (at an unrelenting Rs 225,000) could be cutting further into the vitals of the Mere Mehboob budget. But Rajendra ‘Jubilee’ Kumar’s word was law by this end-1961 juncture in the film industry; and that reigning idol had made it crystal clear that he wanted only a ‘period’ theme specialist like Naushad Ali to be composing, for him, such a Muslim social as Mere Mehboob. Without ever directly coming to the bargain counter, the Jubilee Kumar contrived to ensure that our maestro, in the grand sum, was paid Rs 225,000 for the Mere Mehboob show – Junglee or no Junglee, Shammi Kapoor or no Shammi Kapoor. Yet it was only following a bit of wrangling that such a ‘fat’ fee came to be agreed upon as Naushad final.
Throughout, Naushad, miraculously, stood firm, just refusing to budge. There were murmurs that Naushad’s 1960–61 body of work in no way justified such an inflated fee. ‘Please do tell me why?’ outspokenly came back Naushad. ‘Have my Mughal-e-Azam, Kohinoor and Gunga Jumna, in that stunning sequence, not been multiple silver jubilee successes with each song from each film a huge hit?’
The film trade was still not impressed. It was already reeling under the consistently rocketing rate of front runners Shanker-Jaikishan on a Rs 175,000 after-Junglee roll. Plus it was finding Kalyanji-Anandji and Ravi to be pitching up their expectations based upon what those three validly called ‘sheer performance’. On the side, our film trade was up against an importuning O. P. Nayyar adamant about his fee being raised to Rs 75,000 for any colour movie that he now came to sign. (O. P. Nayyar, right then, was scoring for Filmalaya and S. Mukerji’s Ek Musafir Ek Haseena to come, by the August of 1962, in black and white.) The film trade easily managed to keep OP at bay. In its eyes, it was Nayyar who had devalued himself. As we already know, Nayyar had foolishly lost no end of ground, by end-1960, in joining hit-parade positioning issue with Ameen (Binaca Geetmala) Sayani and Radio Ceylon.
Our film trade, side by side, prided itself upon the fact of its having held such talents as S. D. Burman, Roshan and Madan Mohan to just Rs 40,000 each – by slyly drawing attention to how even their fees had been doubled in the colour decade. But to Naushad, somehow, it saw no compelling call to pay anything more than the Rs 110,000 that our virtuoso had made the fundamental mistake of unvaryingly charging – all through the golden decade of 1951–60 – from Dilip Kumar’s Deedar down to that icon’s Kohinoor. At that Rs 110,000, no fewer than nine of Naushad’s 12 films had been jubilee hits (in various degrees) through 1951–60. Even this was below the Naushad density, the trade now perversely reasoned. If only because, in the 1941–50 decade from mid-1944 Rattan down to Dastan (end-October 1950), as many as 13 of Naushad’s 16 films had celebrated thumping jubilees! Over the years, stressed the film trade, Naushad had started working in fewer and fewer films, more and more with Dilip Kumar. In fine, there was, in the industry, an anti-Naushad feeling growing vis-à-vis Dilip Kumar. Certain industry sources even drew objective attention to how, against having to shell out Rs 200,000-plus now to a Naushad working at a leisurely princely pace, they could book a confirmed jubilee maker – quick on the draw – in Ravi for just Rs 50,000. But Naushad – defying all soft talk of even SJ having reconciled to Rs 175,000 in the afterglow of Junglee – stuck out for Rs 225,000, given the covert support of Rajendra Kumar.
Naushad’s stand, ultimately, stood vindicated as Mere Mehboob (upon releasing on the 1963 Divali eve) proved to be an exceptional success. ‘Husna’ Sadhana looked the nearest thing to one of the seven wonders of the world, as Rafi, soft as a whisper, crooned, via ‘Anwar’ Rajendra Kumar, Ae husn zaraa jaag tujhe ishq jagaaye – in ‘never-never-land’ Yaman. The Shakeel–Naushad impact made via Rafi’s Tum se izhaar-e-haal kar baithe (upon Rajendra Kumar vis-à-vis Sadhana) was no less spellbinding. Lata–Rafi’s Yaad mein teri jaag jaag ke hum (upon Sadhana and Rajendra Kumar) left its own imprint. As did Lata’s Tere pyaar mein dildaar (upon a Sadhana on the ‘fringe’ and dancing it out with a panache set to create the Mere Mehboob mood for a moony musicality). Lata–Asha’s twin offering, Mere mehboob mein kyaa nahein kyaa nahein (upon Sadhana and Ameeta) and Jaan-e-mann eik nazar dekh le (upon Ameeta & co.), carried their own lure. The last two unveiled as numbers imparting a certain ethnic flavour to the Muslim social landscape. The Lata–Rafi, Sadhana–Rajendra Kumar tandem, Mere mehboob tujhe meri mohabbat ki qasam, proved a ready hit – for all the ‘orchestrated’ trouble that Naushad had been impelled to overcome during its recording.
A rear-view mirror peep into how the Mere Mehboob ‘script’ took shape for Naushad would not be out of place. Remember, our composing ace had all along made it a point to answer selected correspondence from his bulging fan mail – he received as many as 500 letters a day at his 1946–55 zenith. As May 1955, therefore, saw his Uran Khatola proclaimed to be a big-big musical hit, it was the propitious time for Naushad – with no Dilip Kumar film of his immediately due for exposure – to have jacked up his price. But, somehow, Naushad chose to leave it for the morrow. Only for Nimmi–Bharat Bhooshan’s Sohni Mahiwal to so fold up (in the November of 1958) as to find his fee-raising style to be cripplingly cramped. That left Naushad almost at the box-office mercy of Dilip Kumar (Mughal-e-Azam, Kohinoor and Gunga Jumna due to unspool through 1960-61). That new decade – set to witness screen values transmuting – was thus upon Naushad before he knew it. In such a welter of circumstances did Naushad run into the ubiquitous Shanker-Jaikishan pair, now all Junglee effrontery, setting terms in the neo colour age.
As I met up with Naushad afresh on the eve of his 42nd birthday falling on the 25th of December 1961, I casually expressed my astonishment at what I had just then heard. About Naushad having, at one crossing, planned to go public in the matter of his recent jubilee achievements. ‘But how did you get to know about something so hush-hush?’ queried Naushad, taken aback. To which I responded: ‘You, Naushad Saab, after having been in this industry for a score of years, surely know that just nothing remains secret in showbiz. What I’d like to know now, in all sincerity, is how, given your unique status and stature in the industry, you could have even contemplated making such a move. Believe me, I know nothing about your actual fee – before and after the sharp upturn that I’m told you’re now seeking on Mere Mehboob.’ (Of course I knew all about the exact fee being sought by him and Naushad knew that I knew.)
‘I’ll grant it to you there,’ came back Naushad, disarmingly. ‘It was but a fleeting thought. Truth to tell, the idea was spurned almost as soon as it occurred to me. Yet you must here reflect upon the innermost feelings that actuated such a line of thinking. I had felt that the industry needed to be rudely reminded, on the threshold of my possibly signing for something so lavish as Mere Mehboob, that this humble one was no non-performing onlooker. This following Mughal-e-Azam, Kohinoor and Gunga Jumna having, each, proved an all-songs hit – in a striking row – through 1960–61. The industry had to know that I was asking for my fee to be but justly revised, in the colour era, after a full 10 years of having concentrated upon the effort rather than the return. Any enhancement that I was now seeking, do remember, was only after the fees of even non-jubilee music directors – music directors till recently perceived to be in the Rs 20,000 bracket – had been doubled in the same colour era. Frankly speaking, my continuing success story now became my problem. This industry, expediently, had taken for accomplished the fact of a Naushad film turning up a spot winner with each song an unfailing hit. Regrettably, things appeared to have come to a pass where only a systematic reiterating of those song-hits, from each one of my three films releasing through the 1960–61 frame, would convince my traducers.’
Naushad talking – even if in private – the language of the industry came as something of a culture shock. But I comprehended the rationale of his reasoning. This was that the industry, now, had not merely to know that he was still a king-size hit. It had, instantly, also to get to view the fact that he remained as much of a sure shot as ever at creating a hit tune without compromising upon its merit. Naushad confided that he felt aghast to hear it said, in the industry, that he had nothing truly worth while to show starting 1960. Our maestro went on, convincingly, to argue that your work no longer did the talking for you. He further lamented that we had lived into tawdry times by which you had to shout to be heard. Not one of those three films of his – he underpinned – had been anything but an all-songs hit, as our film industry habitually counted upon it to be in his case. So how, possibly, could our filmmakers have been grudging him a long-overdue fee correction?
Naushad felt particularly outraged by the suggestion that each one of his last three jubilee hits (Mughal-e-Azam, Kohinoor and Gunga Jumna) had been done in amicable tandem with Dilip Kumar. Now – observed Naushad – he had sealed the lips of those running him down by scoring big time with a brand-new hero in Rajendra Kumar. How does a Naushad listing, carried out in such a context, read? I prepared such a listing – just to see how it panned out – and I felt astonished. Astonished at how – as Naushad had submitted – three successive releases of his, by the end-1960–61 stage (at a point when his name came to be shortlisted for Mere Mehboob), had indeed proved to be, as they jargonized it, ‘each-song-a-hit’ shows. In fact, even a cursory glance at such a listing made overwhelming reading. Just take a look and decide for yourself.
Gunga Jumna (1961) becomes the first of those three films to be named, as releasing at the time when talks with Naushad for Mere Mehboob had already begun. Here then are six spot Naushad hits from that mindsweeping Vyjayanthimala–Dilip Kumar ‘show of co-starring strength’: Nain lad jaihain (Rafi and chorus); Ho o ho hore hore jhanana ghunghar baaje (Lata and chorus); Insaaf ki dagar pe bachchon dikhaao chal ke (Hemant Kumar and chorus); Na maanoon na maanoon na maanoon re (Lata); Dhoondho dhoondho re saajana (Lata); Toraa mann badaa paapi saanwariya re (Asha); last because it is by no means the least relevant: Do hanson ka jodaa bichhad gayo re (Lata in Naushadian Bhairavi).
Let us, next, look at that Meena Kumari–Dilip Kumar blues-chaser: Kohinoor (November 1960) – a biggie releasing some 14 weeks after Mughal-e-Azam. Here, in Kohinoor, the 10 Naushad hits are viewed to unwind as: Jadoogar qaatil haazir hai meraa dil (Asha); Dhal chuki sham-e-gham (Rafi); Dil mein baje pyaar ki shehnaiyaan (Lata); Zaraa mann ki kiwadiyaa khol (Rafi and chorus); Yeh kyaa zindagi hai yeh kaisaa jahaan hai (Lata); Koee pyaar ki dekhe jaadoogari (Lata, Rafi and chorus); Tan rang lo ji aaj mann rang lo (Lata, Rafi and chorus); Do sitaaron ka zameen par hai milan (Lata-Rafi); Chalenge teer jab dil par (Lata-Rafi); plus, how possibly to forget, Madhuban mein Radhika naache re (Rafi-Amir Khan on the N53202 78-rpm record; Rafi-Niyaz Ahmed on the Kohinoor screen).
Now for the pièce de résistance – those 12 all-time Naushad hits from Mughal-e-Azam, a magnum opus in which, it is crucial to note, our composing czar scored, as never ever before, with not a song going upon one Dilip Kumar. (Not even by ‘voiceover’ suggestion, as in the case of Rafi’s Insaaf ka mandir hai from the 1954 Amar – a title symbolizing Dilip Kumar’s screen persona in that riveting Mehboob show.) Naushad was rather particular about fleshing out this singular achievement of his. His detractors were declaiming – he now bored in – that Dilip Kumar was the secret of his enduring musical success at the box office through 12 years. How come then that he had agreed to compete, in such a grandstand finish as Mughal-e-Azam, with not a single song, in such a prestige show, getting to be picturized upon Dilip Kumar as the superstar’s superstar?
Putting that aside as a peripheral issue, let us zero in upon Lata’s Top Five in Mughal-e-Azam. You find four of them to be upon our Anarkali beyond compare – upon a madonna lily viewed to be so weighing the ‘Madhubalance of power’, in turbulent Mughal times, as to extract the maximum mileage from the palace intrigue setting going with Mohabbat ki jhooti kahaani pe roye; Bekas pe karam keejiye Sarkar-e-Madeena; Humen kaash tum se mohabbat na hoti; and Khuda nigahbaan ho tumhaara. Plus there is, do remember, upon Sheila Dalaya: Ae ishq yeh sab duniyaa waale. To follow, there are those three Lata and chorus ear- and eye-holders – Mohe panghat pe Nandlal chhed gayo re; Yeh dil ki lagi kam kyaa hogi; and Jab pyaar kiyaa to darna kyaa. By way of a face-off round-off, we have Teri mehfil mein qismat aazma kar hum bhi dekhenge (Shamshad Begum, Lata and chorus); plus Rafi and chorus’s Zindabad zindabad ae mohabbat zindabad on character actor Kumar. Even that classical colossus Bade Ghulam Ali Khan’s Prem jogan ban ke sundari piyaa oar chali and Shubh din aayo rajdulara had their Tansensory pull in such a stately show.
Not until you peruse such a listing, in cold print, do you realize that Naushad was bang on target when he said that he had always delivered. The box-office bounty yielded by Mere Mehboob further drove home the industry’s hit-upon-hit Naushad point. Indeed, for our composing wizard, the runaway success of Mere Mehboob was all-important, as he had discovered all kinds of pitfalls left for him to overcome as he moved towards the later years of the 1961–70 decade. That decadent decade – as it climbed on him – was all set to find Naushad’s clout to be growing less and less. Things were no longer the same and Naushad sensed it, surprisingly, with K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam, whose elaborate success had spilled over to 1961. Even after such a golden run via Mughal-e-Azam and Kohinoor, Naushad could retain his very special status, in the industry, only by springing the name of Rajendra Kumar as his 1963 Mere Mehboob mascot. This was his way of setting off the niche that Dilip Kumar continued to occupy in his oeuvre.
It had all begun with a bit of a fright for Naushad. K. Asif had chosen to release Mughal-e-Azam (on the 5th of August 1960) without bothering to buy any curtain-raiser time on Radio Ceylon. A Radio Ceylon that then was the passport to advertising (before release) a film’s musical bona fides. K. Asif argued that his film had enough ammunition to fire on its own, that it needed no Radio Ceylon cover. Maybe the hassle was over the Bombay agents of Radio Ceylon not so gently pressing for more (than the rate pre-set) for projecting such an exclusive extravaganza as Mughal-e-Azam. Whatever the hitch there, the upshot was that not one of Naushad’s 12 Mughal-e-Azam gems got to be heard, on Radio Ceylon, before the film released – something distinctly unusual. In fact, through two weeks after the film’s star-spangled banner opening, my good friend Ameen Sayani (on instructions from above?) shut out the Mughal-e-Azam songs altogether from the celebrated Binaca Geetmala – a programme heard, by a totally engrossed public, in each nook and cranny of India.
K. Asif, predictably, had not even been aware of such a startling side development. As far as he was concerned, as the king of kings, he had released the hit of hits. Only as Naushad – mighty concerned about his lifetime best score crying for audio attention – worryingly turned to him did K. Asif stumble upon the fact of Radio Ceylon having gone deafeningly silent on his Mughal-e-Azam. Ameen Sayani was urgently summoned and it is safe to conclude that what K. Asif had to tell him did not exactly make for musical hearing. The pendulum changed extremes with the Wednesday evening that followed, as Madhubala, in chains, broke Lata-free with Mohabbat ki jhooti kahaani pe roye.
After that the speed with which the Mughal-e-Azam numbers made it to the Binaca Geetmala – and stayed there as ‘Music by Naushad’ – had to be heard to be relieved. It all came right for Naushad in the end but it was enough to give our composing virtuoso a very big scare. He had heard about it all before, of course. But now he was told, in so many words, that it was ‘no settlement, no Radio Ceylon’. Naushad clearly lacked the ‘omnidirectional duo’ magnitude of resources to bring down his baton effectively here. This one time, there had been a K. Asif to pull him through. What about the future? With Mere Mehboob (coming in October 1963), therefore, Naushad began to insist upon getting it in writing, while signing a contract, that so many hours of Radio Ceylon time would be pre-bought to air the songs of his film – for a certain number of weeks – before and after release!
Well might readers of a later generation want to know: Was Radio Ceylon then the be-all and end-all of cinesangeet as a popular pastime in India? ‘It was!’ is the disquieting answer. All India Radio, as the country’s national broadcaster, had virtually banned film music, starting 1952. That, precisely, was the year in which Radio Ceylon opted to go commercial. Ever since this radio station assumed that 1952 format, mainstream cinema in India had known no avenue to play its songs other than Radio Ceylon. True, on 2 October 1957, the Government of India, at lingering last, had relented by permitting All India Radio to launch a channel styled Vividh Bharati. With 40 stations across the country, Vividh Bharati, being on medium wave, had caught on, given its easy tuning-in facility for armchair listeners. Radio Ceylon was available only on short wave and the signals, off and on, kept fading out.
But, as a vehicle for systematically promoting film music, Vividh Bharati remained a closed shop to our film industry. This while Vividh Bharati depended 100 per cent upon our film music to keep its 40 stations spoon-fed through 17-18 hours of the day. Vividh Bharati virtually functioned as a satrapy redolent of a government department run by hard-boiled bureaucrats still upholding the imperial British tradition. So much so that the programmes that Vividh Bharati broadcast could have been recorded on ‘red tape’! Its ‘spreadout’ carried colourful names – Sangeet Sarita, Bhule Bisre Geet, Inse Miliye, Chhaya Geet, Jaymala (the programme becoming Vishesh Jaymala on Saturday-Sunday) and what not? The supreme irony, here, lay in the fact that, while feeding Vividh Bharati all the way – with music made wholly by it – our film industry had no say whatsoever in the planning of that national network’s day-to-day programmes. Vividh Bharati, in effect, just battened on the razzle-dazzle of the Bombay film world.
Thus, as Mughal-e-Azam unveiled in the first week of August 1960, the only conduit through which its eagerly awaited music could be publicized, live, was Radio Ceylon. Things had been that way for eight years running – since the Commercial Services of Radio Ceylon were launched in 1952. Against such a background, Naushad’s sense of Radio Ceylon anxiety was understandable. The commercial services of that foreign radio station, laughably, represented the only organized channel through which those in India and outside could cozily get to hear a film’s music – before and after the movie’s release. So much so that there was a keen sense of anticipation about when Radio Ceylon would be playing a coming film’s songs. Those were the days when very few could afford to buy record players and records! In rural areas and small towns, even the radio was a rarity and large groups of people used to flock around radio sets wherever available.
In such an atmosphere had ‘built’ a certain Radio Ceylon expectation on K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam. But – inexplicably now for listeners held captive – that foreign radio station went into a golden silence in airing such a big Indian film’s music before the movie’s release. This led to a total sense of letdown in the listening millions of the country. That it took some 15 days for K. Asif to resolve the issue with Radio Ceylon bewildered our listening fraternity. For, by a.d. 1960, a fortnight was almost a listening lifetime in the case of a benchmark show like Mughal-e-Azam. This should explain the sleepless nights that Naushad spent for a full two weeks, waiting for his majestic Mughal-e-Azam music to Radio Ceylon materialize. Naushad was no Shanker-Jaikishan to have his music playing, almost at the press of a button, on Radio Ceylon.
That was as Mughal-e-Azam bore fruit. At other times – as one who could not pay to be heard – Naushad had to leave it to the magnetism of his name for his songs to be pushed on Radio Ceylon. Given personal responsibilities while dedicatedly working upon one film at a time, Naushad himself had never commanded the money power to call the Radio Ceylon shots. The 1961–70 decade therefore is a telltale pointer to how much Naushadian Sangeet meant to Radio Ceylon’s input and output – still. Not for nothing had Naushad earned all that audience goodwill with the abiding appeal of his music through 20 years. That fund of goodwill was something upon which he could draw even in the screaming 1960s. The way in which the lilting music of a dismal show like Leader (March 1964) came to be spotlighted upon Radio Ceylon is all-revealing here. In point of fact, Leader had turned out to be the scale of Dilip Kumar non-performer that left the S. Mukerji Film Syndicate, as its makers, woefully harried. So much so that S. Mukerji would courteously invite top-rating media folk to be seated inside his mini Filmalaya theatre. So as to be able to ask us to have a closer look at Leader – as a film – and tell him what possibly could be done, at such a late stage, to cut the losses being made on that movie costing a small fortune to complete.
Superheroine Vyjayanthimala and superhero Dilip Kumar were not, any longer, on the Gunga Jumna paparazzi wavelength – and that showed in Leader. Its end stages had to be listlessly shot with the imperially rebellious Vyjayanthimala making little time for Dilip Kumar. Once out of Filmalaya bounds, she was too busy with old romance-hound Raj Kapoor – on RK’s Sangam merry-go-round – to be any longer concerned about the meticulous way in which our perfectionist hero wanted the scenes remaining between the two to be shot in Leader.
An eventful film, S. Mukerji’s Leader. It had, disturbingly for Naushad, his very own Dilip Kumar endeavouring to foist, upon him, Sahir Ludhianvi as his new poet. True Shakeel Badayuni did return, after all, but the Naushad–Dilip Kumar equation was never quite the same after this Sahir interlude. Yes, the Left-oriented Sahir actually turned up with his song-lyric to go upon Vyjayanthimala and Dilip Kumar in that classically dueting Taj Mahal situation from Leader. Astutely arguing that it was a theme centring upon landlord vs labourer, Leftist Ludhianvi, here, came up with a sentiment so in tune with the metre set by Naushad that – given the ambience of the subsequent Leader duet-tune as penned by Shakeel – you could now Naushad sing Sahir as:
Eik shahenshah ne daulat ka sahaara le kar
Hum gharibon ki mohabbat ka udaaya hai mazaaq
Mere mehboob kahein aur milaa kar mujh se
Mere mehboob kahein aur milaa kar mujh se had been Sahir’s parting shot. It was a punchline whose first two words were ideologically intended to advert to the ‘feudal’ Mere Mehboob show. A ‘feudal’ show upon whose music ‘Our Mughal Lordship’ was working even as Sahir and Naushad came face to face, in mid-1962, on Leader. But Naushad, Urdu matchingly, was ready for Sahir. Unruffled by any ‘class’ of jibe, Naushad went on to do some loud thinking about whether he had not – already – got to read something along similar lines in Sahir Ludhianvi’s renowned work on the Taj Mahal. ‘So what’s new here?’ Naushad sought to know, a trifle aggressively. ‘All this [already published Taj Mahal poetry] will not wash here!’ (‘Yeh sub yahaan nahein chalegaa!’) There was an instant personality clash for Sahir to up it and leave. In came Shakeel and the rest is Eik shahenshah ne banvaa ke haseen Taj Mahal Mughal lore.
That Sahir was out to discomfit Naushad, that time out, is something manifest if you take due note of the fact that, simultaneously in mid-1962, that poet was finishing ‘lyricizing’ Roshan’s Taj Mahal (to come in 1963). No Sahir Ludhianvi ego on show in front of the submissive Roshan there. Nor any Leftist overtones in the song lyrics that Sahir penned for that 1963 Taj Mahal film. Lyrics superbly Sahir written to jell with Roshan’s inspired tuning. On Taj Mahal display there, in fact, was the kind of attuning teamwork going on to 1963-win, for Sahir Ludhianvi, his first Filmfare Best Lyricist Award (for the Jo vaada kiyaa woh nibhana padegaa Lata–Rafi duet). In the case of Roshan vis-à-vis M. Sadiq’s 1963 Taj Mahal, the film was to fetch for this master composer – ahead of even Lata’s new pet Madan Mohan – his maiden Filmfare Best Music Director Award. A 1963 black statuette that the genial Roshan spirited away from Naushad’s Mere Mehboob! If Naushad losing out here to Roshan had Sahir Ludhianvi smacking his lips with approval, the fact of Shakeel Badayuni having lifted the Filmfare Best Lyricist Award through three years (1960, 1961 and 1962) – even if for a non-Naushad film on each occasion – was something that had not exactly sent ‘Ludhiana’ into raptures. Seeing that ‘Badayun’ it was that had come to take over, from ‘Ludhiana’, the Leader songwriter assignment too!
Indeed, even before that not so lyrical mid-1962 Leader hint thrown by Dilip Kumar via Sahir, Naushad had turned to a new conscience keeper in Rajendra Kumar. Not that Naushad entirely disconnected with Dilip Kumar. But he certainly began to take a second look at how his career could be going, from hereon, if Dilip Kumar became the Leader style of albatross around his neck. That Naushad’s enthralling music in Leader came to be so prominently aired by Radio Ceylon – in spite of the film proving disappointing at the hustings – was a measure of our Sangeet Samrat’s fresh-found audience comfort level, following the impress left by the Sadhana–Rajendra Kumar twosome’s tuning in his Mere Mehboob (October 1963).
Factually, the music field had become a near racket (in terms of jarring sound waves) by 1965. Yet Naushad managed to preserve his inherent dignity, amidst such discordant notes being struck, by the sheer calibre of the scores that he produced for Leader (early 1964) and Dil Diya Dard Liya (early 1966). That his nine songs in the one and his eight songs in the other were all timeless hits underlined the fact that Naushad’s composing powers were by no means on the decline. That both these mid-1960s films did poor business was no fault of his music, though he had, perforce, to carry the Dilip Kumar can. Naushad had sowed the Dilip Kumar wind with Mela (in October 1948). He reaped the Dilip Kumar whirlwind with Sunghursh (in October 1968) – after 15 films with that ultimate legend. That Dilip Kumar’s films were getting to be long held up in production certainly did not help. Remember, Naushad was now averaging but one film in a year.
He had ventured to break the shackles by reviving (in the February of 1966) his old-hat storyline in Saaz Aur Awaz – by managing to get such a screechy screen cliché released some nine weeks before Dil Diya Dard Liya finally came to view in the April of 1966. This Saaz Aur Awaz ploy – to attempt to pre-empt the never-ending Dil Diya Dard Liya – proved to be a disastrous error of judgement. After all, what had Naushad in common with Subodh Mukerji, as the Saaz Aur Awaz director; or with Saira Banu and Joy Mukerji as the lead pair of such a mid-1940s-looking movie? If the Saaz Aur Awaz music came to sound dauntingly dated in the new year of 1966, this too was natural. Naushad had readied this film’s 10 songs (as written by Khumar Barabankvi) before 1947 – before Shakeel Badayuni joined him with Natak and Dard that year. How, conceivably, Naushad expected a storyline thought up in 1946 to work in 1966 is a mystery. Saaz Aur Awaz was a box-office turnip, setting Naushad shatteringly back even before Dil Diya Dard Liya came as the clincher by way of a damper, following the first quarter of 1966.
‘You make such decisions when you become unsure of yourself,’ explained Naushad. ‘I had put in solid musical work on my films under way but those movies were just not making it to the screen. Saaz Aur Awaz wasn’t just a mistake, it was a blunder. It was a clumsy endeavour at quickly retrieving lost time – something that went against my basic approach to music making. Yet you’ll agree that those two Rafi solos, Saaz ho tum awaaz hoon main and Dil ki mehfil saji hai chale aayiye, and even Suman Kalyanpur’s Poonam ki raat aayi dil ki muraad laayi, were good tunes deserving better picturization than they got. I found Subodh Mukerji to be a gentleman. But treating this genre of music was not his forte; there I erred grievously.’
Where you felt really dismayed for Naushad was in the fact of both Leader (March 1964) and Dil Diya Dard Liya (April 1966) failing to make the cash registers ring. Dil Diya Dard Liya, for one, had such a landmark Lata composition as Phir teri kahaani yaad aayi (upon Waheeda Rehman in Naushadized Maand). Plus Rafi’s memorably soliloquized Koee saaghar dil ko behlaata nahein carried its own Naushad embossing (upon Dilip Kumar in Raag Kalavati). Not to speak of Dilrubaa maine tere pyaar mein kyaa-kyaa na kiyaa (Rafi in Raag Yaman upon Dilip Kumar). Such raagdaari going wantonly waste in a movie that Dilip Kumar, A. R. Kardar and co. truthfully did not know how to end! How saddening it was to view the career of such a pioneering giant as Abdul Rashid Kardar all but ending with a money-guzzling show like Dil Diya Dard Liya. I met the man just before Dil Diya Dard Liya surfaced; also just after it was adjudged as the non-retriever of all that money pumped into its undoing.
Kardar was already a broken man before this show. After the film’s release, he just gave up on cinema – for nearly a decade. The man who made Naushad had been unmade by a film that all but undid Naushad too. To think that Dil Diya Dard Liya carried a life-and-times score by our composing virtuoso. But at a point in time when Kardar did not care much for Naushad; and Naushad cared even less for Kardar. How scenes change in the screen journey of movie greats – Zindagi ke aaeene ko tod do/Zindagi ke aaeene ko tod do/Eis mein ab kuchh bhi nazar aataa nahein …1
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1 ‘Break the mirror of life/Break the mirror of life/Nothing is now visible in it.’ From Kay Productions’ Dil Diya Dard Liya (1966), directed by A. R. Kardar. Song-lyric by Shakeel Badayuni. Music by Naushad. Singer: Mohammed Rafi (in Koee saaghar dil ko behlaata nahein).