THE ‘BACKGROUND’ TO
MEENA KUMARI AS PAKEEZAH
Aap ke paaon dekhe
Bahut haseen hain
Inhen zameen par mat utaariyega
Maile ho jaayenge …
THOSE LYRICAL LINES – ALLIED TO THE SUBDUED NAUSHADIAN NOTES accompanying them – how they gripped you in Pakeezah, come February 1972. How that ‘period picture’ maker-director-writer-songwriter Kamal Amrohi’s Meena Kumariveting fantasy blended with Naushad’s background musicality. Ever heard only the background music of the entire film, on audio, before getting to relish its score, with the visuals, in the film itself? Such a unique audio exposure – given the seven songlets web-woven into the film’s background score – instinctually found one to be associating the aural music, too, of Pakeezah with the name of Naushad. So much so that our composing nawab came to be inseparable, in the public eye and ear, from the music of Pakeezah as a film. Was the charge legitimate then that Naushad hijacked the Pakeezah music credit from Ghulam Mohammad? From his assistant through 10 eventful years? How come that not one of the 12 mainstream films that Ghulam Mohammad independently got to score, as a music director, delivered at the box office, once he left the ‘lucky’ domain of Naushad?
The film’s financiers wanted, in the Divali season of 1968, a big enough musical name to upgrade Kamal Amrohi’s Pakeezah lying in the cans through four years and contemptuously dismissed as belonging there. Pakeezah’s fortuitous revival came about as Meena Kumari, unexpectedly, agreed to resume shooting and to help in bringing to fruition the film launched a full decade earlier. Naushad was the obvious choice as the rejuvenated Pakeezah’s music director, if only because the film, according to our maestro, had been initially offered to him to score. The originally credited music director of Pakeezah – ironically Naushad’s one-time chief assistant Ghulam Mohammad – was no more. After the man had put his heart and soul into what became the only mainline film left in his composing care through seven long years. As Naushad took over full steam on Pakeezah, the arduous transition to the latest in colour technology had to be made. Parts of the film were still in obsolete black and white. In the follow-up to Ghulam Mohammad’s unhappy demise on 17 March 1968, the year was to bear testimony to a dimension of peaking by which colour technology advanced like never before. In such a milieu, certain songs of the film had to be updated in the neo-colour-oriented recordings planned to be carried out before the shooting of Pakeezah resumed by end-1968.
It is well known that Kamal Amrohi had to ward off concerted pressure exerted by the big barons of the movie industry to re-work the entire music score of the film, scrapping each one of the songs already recorded. At least that was the strident demand of the all-powerful Shanker B. C. who wanted, at any cost, the name of Naushad alone to be emblazoned across the billboard as the music director of Pakeezah. If that sounds outrageous, remember that this is a soulless industry with no room for the arts and graces. After all, Kamal Amrohi’s Mahal Pictures needed finance, big finance, if things were to get moving on Pakeezah with the prodigal Meena Kumari back in the title role.
For all his cinematic integrity, even Kamal Amrohi could not have remained totally untouched by such Naushad-centric paymasterly demands. Not one to be arty and crafty ever, Kamal Amrohi had dextrously devised his own novel visual insights into the evolving colour technology of the cinema in India. This, distressingly, was the time when shooting on Pakeezah got indefinitely stalled. In other words, for all his fidelity to pledges, Kamal Amrohi, by mid-1968, had to take cognizance of the obligation to keep the song content of Pakeezah, as a film, in tune with the latter-day technology that he was harmoniously harnessing, now, to the theme. Remember, shooting for Pakeezah had totally ceased since mid-1964. When the film suddenly resumed production, the intervening four years entailed certain inevitable changes in the Pakeezah unit’s outlook on use of up-to-date colour technique. It is in this emerging scenario that we have to interpret Naushad’s music notings to follow. All the more so as our composing connoisseur himself, understandably, was none too forthcoming upon certain aspects of this delicate issue in the melancholy upshot of Ghulam Mohammad being no longer there.
Let us face facts: the ground actuality is that the name of neither Ghulam Mohammad nor Naushad was the first one to be broached to score the Pakeezah ‘period’ theme. The one to be right away handpicked for the task was C. Ramchandra, given that wizard’s Mughal musical reputation after Anarkali (January 1953). C. Ramchandra, just then (at Rs 100,000 per film), had come up with a runaway musical hit in Azaad (releasing during the March of 1955). Against such a win-win backdrop, C. Ramchandra had even ventured to test the lie of the Naushad land. C. Ramchandra audaciously demanded – à la Naushad – Rs 110,000 for scoring the Pakeezah theme. Tongue in cheek, C. Ramchandra argued that he was seeking such a Naushad-equalling fee not without justification. The elaborate Pakeezah background music to be scored – he now put forward – was going to mean certain ‘orchestration supervision charges’ that were bound to be incurred, in the course of rehearsals, with privately engaged instrumentalists in his own Sai Prasad Dadar music room! C. Ramchandra, make no mistake about it, would have done a theme-attuning job on the music of Pakeezah with his Anarkalingering Yeh zindagi usi ki hai reputation.
Ramchandra Narhar Chitalkar, hailing from the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, had but recently collaborated with Lata Mangeshkar – the film’s first two songs recorded – upon cineaste Debaki Bose’s Noorjehan (with Vyjayanthimala chosen to essay the title role). Maybe Noorjehan came to be left incomplete by that veteran filmmaker V. M. Vyas. Yet, now, C. Ramchandra was well equipped to score Pakeezah with his enviable grip on the thumri. Such a naughty knack of tuning with song-and-dance made C. Ramchandra the master composer of the mujra, traditionally set to unveil upon the nautch-girl on the Indian screen. And Meena Kumari as Sahibjaan, what was she if not the nautch-girl of nautch-girls?
This was when Kamal Amrohi was urged by his financiers – confronted by a C. Ramchandra insistent upon a fee of Rs 110,000 – to take the Pakeezah theme to Naushad. Yet, according to Naushad, it was he who had been first sounded out for the Pakeezah music scoring (late in 1955). The Kamal Amrohi proposal, observed Naushad, had come to him at a time when he was busy with more than one big film – he was working, right then, on Mughal-e-Azam and Mother India alike. Therefore, said Naushad, he had expressed his inability to take on the mammoth Pakeezah music assignment at the time.
My instinct here tells me that Naushad, being Naushad, did not want to banish from his mind, altogether, the possibility of his getting to score a biggie like Pakeezah. Also, in no circumstances did our ace want Kamal Amrohi going back to his belligerent rival C. Ramchandra to score something so exclusive as the music of Pakeezah. In such a surrounding did Naushad reiterate – as late as in the April of 1972 after the film had been pronounced to be an unqualified success – that it was upon his initiative that Ghulam Mohammad’s name came to be finalized for Pakeezah. Naushad pressed the point at our Ashiana meeting on 8 May 1972, having sent for me upon viewing, in Filmrare, my 5 May 1972 ‘On Record’ column touching upon Inhein logon ne. Naushad clarified that Inhein logon ne, as given neo shape, was his tune in Pakeezah.
That prompt Naushad observation came as the Kamal Amrohi–Meena Kumari Pakeezah ‘swan song’ went on to be on the nation’s lips in the aftermath of the traumatizing demise of our Tragedy Queen on the Friday of 31 March 1972.
Here is where to rewind – some 16 years back – to end-1955. To the time when Kamal Amrohi had been urged to pitch for C. Ramchandra first and then for Naushad to score the prestigious music of Pakeezah. At that juncture, the staid Ghulam Mohammad was no box-office draw at all, as one having a succession of flops associated with his name through three years starting mid-1953. In fact, for a show as imposing as Pakeezah, it came as an agreeable surprise to find Kamal Amrohi settling for such a non-crowd-pulling name as the one of Ghulam Mohammad.
Did that come about, at the time, to allow for the outside possibility of our film trade, later, insisting upon roping in a much bigger name – like, say, that of Naushad – on such a grandstand show? As it turned out, Naushad entered the Pakeezah recording picture even earlier than any such conjecture made could take concrete shape. By end-1962 itself – at the ‘request’ of a very sick Ghulam Mohammad grappling with the after-effects of a major heart attack – had Naushad become a live presence on the Pakeezah scene.
Never ever lose sight of the fact that even Kamal Amrohi, come what may, had to sell Pakeezah in the marketplace. That said, did not Ghulam Mohammad, once he had worked so very sincerely upon the film’s aural score, deserve a certain consideration? Of course he did. But then sentiment is the first casualty in this here-and-now industry. Here what counted was that Ghulam Mohammad, by mid-1961, had 12 successive flops to flaunt (even the end-1954 Mirza Ghalib, for all the President’s Gold Medal glitter associated with its name, having proved a non-runner). Yes, once he left the ‘lucky’ confines of Naushad, nothing had gone right for Ghulam Mohammad. With A. R. Kardar’s Dil-e-Nadan (June 1953) had begun the downhill box-office descent of Ghulam Mohammad. This in the face of Dil-e-Nadan brand-selling its sensational new hero as ‘Singing Star Talat Mahmood’. (To think that Dil-e-Nadan, for starters, had been titled as Nashad by A. R. Kardar to undermine Naushad via a Talat Mahmood show scored by Ghulam Mohammed – as our sangeet suzerain’s newest ‘opponent’!)
‘When that rhythm section specialist conclusively moved away from me [this, really speaking, only after Mehboob’s Aan released in the August of 1952],’ observed Naushad, ‘he was one already well known as an independent music director in the film industry. Thus Ghulam Mohammad created an immediate impression with his standout scores, first, in A. R. Kardar’s Dil-e-Nadan [June 1953] and, next, in Sohrab Modi’s Mirza Ghalib [December 1954]. Ghulam Mohammad’s intrinsic capability as a music composer in his own right was never hidden from me – as from viewers – so that it should have been smooth sailing, now, on Pakeezah too. If truth be told, there had been no bitterness whatsoever attached to our parting from each other, as my contract with Kardar Productions was ending with that banner’s [May] 1952 advent of the Suraiya–Suresh starrer Diwana. I was seeking no extension there, having already committed myself – if with Kardar’s resigned permission – to Vijay Bhatt on Baiju Bawra. Ghulam Mohammad had been my chief assistant all through the first seven months of 1952 – on Kardar’s Diwana as well as Mehboob’s Aan. An Aan releasing some 14 weeks after Diwana came on the scene [in the first week of May 1952].
‘I had in point of fact,’ revealed Naushad, ‘already quietly started work upon Vijay Bhatt’s Baiju Bawra, anticipating a certain musical eventuality. I was ready for it, therefore, as Ghulam Mohammad came up to me, haltingly, to say that he had finally decided to leave as my chief assistant, following invitations to compose for three films. “So,” I chivvied him, “as a music director now terminating all connection with me, you are going to be straight competition to me, are you?” Having said that in a lighter vein, since I had already geared myself to finishing up at Kardar Productions, I opted, there and then, to let Ghulam Mohammad go, without any fuss. In so releasing him, I thanked him profusely for his priceless assistance through 10 memorable years. I wished him the very best in his career ahead – “with the label of Naushad’s chief assistant attaching to you no longer”, I smilingly added.
‘The point that I am seeking to bring home is that Pakeezah came back to my care out of the blue, so to speak. With Ghulam Mohammad no more [by 17 March 1968], someone had to complete the job. Who at the time was better suited to undertake such an onerous responsibility than I was, as one who had started out as Ghulam Mohammad’s junior in the industry – as a pianist at Rs 40 a month? Scoring the background music of Pakeezah would be in the nature of a personal tribute to the man. Still, when Kamal Amrohi came back to me, I was clearly told one thing. This was that, though I was being booked on paper to compose just the Pakeezah background music, there was a fair bit of aural scoring work left to be done. I assured Kamal Saab that I was taking over from Ghulam Mohammad to execute his job, not just to score the background music of the film. The decision to re-shoot Pakeezah, in more innovative colour, had led to certain songs of the film having to be re-formatted to suit the switch in technique. It is in this setting that I had told you, then itself, that Inhein logon ne inhein logon ne, Chalte chalte chalte chalte and Mausam hai aashiqaana1 were three tunes in the film that practically needed inventing by me in an idiom toning with updated colour technology.
‘Those three songs were mine (‘Woh teen gaane mere thhe),’ had been Naushad’s exact words then. In fact, Naushad at the time had gone public about ‘those three songs being his tunes’. ‘Naushad Saab should not have been saying that,’ remarked Khayyam as I met up with him in mid-1972. ‘What took place behind the purdah [curtain] should have remained behind the purdah.’ That may be Khayyam’s viewpoint. The other part of it is our right to know. So, now I asked Naushad pointblank about Thaare rahiyo o baanke yaar re,2 too, having been recorded by none other than him. ‘None the less, that composition was by Ghulam Mohammad,’ was our tuning virtuoso’s unequivocal response. ‘Then what about Inhein logon ne inhein logon ne, too, having been recorded by you?’ I persisted.
‘Inhein logon ne inhein logon ne – my tune it was, so who else would have been recording it but me?’ came back Naushad. ‘Yet Aaj hum apni duuaaon ka asar dekhenge and Chalo dildaar chalo chaand ke paar chalo,† those two were Ghulam Mohammad’s tunes,’ nimbly added Naushad. ‘I have already identified as mine the three specific compositions in whose context we were discussing the new musical compulsions of the Pakeezah theme. Shall we, therefore, just take things forward from where we had left off? With the film’s colour-camerawork approach undergoing a radical change, the entire taking outlook changed and those were three tunes that I had to cast, in my own métier, to be able to give the sequences in which they were occurring a fresh momentum.
‘Ghulam Mohammad, mind you, would have had to do precisely the same thing, had he been living,’ emphasized Naushad. ‘Looking to the fact of the film’s long-drawn shooting and its changeover to the latest in colour, there also were certain crucial musical gaps in the narrative. These gaps had to be aurally filled by creating six-seven songlets in voices suiting continuity. When I did this job, I never asked to be separately noted for those seven songlets. If, as you say, three of my seven songlets in the film came to be a part of the Pakeezah LP record [MOCE 4121] – alternating with the six main songs figuring in the film – do not ask me how that came about on the long-play. No less futile is it for you to seek to know as to how and why Lata Mangeshkar’s aalaap [musical prelude] – going with the Pakeezah credit titles scored by me – got to form a part of the film’s LP. Direct all your queries in this direction to the film’s illustrious creator Kamal Amrohi,’ wound up Naushad, trying to lay the point to rest.
‘Let us be honest with ourselves here, Naushad Saab,’ I interposed still. ‘Remember, we are talking of late-1968 as fresh finance was sought, desperately, for the film. Was there not, at that juncture, an audibly vocal distributor demand to display your name alone in the credits as the sole music director of Pakeezah? I for one know it for a fact that big-finance gun Shanker B. C. was prepared to back a Pakeezah in limbo only if you came in to compose the music for the entire theme afresh. He wanted the Pakeezah music, now, to be in tune with the way in which trends, audiovisually, had undergone a tidal change in the 12 years since the film’s songs were recorded. He strongly pleaded that those songs – each one of them recorded by the end-1956 black-and-white era – would now be sounding to be outmoded. He wanted each one of those 10-12 tunes to be scrapped forthwith.’
‘I know nothing about all this,’ said Naushad, looking away. ‘All that I can tell you is that there was no such precondition from my side. How could there have been when the sacred name involved was that of my late assistant, Ghulam Mohammad, who was no longer in our midst? If there was indeed distributor pressure to so invoke my name as associated with the songs-creating part, too, of Pakeezah, that remained a matter for Kamal Amrohi to deal with in his own way.
‘Just imagine, three of the song sequences from the shooting earlier done – three sequences already set out by me – were still in black and white when, properly, I took over on Pakeezah. Before these black-and-white sequences came to be re-shot in upmarket colour, fresh recordings, willy-nilly, had to be undertaken for those three songs, technically, to blend with the narrative. Such recordings I carried out without fuss for the colour visuals to tone with the film’s music. I did this in consultation with the film’s dance director Gauri Shanker. This is something that ordinary people just would not understand. These fresh recordings had to match the dancing steps of the more vivacious Padma Khanna, standing in – via long shots – for Meena Kumari as Sahibjaan in a couple of critical dance sequences. All this was a part of the work that got left over, that is all,’ rounded off Naushad.
In such a set-to, what do we make of the assertion that Ghulam Mohammad had recorded the entire aural score of Pakeezah by end-1956? That is, before the film began shooting? Such a contention means everything or nothing, if you know the fiscal culture of our film industry. Here, in the mid-1950s, finance for a film was raised, mandatorily, by recording its first two songs at the producer’s personal expense. Only after the SCREEN weekly published from Bombay – as the film industry’s recognized trade journal then – carried a report to the effect that the first two songs of the movie in question had been recorded already would the opening instalment be coming forth from its distributor. Out of succeeding instalments that were made available, the producer was expected to record more and more songs – in segments of two each (as further attested to by the SCREEN weekly). This even while making preparations to begin shooting on the film.
The belatedly released additional Pakeezah Rang-Barang LP record (ECLP 5544) embodies nine songs tuned by Ghulam Mohammad that remained unused in the film. From among them, the only one with which you are able to relate, at a glance, is Chalo dildaar chalo chaand ke paar chalo – not as a duet but as a solo, here, by Lata Mangeshkar. How come as many as nine songs recorded for Pakeezah remained unused in the film? Maybe the instalments forthcoming for recording those nine unused songs and other used songs in Pakeezah represented but a drop in the Arabian Sea for someone aiming so high as Kamal Amrohi. His gentleman publicist, Mobin Ansari, said it all when he told me: ‘You should have been there on the spot to see how the entire profit from Deedar [the Rajendra Jain movie coming in April 1951] was consumed by the first set created for that enterprising producer’s Anarkali, being made under the Filmkar banner.’
An Anarkali being directed (for Rajendra Jain and his Filmkar) by none other than Kamal Amrohi. An Anarkali with Madhubala in the title role – before she defected to K. Asif by Mughal-e-Azam fatwa! Decide for yourself, then, how much nine, even twelve, songs recorded through 1956 – for a Pakeezah show when it was still purely in black and white – really meant, technologically, by July 1968. Here is where the submission made by Naushad, about his having had to record certain songs afresh, assumes contextual clarity. ‘My one advantage,’ observed Naushad, ‘was that the style of Ghulam Mohammad and my style coalesced so very neatly. My idea was to see that you, as the Pakeezah film’s viewer, did not even get to know the composer difference as you saw it finally, in colour, on the screen.
‘Side by side, no less had I to work wonders on the background music that I was due to compose for Pakeezah. Background music always has been my area of specialization. I therefore affirm that I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the challenge posed to my baton by the background music of Pakeezah. I mean the high challenge of scoring the background music for a film done with such flair by Kamal Amrohi, the total visionary,’ concluded Naushad.
In the film’s credit titles, however, no way was Naushad spotted to be just ‘in the background’. There, in red letters against a golden backdrop, Kamal Amrohi had put into view, on separate placards, the two names in the order shown below:
TITLE AND BACKGROUND MUSIC: NAUSHAD
MUSIC: LATE GHULAM MOHAMMAD
In the bargain, Kamal Amrohi (yielding to trade insistence from the hour in which he had resumed shooting?) projected, first, Naushad as the one who composed the title and background music and only then went on to name Ghulam Mohammad as his music director. Even so, by his style of credit titling, Kamal Amrohi had attributed – to Naushad’s chagrin – all six full songs that came to be used by him, in Pakeezah, to Ghulam Mohammad. Yet Naushad, for all my tenacity in the matter, was not prepared to discuss whether he was totally satisfied with the way in which he came to be finally credited for Pakeezah. After all, he had put in no end of slog on the aural side, too, of the film’s music. He naturally expected to be suitably noticed in the credit titles for this. For the film trade, Naushad’s name had to come first – and that it had. Which full song was composed by whom became a point of detail for the trade, once it got the name of Naushad in there first.
On the Pakeezah LP, Naushad had no plaint about his name figuring alongside the title-music aalaap sung by Lata Mangeshkar. Also, about his name getting to be viewed alongside three (of his seven) songlets that got to feature in the long-playing record. Naushad’s chief area of concern had been the credit titling. Here the film trade had won the point for him. It did dismay Naushad that the Pakeezah credit titles failed to home in on his name for what he had set forth as his three full songs in the film. But he left it at that. Forget Naushad; nowhere on the Pakeezah LP did you find even Ghulam Mohammad’s name to be prominently suggested. This when, going by the tenor of Pakeezah’s credit titling, Kamal Amrohi should have been carrying, on the dust jacket of the film’s MOCE 4121 LP, a separate bold-letters punchline, saying:
MUSIC: LATE GHULAM MOHAMMAD
But then the Pakeezah LP opened with Naushad’s Lata-rendered vocal piece as aalaap! Next, three vocally scored pieces (from Naushad’s background music) adorned the long-playing record! So Kamal Amrohi took the easy way out on the LP – each song, or each songlet, he just ascribed, in smaller lettering, to its respective music director.
It was as Pakeezah started making big box-office news (by mid-May 1972) that Naushad chose to go public with his claim on three full songs from that tastefully executed film being his compositions. But let us not, any more, get into the grey area of the film’s six main aural songs; just let us re-watch Pakeezah on You Tube to hear, anew, those seven songlets. Songlets that we know to have been composed by Naushad for them to be in happy aural accord with his background music going with the film.
Admittedly, they are song pieces drawn from our traditional lore. Yet how aptly in tune with the theme is each one of those seven songlets (as late as mid-1971). How pat do they sit upon the visuals going with each songlet. (We have three of those seven songlets articulated, on the cherished Pakeezah LP, by Rajkumari; Parveen Sultana; and Vani Jairam in that sequence.) Left to himself – Naushad had said – that he could still score in the old vein. His seven songlets in Pakeezah, alongside the Lata taraana, are proof that, given the environs, the man had kept his creative stream flowing till mid-1971.
In fact, Pakeezah was ‘background scored’ after Naushad had been a full 30 years into films. Do not come up with the stale argument that our maestro had the stamina for a near 25-year stay at the very top (starting with Rattan: July 1944) only because, from Shabab (May 1954) down, he averaged just 1.2 films a year. For the truth is that, the fewer the films that you do at a yearly average, the tougher it is to keep an open composing ear. Ideally, you need to be doing (like Sachin Dev Burman) two films in 12 months to preserve a certain continuity of musical thought. At the end of those near 25 years at the helm, Naushad might not have been in his old position (by end-1968). But that he still commanded a position was in itself something of a miracle. Such longevity in a high-mortality industry like films could only be measured in terms of a rooting that gave the man nothing less than extraordinary staying power. Let us then look at Naushad’s ‘background’ away from Pakeezah.
The courtesy of the S. Bhondu & Sons proprietor, Ghurbat Ali – the man’s big music shop being located on Lucknow’s La Touche Road – might have offered teenager Naushad a rare opening. The opening to be right in the midst of musical instruments during the early part of the day – in the formative phase of his career. This in exchange for looking after the shop before the proprietor reached the place. On the quiet, of course, as a colt straining at the leash, Naushad tried himself out upon those musical instruments. Evidently, he finally decided that the piano and he were made for each other – almost 20 years before Andaz happened (in March 1949). It is the solid hour’s early-morning practice that he put in on the shop piano that helped us ‘place’ Naushad’s Lucknowi fingers as carrying the featherweight touch. The piano was clearly his forte. But such a chance tuning with musical instrumentation hardly qualified Naushad to excel in the craft of background scoring. Ghulam Mohammad, among others, was all admiration for Naushad’s skills in this specialist direction. How did our maestro become such a mastermind in scoring background music? Let us have it in Naushad’s own words about how he prepared for such a spectacular career. Reflected Naushad in the May of 1977: ‘I awoke to music, as it were. Next door to our abode in Lucknow was a theatre, Royal Cinema, so that the whole soundtrack of the film showing there was to be heard in our home. What must have registered upon me from that sound track, even then, was the silent film’s music, being played “live” by performers sitting in a “hollow” before the silver screen. Remember, it was still the heyday of the silent film. Each note that they played must have got imprinted in my psyche from the instant during which I came into this world as the son of Waheed Ali, court munshi at the Lucknow durbar. How I wish that the court munshi had been the court musician! For my father never did approve of my interest in music. In fact, he was to discourage me at every step, reasoning that I could not expect to make a career out of music. My first job, he said, was to go to school. But how to go to school when the cinema house was next door?
‘As I grew up, I drew closer and closer to that orchestra playing in the hollow and felt stunned to see the way in which Ustad Laddan Sahab leading those musicians – as himself a specialist on the tabla, the violin and the clarinet – was able to get his baton to match each single action taking place upon the screen. This – though I did not know it at the time – was the art of background music scoring being demonstrated to me first-hand. My total control over my orchestra today, my art of turning simplicity of tune into a calibrated craft, had its genesis here. What the ear hears as the eye observes – with the screen slivers of silver in front of you – had to turn into musical fragments frozen in my mind.
‘Those first 10 years I recall as the years that built my musical base. Years during which the only book at which I seriously looked – from a distance – was the music book that Laddan Sahab and his orchestra kept in front of them while playing. Today, with the advantage of having spent a full 37 years in films as a composer, I say that all the music that is there in our sangeet vocabulary I heard from that orchestra playing in Lucknow. The art of making mental notations I picked up from those Lucknow musicians. For, the way they were suiting the music to the action on the screen, it was like experiencing the talkie in the silent era itself.
‘I was more than 11 years old by 1931 – the year of the talkie in India3 – with my every sense, my whole being, attuned to music. This made me the despair of my father, who did not spare the rod on a single day. He could not, for there was not a day on which I did not return home late. Late as a result of waiting for the evening show at Royal Cinema to finish – for each note that I heard to be absorbed from the ringside seat that I had managed next to those musicians in the orchestra. Already I was dreaming of launching my own music group – of running away from home, since it was the only way of running away from school. What was there to learn at school when everything that I wanted to know about music was being taught next door itself? If I was interested in school at all, it was to grow literate enough to write music and be literary enough to imbibe the poetry to go with that music.
‘Music thus was my lifeblood, while my father hated its very sound. How could the twain, therefore, meet? On the quiet, I was already vaguely envisioning a music career in the big bold city of Bombay. We youngsters in Lucknow formed a music group, which I spearheaded. Such a music group and my father: they were poles apart. So the break with father finally came. But it was easier to run away from father than to run away from reality. With that music group that we formed we made bold to set out on a tour of India with very little finance to see us through. In your youth, you just trust the future to look after itself. What I sought was a chance to experiment with all that I had heard from that orchestra in Lucknow.
‘I now discovered that tuning was something that came naturally to me. The essence was already there in what I had picked up from that hollow in Lucknow. Keeping that as my foundation, I began to entertain dreams of modernizing our music, giving the set tunes that I had heard a new mould and meaning. I was by this stage in my late teens, full of go, full of ideas, as I found that I could get my music group to play exactly what I wanted in the way in which I wanted it done. I was thus a self-made musician. Tuning was already a mere matter of mental notation for me, taking into account my live grounding. Enthusiasm there was in plenty; the money needed to sustain that enthusiasm was the crunch.
‘Predictably, our music group broke up at some stage in our journey against the odds and I was on the streets. To Lucknow I could not go back; I had burnt that bridge long ago. Bombay now beckoned to me. Without a rupee in my pocket, I was telling myself that I had all the musical talent in the world. What then was I doing in any city of the country save the City of Opportunity called Bombay? How I got to Bombay, finally, is not really a story worth narrating. Suffice it to say that I got there having, in the course of my travels and travails, grown to be a young lad of 17. One ready to seize time by the forelock.
‘The pavements of Bombay were viewed as being extra accommodating even then and that is where I ended up. It was already the era of the talkie and that was what had prompted me to begin thinking about getting out of Lucknow. While still in Lucknow, I had heard stirring tales of how Wazir Muhammad Khan, playing a fakir, had launched the talkie by singing live, on the screen, De de khuda ke naam pe pyaare taaqat ho gar dene ki/Kuchh chaahe agar to maang le mujh se himmat ho gar lene ki. Here was a clarion call that proved inspirational to me. The sway of silent cinema was still there; true, but the talkie held out a live attraction all its own. So I longed for a break that would help me come out of that hollow and create music that would go straight on the screen,’ wound up Naushad.
His penchant for background scoring, when precisely did it catch our attention? Not for a long time, as far as my memory goes. I know that I speak for a whole vintage generation when I dare to say this. I say that, orchestrally, we then were just flabbergasted by the ‘interlude pieces’ that Naushad produced to go with his tunes. As casual viewers still, it took us ages to awaken to his background scoring proficiency. Never ever forget that, apart from those superlatively catchy tunes, Naushad’s interludes for those numbers (from 1947 to 1951) gripped us in a variety of films – Natak, Dard, Anokhi Ada, Mela, Andaz, Dillagi, Chandni Raat, Dastan, Dulari, Babul and Jadoo.
We did not have the technical knowhow, then, to be able to appreciate how very inventively Naushad managed to use a string of Western instruments in those ear-cuddling interludes. We just revelled in how Uma Devi so ‘Tun Tunized’ Dil waale dil waale – in the Suraiya-blossoming Natak (mid-1947) – as for the interlude music unfolding to hold us in bondage for the rest of our lives. As Mukesh began entrancing us with Bhool gaye kyun de ke sahaara lutne waale chaeen hamaara (upon Prem Adib) in Anokhi Ada (September 1948), we looked forward, keenly expectantly, to Shamshad Begum joining him, from far far away, with Toot gayaa dil dard ka maara haay yeh kis ne mujh ko pukaara (upon Naseem). We so looked forward while being beguiled by the interlude music piece so enrapturingly playing in between.
No less did we wait for a similarly ‘transparent’ Shamshad Begum intervention as, in Chandni Raat (May 1949), we heard Mohammed Rafi taking off (on the highly personable Shyam) with Chheen ke dil kyun pher lein aankhen jaan gaye hum jaan gaye. Even as we heard Naushad’s peerless interlude piece playing as a near heartbreak in between, how impatiently did we wait for Shamshad to arrive (upon Naseem) – as only the Begum of Song could do – with Ho na kahin, badnaam mohabbat, dekho dekho paa ke, kuchh na kaho, kuchh na kaho. Who here more deserved Naseem, personifying the beauty of being queen – Prem Adib or Shyam? A matter of perception, so shall we just say that Naseem and Shamshad came to be two-in-one in our eyes and ears?
Suraiya’s Dastan (heightening our Divali mood in 1950) was no less a fable to follow, as it came over as Aayaa mere dil mein tuu. Following the dream prelude music, as Suraiya started vocalizing it as O o o aaya mere dil mein tuu, we just could not tarry for her to round it off as: teraa shukriyaa. For the weight of Naushad’s full orchestra to descend upon us with its ear-latching catchline of Naacho naacho re jhumbak jhumba …. A Suraiya looking sweet and singing sweet. Was this indeed the girl enjoying the privilege of bringing – to school each day – a shining four-anna piece? A piece quietly slipped into her bright-blue uniform pocket by Papa Jamaal Shaikh while her tyrannical granny Badshah Begum was not looking?
Do you here at all recall the calibre of background music made for any film by Naushad? No way – you and I were for those on-screen ear-candy tunes only those days (with their cute interludes). Who cared for the ‘background’? As a matter of fact, not until I came to Mehboob’s Amar (in the October of 1954) did the background music of Naushad begin intriguing me. This as the towering Jayant chased the cowering Nimmi – in the Mehboob Studios’ rain-swept woods – for that petite young lady (playing Sonya) to seek Amar protection in the benign bungalow of ‘Shekhar’ Dilip Kumar. Only as the Jayant-pursuing-Nimmi segment unspooled on the silver screen did we awaken to how Naushad built the atmosphere, here, with his tantalizing background notes. Such music held us pushback seat-bound as it dramatically merged with the heart-rending screen plight of Nimmi – as a Sonya running for her life. A Nimmi, as the madamoiselle in distress, now looking Sonya-ravishing, now looking Shekhar-ravished. This was Naushad scoring the Amar background music for the mobility of Faredoon Irani’s camera to do the rest.
No less telltale were Naushad’s background notes as Rafi appealed, on behalf of the wronged Sonya, to Shekhar. A call to Shekhar carrying those temple-bell clear notes of Insaaf ka mandir hai yeh bhagvan ka ghar hai. An appeal assuming a Naushad–Rafi poignance all its own in the mandir-stepping presence of ‘Anju’ Madhubala. An Anju eye-catchingly set to wed Shekhar. Oh for those times when our musical sensibilities were not sufficiently critically honed to divine that the Lata lament, upon ‘Sonya’ Nimmi, was hued in Raag Bhairavi. That it was hued in the same Raag Bhairavi for Lata (Khamosh hai khevanhaar meraa) as for Rafi (Insaaf ka mandir hai). Sheer innocence and blissful ignorance were the signposts to developing a consuming interest in music golden set to grow olden.
After Amar, however, there was not a single Naushad film in which the background music did not register in the movieola of my imagination. Naushad touched the forefront in background scoring with Mughal-e-Azam (in the first week of August 1960). The only issue under debate here is whether he went one better with Pakeezah (in the first week of February 1972).
Ah, the Pakeezah controversy, it just refuses to go away even with Naushad gone. The to-do began with my naming those three Lata lip-huggers – Inhein logon ne inhein logon ne, Chalte chalte chalte chalte and Mausam hai aashiqaana – as proclaimed to have been composed by Naushad. Even earlier – in fact before the film came – Naushad had not endeared himself to Ghulam Mohammad’s family by inviting certain influential media folk to hear the tape of his Pakeezah background music before the film’s release.
Girija and I were called together in the last week of January 1972. Not until we had reached Naushad’s sanctum did we realize that we were due to hear the background music of a magnum opus before its release – a unique interaction. Naushad, for his illumining part, kept a soft-paced commentary going, invoking each visual – as notated to go with his background music piece then playing. Our listening joy was doubled as we felt Sahibjaan Meena Kumari coming live upon our mental screen. Sound bites out of this world they were. Thus, even before the film’s advent, we had savoured the Pakeezah background music complete with the train whistle piercing through the deadly silence of the night.
That Ghulam Mohammad’s family took a dim view of Naushad so publicizing only his side of the Pakeezah contribution is a fact. Their ire was further aroused from the instant in which Naushad picked out those three songs as his tunes after Pakeezah (following the December 1971 Indo–Pak war) withstood a six-week delay in releasing, coming, finally to the screen, only on the 4th of February 1972. Obviously, the Ghulam Mohammad family feeling here was that Naushad should not have been coming into the public picture at all, if (as he maintained) he had done it in his late assistant’s memory. The gravamen of their charge was that Naushad had begun to hijack the music of Pakeezah.
I really would not know about that. For my part, I saw nothing awry in Naushad seeking credit for only his background music. That he dressed it up in the showmanly light in which he did – it had always been his signature tune. If key media folk heard his background music for Pakeezah even before the film fructified, they would be able to gauge Naushad’s true scale of work in it when they finally came around to viewing the movie – with the visuals. It was the Naushad mode of seeing to it that his side of the Pakeezah contribution did not go press-unnoticed (with television still to open out in India). Naushad – do remember – had not begun this ‘show’ business of cultivating the media only on the eve of the Pakeezah occasion. He had all along treated the media as career determining – from the point at which he became aware of his personality ascendancy with Rattan (mid-July 1944). He managed the media well, very well, in his time. He was now merely endeavouring to manage it, all over again, at a winding in his career when he needed media attention more than ever before.
Pakeezah, as a film, did not impact to start with, as we all know. Only Meena Kumari’s agonizing death on 31 March 1972 goaded audiences into taking a fresh look at her Pakeezah persona. It is from hereon that the film’s songs aligned to its background scoring held viewers spellbound. Naturally, there were film trade magazine reports of how Pakeezah appeared to be heading to be one of the industry’s top grossers of all time. In the winter of Meena Kumari’s screen life, Naushad had breathed new life into Sahibjaan. A Sahibjaan, up to that point, looking to have been left to her dancing-girl throes in those Pakeezah cans administered such an unceremonious dumping. Was Naushad, or was not Naushad, entitled to put forth the film’s background music as a rare job of work in the circumstances prevailing? That the entire Pakeezah aural score too, in the process, got identified with our maestro’s name was not something of his doing. This was the sheer magic of Naushad’s name at work. It was for the marquee magic of that name that Kamal Amrohi had gone back to Naushad, in the first place, as his Pakeezah extravaganza witnessed a providential resurrection, late in 1968.
Such was the quality of the film’s songs that Ghulam Mohammad, too, got his due share of media praise for his thematic tuning in Pakeezah. Dadasaheb Phalke Award recipient-to-be Pran, going public upon Ghulam Mohammad being denied the Filmfare Best Music Director prize, went to the extreme of spurning his 1972 Filmfare Best Supporting Actor award for Beimaan. This on the plea that the Best Music Director award, to Shanker-Jaikishan for Beimaan, was itself beimaan! A highly dubious music award it definitely was. But the Filmfare editorial management – by then seen to be backing ‘parallel cinema’ as a movement in India – had a credible if expedient argument to put up, for our edification, in assessing the motion picture arts and sciences. They reasoned that, if they came around to awarding Ghulam Mohammad, what did they do about Naushad? Was not a film’s background music as important, at least by 1972, as its aural score? They pointed out that the Pakeezah music could be awarded only jointly.
Just think: if Naushad had stepped up to collect any such shared Filmfare Award, the Pakeezah songs too, near inevitably, would have got, on the dot, to be re-linked with our maestro’s charismatic personality. True, Ghulam Mohammad’s family representative – very likely his begum – would have walked up to the rostrum, first, to receive that composer’s posthumous Pakeezah award. But once Naushad materialized upon the same podium as a follow-up, the media blaze would have turned upon our composing sultan – yet again at the expense of Ghulam Mohammad. That such a stage call-up did not come through, therefore, was something to be grateful for in the circumstances. The nub of the matter is that Kamal Amrohi had turned to Naushad when he himself was in a rather vulnerable position. He went to that sangeet monarch at a time when those pumping fresh October 1968 finance into his film wanted that composing idol’s name in the credits as a must.
As a must, certain details have to be set down here. Beyond any ‘claimant’ dispute, there was a total of twelve songs (nine unused and three used) that were recorded by Ghulam Mohammad as early as by end-1956, before shooting work began on Pakeezah. Sound tracks of three of those twelve songs (freshly re-recorded for updated colour) came to be ultimately used, beyond doubt, in Pakeezah. Those three songs were: Thaare rahiyo o baanke yaar re (Lata); Aaj hum apni duuaaon ka asar dekhenge (Lata); and Chalo dildaar chalo chaand ke paar chalo (the Lata–Rafi duet edition). Of those three songs used in the film, Naushad is known to have recorded (before Pakeezah came to be interrupted in mid-1964) Thaare rahiyo o baanke yaar re (Lata). Naushad himself had confirmed that the three songs named sequentially above were indeed Ghulam Mohammad compositions. Alongside had Naushad contended that three Lata-rendered solos – finally retained in Pakeezah and going as Inhein logon ne inhein logon ne, Chalte chalte chalte chalte and Mausam hai aashiqaana – were his tunes. It is his word here against that of anybody else, since Naushad is known to have come fairly early into the Pakeezah song-recording picture. That at the ‘request’ of Ghulam Mohammad after the heart attack that the film’s contracted music director depressingly suffered (end-1962). The only mainstream film in the custody of Ghulam Mohammad by then – as the 1961–70 decade dawned – was the troubled Lekhraj Bhakri-directed Shama, which was to end up as a June 1961 disaster at the counter.
Ghulam Mohammad himself has been cited as noting that Naushad was requested to ‘sit in’ on some songs of Pakeezah as he himself was too ill to be getting through with the colour recording job here. This going by knowledge that all Pakeezah songs stood recorded and ready, in black and white, by end-1956. Between end-1956 and mid-1964, the technological changes effected, how far-reaching were they, in the phased makeover to colour that Pakeezah, as a film, underwent? Through those drastic changes that, in the grand sum, were spread over 15 years (end-1956 to end-1971), could each one of the songs that Ghulam Mohammad definitely recorded, on his own, have remained sacrosanct? It is for you, as an obsessive listener and as an objective viewer, to reach your own verdict here. Reach your own verdict in the timeframe of the metamorphosis that Pakeezah – as a cinematic milestone – beheld during its dramatic shutdown by mid-1964 and its enigmatic completion by end-1971. If you hold that the Pakeezah song tracks recorded did not encounter any change at all in the 15 years intervening (between end-1956 and end-1971), there the matter ends – case dismissed.
Never forget that, for all the goodwill going with finishing Ghulam Mohammad’s job of work, in this meretricious industry the option to take up, or not to take up, Pakeezah rested with Naushad in the end. Kamal Amrohi, if going for a name by that end-1968 juncture, could have turned to either Madan Mohan or Khayyam. Both were perfectly capable of picking up with aptitude from where Ghulam Mohammad had forlornly laid off. Any great job done by either Madan Mohan or Khayyam would have cost much less too. But when did Kamal Amrohi ever count cost? If the distributing fraternity wanted Naushad alone for it to be able to sell something so treasured as Pakeezah, trust Kamal Amrohi to get that composer at any expense.
From the moment in which Naushad stepped into the composing fray, such was the man’s aura that Ghulam Mohammad was bound to suffer a denting in status: no matter how vital the true extent of his contribution to the musically enriching success of Pakeezah through the last nine months of 1972. Ghulam Mohammad, even after he left the shade of the Naushad banyan tree, never really grew out of its shadow. As he left our composing ace for good, the Naushad luck, too, left Ghulam Mohammad. The luck by which five films scored independently by him between 1947 and 1950 (Doli, Grihasti, Pugree, Paras and Pardes) had been noteworthy jubilee hits. Maybe sans Naushad – starting with Dil-e-Nadan and going up to Mirza Ghalib through the 1953–54 cycle – Ghulam Mohammad came up with a line-up of meritorious scores. All to no avail as commercial success eluded the man, consistently, in each one of the 12 films for which he scored music after, at long last, he turned away from Naushad. His true due, somehow, Ghulam Mohammad got not even now from the mega success of Pakeezah. Was it then prewritten in his stars that Naushad was destined to tower over him to the end?
If there is one calling in which you make your own luck, it is films. Rule as numero uno did Naushad because the coin spun his way on a level playing field. No less because he chose to bat when the going was good. ‘Naushadmaani’ as a coinage – as the Urdu state of joy by which you are able to express yourself in an Aaj furqat ka khwaab toot gayaa4 song-language all your own – says it all. Says it all in the case of the man who came to jubilee dinner as Station Master (1942) and stayed on till Pakeezah (1972) to prove that his was a baton on song even when it was in the background.
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1 Inhein logon ne inhein logon ne was penned by Majrooh Sultanpuri; Chalte chalte chalte chalte yoon hi koee mil gayaa thhaa was written by Kaifi Azmi; and Mausam hai aashiqaana was given lyrical form by Kamal Amrohi himself. All three numbers were rendered by Lata Mangeshkar.
2 Thaare rahiyo o baanke yaar re was written by Majrooh Sultanpuri and rendered by Lata Mangeshkar.
† Both Aaj hum apni duuaaon ka asar dekhenge (as rendered by Lata Mangeshkar) and Chalo dildaar chalo chaand ke paar chalo (as put over by Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammed Rafi) were written by Kaif Bhopali.
3 The first talkie in Hindustani cinema history, Imperial Movietone’s Alam Ara – a ‘period fantasy’ scripted, directed and sound-recorded by Ardeshir Merwan Irani with its story credited to Joseph David – was released at (South) Bombay’s Majestic Cinema on 14 March 1931. The film had seven songs and its music was scored by Phirozshah M. Mistry (assisted by B. Irani). The number of lines in each of the seven songs (going by the order in which the numbers came over on the Alam Ara screen) is as follows: four lines; two lines; four lines; four lines; nine lines; six lines; and seven lines. This is being detailed to balance the fact that no disc records of the film were issued, since they were not pressed in 1931. Not one song was picturized on the hero and only one tune was filmed on the heroine. This costume drama starred Zubeida (playing Alam Ara) opposite Master Viththal (as Qamar). On the film’s direction, Ardeshir Merwan Irani was assisted by Rustom Bharucha, Pesi Karani and Moti B. Gidwani. The March 1931 Alam Ara was nearly 10,500 feet in length (Censor Certificate No. 10043). It was shot in four months and it cost Rs 40,000 to make. Alam Ara was remade in 1956 and 1973. The only artiste to figure in all three editions – Wazir Muhammad Khan – unforgettable as the one to sing first in our talkie (the 1931 Alam Ara).
4 The starting point of the Tum se izhaar-e-haal kar baithe solo from H. S. Rawail’s Mere Mehboob (1963). Music by Naushad. Song-lyric by Shakeel Badayuni. Rendered by Mohammed Rafi.