A PRICE TO PAY FOR BEING NUMBER ONE
Jhoomte aa rahe hain zamaane naye
Hasratein gaa raheen hain taraane naye
Jhoomte aa rahe hain zamaane naye
Hasratein gaa raheen hain taraane naye
Aaj dil ki tamannaa nikal jaayegi
Geet hogaa yehi laee badal jaayegi – laee badal jaayegi
Eik nayaa raag qismat sunaane ko hai
Pyaar sajne lagaa saaz bajne lagaa
Zindagi dil ke taaron pe gaane ko hai
Dhal chuki shaam-e-gham muskuraa le sanam …1
FOR ALL HIS EMPHASIS ON QUALITY, IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE END-1958 debacle of Nimmi–Bharat Bhooshan’s Sohni Mahiwal, for the first time in his 15 years at the helm, Naushad found himself in the throes. This as our maestro impatiently waited – through the year and three-quarter to follow – for those Dilip Kumar chartbusters of his, Mughal-e-Azam and Kohinoor, to arrive during the August–December frame of 1960. Meanwhile, at least one major hurdle in sustaining his hold on the public imagination had been overcome. The sudden eclipse of C. Ramchandra sans Lata, by early-1959, meant that Naushad had breathing time. Yet no way could he rest on his laurels, if only because the ultra-swift fadeout of C. Ramchandra had opened up the music field as never before.
How exactly did Naushad with Sohni Mahiwal arrive at a U-turn in his career by end-1958? If our maestro had been a vintage witness to C. Ramchandra seizing the baton from Husnlal-Bhagatram by the end of 1949, Messrs Shanker-Jaikishan, come 1959, began to emerge as the newest contenders to query Naushad’s coveted Celebrity No. 1 positioning in the film industry. SJ, in fact, were clearly No. 2 as O. P. Nayyar – upon status clinchingly holding up, by the 19th of April 1958, the 1957 Filmfare Best Music Director Award for B. R. Chopra’s Naya Daur – proceeded to fire a salvo on our durable duo. While SJ and OP thus tussled it out for the Binaca Geetmala stakes, Naushad managed to sustain his standing at the top with the 1960 advent and success of, first, Mughal-e-Azam and, next, Kohinoor. What our maestro thus came to command, by the close of the 1951–60 decade, was a very special status putting him in a Baiju Bawra ‘class’ by himself.
Is it not something significant that, within a year of Naushad leaving A. R. Kardar to score Baiju Bawra, that cine giant discovered, at high cost, Ghulam Mohammad to be no box-office match to our maestro? No doubt Ghulam Mohammad produced a dream score (for a Talat Mahmood, expectations arousingly, debuting as a singing star) in Kardar Productions’ Dil-e-Nadan (June 1953). Yet, for all of Ghulam Mohammad’s composing artistry, that luckless music maker, ruefully, came to be identified by Kardar as not being enough of a heavyweight to be a marketable match to Naushad with all his aura. Indeed, Kardar’s Dil-e-Nadan crashed no less resoundingly at the box office than that banner’s Sachin Dev Burman-scored Jeewan Jyoti was set to do – a couple of months later. This was when Kardar artfully turned to C. Ramchandra, as Naushad’s fiercest competitor still, to score the music to go on the stately Vyjayanthimala playing Yasmin in his (March 1955) film of that name. Indeed (as noted in Chapter 1), Kardar came to rate C. Ramchandra as the best of them all – as one excelling Naushad, Sachin Dev Burman, Roshan, Madan Mohan and O. P. Nayyar. A point of view open to serious debate at all times. But if Kardar ranked C. Ramchandra so highly, Naushad, for his part, never ever made the elementary mistake of underestimating that intrepid trailblazer. In fact, it took Naushad all of 10 years to shake off C. Ramchandra as his jazzy rival. Only for our Sangeet Samrat to get to view freshers Shanker-Jaikishan to be taking up the baton where C. Ramchandra had left off. How CR undid himself, how SJ made themselves at that sharkskin-suited composer’s stylish expense, is by now part of our musical lore. If lore it is, let us have some more of that lore.
Come 1959 and Naushad had to meet the Shanker-Jaikishan bogey head on, as C. Ramchandra, minus the melisma of Lata, began fading out, amazingly rapidly, by the beginning of that pendulum-swinging year. Sivaji Ganesan’s2 Amar Deep (censored on 29 December 1958 but released in January 1959), side by side with S. S. Vasan’s Paigham (November 1959), became the last two films for which CR commanded a lakh of rupees each. Commanded a lakh of rupees for Amar Deep on the mood-setting toning of such Lata renditions, in that film, as Dil ki duniya basaa ke saanwariya (upon the willowy Vyjayanthimala) and Mere man ka baanwra panchhi (upon the billowy Padmini). For all of CR’s composing flair on show in Amar Deep, about such a formidable contestant as C. Ramchandra, by early-1959, Naushad had to worry no longer.
What Naushad now really had to bother about was the ubiquitous team of Shanker-Jaikishan advancing by leaps and bounds as they got to score L. V. Prasad’s Chhoti Bahen (releasing March 1959). This came to pass after CR had insisted upon a lakh of rupees for Chhoti Bahen and failed to land it. Like CR before them, SJ had, for their ultimate goal, the Rs 110,000 booty that Naushad extracted for a film. With that backdrop in view, I asked CR: ‘Knowing that it would be only bringing SJ closer to the six-figure fee that Naushad had sustained through the decade just ending; aware that your saade-saatee [seven-and-a-half years of astrological bad fortune] had begun, why in heaven’s name had you to let Chhoti Bahen go to SJ? A Chhoti Bahen that came to be so abidingly personified by a Nanda hailing from your own Marathi stable?’
‘When the fact of my saade-saatee beginning saw Lata Mangeshkar ditching me as her sweetheart, you want to know why I let a mere Chhoti Bahen go? Let that film go for how much in any case?’ CR sought to know. ‘Finally, SJ got Rs 75,000, you say. Yet remember one thing, Raju. In this highly exploitative industry, you have to stick to your rate, come what may. It is guided by this healthy Naushad one-lakh maxim that I let Chhoti Bahen pass. No way was I going to bring down my one lakh cut-off rate. My simple Naushad norm by then was – no lakh, no film! I hadn’t feared Naushad, I didn’t fear SJ either. SJ, you say, were prepared to do Chhoti Bahen for Rs 65,000. Even that Rs 65,000, let me tell you, was a speculatively exploratory quote by Shanker in front of distributor Tarachand Barjatya. SJ’s market price then [February 1958] was but Rs 50,000 when I had charged my customary Rs 100,000 for Sivaji Ganesan’s Amar Deep. Sivaji, one of the great gentlemen that I met, readily agreed to my set fee as he signed me for the film some time in October 1957. He made only one request – that it should be the voice of Mohammed Rafi upon Amar Deep hero Dev Anand. I readily agreed to that, as I had to keep the magnanimous Sivaji Ganesan pleased. Against such a background, just look at the results that I drew out of Rafi in his Amar Deep duet with an Asha in equally fine voice: Dekh humen awaaz na denaa.
‘But our theme is Chhoti Bahen,’ continued CR. ‘Rajshri’s proprietor Tarachand Barjatya I had already personally offended in this matter, so that, as the film’s leading distributor, he wanted me out at all cost. So he initially offered SJ a generous Rs 65,000 for Chhoti Bahen – as much as Rs 15,000 more than what that duo charged then. It had become an ego battle between Tarachand and me. In such a set-to, SJ ingratiatingly managed to get their rate raised further to Rs 75,000 – a 50 per cent jump, just think, from their market fee, then, of Rs 50,000. That SJ stuck to that Rs 75,000 even after Chhoti Bahen is something that goes to their credit. SJ here were mighty lucky with a couple of simultaneous hit films releasing alongside Chhoti Bahen [Anari and Love Marriage] so that they could keep their rate uplifted at Rs 75,000. But always remember that only by pandering to a mere distributor’s ego did SJ, ultimately, manage to reach the Rs 75,000 threshold.
‘Tarachand Barjatya of Rajshri,’ went on CR avidly, ‘claiming to be speaking on behalf of producer-director L. V. Prasad, had offered me Rs 85,000 for Chhoti Bahen. I had asked Tarachand who did he think he was to determine my rate at Rs 15,000 less than my recognized market fee of one lakh. That too on the opinionated ground that my music in L. V. Prasad’s Sharada [end-1957] had not been up to my standard? “Let L. V. Prasad himself speak to me and say so,” I had told off Tarachand. I had duly collected Rs 100,000 for Sharada and was not backing down now. Not after Sivaji Ganesan, just two months before the advent of Sharada [coming in December 1957], had paid me – through the same Tarachand, mind you – my settled Rs 100,000 fee for Amar Deep.’
‘Not the most discreet thing to have done, telling off Tarachand.’ I pointed out to CR, adding: ‘It’s, remember, on the distributors’ say-so that Naushad retains his industry highest fee of Rs 110,000. Tarachand Barjatya is a very powerful distributor, one best not antagonized. After all, what was the outcome of your sticking to your Rs 100,000 guns? Shanker stepped in, was offered Rs 65,000 for Chhoti Bahen, requested for Rs 75,000 and got it. Then, moving to Rajshri’s music room, Shanker himself created the dummy words and dextrously tuned his own stream of thought (for Lata later to render upon Nanda) as Bhaiya mere Raakhi ke bandhan ko nibhana. Shailendra, as Shanker’s settled songwriter by then, gamely retained those dummy words, as Tarachand had liked the sisterly Raakhi3 sentiment going with it very much.’
‘There you return to Tarachand liking a tune for an L. V. Prasad film! Tarachand is nobody to like or not to like. I assure you that Tarachand wouldn’t have dared to come openly into the picture if, say, Naushad had been composing Chhoti Bahen,’ insisted CR. Clearly, Naushad remained something of an obsession with CR. Yet the rude reality is that, for all the jubilees that he produced, C. Ramchandra (whether in his red Oldsmobile Tourer or in his Chevrolet Fleetmaster Woodie Convertible) merely came close to overtaking Naushad’s low-profile Fiat. CR never really went past Naushad. What CR therefore now failed fatally to see was the writing on the ‘mall’. Going by this marketplace writing, the sour grapevine in the film industry gleefully let it be known that the Lata–CR ardency of feeling was beginning to cool following Sharada (end-1957). As the distributor then handling Amar Deep for Sivaji Ganesan, Tarachand Barjatya, as an insider, knew another crucial fact.
This fact was that, after having recorded, for Amar Deep, two songs of high merit – Dil ki duniya basaa ke saanwariya and Mere man ka baanwra panchhi – Lata had finally moved away from C. Ramchandra. Thereby bringing a ten-year-old association (including seven years of euphonious togetherness) to an abrupt end. So much so that, as the after-effect of it all, CR had been impelled to record his remaining six female participative Amar Deep songs in the voice of Lata’s younger sister, Asha Bhosle, this after having cast those six tunes in the Lata mould. Compulsively thus had it been Asha in such meant-for-Lata Amar Deep compositions as Tum sune jaao hum kahe jaayen, Yeh ji chahta hai kisi din main teri nigahon ki saari udaasi churaa lu, Laagi apni najariyaa kataar ban ke (chorus-backed) and Kisi din zaraa dekh meraa bhi ho ke. Asha, if so-so in the first three numbers here, sang the last-named solo, Kisi din zaraa dekh meraa bhi ho ke, quite well. As well as she did Dekh humen awaaz na denaa (with Rafi) and Eis jahaan ka pyaar jhoota (with Rafi and Manna Dey).
Yet CR sans Lata was not quite the same box-office proposition for the film trade. As Naushad’s indomitable rival, CR (starting 1959) was actually being called upon to prove himself anew. To prove how impactive he could be with Asha for his neo choice of voice. Tarachand Barjatya, therefore, as the shrewdest of businessmen, had sought to fire the first shot – following the Lata–C. Ramchandra break-up starting in the first quarter of 1958 – by venturing to scale down CR to Rs 85,000 for Chhoti Bahen. CR had reacted sharply to the idea of any such cutback and had virtually written finis to his career by staying firm upon being paid his one lakh – Lata or no Lata. News of the Lata Mangeshkar–C. Ramchandra disconnect spread like a prairie fire inside the industry. Result – from being No. 2 only to Naushad till mid-1958, by the January of 1959, C. Ramchandra, benumbingly, had surrendered that enviable mantle to the innovative Shanker-Jaikishan team. Actually, minus Lata, CR had ceased to be a real force by the stage of that mid-1958 enforced crossover to Asha. So much so that, advancing like an avalanche, O. P. Nayyar – given the impetus of that priceless Filmfare award just announced as going to his Naya Daur – grabbed the No. 3 spot behind Naushad and SJ.
Some industry this! One moment C. Ramchandra is on top of the film world with Lata; in the next second he is a nonentity minus the Mangeshkar supernova. In fact, sans Lata, CR was left with only two 1959 ‘biggies’ to score – S. S. Vasan’s Paigham and V. Shantaram’s Navrang. Gemini’s November 1959 Paigham was to turn out to be a no-CR music show (with Asha a participant in six of its ten songs). But, before that, both Asha and CR had scored big time – by October 1959 – with Navrang. Asha here – as CR happily readjusted his tuning sights – was near omnipresent in eight of the twelve songs adorning Navrang, each one of them a hit. For all that, the fact of CR’s Navrang proving to be a ‘dragged’ silver jubilee success – with V. Shantaram’s muse Sandhya yet again dominant – came to be dismissed by the industry as an inhouse Marathian show of strength at best. That was by end-1959. Now the mid-1960 collapse of Shankar Mukerji’s prestigious Suchitra Sen–Dev Anand starrer Sarhad, with Asha featuring in each one of its seven flop songs, sounded the last post for C. Ramchandra, cancelling out his hallmark Navrang success achieved in the exclusive playback company of the Bhosle girl.
Yet, for all that display of Asha might, Lata, I say, was missed, not just by us, but by C. Ramchandra, too, in Navrang. Proof of this was CR pensively returning to a still non-reconciled Lata with Rajkamal’s 1961 Stree. This at the behest of ‘Dushyant’ V. Shantaram, with Shakuntala enacted by a Sandhya showing pockmarks! In fact, at this sensitive point in his career did I meet up with C. Ramchandra (during the November of 1961) in his neo-Sargam bungalow at the Santa Cruz crossing in West Bombay. A bungalow studiously built to match – in size and surrounds – that Ashiana landmark of Naushad. Asked CR now, looking a Shivaji Parked-out misfit in such a Santa Cruz monolith: ‘Didn’t I prove with the quality of my music for V. Shantaram’s Stree that I could compose as well as ever for Lata?’ He did prove that and he didn’t, sitting in his updated Sargam music room. The Stree score was fine but the volatile vocal vibes between Lata and CR were missing in something otherwise so striking as O nirdaii pritam. How the industry forgot all about a silver jubilee specialist called C. Ramchandra after Sarhad (mid-1960). CR now had to move outside the industry and go back to Lata (on her own terms) to recapture one moment of national glory with the Kavi Pradeep-anthemized Ae mere watan ke logo. But that was an event set to happen in faraway Delhi on 27 January 1963 (as a tuneful ‘morrow’ follow-up to India’s Republic Day). Such a Delhi breakthrough by CR really came about a day after the fair. It came about at a time when 27 January 1963, in the crassly commercial film industry of Bombay, was a rather advanced stage for C. Ramchandra, over 20 years into cinesangeet by then. It was, after all, a stage by which even Naushad was being publicly queried, on his numero uno status quo, by the perennial pair of Shanker-Jaikishan.
Indeed, as C. Ramchandra stood Lata-elbowed out of the Top Three race, O. P. Nayyar (with an ingenious sense of timing) picked up a self-damaging quarrel with Ameen Sayani and Radio Ceylon. This is what left the music arena free for Shanker-Jaikishan (at Rs 75,000) to proceed, sensationally, to narrow (by mid-1959) the rate gap between them and Naushad (Rs 110,000) to a mere Rs 35,000. How Naushad, biding his time, went on to neutralize SJ via Mere Mehboob and Rajendra Kumar, by October 1963, is another chapter altogether.
Meanwhile, let us go in sequence here. Following CR’s beginning to move down by early-1959, SJ clearly aimed to outstrip Naushad in per-film pricing. SJ had done very well to touch Rs 75,000 for Chhoti Bahen as early as March 1959. Indeed, Shanker had once slyly drawn my attention to how, right through the 1951–60 decade, Naushad’s rate had rested at Rs 110,000. For Jaikishan, as the team’s showboy, to add: ‘Raju Saab, just wait and watch how, in a year or so from now, SJ go sneaking past Naushad’s Rs 110,000!’
But Naushad still did rate Rs 110,000. Granting that the perky SJ, by this time, were – at Rs 75,000 per film – within striking distance of our maestro’s six-figure niche, what about the rest? Believe it or not, not one of our other top composers, each rarely gifted, then rated more than Rs 20,000 per film. For Rajshri Productions’ 1962 Aarti (featuring Pradeep Kumar, Meena Kumari and Ashok Kumar), Khayyam had stuck out for Rs 30,000. Only for Roshan to be called in as the one agreeable to scoring the Aarti theme for Rs 20,000. In fact, Dada Burman was happy as a lark with his Rs 20,000 picking – even if it was less than one-fifth of what Naushad got. Dada Burman was one man who did not grudge Naushad his Rs 110,000. Dada felt that he owed the catchy slant that he had developed in his music to Naushad. (‘Quality we all had, but how to blend quality with popularity, it was from Naushad that we learnt the art.’)
In this perspective, that emerging writer-director, Goldie Vijay Anand, narrated to me something that had transpired while he was at a music sitting in Sachin Dev Burman’s Sion home near Matunga (in North Bombay). A producer’s representative had called on S. D. Burman and, as scrupulously instructed, shouted out: ‘Dada, your instalment money’s here, just come and fetch it!’ Whereupon Dada (with wife Meera Burman in tow) had opened the front door that much and no more – to say in a whisper: ‘Quiet, quiet – come to the backdoor, silently hand over the money and just go!’ It was almost as if Rs 20,000 was too much cash for the genteel Burmans to handle. Surely, Sachin Dev Burman, Roshan and Madan Mohan, each, deserved much more than Rs 20,000 per film – through the 1951–60 golden decade – for the rare quality of melodies that they created during those salad years of music in Hindustani cinema?
But S. D. Burman, Roshan and Madan Mohan were not sure-fire jubilee swingers, so that they had to rest content with as little as Rs 20,000 each. With not a single distributor could you speak about S. D. Burman, Roshan and Madan Mohan in the same breath as about Naushad, CR and SJ. Why, Hemant Kumar of the aristocratic voice – until he lifted the 1955 Filmfare Best Music Director statuette for Filmistan’s Nagin – was known to be rating but Rs 10,000 per film. Rating merely Rs 10,000, yet feeling grateful to be garnering that much for such 1954 movies of his as Filmistan’s Samrat and Shart. Wonder of wonders, producers lined up to book Hemant Kumar as Filmistan’s Vyjayanthimala sizzler, Nagin, headed for a mid-1955 silver jubilee. They so lined up looking to how, value addingly, Hemant Kumar had spirited away the Filmfare black beauty from under the ‘uppity’ nose of the indefatigable Naushad (finishing second that year with Uran Khatola, yet being ahead of C. Ramchandra, this time beating Azaad to it).
Could you believe that Hemant Kumar – in an odd bid to shorten the queue waiting for him to sign on the slotted line – ‘hopefully’ doubled his price to Rs 20,000? Still producers stayed on to sign him. I stress upon this aspect just to draw timely attention to how it was all about a music director giving, not quality music, but jubilee quality music. Not for nothing did Naushad rate Rs 110,000 per film. A silver jubilee was but the first milestone passed in Naushad’s career. His film ran on, after those 25 weeks, for at least 10 weeks more – on the sheer repeat value of his songs. So much so that Lata’s Mohabbat hamaree zamaana hamaraa/Tuu gaaye jaa ae dil taraana hamaraa, by November 1949, was almost Naushad’s theme song to get the audience to come and glimpse Dulari Madhubala time and time again.
Nobody ever doubted Naushad’s musical lordship by the end of 1941–50, his decade in films. But now the decade to follow (1951–60) was drawing to a tantalizing close. What precisely was Naushad’s position here? Why, for instance, had Naushad stayed put, almost throughout the 1951–60 decade, on his ‘prestige’ price of Rs 110,000? Why had he not made a strong bid to get his fee enhanced during what was the determinant decade for Hindustani film music? Why, why? The answer here, very simply, is that Naushad, inexorably, moved into a situation in which he just could not think of jacking up his price any further. Remember, payments to music directors in the industry continued to be pretty modest in those times (1951–55) when a producer and his money were not easily parted. Naushad had been the glorious exception here. On the jubilee voltage gained by his extraordinary box-office feats from Rattan (July 1944) down to Dastan (October 1950), he had managed to get his fee hiked to a fantabulous Rs 110,000 as early as when he took up Deedar (finally releasing in April 1951). In the setting created by that six-figure cut-through by Naushad, C. Ramchandra alone had rated Rs 50,000 at that point – as the new decade of 1951–60 got under way.
Believe it or not, Shanker-Jaikishan you could get, even after Raj Kapoor’s Awaara (December 1951), for Rs 20,000. What rankled in the case of the others was that they ranked even lower – Rs 10,000 max. It was an era in which you inched forward thousand by thousand. This should be manifest from the fact that not until Azaad (March 1955) did we get that one lakh rupees’ Southern confirmation about C. Ramchandra having, at long last, ‘done a Naushad’. That flamboyant composer had cornered Rs 100,000 for a quick-fire, 23-day, nine-song effort in the Bombay-‘invading’ producer-director S. M. Sriramulu Naidu’s Azaad. A full lakh to this devil-may-care music director for knocking off the film’s nine songs in 23 days, where Naushad would not agree to promising even a single tune in the 30-day frame ‘insultingly’ laid down by Sriramulu Naidu. ‘This is no wayside grocery store, it’s just not the way I work!’ was how Naushad had brusquely brushed off S. M. S. Naidu.
Against such a backdrop, upon C. Ramchandra’s one-lakh demand coming to be obliquely questioned, that belligerent composer had told S. M. S. Naidu: ‘You’ve been to our No. 1 music director and seen how fast he works! Pay me my one lakh and your job’s done inside the mere four weeks that you’re giving me.’ Thus Rs 100,000 it was to C. Ramchandra for the Coimbatore-based Pakshiraja Studios’ Hindi Azaad – a remake of that August 1954 all-time Tamil hit titled Malaikkalan (P. Bhanumathi opposite M. G. Ramachandran). A Tamil blockbuster, remember, with its screenplay and dialogue written by none other than M. Karunanidhi. Sriramulu Naidu’s Malaikallan was later shot in Telugu (as Aggi Ramudu); in Kannada (as Bettadha Kalla); in Malayalam (as Taskara Veeran); and even in Sinhala (as Soorasena). Pakshiraja Studios’ Azaad from the South thus proved the scale of money-spinner that brought C. Ramchandra catapulting on to all but rate on a price par with Naushad. Aazad, in the process, fulfilled for C Ramchandra his career-long ambition of touching the Naushadian one-lakh mark.
Indeed, once CR’s Azaad materialized in the March of 1955, Naushad’s films (for whatever reason) suddenly began to get spaced out. To wit, Uran Khatola (arriving only by the middle of May 1955); Mother India (by the end of October 1957); and Sohni Mahiwal (by the start of November 1958). I recall Naushad – unusually for one of his stature – turning up for the press show of Nimmi–Bharat Bhooshan’s Sohni Mahiwal. That was during the Wednesday evening of 26 October 1958 at the Embassy Minuet (opposite the Liberty Cinema) in South Bombay. Greeting him, I urged Naushad to park himself next to me (in a corner seat) during the press show. Naushad accepted the invite with alacrity. After that, right through the Sohni Mahiwal press show, I got to sense Naushad’s gnawing anxiety about that end-1958 film’s future. The fine line between success and failure: how much slimmer than anywhere else is it in glam-sham showbiz? To think that Sohni Mahiwal, now, represented Naushad’s last-ditch hope of scoring with Bharat Bhooshan anew.
Following the mega-success of Baiju Bawra (October 1952), neither Mohamed Sadiq’s May 1954 Shabab (a very costly venture) nor Mehboob’s October 1954 Amar had done extraordinary business by Naushad standards. Such a dual experience – though not in the same year – Naushad had gone through only once before, as Elan (1947) and Chandni Raat (1949) had not sent the cash registers jingling. In mid-1955, Sumi Ullah Sunny’s Uran Khatola had proved a jubilee hit but it had cost a small fortune to make as it came to be long drawn out in production. Yet Naushad’s music here, as confirmed by HMV, had sold outstandingly as ever, whether we talked of Shabab or Amar or Uran Khatola.
But Naushad was there to make the film run with his music and that had not happened – at least not to the extent expected – with either Shabab or Amar. After that, Uran Khatola, if arriving glitteringly at Bombay’s Regal Cinema (alongside Imperial) on the 20th of May 1955, had its cost to recover first. The profit that Uran Khatola showed after that was sizeable but the money had taken its own time to flow into the kitty. As for Mother India (releasing end-October 1957, prestigiously, at Bombay’s Liberty Cinema), it had been, quintessentially, Mehboob Khan’s show with Naushad just called upon to attune to that cine visionary’s kaleidoscopic imagery of Gandhian India. Upshot – by accident or design, everything now for Naushad (by the November of 1958) hinged upon Chowdhry Art’s Raja Nawathe-directed Sohni Mahiwal. Viewing the film – sitting all but silent by my side – Naushad should have sensed that Nimmi clearly lacked the first bloom of youth to look Sohni; that Bharat Bhooshan, too, was far too gone in years to pass off as the teenage Mahiwal. That effectively destroyed the legendary lovers’ cinematic illusion sought to be created by the tone of Naushad’s music here. Our maestro’s tuning and his orchestration were, nevertheless, ear-arresting as ever in Sohni Mahiwal.
Based upon that tragic love story extolled in Indian folklore, Sohni Mahiwal had Lata’s Tumhaare sang main bhi chalungi carrying Naushad’s Raag Bhairavi chhaap (imprint). The shading of Rafi’s Aaj galiyon mein teri aaya hai diwaana teraa and Teri mehfil teraa jalwaa teri soorat dekh li marked out these numbers as tunes with which Mr Everyman empathized. Rafi’s Duniya hai isi ka naam kahein shaadi kahein barbaadi was on a par, in its vocalizing depth, with Lata’s Ae mere maalik mere parwardigar. Plus Lata–Rafi’s runaway hit in hoi-polloi Bhairavi, Aane waale ko aana hogaa, had about it a ring at once limpid and lucid. But, as a twosome, Nimmi-Bharat Bhooshan looked a far cry from Sohni Mahiwal as they were to be symbolized – some 27 years later – by the genuinely youthful team of Poonam Dhillon and Sunny Deol. Even given such a winsome pairing, that 14 July 1985-releasing Sohni Mahiwal had failed to jell, so that the theme itself looked jinxed on the silver screen – at least after 1950.
The Nimmi–Bharat Bhooshan Sohni Mahiwal, in fact, came as an end-1958 career blow to Naushad. The movie’s unwinding was such that it witnessed Naushad’s exemplarily thematic music to be totally wasted upon a hero–heroine pairing looking a woeful mismatch. If you feel that such musical commendation of Naushad is misplaced here, I suggest that you revisit your collection of Sohni Mahiwal’s music (ECLP 5954) and serenely re-hear each song in the film. I assure you that you would be astounded by the folksy authenticity that Naushad attains here. It was thus the film that failed the music; the music in no way let down the film. The movie’s climax had Mahendra Kapoor making his robust playback debut with Chaand chhupaa aur taare doobe. This stripling – replacing Mohammed Rafi, here, as a surprising Naushad afterthought – took a well-schooled start. That vigilant Radio Ceylon announcer, Gopal Sharma, did Mahendra Kapoor proud by seeing to it that the song rose above the film.
Rewinding through that 1951–60 decade of rather mixed fortunes at the box office for Naushad, the fact of Sohni Mahiwal coming unstuck had the effect of leaving him languishing. Languishing in a position of having to hold on to his set one lakh-plus price. Sohni Mahiwal’s fate as a film found our ace in no position to pitch for a raise even as late as end-1958. Naushad, at this delicate stage in his 18-year journey through the industry, had no way of knowing the 1960 course that such cult Dilip Kumar starrers of his as Mughal-e-Azam and Kohinoor would take. Our maestro, in truth, had staked his all when – incredibly self-defeatingly – he began averaging but one film a year. That was a career decision made during a period of Naushad boom. As the boomerang did Sohni Mahiwal come, signalling a grim 1958 year-end for our maestro. A cataclysm finding Naushad, yet again, pushed into Dilip Kumar custody to salvage something from the wreckage.
It could have been no feeling of joy for Naushad to reflect upon so being drawn, all over again, into the Dilip Kumar vortex. It entailed our ace’s helplessly waiting for Mughal-e-Azam and Kohinoor to fortify his standing by the fag end of the 1951–60 decade. His Dilip Kumar hook-up – a hook-up to be reasserted with Gunga Jumna (November 1961) – is what visibly reduced Naushad’s bargaining power in the industry. This came about at a time when it was down to holding at bay those opportunity-sniffing ‘greyhounds’, Shanker-Jaikishan, in the new decade. Happily, as this defining decade of 1961–70 dawned for Naushad, he displayed imagination in moving into the cozy Mere Mehboob company of that ‘family well-wisher’ Rajendra Kumar – the one superstar whose shadow never grew less through the crucial years to follow. As Naushad so turned to Rajendra Kumar for respite, Mohammed Rafi was already a fixture upon that super hero. In the neo decade, Rafi alone was to remain constant in Naushad’s musical template. For the resonant reason that, through 30 years and more, never anything less than virtuosic had been Rafi in the charismatic care of Naushad (until that singing great so suddenly passed away on 31 July 1980). Rafi’s versatile vocalizing for our maestro embodied variations at once multiple and subtle. No matter how a Naushad film came to fare at the turnstiles, his Rafi songs in it were unerring hits, Sohni Mahiwal being the latest to underscore the point.
If Rafi’s voice was everything for Naushad, no less focal was this singer’s singer to the breakaway music made by the new whizkid on the block, O. P. Nayyar. As one making waves in the Binaca Hit Parade, rebel composer Nayyar – like C. Ramchandra before him – revelled in running down Naushad, admittedly still only in private conversation. Nayyar would derisively wonder where Naushad would have been sans Lata Mangeshkar (167 songs) and Mohammed Rafi (149 songs). By the same token – forgetting Rafi’s 197 songs for Nayyar – may we ask: Minus those 324 renditions by Asha Bhosle through 20 years, where would have been OP? That Asha, by comparison, sang just 39 songs for our Movie Midas is a measure of the divergent vocal approaches of Naushad and Nayyar. Besides, Naushad never shunned Shamshad Begum – as Nayyar was at pains to claim – he only progressively marginalized her. Set that against Nayyar dubiously dumping, by the end of 1958, Geeta Dutt and Shamshad Begum alike in favour of Asha Bhosle at a time when the two singers were still competition to Lata Mangeshkar. Given such partisan personal loyalty, it hardly lay in O. P. Nayyar’s shallow self-serving domain to question the professional integrity of a composing colossus like Naushad.
For all that, in the persona of O. P. Nayyar as an obstreperous Naushad baiter, we have the third of our music directors then (leading up to 1959) insisting upon royalty. (Naushad and SJ were the other two – with CR, by the end of 1959, out of the hunt.) Indeed, for all his claim to instant fame, Omkar Prasad Nayyar, initially, was sedulously denied royalty by film makers like Guru Dutt (Aar Paar, 1954; Mr & Mrs 55; and C.I.D., 1956). By S. Mukerji (Hum Sab Chor Hain, 1956; Tumsa Nahin Dekha, 1957; and Bade Sarkar, 1957). By B. R. Chopra (Naya Daur, 1957). By F. C. Mehra (Qaidi, 1957, and Mujrim, 1958). By Shakti Samanta (Howrah Bridge, 1958). By Ashok Kumar (Raagini, 1958, and Kalpana, 1960). No less by Bibhuti Mitra (Phagun, 1958, and Basant, 1960). Whereupon OP had devised the ingenious stratagem of working in any number of B-grade films (like Shrimati 420, 1956, and Johnny Walker, 1957) and getting their small-time producers to sign off their entire 10 per cent royalty to him. OP showed me six such letters assigning all 10 per cent royalty to him.
But such a short-term move only kept OP, initially, well behind Naushad, CR and SJ. It was only in the new decade of 1961–70 that OP, more far-seeing by then, revised his strategy. He did that as, in big-time colour films, his calibre of scoring, too, became such that he near automatically qualified for 5 per cent royalty – like Naushad and SJ. Before that, through the 1955–60 span, while OP and SJ fought piteously petty Radio Ceylon–Binaca Geetmala battles, Naushad remained a name rating above them all. It was left to Meena Mangeshkar, boldly sailing against the Lata mast – even while residing with her elder sister in Prabhu Kunj on Bombay’s Peddar Road – to hit the bull’s eye here. Full marks are due to this Mangeshkar singer-sister, as the one immediately next to Lata, for daring to draw such pinpointed attention to something so cardinal. Meena Mangeshkar candidly observed that such was the intensity of the O. P. Nayyar wave, through 1955–60, that Naushad alone, given his unique status, remained untouched by it. She added that OP’s razzle-dazzle success ‘confused every other music director about what to give’ – but not Naushad. Yes, Naushad still retained the vital thing called ‘style’ that set his music apart from the rest, as Mughal-e-Azam and Kohinoor were to underline in the August–November 1960 cycle. Thus from the 1951–60 decade brink did Naushad – look at it how you will – pull himself back. Pull himself back even while raising that teasing query all over again: Did Naushad still need a Dilip Kumar starrer to redeem himself?
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1 From S. U. Sunny’s Kohinoor (1960). Music by Naushad. Song-lyric by Shakeel Badayuni. Rendered by Mohammed Rafi.
2 Sivaji Ganesan (1 October 1928 to 21 July 2001) was a South Indian thespian who portrayed an amazingly wide variety of roles.
3 The Raakhi is a thread that a sister ties on her brother’s wrist during the festival of Raksha Bandhan. The Raakhi is symbolic of the sister’s affection for her brother and the brother’s pledge to protect her. Thus did Lata Mangeshkar become the Raakhi sister of Madan Mohan and Dilip Kumar.