Murli se teri jiyaa laagaa balam ho
Murli se teri jiyaa laagaa balam ho laagaa balam
Aankhon mein tuu hai nahein ab koee gham ho
Aankhon mein tuu hai nahein ab koee gham
Nahein ab koee gham
O bansi waale tujhe meri qasam, tujhe meri qasam
O bansi waale tujhe meri qasam, tujhe meri qasam
Aaj sunaa de woh dhun zaraa
Rum jhum saawan ki barse ghataa
Murli waale murli bajaa sun sun murli ko naache jiyaa1
‘MURLI WAALE’ IS HOW APPRECIATIVELY CHANTEUSE SURAIYA addressed Naushad’s favourite flautist Bhalchandra Barve, playing enchantingly, here, upon her Dillagi hero Shyam. A Shyam having Suraiya moving in cute ‘playing’ step with that Tuu meraa chaand main teri chaandni duet (of March 1949) from Dillagi. Suraiya proceeds to place on record how clever was our composing sultan in the art of man management. Naushad knew all about how to look after his interest in films and outside – and this was resented. He instinctively understood that, if nothing succeeds like success, nothing fails like failure – in this ritzy-glitzy industry. Naushad worked indefatigably towards his own advance. Maybe there was a ruthless streak in him. Was his show of abiding modesty then a put-on, a mask to disguise the real Naushad? You never really found out, beyond getting to know that here was a master musician who was clear in his mind about how to project himself in all situations, in all seasons.
How many of you know that Suraiya, not Meena Kumari, was the one to be sounded out first to play Bharat Bhooshan’s Gauri in Naushad–Vijay Bhatt’s end-1952 classical mood-swinger, Baiju Bawra? About its hero being fresher Bharat Bhooshan, Naushad’s mind was made up. The aspect left to be considered was this – that casting the then downmarket Meena Kumari as Gauri, opposite a still-to-be established leading man like Bharat Bhooshan (essaying the title role of Baiju Bawra), could have meant a double risk. Suraiya’s brand value would have halved that risk certainly. Do always remember that Baiju Bawra was Naushad’s first film as the total freelance after his having daringly stepped out of the A. R. Kardar sanctum. ‘Be ready for a call any time!’ Suraiya said that Naushad had told her, early in 1951, as it became evident, to the last of our singing stars, that the grand vizier of our music was planning to leave Kardar Productions.
‘I was away shooting when Naushad and Vijay Bhatt first called upon my granny Badshah Begum – a tough bargainer – at our Krishna Mahal Marine Drive home early in 1951,’ recalled Suraiya. ‘The two came a long way in meeting our terms. In fact, granny had a soft corner for Naushad following the stand that he had taken on my Dev Anand connection. [Naushad had not approved of the love affair between Suraiya and Dev Anand as it developed on the sets of Vidya (1948) – see Chapter 7.]
‘I was,’ continued Suraiya, ‘still cut up with Naushad but was too professional in my outlook by then [early 1951] to miss out on the opportunity to essay a lifetime role sure to test – in the same way as M. Sadiq’s [1948] Kajal had done – the actress in me. So I was game in the matter of playing Gauri opposite Bharat Bhooshan as Baiju Bawra but, somehow, things did not work out. They wanted bulk dates, something that my other film commitments just would not permit me to allot at the time.
‘Likewise was I rather keen to play Anarkali in the famous [1953] Filmistan movie of that name,’ Suraiya took me by surprise in disclosing. ‘Again I was away shooting as the Filmistan production chief S. Mukerji and that movie’s comprehending director Nandlal Jashwantlal came visiting granny to persuade her, first, in the matter of my doing Anarkali. Nandlal was very eager, the two of us having vibed very well as he let me interact freely with Dev Anand on the sets of Sanam [releasing May 1951]. In fact, S. Mukerji and Nandlal Jashwantlal even came a second time and, on this occasion, I was personally there. I asked them, first and foremost, as to who was composing Anarkali for them. They said C. Ramchandra, then ranking next only to Naushad. They had persuaded C. Ramchandra, who had gone away from Filmistan, to return – upon their being told that K. Asif, all of a sudden moving away from Anil Biswas, could zero in upon Naushad to score the music for Mughal-e-Azam. Thereupon I had second thoughts and politely refused the [1953] Anarkali role.
‘In film industry circles, it was well known about how much more hooked, upon Lata Mangeshkar, C. Ramchandra had become by the early 1951 stage – the time when they came calling for Anarkali. Side by side, I got to know that, alongside Naushad, Nargis’s name had been finalized – all over again – to play Anarkali in K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam. Recollect how, originally, it was Nargis who had donned makeup [at Bombay Talkies Studios] for the role of Anarkali, as K. Asif announced Mughal-e-Azam [in 1944] with Sapru for her Salim; Veena as Bahar; Chandramohan [of the fiery eyes] in the pivotal role of Akbar; and Durga Khote as Jodhabai. That Mughal-e-Azam project came to be shelved in mid-1947, as you well know.
‘As K. Asif revived the Mughal-e-Azam idea in the 1950s,’ went on Suraiya, ‘Nutan’s name was in the air, for a while, as the one due to play Anarkali. Yet now it was Nargis, yet again. Filmistan’s Anarkali, in the circumstances, looked to be an S. Mukerji ploy to set me up against Nargis essaying that role in Mughal-e-Azam. Our film industry somehow viewed Nargis and me as box-office rivals, though I had my own clear-cut identity as a singing star. What I would have truly loved to do was to play the role of Anarkali with Naushad composing the fabled theme for me to sing. Naushad alone could have made a vocal innocent like me sound credible in such a legendary role. Do therefore take note that Bina Rai as Anarkali, in the [January 1953] Filmistan movie, transpired only after I had said no to the notion. Likewise did Madhubala as Anarkali, in Mughal-e-Azam [August 1960], happen only after first Nargis, then Nutan and, finally, Nargis again had said no,’ wound up Suraiya.
True enough. Between Nargis first leaving the scene and Madhubala later arriving, they had vainly waited for Nutan to report for work on the sets of Mughal-e-Azam, in August 1952, when Naushad was yet to replace Anil Biswas as the theme’s music director. Nutan – for whatever reason – failed to turn up for shooting as Anarkali, during the August of 1952, so Madhubala it was who proceeded to answer the call sheet for Mughal-e-Azam – after yet another No from Nargis. The rest is Pyaar kiya to darnaa kyaa Mughal history. Nutan, for her part, had stayed away arguing – believe it or not – that Nargis or Madhubala would have been a far happier option for the role.
‘Each of those two actresses – whether the choice be Nargis or Madhubala – in her own way embodies the personality of Anarkali as we imagine her,’ argued the then youngest heroine of the Hindustani screen. This after Nutan having been ‘handpicked by K. Asif and Dilip Kumar as the heroine of their ambitious historical romance’. Yet Nutan earlier, while still in the Anarkali saddle, had been a trifle bewildered by the controversy raging, in the ranks of cinegoers, upon her getting to be selected for the Anarkali role. Observed Nutan as ‘sweet sixteen’: ‘The question of maturity of an artiste to do the role does not arise, as an actress must be prepared for any part that she may be called upon to play. I have acted tragic roles before and I shall endeavour to do my best as Anarkali.’
Yet, during that fateful shooting day in August 1952, it was ‘no Nutan go’. Thus was it Madhubala. A Madhubala thereby ceasing to be, overnight, Kamal Amrohi’s Anarkali (opposite Kamal Kapoor as Salim) and ‘historically’ electing to be K. Asif’s Anarkali (opposite Dilip Kumar as Salim). This as shooting began in earnest, at long last, for Mughal-e-Azam. Such shooting now got going with Naushad, in another startling switch by K. Asif, displacing Anil Biswas – as the one whom Dilip Kumar then rather fancied – as the erudite music director of Mughal-e-Azam. This spot ratification – by K. Asif himself – of Naushad’s name as music director put at rest all talk of it, possibly, being Pandit Gobindram composing Mughal-e-Azam. A Pandit Gobindram – as a venerated senior from the Punjab composing school – still called to mind as being the one who created, for Hind Pictures’ Laila Majnu (1945), the captive Teraa jalwa jis ne dekhaa woh diwana ho gaya. That one had come to be enacted on the screen – vis-à-vis Laila Swarnalata – by Majnu Nazir (in the voice of Shiv Dayal Batish, joined by one Mohammed Rafi in the chorus!). As Naushad it now emphatically was taking over from Anil Biswas, I posed to Suraiya the sharp query: ‘Would you have welcomed playing this Anarkali, now, in K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam?’
‘You bet!’ came back Suraiya. ‘Surprising indeed that I got no chance to work again with Naushad after we [officially] left Kardar’s, almost together, with Diwana [May 1952].’
But Naushad did, much later in life, put forth something prospective for Suraiya to ponder. It came about in an odd way indeed. M. V. Kamath had taken over – at three in the afternoon! – as my new editor (of The Illustrated Weekly of India), from Khushwant Singh, on the Friday of 28 July 1978. M. V. Kamath had so dramatically taken over only to be disrupted – in his totally sincere effort to change the sexy orientation of the magazine – by recurring labour trouble. We could therefore get really settled only by September 1979. At that point, The Times Group’s circulation department was after us to produce a ‘Weekly Special’ to pep up the journal – so as to make up ground lost by enforced labour shutdowns. As Suraiya was an M. V. Kamath pet, that editor now let me run a lavish six-page spread on our singing-star idol in such a special. It was a feature titled ‘Suraiya Yesterday & Today’ (with ‘Music by Naushad’ for its underlying theme) and it unfolded in the glossy 25 November 1979 issue of The Illustrated Weekly of India. ‘I tell you, the phone has not stopped ringing since your magazine hit the stalls!’ Suraiya excitedly called to say. ‘It is almost like in the days when I was a star in perpetual demand. Some of our high-rating heroes, prominent among them Bharat Bhooshan, Dharmendra and Shammi Kapoor, were the first to call, followed by other leading men. That Naushad, too, rang up goes without saying. Soon after that, three contemporary playback singers, each one of them turning a lead player opposite me in our cinema, Mukesh, Talat Mahmood and C. H. Atma, called in swift succession. Mummy is as thrilled as I am, she wants me to invite you to high tea, name your day and time, Raj.’
A day was fixed. Always attired in a suit those days, I walked up to Suraiya’s Krishna Mahal home, just six buildings from my Tulsi Vihar Marine Drive Seaface abode. Whereupon whom should I be finding to be already ensconced there, in that ground-floor flat of Krishna Mahal, but Naushad, addressing Suraiya as ‘Baby’ – as he had always done. Both mother and daughter appeared to be somewhat embarrassed by our maestro’s unscheduled visit coinciding with my invited arrival. Upon perceiving their discomfiture, I managed to ease the situation by warmly greeting Naushad. After some small talk, Naushad came up with his line of thought – something devised on the spur of the moment, I later felt. It was that Suraiya should be giving deliberation to re-singing select songs from his repertoire – for the numbers to be running through three albums. Naushad – as always sounding plausible in the way he made it out – now turned to Suraiya for endorsement, saying that he would approach the Gramophone Company of India (HMV) if ‘Baby’ were willing.
The concept was debated further as I reeled off Suraiya’s Naushad evergreens that we could shortlist for inclusion. But, at the end of it all, Suraiya burst the bubble as she said: ‘Those Naushad numbers that you have just enumerated, Raj, they sound out of this world. Therefore, Naushad Saab, may I suggest that we just leave them as they are. If only because, the moment I open my mouth again, the illusion is going to be shattered. I mean the carefully nursed illusion of my being a singing star! Please do respect my decision never to sing again – since I became the one and only heroine of my day to renounce films when at my absolute peak. I am all but 50 and seasoned enough to realize how exactly I would be sounding, today, the instant I go in front of the mike.’
‘Oh, you are nearing 50, are you, Baby? Well, you certainly do not look it!’ said Naushad, shrewdly changing the subject. Then, turning to Suraiya’s mother, Naushad caught each one of us there off guard, as he counselled: ‘Mumtaz, I suggest that you get Baby married at least now. She has been through enough, don’t you think?’
How Suraiya’s mum scoffed at Naushad, once he had left, observing: ‘First of all, he came in the way of her marriage to Dev Anand when my Baby was up there among the highest in 1948. Now he says that she has been through enough and that I should be getting her married! I?’ Whereupon I chipped in: ‘From that, do I take it, Mumtazji, that you would have had no objection to your Baby wedding Dev Anand?’ To that, responded the mother: ‘Neither my shauhar [husband] nor I were against it in the final analysis. To us our only kid’s happiness was paramount. Which route do you realistically think I would have taken? Seeing Baby married to her Dev or seeing her still single, as I am doing right now – just the two of us in this huge seafront flat, all by ourselves?’
If the idea of Dev Anand was not acceptable to Naushad, whom would our composing ace have liked Suraiya to marry? Mohamed Sadiq – one whom Naushad had well known from mid-July 1944 as the director of Jamuna Productions’ Rattan, acclaimed as his breakthrough movie? Well, M. Sadiq was in love with Suraiya, very much in love, as Naushad was well aware.
‘He was a great gentleman, M. Sadiq,’ conceded Suraiya. ‘Artistic by nature and always soft-spoken, M. Sadiq directed me memorably in Kajal [1948] without once touching me. I liked him as a person for his genteel ways. Yet, between liking a man and loving a man, there is a world of difference. I never ever loved Sadiq, if that is what you think; I only got to like him for his polite ways. Plus the elderly Sadiq was already married with children, being a good 18 years older than I was. That ruled him out, if he was ever in the picture, that is. I know that Naushad was open to the notion of M. Sadiq being my suitor; but I was not and that was that. Where was Dev Anand, young and single, so dashing, so romantic, so good-looking, and where was anyone else?’
Yet her granny – with whom both Kardar and Naushad inevitably discussed the growing Suraiya–Dev Anand bonding – put down her foot on the issue. Suraiya in fact, after no end of clandestine meetings with Dev Anand – meetings on which M. Sadiq kept tabs as her granny’s emissary – discovered herself to be browbeaten in the end. Discovered herself to be a young lady pressured to a point of no return. A point at which, temporizing, a defeated Suraiya, somehow, agreed to severing all connection with Dev Anand. What is more, feeling fed up with the whole drama – a drama in which she found Naushad to be participative side by side with Kardar – she just resigned herself to going along with the family’s wish that she wed M. Sadiq. ‘I did feel terrible after I had said “yes” to it,’ reminisced Suraiya. ‘I even felt that Dev Anand had every right to administer the resounding slap that he did when, upon feeling totally helpless in the matter, I said a shattered “no” to him, not having the courage to look him in the face.
‘The very next thing that I was told,’ continued Suraiya, ‘was that everything had to be formalized strictly as per custom. To this end, I was told that M. Sadiq would be coming over to see me and to accept me as his bride! When I heard about this I burst out laughing so loud that my mum admonished me for not exhibiting the style of restraint that a young Indian bride was expected to display. At this I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. Here was M. Sadiq, who had directed me through an entire film in Kajal [1948], and there they were, wanting me to act the coy bride before him! “What hypocrisy!” I said and, showing gumption for a change, flatly refused to heed the idea of M. Sadiq as one coming to ask for my hand. I later got to hear that neither Kardar nor Naushad had been best pleased about this. But it was my life, my future, that I, and I alone, had a right to decide – not they. It hurts me a lot to have to say this about Kardar and Naushad, since to both of them I owe ever so much. But did that give them the right to intervene in what was purely my personal matter? No way!’
Suraiya’s distress here came through each time I met her, especially after September 1987, when she was left to her own devices, in that huge Marine Drive flat, following the death of her mother Mumtaz. But even Naushad was to admire the grip that Suraiya proceeded to take on herself and money management from the point at which she was left all alone. Each sari, each item of dress, that came as a gift from a fan was grist to the Krishna Mahal mill; Sur could give you the feeling of her being tight-fisted even as she shook your hand. Suraiya once insisted upon showing me her wardrobe. Lined up there must have been some 1000 saris alongside other modes of dress. ‘Not a week passes,’ Suraiya told me edifyingly, ‘when I do not receive a gift item, which I open with care.’
Yet jewellery remained her obsessively possessive preoccupation. ‘How much do you think she is worth today?’ Naushad asked me as I met up with him in the May of 1990 and the talk turned to the perennial hits upon which the two of them had so entrancingly collaborated. ‘Anything up to Rs 50 crore!’ Naushad himself answered, as I told him that I had not the faintest idea. ‘Look how exemplarily Baby has invested in real estate. Is this the same Baby whom I had to guide at every step as she came to perform for me, for the first time in 1942, in Nai Duniya with Boot karun main paalish baabu?’
Suraiya, for her part, had bitter-sweet memories of her association with Naushad. Never could she forget the singing-star status that Naushad was the one composer who had been predominant in bestowing upon her. At the same time, Suraiya was in no mood to be commending Naushad for the manner in which he kept confabulating with her granny where it came to distancing her from Dev Anand.
Yet, as the still sturdy-looking Suraiya unexpectedly passed away on 31 January 2004, it was Naushad who took the initiative in getting her posthumous justice. To his all-time credit, Naushad it was who led those exploring the line of organized action against the ones he saw as trying to grab her property. Not least her cozy Marine Drive flat worth anything up to Rs 8 crore by 31 January 2004 – for its seaface ground-floor location so strategic as a showplace. (Suraiya told me that she had bought the flat some time in 1961 – as the idea of a Krishna Mahal housing society was mooted – for Rs 60,000; plus another Rs 7500 had been paid for the deep Cadillac-accommodating garage that went with the flat.) Often my cricket reporting job took me to the Wankhede Stadium plush behind Suraiya’s flat. A flat that I ruefully passed to notice the place to be sealed for a good nine years after her singing-star demise. Nothing really worth while was found in that flat after Suraiya passed away. I myself got to hear somewhat late – only by mid-January 2004 – about her having taken ill. Whereupon I straight away rang her up and said that I would be there within the half-hour to look her up. ‘Oh but you can’t be coming here now with all these people around .…’ Suraiya responded uncertainly. As I heard voices, she just put down the phone. But Suraiya herself rang me up the evening following and I now found her to be as near her pleasant self as I could expect her to be in the circumstances. She right away said a dainty ‘sorry’ for having cut me off so abruptly the previous evening. ‘They want me to eat more and more chocolates!’ she said next. ‘You know how I like chocolates so much and no more.’
That was the last that I heard from our ‘chocolate charmer’, quite meticulous in caring for her diabetes problem. (‘It is not too serious and it is well under control but I am not one to ever let it get to me through being casual in attending to it.’) She said she would herself be ringing me up and asking me to come over in two-three days as she got to feel even better. That was the final message that I got from her (early in the third week of the January of 2004). The next thing that I came to know was that Suraiya was no more. After having steadfastly stuck to her ‘Naushad resolve’ to sing no more – Duniya kyaa jaane meraa afsaana ….2 There was consternation, even outrage, all over the country and outside. Yet she had lived to be 74 and had always looked to be in command of herself, until that evening when she told me that I could not go over to her flat. As the matter began to lose steam, after the initial hustle-bustle, Naushad, becomingly, was the first one to say that such a subcontinental star performer as Suraiya could not be allowed to rest, just like that. Naushad was the force behind pressing for something to be done. He obviously felt that he owed this much to Suraiya’s memory, whatever might have been his personal conviction on the issue of her marriage.
I wondered if Naushad knew anything about the extraordinary marriage offer that Suraiya said she had received. (She had refused to name the man, or from where he hailed, as being points no longer relevant.) This soon after Suraiya had let it be known that the Lekhraj Bhakri-directed Shama (tuned by Ghulam Mohammad and finally releasing only in the middle of June 1961) would be marking her farewell to films. (Of course, a full two years later – in the July of 1963 – it was the hopelessly delayed Rustam Sohrab that arrived as Suraiya’s final film.)
Related to announcing (by mid-1960) Shama as her Dharakte dil ki tamanna ho3 swan song, Suraiya had totally surprised me in noting: ‘There was this enormously wealthy gentleman who had looked a Muslim of high breeding. A mid-1960 encounter it was – soon after my having completed all work on Shama. That refined looking gentleman had come to see me, when I was all by myself, after someone I well knew had brought about a meeting. I could feel his class as he made an astounding offer. It was that I should be abandoning my flat and every single thing in it, plus each one of my assets outside – away from it all as his begum. He said that he himself would be coming with the sari-set of his choice on the appointed day. A sari-set that, he said, I would be going inside my room and wearing. Then in that sari did he want me to accompany him, straight away, as his highly prosperous begum, leaving behind everything, just everything. He looked to be a cultured man, quite clear thinking in the matter. But, assuming that I had entertained the proposal, there was a hitch – he was a man already married with children! Indeed he had himself candidly revealed this before stating his intent. Not that I took him seriously, not at all. Me, I am human, I want my own flat, my own car, my own bank, just six buildings away! In short, I now want my freedom. I rejected him there and then, of course. Incidentally, he was tall, quite handsome and fair-looking, appearing to be well under 40, the nearest in looks to Dev Anand in terms of a man proposing to me. He even urged me to do a serious rethink on it as he left. His demeanour had been impeccable all through. He looked genuine enough but you never can tell. After he was gone, I fell to reflecting about why at all I had let him invade my privacy in the first place. I was just past 30 by then, so that I should have known that marriage, by the traditional mode, was something no longer within easy reach. Dev Anand was my first and last chance and I had blown it through my own sense of indecision in the moment that mattered,’ signed off Suraiya.
Looking back upon it all, the mind returns to the time when that visit by Naushad to Suraiya’s flat had clashed with mother and daughter having invited me to tea. I had then tried to ease things by remarking: ‘It was quite amusing, Sur, to hear Naushad addressing you as Baby at this age.’ Her response: ‘Well, he has called me Baby from the day on which I stood upon a stool to be able to reach the mike and sing for him. Did you get to grasp how sharp, how mentally alert, Naushad is even at 60? You saw how adroitly he switched the talk from my singing to that corny idea of my wedding when I said that I was nearing 50. That is Naushad for you, always on top of the situation. Side by side you should have seen him in action at Kardar Studios. Once, where it came to singing out a certain passage from Naam teraa hai zabaan par [in his Musical Pictures’ Dastan, 1950], I had resolutely said: “I just can’t do it!” [“Yeh hum se nahein hogaa!”] To which “Kaise nahein hogaa?” came back Naushad, more sharply than he knew. No doubt he had posed the same “why not?” query to me before, in the course of my singing, but never this tartly. The new-found authoritarian streak in Naushad came through here, though he deftly softened the blow with: “Baby, come now, what is there that you cannot sing for me?”
‘He could be quite aggressive in getting his wish carried out,’ went on Suraiya. ‘At times I formed the impression that he almost ordered around Ghulam Mohammad who, if his assistant still, was some 11-12 years his senior as a musician. I even heard Naushad saying, in another context involving the same Ghulam Mohammed, that there is no senior-junior at work. He thus made it plain that he was the boss and that it had to be done the way in which he wanted it done – by Ghulam Mohammad or anyone else. Towards our finishing months at Kardar Productions, given his growing clout in the film trade following the setting up of Musical Pictures, I thought that I observed him as being even more powerful than Mianji himself. That is how, as you know, all of us addressed Abdul Rashid Kardar, a father figure to us as the benign head of K Productions.’
That is Suraiya describing a Naushad riding high. For my part, I do know this – that Naushad called the shots where it came to anything to do with Musical Pictures. Short point: the other side of Naushad – and there was one – Suraiya was strategically well placed to view. Just think, would there not have been the other side to someone so magnetically successful? Naushad was a no-nonsense person where it came to work. All that eloquence of expression was for public consumption. Our tuning virtuoso, I say, understood the industry like no other music director did. Plus he well knew how to keep in good cheer those of use to him. Upon Girija and my inviting him and his family to the inauguration of our Hamsadhvani bungalow in Bangalore on 31 May 1985, with forethought arrived this telegram, on the dot, during that date: ‘May God bless you both on the occasion of Grahapravesam4 in your new house – Naushad.’ Earlier, at a well-attended ‘An Evening with Naushad’ programme at the Nariman Point end of Marine Drive, I had spoken on his life and times during the 28th of March 1971. Thereupon Naushad had got up to say: ‘Raju Saab, what do I say about him? Even I do not know as much about my music as Raju Saab does!’
Flattering words, those. When so uttered in an assembly by a personality as telegenic as our Sangeet Samrat, they were words not entirely without effect – Naushad well knew this. In public relations, he had no musical peer. I dropped no more than a hint that Naushad’s chance to push for the Padma Bhushan had at last come as that polyglot, P. V. Narasimha Rao, emerged as India’s prime minister (on 21 June 1991). ‘He is well versed in the many facets of the Urdu language and inclined to accord recognition to those prominent in the fine arts, Naushad Saab,’ I had pointed out. ‘The Republic Day citations are due in seven months or so. Pulling off such a celebrity award involves a lot of spadework. If you start now .…’ In next to no time, Naushad, through his contacts, had set the levers of New Delhi’s power machinery in motion. Almost predictably, therefore, I saw Naushad being anointed as a Padma Bhushan in the Republic Day Honours List of 1992.
Even while appearing to be the epitome of humility, Naushad well knew how to stand apart from the crowd. Take the occasion when he was proclaimed as the one to clinch the most coveted prize in the field of cinema in the country – the 1981 Dadasaheb Phalke Award. The citation came, somehow, for the same (1981) year during which Khayyam had gained high recognition via the National Award for the music of Umrao Jaan. On the New Delhi rostrum, in the same year during the same hour, there was room for either Naushad or Khayyam. How Naushad managed to inch himself to the forefront here, no one came to know. You only got to view, on TV, the New Delhi focus being upon Naushad as the Lifetime Achiever alongside Best Actress Rekha (for Umrao Jaan). Thus did Khayyam find himself painted into a Doordarshan corner. He came back to Bombay wailing that his rare moment of glory in life had been snatched from him by one who had been his musical inspiration in his salad days.
Super clever I found Naushad to be all along the line – ‘one up’ upon each of our music directors even while doing one film at a time. Take the late-March 1968 event for which the Awards Committee of the Sur-Singar Samsad was meeting at a South Bombay venue to determine the distinguished recipient of the inaugural Dr Brihaspati Award (which later became the Saraswati Award). Naushad was updated on the fact that I was that Sur-Singar Committee’s convener. He, somehow, also had knowledge of when and where we were to gather to finalize the award. He rang a day before we were due to meet, wondering if, in having broadly discussed with Girija and me his musical score for Palki (May 1967), he had accurately identified the raag of each song in the movie – for our ready journalistic reference. I asked Naushad kindly to hold on until I got paper and pencil ready, refusing to hear tell of his sending someone that morning, to my office, with the Palki raag listing.
He then proceeded to spell out Rafi’s Ae shehar-e-Lakhnau as Raag Desi; Rafi–Suman’s Dil-e-betaab ko as Yaman Kalyan; Rafi’s Chehre se apne as Pilu; Lata’s Dil ki kashti as Narayani; Rafi’s Kal raat zindagi se as Maand; Lata’s Jaane waale teraa khuda hafiz as Kaafi; Manna Dey’s Mere ghar se pyaar ki palki chali gayi as Bhairavi; and Asha, Rafi, Aziz Nazan, Manna Dey and chorus’s Main idhar jaaun ya udhar jaaun as Tilang. Having done that, Naushad asked me, on his behalf, to make it a point to congratulate Sur-Singar Samsad’s ‘Sangeetdas’ Brijnarain upon his institution having launched something musically so significant as the Dr Brihaspati Award. An award to be conferred upon the music director composing for ‘a film embodying more than 80 per cent classical content in its music score’.
Naushad had thus ensured that his Palki case would not be going unrepresented at the awards meet. Actually, Palki as a film was already ranking high in the committee’s esteem, yet Naushad was taking no chances there. Along with the only other film in the running, Vasant Desai’s Ram Rajya, I logically put forth, as the convener, the name of Naushad’s Palki as looking a viable enough contender for the inaugural Dr Brihaspati Award. ‘But how does Ram Rajya come into the picture now when it is such a prized award for a 1967 film?’ a committee member legitimately demanded to know. Whereupon I enlightened the gathering that this Ram Rajya was a Vijay Bhatt remake of his 1943 classic of the same name. Here, the music director of its later edition, Vasant Desai, against his will, had been compelled to replicate a couple of Shankarrao Vyas tunes from that hallmark Ram Rajya film’s 1943 original. Any such ‘carryover’ – even if it was one that was enforced upon Vasant Desai – had to be, factually speaking, brought to the notice of the Sur-Singar Samsad Committee, at that meeting, by me as its convener.
Upon learning about straight repetition of two such enduring hit songs in the neo-Ram Rajya, the Sur-Singar Committee pronounced, by a unanimous vote (5-0), Naushad and his Palki to be, illustriously, the Dr Brihaspati Award winner in its first year – once the raag of each song in the film came to be highlighted.
The thrust of my argument here is simple. It is that Naushad – without once mentioning that his film could qualify for the prize – saw to it that Palki would be the front-runner for the 1967 Dr Brihaspati Award. Only later did Naushad’s other far-reaching motive in so angling for that Dr Brihaspati Award become clear. The Laxmikant-Pyarelal duo, almost side by side, was going to be declared as the 1967 Filmfare Best Music Director Award winner for L. V. Prasad’s Milan (the Nutan–Sunil Dutt starrer so engrossingly directed by Adurthi Subba Rao). Thus, at a time when our composing supremo faced a major crisis in his career (three successive crashes at the box office), the popular award – the canny Naushad knew from his sources – stood only to be announced as bagged by Laxmikant-Pyarelal. Therefore, at least the prestige award, for the same year of 1967, Naushad wanted to secure for himself. Do here note that – in the face of Naushad having already found out about Laxmikant-Pyarelal winning the 1967 Filmfare statuette – both citations, ultimately, came to be made public only during the same late-March 1968 weekend in the newspapers! Laxmikant-Pyarelal, to their mortification, thus had no choice but to share newspaper space with the one they had presumed to challenge in front of me: Naushad.
My point here is that Naushad never sat back and waited for things to go his way. He took the trouble to ascertain everything about that Sur-Singar Samsad meeting scheduled to take place at Podar House on the Marine Drive Seaface before ringing me. If you said that he put himself forward for the award in the process, I would choose to look at it this way. That the second in which Naushad’s name was mooted that day, the Sur-Singar Awards Committee felt inclined to plump for Palki – his classical stature itself being the passport to the prize. I had seen this about Naushad. If I held an all-night Naushad music soirée at my home and he was gracing the occasion with his august presence, the oldest two in the family, my father and my mother – otherwise into the Carnatic music system – would come out to meet this stalwart of Hindustani sangeet. Naushad was one name you could mention in any part of India for them to equate with the man via his contribution to the better calibre of film music. Plus image building was something that came naturally to the man.
For instance, Naushad’s true date of birth (as authenticated by the SCREEN Year Book and Who’s Who 1956) is: ‘b. Dec. 26, 1919’ – that is, Boxing Day. That Boxing Day is the date during which Girija and I habitually greeted Naushad, upon his birthday, in our initial years. Then, progressively, Boxing Day lost its sheen in independent India, all emphasis shifting to Christmas Day – to the 25th of December. Discerning how such a day in the calendar could mean so much more, Naushad quietly amended his date of birth to 25 December 1919. No one came to find out when and how he had got this done. Look anywhere – at least from the year 1978 onwards – and you would be finding Christmas Day to be listed as Naushad’s date of birth. The Christmas Day of 25 December – tactically reasoned Naushad – signified a landmark date by which they could never forget his birthday. So he just chose to get a day older, that’s all. The crunch came as HMV (the Gramophone Company of India Limited) put out a biographical sketch of Naushad to announce the release of his LP titled: Naushad: Background Music from Films (1970 ODEON/EMI, D/MOCE 4016). HMV’s dilemma – how to project Naushad’s date of birth when, officially, it had it down as 26 December 1919? HMV resolved that quandary by merely stating in the ‘biographical sketch’ put out on 26 February 1971: ‘Born in Lucknow in 1919 …’ ! That left our tuning ace free to remain as born on 25 December 1919.
Did I flesh out Naushad as the master of PR? Even while portraying himself to be the picture of genuine self-effacement, he well knew how to push himself. From that late-1950 hour during which he got himself glibly characterized as ‘Naushad, Naushad, chaalis karor mein ek hi Naushad!’ (in the Dastan trailer, as detailed in Chapter 1), the man never shunned the limelight. Never shunned it while making it out that he was content to let his achievement speak for itself. That his achievement so spoke helped. But he also turned, into a near art form, the knack of keeping the spotlight trained upon him by, artfully, turning the moment upon someone else – say, hailing Madan Mohan as the ghazal king beyond compare while demystifying himself as ‘eis nacheez’ (‘this nonentity’).
While he thus graciously applauded those who were no market competition to him, Naushad was unrelenting in scoring points at the expense of, say, a Sajjad Husain (one always running down our maestro as a mediocrity); an Anil Biswas (rating himself to be a far superior talent); a C. Ramchandra; a Husnlal-Bhagatram; a Shanker-Jaikishan; or an O. P. Nayyar, At the turn of 1988, as Lata and Asha for once joined forces to say a concerted no to singing again for him, Naushad produced, out of the hat, their bête noire, Anuradha Paudwal, to perform in seven out of eleven songs, for him, in Awaaz De Kahan Hai (releasing in 1990). Result: he had both sisters seeking singing peace. With Lata Mangeshkar he fought, subtly, a running battle even while drawing the best out of her. Their silken rivalry found me to be caught somewhere in between. Naushad would say that let Lata show that she could – as in March 1949 on Andaz – still sing an Uthaye jaa unke sitam and he would compose an even better ghazal for her to render. Lata’s response, fittingly, would be that it was for Naushad, first, to demonstrate that he could still compose an Uthaye jaa unke sitam, then he would know if she could deliver as soulfully as before.
Naushad accorded Lata Mangeshkar all respect due to Her Majesty’s Opposition while making it adeptly clear that Mohammed Rafi, to him, was the ruling power in a man’s film world. Kishore Kumar he contemptuously ignored for a full 27 years and, in doing so, gave that singer nearly a complex about never being able to sing for a Naushad film. Kishore was acutely aware of the fact that no singer in the industry was rated as complete until he performed for Naushad. When our maestro did surprisingly mellow by getting Kishore to sing with Asha Bhosle, for him, Hello hello kyaa haal hai (EP SEDE 16508) in Sunehra Sansar (mid-February 1975), Naushad took back with the right hand what he gave with the left. The song never did get to be picturized and was no part of Sunehra Sansar. Suraiya always did say that, in her time, Naushad cared for neither Kishore Kumar nor Asha Bhosle. She further submitted that Shamshad Begum rated as the one foremost in Naushad’s songbook even as Suraiya found Lata Mangeshkar, as the singer of singers, becoming the central theme of discussion among other music directors for whom she performed.
Having set forth all this, is there a certain one-dimensional picture of Naushad being created here – a picture crying to be corrected? A picture generated perhaps by the way he opposed Suraiya wedding Dev Anand? Naushad, in this sphere, could sincerely move to the other extreme and be ultra-generous in his community assessment. I refer to Baburao Patel, the puckish editor of filmindia. It is doubtful if anyone wrote so virulently against any one community as Baburao Patel did in his widely read and highly admired monthly. Yet Naushad astonished me by divulging: ‘Do you know that there would have been no Mehboob Studios, possibly no Mehboob Khan, if Baburao Patel had not intervened on behalf of a lifelong friend in that critical hour? Mehboob had got so busy with shaping Mother India as his Technicolor masterpiece that his banner’s losses just mounted.
‘Mother India, given its scale of production, took nearly three years to complete in the wake of Amar [October 1954],’ went on Naushad. ‘In the interim, the man’s other home productions to keep Mehboob Studios afloat, Awaaz and Paisa Hi Paisa – both of them releasing in 1956 while Mother India was still in the making – just squatted at the box office. That brought this pioneer filmmaker to the brink. Mehboob thus stood to lose a whole lot as he had sold Mother India – going well beyond its budget – at none too high a price as a one-star Nargis venture. Came the testing time to give delivery of the Mother India Technicolor prints [by July 1957] and Baburao Patel stepped in, almost ordering Mehboob to sit aside while he did the talking. Baburao Patel just refused to give those distributors due delivery of their Mother India prints unless they paid, each, three times the price agreed. Mehboob did try to intervene to say something about having given his word and it being a matter of honour with him. Patel just brushed aside Mehboob, asking if it was not agreed, beforehand, that Baburao would be doing all the talking at that meeting?
‘In the end, they went mumbling and grumbling – but paying, in writing, three times the agreed price. I know nothing about what Baburao Patel said in his filmindia. I only know how he salvaged things for Mehboob Khan that day,’ observed Naushad. ‘As a film, Mother India certainly was worth three times the agreed price. But it was left to Baburao Patel to press the point in his own brash style and help us to sell Mother India at a price that would put Mehboob Productions on an even keel again. We at Mehboob Studios, most of all Mehboob himself, recognized this as a Good Samaritan act on the part of Baburao Patel. He used strong-arm tactics that shocked us but he spoke to those film trade people in the only language that the Mother India distributors understood. After that, he had a right to call us dumb-driven cattle for not knowing the real value of our own classic film. His true magnanimity lay in the fact that not once, in public, did Baburao Patel mention to a soul about how he had interceded, in the matter, on behalf of Mehboob Khan.’
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1 From A. R. Kardar’s Dillagi (1949). Music by Naushad. Song-lyric by Shakeel Badayuni. Rendered by Suraiya.
2 From Kardar Productions’ Dillagi (1949). Music by Naushad. Song-lyric by Shakeel Badayuni. Rendered by Suraiya.
3 From Tasviristan’s Shama (1961), directed by Lekhraj Bhakri. Music by Ghulam Mohammad. Song-lyric by Kaifi Azmi. Rendered by Suraiya.
4 A religious ceremony performed before a family moves into a new house.