Allah tere saath hai Maula tere saath hai
Allah tere saath hai Maula tere saath hai …1
TO THINK THAT HE IS GONE IS NOT TO THINK THAT HE IS DONE. HIS tuneful bounty is something that we shall esteem forever. In the winter of his career – as 25 December 1969 saw him turning 50 – Naushad you found to be, not rejoicing, but agonizing. Agonizing about how our value-debased cinema no longer left him with the scope and the reach to create. No longer could he let a tune ‘evolve’. The song, now, had to be fine-tuned, rehearsed and even recorded during one and the same morning. Within a five-hour timeframe, if you please. This drastic change of pace – says Naushad – was something that struck at the very root of his idea of honing and toning, nourished through 30 thriving years. Robbed thus was Naushad of the timeless feel by which the composer in him could nurture a tune for days on end. A timeless feel by which he could rehearse the singer almost at will. Come 1969 and it was a revolving-door work culture confronting Naushad. It made for a setting turning so chaotic that our composing wizard found his springs of inspiration to be all but drying up. Upshot: the Ganwaar genre of 1970 score. With clarity and sanity does Naushad expatiate on how frustrating his final phase in films became. His calm commentary on how fondly he ‘nursed’ a tune makes heart-holding reading. A revelatory insider feedback it is on the tinsel atmosphere in which our vintage music era drew to an inglorious end.
Where it came to dressing poetry, was not Khayyam, as Naushad’s one-time disciple, almost his artistic peer? As the poet’s composer, Khayyam narrates this occurrence in anguished tones. That music aesthete was preparing to record, at Mehboob Studios (in the West Bandra suburb of Bombay), the very first song of Yash Chopra’s 1976 Kabhi Kabhie. (This was the youth film by which a whole Amitabh Bachchan-adoring generation came romantically to swear.) That first recording, in the case of such a cult film, was to be a witness to quintessential Sahir Ludhianvi poetry assuming a melodic concord – as Kabhi kabhie mere dil mein khayaal aataa hai. All looked set for a musical event to treasure as in walked Lata Mangeshkar. (Her dueting companion Mukesh – on Kabhi kabhie mere dil mein khayaal aataa hai – had got there earlier.) Lata now was accompanied by – guess who? Who but Naushad!
‘Lata herself had brought along Naushad Saab, though his agreeing to be there did surprise me,’ Khayyam was to tell me years later – after Naushad (d. 5 May 2006) was no longer with us. ‘As you well know,’ went on Khayyam. ‘it is just not the done thing for one music director to be showing up at another composer’s recording. I was established as a composer by then, having started out as a singer in the late 1940s. As an ardent admirer, in fact, of the music that Naushad then made. Given all that, I will not say that Naushad Saab’s majestic bearing deterred me from going ahead, in any way, with my Kabhi kabhie mere dil mein khayaal aataa hai take-job. By the time Naushad Saab reached the place with Lata, all key members of the Yash Chopra unit – including that top-drawer filmmaker’s singer-wife Pamela – were already in attendance. Not least was Sahir Ludhianvi there among those gathered at the Mehboob recording theatre that morning.
‘I therefore took it to be a courtesy call upon the Chopras by Naushad Saab,’ added Khayyam. ‘But Naushad Saab stayed on and that did inhibit me in a way. Even so, with the musicians alerted, after getting Lata and Mukesh’s okay, I signalled for a trial take before the recording proper. Even as the orchestra started playing, Naushad Saab called a straight halt to it. He pointed to Nawab Khan performing on the tabla. He drew critical notice, in the opening notes of the song, to the lack of the chaanti – the thin and sharp right-handed side sound of the tabla. “There you are!” exploded Sahir Ludhianvi without even waiting for me to explain. “You, Khayyam, are out to ruin my poetry!” There was quite a buzz, naturally, as Sahir got further worked up, giving leeway for animated chatter. I had to wait for all that hubbub to die down before observing: “But, Naushad Saab, I have studiedly kept it as no chaanti sound of the tabla. Thereby I feel that I achieve a subdued musical effect that lends a certain amplitude to Sahir’s poetry.”
‘Neither Naushad Saab nor Sahir Ludhianvi sounded very convinced by my reasoning,’ continued Khayyam. ‘Naushad Saab, in fact, went into a further technical delineation of the reason why he felt that it was not musically scientific – no chaanti sound from the tabla. Diplomatically, Yash Chopra intervened to say that Naushad Saab had expressed his point of view; that he was a revered music personality; and that it was a matter for the film’s entire music unit to deliberate upon and decide.
‘Throughout, oddly, Lata Mangeshkar – whose word the Chopras set store by and who was away inside the singer’s cabin with Mukesh – had not come forward to convey her feelings about it,’ noted Khayyam. ‘Naushad Saab, having made his opinion known, took our leave, adding that he had nothing more to say on the issue. That gave me an opportunity to have a quiet word with Yash Saab. Sahir was still insistent that Naushad’s standpoint had to be taken into account. In the end, it was decided to just play it and see how Kabhi kabhie mere dil mein khayaal aataa hai came across if done my way – with no chaanti sound from Nawab Khan’s tabla. So pleasing was the end-result that they were heard to remark that Khayyam always had his way. I did – I knew my music. I maintain that it was not quite right on the part of Naushad Saab – whom I so respect as an exalted senior – to have got involved in my recording.’
For listener and reader edification, this was not the first time that Lata was bringing Naushad to another music director’s recording. She had done a similar thing early in 1958. That incident took place as her then pet Roshan – Madan Mohan coming to rate as her all-time favourite only later – was set to record the Saari saari raat teri yaad sataaye Lata solo to go upon Geeta Bali in F. C. Mehra’s Aji Bas Shukriya (to release in April 1958). At this timely early-1958 juncture, who should be entering the Mehboob Studios recording theatre but Naushad. As Lata – almost on cue – signalled in the direction of Roshan, that music director, astonishingly for one of his composing lineage, said: ‘Naushad Saab, come, come, I shall feel honoured if you record my song for me today!’
Lata – ‘in her own voice’ – has since recounted how Naushad it was who did the recording for Roshan that morning without changing a note. Lata, naturally, failed to add that the initiative had been hers in ensuring that Naushad materialized in Roshan’s recording room during the moment that mattered at Mehboob Studios. At that time, Roshan was in the worst phase of his career, reduced to doing B-grade movies at Filmistan when that famous institution itself was obviously heading for a total shutdown. Lata, thereupon, had brought Naushad into the Mehboob Studios to see if some of our Midas Maestro’s luck could rub off on Roshan. It worked! Saari saari raat teri yaad sataaye proved to be a 1958 Binaca Geetmala hit for Aji Bas Shukriya to put Roshan on the comeback track. With a little Binaca Geetmala push from the Roshan family’s long-time friend, one Ameen Sayani, of course.
As with Roshan, now before Kabhie Kabhie came (to release by February 1976), Khayyam had found himself in the roughest patch of his musical times. That at a point when he was already 22 years into films. Believe it or not, from 1968 to 1973, Khayyam had landed not a single film. Following that six-year hiatus had come along four small-time films, not one of them faring well at the turnstiles – Pyase Dil (1974); Sankalp (1974); Mutthi Bhar Chawal (1975); and Sandhya (1975). From these four low-budget films, Khayyam had but two songs to show for hits, as exemplarily rendered by Sulakshana Pandit. These were: Tuu hi saagar hai tuu hi kinaara (set in Raag Ahir Bhairav for Sankalp) and Ang ang rang chhalkaaye (cast in Raag Yaman for Sandhya). At such a perilous hour in his career – when the film industry, additionally, had invested that composer with the tag of being ‘unlucky’ – Yash Chopra made bold to entrust to Khayyam so prominent a multistarrer as Kabhi Kabhie. Yash’s wife Pamela was close to Lata – all that recording to-do had to be viewed in this light. It is safe to assume that Naushad came along for that Kabhi kabhie mere dil mein khayaal aataa hai recording only after a proper invite from the Chopras. Naushad, obviously, was Lata’s idea of a taaweez – an amulet – for Khayyam at a curve in his journey down tinpan alley when he needed all the luck in the world to retrieve his career with Kabhi Kabhie.
That Naushad got embroiled in that tabla–chaanti side dispute also needs a bit of elaboration. Naushad, being a traditionalist to the core, could have earnestly believed that the sound from the tabla’s chaanti side should have been there mandatorily. After that, there is nothing to suggest that Naushad tarried to help carry out the Kabhi kabhie mere dil mein khayaal aataa hai recording for Khayyam – à la Saari saari raat teri yaad sataaye for Roshan. But Naushad just being there, as Lata saw it, was enough! Our maestro’s mere appearance at the recording venue, Lata evidently believed, was destined to prove a good omen for Khayyam vis-à-vis Kabhi Kabhie (February 1976). Was Naushad then, by the 1970s stage in his career, one lucky only for others – as he had been, by way of an example, for the till then consistently losing-out Ghulam Mohammad in the case of Pakeezah (February 1972)?
Naushad’s proverbial luck, how come that it had repeatedly failed the man himself through the critical years following the 1963 Divali-eve Mere Mehboob windfall? Years during which his fortunes rose and sank with the fate of a Dilip Kumar film? Remember this, that, but for Ram Aur Shyam turning up aces when it did in the July of 1967, Naushad would have been nowhere, just nowhere. Luck is a two-way eversilver coin. Regularly beginning to lose a toss that he had won through 21 years of his musical life (1942–63) must have baffled Naushad no end. Touching upon this luckless period in his career, Naushad talked with great feeling about the most testing time of his professional life (1964–68) as I met up with him during the new year of 1981.
Broodingly asserted Naushad: ‘Everyone dismissively looks upon 1961–70 as my fatal decade. Yet I maintain that I composed some of my better music in a clutch of films mounting the screen during this very decade. Like in Gunga Jumna [November 1961]; Mere Mehboob [October 1963]; Leader [March 1964]; Dil Diya Dard Liya [April 1966]; Ram Aur Shyam [July 1967]; Aadmi [January 1968]; Sunghursh [October 1968]; and Saathi [November 1968]. My work was far more mature here. My orchestration was even better ordered. My singers were seasoned enough to perform at their finest. My recordings were designed to take full advantage of the vastly improved technology available during this 1961–70 decade. In short, my work now was far better rounded in every way.
‘My personal vibes with Shakeel, too, had grown into that shaair’s poetic imagery coalescing even more fluidly into my music. How gamely did Shakeel battle with his illness to complete the song-lyrics of [the end-1968] Sunghursh to our mutual satisfaction. Shakeel’s condition taking a turn for the worse, at this decisive juncture in my career, was a blow, a big blow. But working in films is first about commitment, only then about sentiment. So, taking such a demoralizing personal break in my stride, resiliently did I re-connect with the Majrooh Sultanpuri of Andaz [March 1949]. With Majrooh Sultanpuri now came Mukesh to remind me of the 23 trips by public bus and train that this dedicated singer – without once complaining – had made to my Bandra home, back in 1948. No fewer than 23 trips so made for rehearsing those four Dilip Kumar Andaz evergreens: Hum aaj kahein dil kho baithe; Tuu kahe agar jeevan bhar; Toote na dil toote na; and Jhoom jhoom ke naacho aaj naacho aaj. Forget momentary brushes, these are inevitable when the composer and the singer are coming together after close to 20 years. In my view, overall, Mukesh sang very well for Rajendra Kumar in Saathi [November 1968]. Just look at the calibre of the score that I came up with for Saathi. Did you, anywhere, get the impression that Majrooh Sultanpuri and I were not on the same wavelength?
‘It is true that not each one of the films just named by me succeeded. Such a turn of events was the outcome of my stalwart heroes beginning to lose their very special charisma in this decade. But that had nothing to do with the totally committed class of music that I scored for the eight movies in colour identified as well scored by me. Yet I appreciate that the show world, having lifted you to the skies, could bring you nosediving down. This is the time for you to introspect and to stick to your style, not to give in to the incessant cry of critics to bring in change for the sake of change. Nothing modern that I tried in Saathi [end-1968] really convinced me that the musical path that I had chosen to follow with Baiju Bawra [end-1952] was flawed. Those who say that my music did not change after Baiju Bawra are talking with an arrogance that comes with ignorance. Even while sticking to the course marked out by Baiju Bawra, my musical outlook, in the 16 years that followed, had taken a technological leap forward by the time we came to completing Saathi in the latter half of 1968.
‘Getting a film to run is not in your hands. Simply because almost everything that I did after Rattan [July 1944] made the coffers jingle is no reason why I should not have been allowed time and space to create, as I had been permitted to do earlier. It is idle to argue that everything had become faster. If anything, films were taking longer to finish, in the 1960s, than had been the experience through the 1950s. Music, especially, is something to be made in a laidback style by which the songs grow upon you. Could you realistically say that something that I crafted in 1966, like Phir teri kahaani yaad aayi phir teraa fasaana yaad aaya for Dil Diya Dard Liya, did not grow upon you?
‘A tune has to be moulded in such a way that it builds inside you. This is a process. It is this very healthy process that was being vitiated by the demand for spot hits. Creating a tune is not making instant coffee. It never did take me long to come up with a tune. There is no such thing as merely doing a tune. There is only such a thing as nursing a tune that you have conceptualized. You could be nursing a tune for anything up to a month, as it takes final shape inside you. It is the time given for such nursing of a tune that invested my music with the venerated value that you say it carries today.
‘We composers thus began operating in an atmosphere best sketched as unmusical. No, I am not offering any alibis for the pattern that my music assumed from 1970 onwards. I am just wanting you to take due cognizance of an unthinking trend by which everything came to be haphazardly hurried inside the music room. The music that you make reflects the pace at which you have been permitted to work. It is the pace at which we had made music all our life that came to be crucially affected by this new urge to get things going at any cost. Such unholy hurry affected the tone of music in our films most. We were suddenly denied the leisure by which our idea windows opened out. The accent, fatally, shifted from getting music done to getting music done with – come what may.
‘Music is not a product or a commodity. You need to be working at it all the time. It is this vital work atmosphere that came to be growingly missing in the industry from 1969. “We are entering the beginning of a new decade,” I was told. “This is going to be the decade in which we do not wait for things to happen, we make things happen!” Such glib jargon was beyond my musical ken. My first 30 years as a composer, they say, were my best years. They were my best 30 years as a composer because those 30 years were the best years of our film industry too. By contrast, what is it that you are getting in the name of music today? Earwash! Scene 6 – featuring a song – comes after Scene 15 in Love and God. I mean in that left incomplete film of K. Asif later somehow revived. Revived and condemned to a [May 1986] spot-flop release. In tune with the times – as I had then outlined to you – the idea was to milk even a K. Asif saga for a fast buck. In the Love and God case, about Scene 6 – featuring a song – coming after Scene 15, I had, right away, impressed upon the new team members the urgency to correct it at that time itself. But, with K. Asif gone, they just did not bother to get back to me. They let it stay as it was, saying that they would see about it later. True, K. Asif’s film-making was timeless. But never was it careless. The Mughal-e-Azam tune legacy, it never could be the tune legacy of Naushad alone. It is K. Asif’s tune legacy in essence.
‘From K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam, you had cited Lata’s Bekas pe karam keejiye Sarkar-e-Madeena as the tune that you prized the most. You had pinpointed it as Raag Kedara, right? That means you have me entering the Kalyan thhaat. Now you are wondering if Bekas pe karam keejiye Sarkar-e-Madeena could be done in Raag Tilang. So you want me to slip into the Khamaj thhaat from the Kalyan thhaat? Let us see, let us play with the notes. Here you are: it has clicked on the dot; you have Bekas pe karam keejiye Sarkar-e-Madeena there in Raag Tilang. Now you are moving even further away and asking if the same Bekas pe karam keejiye Sarkar-e-Madeena could not be done in Raag Malgunji? To get there, let us go, first, into the Kaafi thhaat. Getting to Raag Malgunji from here could take a little more time than we spent upon doing it so far. Oh, but here is Bekas pe karam keejiye Sarkar-e-Madeena in Raag Malgunji – just as you wanted it!
‘Watch these harmonium keys doing a tap dance as I play and sing. Your Filmfare had the gall to write, in the early 1950s, that Naushad could tune but not sing! After that, such was the Filmfare sway that, for years on end, it came to be blithely written that Naushad could compose but not sing. Really? If a composer could not sing, how would he be explaining the finer facets of the tune to the singer? Today, at last, you know that Naushad does sing. Could you kindly ask your Filmfare people to carry the right news, at least now, in the new year of 1981? The right news about this one whom, otherwise, they hail as the custodian of classical music in films? Their labelling, that, not mine.
‘Having said that, let me tell you that it does not take me long to hit upon the tune. Yet hitting upon the tune is but the beginning. After that, the tune needs caressing. It is your brainchild, so it needs rearing. Therefore those who say that I take too long to ideate a tune know no music, understand no notes. Readying a tune for the take-stage is a gradual mental workout. You are polishing your tune with each day that comes along.
‘A Tod diyaa dil meraa, you think that it came about, just like that, for Lata? Ask her how much she had to work at it with me, before it assumed the Raag Pahadi hue that it did upon Nargis as Neena in Mehboob’s Andaz [March 1949]? Our six basic raags are Deepak, Megh, Hindol, Shri, Bhairav and Malkauns. These, our six citadels, were assailed at various times through the decades. I speak as we have just about gone into 1981, as the talkie is poised to complete its 50th year in a couple of months. During those 50 years, our six basic raags that I specified were assaulted by the foxtrot; the waltz; the cha-cha-cha; the rumba-samba; the rock-’n’-roll; and the disco. Those are six catchpenny Westernized song-forms that came to, and went from, our screen. But Deepak, Megh, Hindol, Shri, Bhairav and Malkauns are where they were. I am here today and gone tomorrow. After I am gone, you could get to sense a further erosion of our musical heritage. But never ever fear for the future of Hindustani music. If only because I shall be leaving this world in the certain knowledge that our six basic raags, Deepak, Megh, Hindol, Shri, Bhairav and Malkauns – upon which I formatted my entire music – are now and forever,’ wound up Naushad.
Even in such an elevating ‘Raga Nostalgia’ mood, there is this other base viewpoint on Naushad’s music to be considered. To be considered objectively, even at this late stage, before we sign off. Naushad’s daughter Fehmida succinctly summed up the 2005 generation’s stance on the Taj Mahal norm of Naushad score when she quoted a college friend of hers as saying of our maestro: ‘Your father’s music is so puritanical. His songs are devoid of all double entendre and his female singers croon like convent nuns!’
Is that not amazingly close to the way in which his sworn rivals viewed Naushad’s music over the years? But was Naushad’s music really all that puritanical? Did Lata Mangeshkar indeed sing for him like a convent nun? Such a wild charge flies in the face of the fact that Naushad’s music, to this day, captures the imagination of the nation. With melody for its keynote, his music is poetry in excelsis. Some of Lata’s singing for him, it is as if Naushad has dipped his baton in maple syrup for her. That very special Rafi resonance brought with it a soz, a passion, an ardour, that left an impact to be carried, for all time to come, as a part of your psyche.
To each detail of song, to each piece of poetry, to each aspect of instrumentation, to each facet of orchestration, did Naushad, in his music, pay equal heed. There is this famous 1653 work by Izaak Walton titled The Compleat Angler. Varying it tellingly, we could aptly describe Naushad as The Compleat Composer. You had to see him in recording studio action as each segment of music was played back to him. Headphones on – left palm on his temple above his left eye – both eyes closed but both ears open, Naushad listened. Listened to each piece of music played as he made mental notes. At the end of it all, one by one, he communicated, through the recordist’s mike to each musician, the subtle variation that he wanted from what the man had played to him.
Naushad’s powers of concentration reminded you of Vijay Merchant at the wicket. ‘Upon your completing 100, it is when the public applause is still ringing in your ears,’ counselled Vijay, ‘that you need the will power to turn away from it all and ask the umpire for fresh guard.’ Likewise did Naushad ask for fresh guard each time he scored in front of his public. Surely there must have been something more than mere style; there must have been genuine substance, to Naushad’s music for it to have been heard with such rapt attention – through 70 years – not only in India, but in so many parts of the world? Undertake a rewind of his career tunes and you would be discovering that Naushad was one connoisseur who always composed, never compromised. It is best to pick up Raag Bhairavi as his standard bearer in assessing the expanse that Naushad covered in his life. Hear how the Zohrabai Ambalewali Bhairavi in Rattan (mid-July 1944) unspools as an Aayi Deewali aayi Deewali antique piece upon Swarnalata. Now set that priceless antique piece against Naushad’s November-1968 Lata Bhairavi unveiling upon the willowy Vyjayanthi in Saathi as Main to pyaar se tere piyaa maang sajaaungi.
You get to feel how far Naushad has travelled in 25 years even while preserving the purity of Bhairavi as the raagini of raaginis. Naushadian Bhairavi also produced some cutely penned Shakeel poetry – Kyaa rang-e-mehfil hai dildaaram o jaan-e-aalam as rendered by Lata in the April 1966 Dil Diya Dard Liya. That is by the way. Otherwise it was still a Shakeel writing in the same Dil Diya Dard Liya at his Darbari best – Guzre hain aaj ishq mein hum us maqaam se/Nafrat si ho gayi hai mohabbat ke naam se. Naushad ‘mooding’ a Rafi by then able to go, if necessary, a full octave higher. Yet filming Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, as Dil Diya Dard Liya, had been no classic climb. By its release time after the first quarter of 1966, this long held-up film had taken its toll on A. R. Kardar as its maker (see Chapter 13).
I was face to face with that master pioneer of Hindustani cinema, while he was on his daily Marine Drive walk, during a summery morning in the first week of April 1966. I congratulated Kardar Saab upon Dilip Kumar having, at last, brought Dil Diya Dard Liya to a consensus conclusion. I pointed out to Kardar Saab that I just could not wait to audiovision Shakeel–Naushad’s compositions with the film. I keenly sought to know from ‘Mianji’ Kardar how it had felt to be working again with Naushad after a full 14 years. Only to be informed, shatteringly, that the two, Kardar and Naushad, had not exchanged a word on the Dil Diya Dard Liya music during the movie’s making.
Some journey, that. Just ruminate about how Naushad must have felt, in the May of 1952, as he severed his umbilical cord in leaving Kardar Productions after a 10-year association of unforgettable hits. Naushad did not say so at the time but he must have missed the feeling of snug security that being with Kardar for so long gave him. His first film as a total freelance (after being with Kardar through a full decade) was Baiju Bawra (to release in October 1952). Yet Naushad here boldly took nothing less than a career risk in attuning the film in the classical vein that he did.
Point: Naushad was comparatively young (not even 32) when he undertook the music of Baiju Bawra. He was still driven by the urge to conquer fresh frontiers. By stark contrast, his 1968 career-undoing setbacks, Aadmi, Sunghursh and Saathi, had found Naushad talking in bitter-sweet tones about it all – as we just read.
Having sounded so fatalistic in January 1981, could you believe that, as late as November 2005, Naushad came up with a score truly worth cherishing in his farewell film, Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story? Akbar Khan’s ill-starred extravaganza this devastatingly turned out to be – as it featured Kabir Bedi as Shahjehan; Sonya Jehan as Mumtaz Mahal; Manisha Koirala as Jahanara; Pooja Batra as Noorjehan; and Arbaaz Ali Khan as Jehangir. Refreshed by years of rest and afforded the ambience that he had always needed to compose, Naushad was in his ‘poetuning’ element here. The one ambition of any singer is to perform for Naushad in a film. By the time Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story was a reality, A. Hariharan was a national celebrity. Yet to be summoned to sing for Naushad in a film, even as late as 2005, was the ultimate honour for that Trivandrum Iyer.
Muzaffar Ali’s 1978 Gaman had seen another truly talented singer Suresh Wadkar coming over, memorably, via the Shahryar-written ghazal, as: Seene mein jalan aankhon mein toofaan-sa kyoon hai. Its redoubtable composer Jaidev had sculpted a matching beauty for A. Hariharan in the same Gaman. It was voiced over upon Farooque Shaikh (inside a taxi) and it unwound, from the same Shahryar’s pen, as Ajeeb saniha mujh par guzar gayaa yaaron/Main apne saaye se kal raat dar gayaa yaaron. Somehow this jewel of a ghazal did not work for that struggler singer then, when Hariharan had been the one Southern male performer to have sat down and learned Urdu scientifically. However, after taking such a halting start, Hariharan was to win commendable acclaim for his non-filmic ghazals. This Iyer idol also went on to sing in a string of Tamil films through the 1990s into the new millennium. His hold on the Urdu language, on its finer points, now showed as, perceptively, Hariharan met the daunting demands of Naushad in Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story.
As penned by Naqsh Lyallpuri and Syed Gulrez, the theme is literally poetry in motion. It had you in a thrall as Hariharan, as daintily chiselled by Naushad, explored the contours of the Urdu language in its tenderest tones – via Apni zulfen mere shaanon pe bikhar jaane do/Aaj roko na mujhe hadd se guzar jaane do. As fresher Preeti Uttam (Singh) joined in with aptitude, we got four dream duets – two of them proving to be Hariharan-virtuosity vivifying while going as: Mumtaz tujhe dekhaa, jab Taj Mahal dekhaa/Phir aaj ki aankhon se, guzraa huuaa kal dekhaa. Such a nugget followed by the gem: Mumtaz! Mumtaz! Tuu ne hi sadaa di hai, tuu ne hi bulaaya hai/Phir Taj ki baahon mein, dil kheench ke laaya hai. The other two duets spotted out Preeti Uttam as a voice at once building and bidding via Dilruba! Seene mein bhi toofan hai, dariya mein bhi toofan hai/Eis paar meraa dil hai, us paar meri jaan hai and Ajnabi thehro zaraa, tum farishta ho, ya koee khwaab ka chehraa ho tum. All this plus a qawwali to hear and hold dear – Ishq ki dastaan saari mehfil sune/Ishq dil mein chhupana zaroori nahein. In being chorus accompanied, this qawwali, easy on the ear, came to be spiritedly put over by Preeti Uttam and Kavita Krishnamurthy.
Kavita’s calibrated playback rise, privately, Lata had welcomed. Without putting it into so many words, Lata had conveyed the message that Kavita was free to arrive as the logical ‘successor’ to Vani Jairam (by then so neatly packed off to Madras). What Lata did not know is that – even in her Hindustani cinema – one Iyer (from that Brahminic clan) simply had to succeed another Iyer as an unwritten code of musical law! A third Iyer on the scene, even if a ‘colonial cousin’, could have been a complication – if it had not been a singer with the timbre of A. Hariharan.
Yes, it is to Ananthasubramani Hariharan that Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story belongs as a balladeer. The entire score of Taj Mahal is a regal reminder of Naushad at his Mughal loftiest – with the latest in music technology selectively harnessed to the ageless theme. How instantly you equate with each one of these five will-o’-the-wispy Taj Mahal tunes as their poetry transports you to another sphere altogether. This very special composing quality of Naushad manifests itself afresh in Taj Mahal after a full decade of patient wait by his aficionados (our tuning ace having made no waves with Guddu, 1995). Here then is Taj Mahal music to make the heart sing; to make the mind feel king. But who was to hear such mellow ‘period’ music of refined taste by the November of 2005? That is, at a stage in time by which our cinesangeet stood vandalized to a point of no return? Generationally, who had time for the good old Naushad, at near 86, touching a new career apex in theming Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story? If the extensive instrumental pieces heard here were also vintage Nauhad, who cared in the meretricious twenty-first century? As Taj Mahal came crashing down, there was not even critical recognition for its music. Reviewers of 2005 were just not in sync with the grand motif of ‘Music by Naushad’. But album reviewers were more kind, upholding his score as a Herculean tuning effort in the sundown of his career. Akbar Khan, as the Taj Mahal writer-director, put it in a.d. 2000 perspective when he rhetorically stated: ‘My film’s music needed a Tansen, a Beethoven or a Naushad. I was only left with the last choice …’
Nothing distressed Naushad more than such an epic as Taj Mahal going abegging for appreciation. The film’s failure became something touching his zain – his honour. This zain it is that had been at stake in Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story. History could be notoriously unkind in the final verdict it delivers. Meeting up with Naushad after the Taj Mahal trauma – with that leg problem of his accentuating – I had a premonition that he would not live for long. The end came with a pang on 5 May 2006. It verily was the end of a musical epoch in Indian cinema. The world was a smaller place without his towering musical presence. You got this sinking feeling that nothing less than the powerhouse of music had been switched off.
A visit to his music room proved heart-rending. I just stood there, gazing at that piano. A piano at which there would be no ‘Naushad, Naushad!’ to sit any longer – no Andaz, any more, to envision in the keyboard of our imagination. ‘The Moving Finger plays and, having played, moves on ….’2 To think that it was at this piano that he had sat down to tune such a strain of thought as: Tumhaari duniya se jaa rahen hain utho hamaara salaam le lo.3 How becomingly had he apostrophized: ‘Tuu kahe agar jeevan bhar main geet sunaata jaaun.’† His thirst for Life Death alone could quench – Saahil ki tamanna thhi mujh ko, manjhdhaar mein bedaa jaa pahuncha/Jeene ki duaayen kya maangoon, paani to galey tak aa pahuncha.†† Aptly had he concluded: ‘I owe everything that I am to music, music owes me nothing.’ But our eternal debt of tuneful gratitude to Naushad, how do we repay it?
My eyes were moist as I left Ashiana – one last time, mindful of the aansoo piye jaa4 spell that he had cast. Streaming down came those tears, once I was out of the ‘Ashiana’ orbit. An Ashiana in whose music room Naushad had habitually slept and dreamt. Dreamt up melodies for the whole nation to hum. Hum rah gaye akele, hum rah gaye akele …5
The King Emperor of Song – no less – was no more.
How composed Naushad looked even in death …
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1 These lines – filmed upon ‘Majnoon’ Sanjeev Kumar – are a follow-up to the song that starts upon that thespian as Jaan-e-tamanna alwidaa husn ki duniya alwidaa (vis-à-vis ‘Laila’ Nimmi). The number is from K. Asif’s Love and God (1986). Music by Naushad. Song-lyric by Khumar Barabankvi. Rendered by Mohammed Rafi and chorus.
2 A Naushad-piano-oriented variation of the Omar Khayyam quote, ‘The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on’, by Edward Fitzgerald (1809–83).
3 Leaving your world forever am I; please do accept my farewell greetings.’ Tumhaari duniya se jaa rahen hain utho hamaara saalam le lo is the follow-up line to the film’s climax song having for its opening: Khuda nigahbaan ho tumhaara dharak te dil ka paiyyam le lo (unveiling upon Madhubala playing Anarkali, an Anarkali banished to Iran by the Emperor Akbar). From K. Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam (1960). Music by Naushad. Song-lyric by Shakeel Badayuni. Rendered by Lata Mangeshkar.
† ‘Just ask me to do so and I will keep performing for you throughout my life.’ Tuu kahe agar jeevan bhar main geet sunaata jaaun was our maestro’s punchline in this scene-changing triangular drama. From Mehboob’s Andaz (1949). Music by Naushad. Song-lyric by Majrooh Sultanpuri. Rendered by Mukesh (on ‘Shekhar’ Dilip Kumar at the piano).
†† So desirous was I of reaching the shore, only to find my boat getting entrapped in the whirlpool/Pray for my life, how do I, when myself I find neck-deep in water? From the torch song, Khamosh hai khevanhaar meraa, in Mehboob’s Amar (1954). Music by Naushad. Song-lyric by Shakeel Badayuni. Rendered by Lata Mangeshkar (on ‘Sonya’ Nimmi).
4 A phrase from the ghazal going as: Uthaaye jaa unke sitam aur jiye jaa/Yun hi muskuraaye jaa aansoo piye jaa. From Mehboob’s Andaz (1949). Music by Naushad. Song-lyric by Majrooh Sultanpuri. Rendered by Lata Mangeshkar (on ‘Neena’ Nargis).
5 The completing line from O door ke musafir hum ko bhi saath le le re is Hum rah gaye akele, hum rah gaye akele – meaning ‘We have been left all alone, all to ourselves/We have been left all alone, all to ourselves.’ From Sunny Art Productions’ Uran Khatola (1955). Music by Naushad, Song-lyric by Shakeel Badayuni. Rendered (chorus-accompanied) by Mohammed Rafi (on ‘Kashi’ Dilip Kumar).