Yeh pyaar ke naghme yeh mohabbat ke taraane
Tujh ko bade armaan se aaya hoon sunaane
Ummeed mere dil ki kahein toot na jaaye
Ae husn zaraa jaag tujhe ishq jagaaye …1
ON THE PIANO, DILIP (ANDAZ) KUMAR WAS CLEARLY A TEENAGE CINEMATIC fixation that our Jubilee King, Rajendra Kumar, wanted to re-live on the screen. This not so magnificent obsession that 1960s’ super hero never quite overcame. He wanted Naushad to re-create Rajendra Kumar on the piano à la Dilip Kumar. Complete with Mukesh for his ghost voice. This neo megastar’s Ashirwaad home was a precious stone’s throw from Naushad’s Ashiana abode. Rajendra Kumar just hopped over – I saw him plonked in Naushad’s drawing-room sofa three times starting September 1965. He was beyond dispute our number one star by then with Mohammed Rafi for his accepted choice of voice. Yet he wanted a change of vocal pace. If it was an ego trip on his part, he was, as the superstar supreme, in a position to undertake such a trip. To prove a point to those still tending to be dismissive of Jubilee Kumar as a Dilip Kumar replica at best.
Following the multiple jubilee success, in a row, of three Dilip Kumar starrers of his in Mughal-e-Azam (August 1960), Kohinoor (November 1960) and Gunga Jumna (November 1961), Naushad rose to what, even for him, was a box-office summit not scaled before. So much so that Son of India (November 1962) came to be treated as a freak squeak. After all, it was but a grandiosely failed attempt by Mehboob to hoist his very own Kumkum into star orbit. Naushad’s tunes in the film were such a Radio Ceylon draw that Master Sajid’s signal failure as Son of India was not held against our Sangeet Samrat. Such a riot-of-colour misadventure, coming as a near overkill follow-up to Mother India, was dismissed by the trade as a Mehboob aberration by way of his final film fling. Thus, Son of India came as the opportune interregnum during which our maestro could choose to opt for a long overdue change of hero.
Naushad, in point of fact, was on velvet, following the arrival of Mere Mehboob in the October of 1963. For our maestro, here, could demonstrate, through the magic of the music that he made upon new super hero Rajendra Kumar (pairing with Sadhana), that he could break the Dilip Kumar syndrome – after three consecutive jubilee hits with that thespian – and yet score big time. Mere Mehboob had also, significantly, witnessed Naushad raising his fee to a notch above Shanker-Jaikishan, the reigning pair in the Bombay film world by then. This is what now prompted me to bring up the SJ matter with Naushad. ‘SJ,’ I pointed out – ‘Shanker even more than Jaikishan – say that they overtook everyone else long ago. You, Naushad Saab, were the first, they say, to feel the pinch of their phenomenal advance.’
‘In which way?’ Naushad sought to know. ‘So many came before them, so many have come after them. To talk of any composer as being a challenge to me is to limit the scope of music itself. Here each one of us has a conspicuous following. That is the beauty of film music. It places so many of us in the kind of competition that only extracts the very best out of each one of us. Music is not about position, it is about passion. You need a certain passion to make music in a field so diversely spread out as films. Success automatically follows if you bring a certain dedication, a certain commitment, to the music that you make. You once asked me about whether I felt the competitive heat less when so many top music directors went away to Pakistan. You even sought to know if I would have made the name that I did if those highly talented music directors had stayed on in India instead of going away to Pakistan.
‘What you forget,’ went on Naushad, ‘is that those very music directors, who now moved away to Pakistan, were composing at their finest while I advanced quietly, side by side, in undivided India. Indeed I began to touch a peak of sorts by 1946-47. That I so advanced while they were still in India is something that speaks for itself. Some said that I had all the luck in the world. Okay, if you see it that way, I had luck. But Lady Luck is a fickle accompanist in the rough-and-tumble of the film world. Only if you have the musical knowhow, only if you’re able to transcreate that knowhow into a popular art, does Lady Luck deign to take a second look at you. In this industry, you certainly need luck. But here you also make your own luck. My approach was straightforward. I never ever saw any composer as a threat to me – simply because I never looked upon myself as competition to anyone else. Here in films, where you’re only in limited creative control, you just do your best. Knowing that there’s a public to pass judgment on whether you have indeed done your best.
‘It’s a unique job, making music in Hindustani cinema,’ reflected Naushad. ‘Here, if you have – by, say, the middle of October 1961 – produced a golden jubilee turning into a diamond jubilee via Mughal-e-Azam, in your very next film, you’re on trial again – you start from zero! There are no marks given, there is no degree handed out, for high success. Creating a jubilee is no qualification. Expectation of even more from you is all that a jubilee signals. After 22 silver jubilees, six golden jubilees and three diamond jubilees, I’m going to be asked to assert my worth all over again with Leader as we move into 1964. If I succeed, they’re sure to attribute my scoring in Leader to Dilip Kumar’s star presence. Even now, when I’ve proved myself by doing it on Rajendra Kumar with Mere Mehboob, they’re saying that it was something only to be expected, given the Midas touch that that superstar had been bringing to any film that he did by end-1963!’
That very Rajendra Kumar (during the November of 1965) strode into Naushad’s Ashiana abode to raise an amazing point – about his wanting to be Dilip Kumar on the piano in his own Andaz. In his own Andaz, that is, as distinct from Mehboob’s (March 1949) Andaz.
‘Naushad Saab,’ said Rajendra Kumar, ‘what you gave me in Mere Mehboob – with Sadhana looking a vision via Ae husn zaraa jaag tujhe ishq jagaaye – is but a foretaste of how much I could accomplish on your piano! Rafi Saab sang Ae husn zaraa divinely. But he’s my settled voice. What I now want is a change of voice with an imagery in mind. I want you, Naushad Saab, to settle the voice of Mukesh upon my screen persona the exact way in which you fixed it upon Dilip Kumar in Andaz. I want four tune gems couched in Dilip Kumar’s Andaz-piano idiom.
‘See that music room of yours to the left of where I’m seated, Naushad Saab. Just go in there and set your mesmeric fingers to the piano inside. Come out only when you think that you have ready, for me, those four Mukesh-modulated tunes. Mukesh tunes to be lyricized, remember, by only Majrooh Sultanpuri – as in Andaz [1949]. Once you have four such Mukesh–Majrooh nuggets ready for me, let’s proceed to record them. I want Majrooh Saab to write and you to tune those four solos for Mukesh, here and now, picturing the [1949] Andaz photoplay as your guideline. Having done that, let’s look for the story-screenplay writer who would be able to transliterate the effect created by the Andaz trio of Dilip Kumar, Nargis and Raj Kapoor. Once such a storyline is to hand, once we sit down to picking the star twosome to go with my neo-Andaz personality, your role, Naushad Saab, shifts to creating matching Lata tunes for the leading lady in the film. The rest, leave it to my drawing power as a star.’
His drawing power as a star was no idle boast. If he had then wanted a film done in a particular way, Rajendra Kumar got it done, that’s all. There was no way Naushad could have said no to him, representing as that megastar did this composer’s fresh 1960s’ stake in cinema. In such a setting, once Rajendra Kumar had left, Naushad promptly asked my movie journalist wife Girija (Rajendran) and me to join him inside the music room. That piano, when the two of us last heard him playing it, had seen Naushad giving us a renewed taste of the ‘quintessential quartet’ from Andaz – by re-creating for us a snatch, each, from Hum aaj kahein dil kho baithe in Raag Jaijaiwanti, Tu kahe agar jeevan bhar in Raag Kirvani, Toote na dil toote na in Raag Bhairavi plus Jhoom jhoom ke naacho aaj in Raag Shivranjani. Majrooh Sultanpuri, ever so feelingly, had written those evergreens going so arrestingly upon a Dilip Kumar wooing Nargis as he had never wooed her before – Raj Kapoor or no Raj Kapoor. Rajendra Kumar now wanted that noted poet back in harness with Naushad and Mukesh to rework the Andaz movie miracle.
Naushad proceeded to explain to us about how, even in the face of the cult status that Rajendra Kumar by then commanded as a hero, Andaz and Dilip Kumar remained a screen fantasy with that performer. ‘What he wants could be attempted, certainly, but who’s to create a Mehboob-visualized script in which those four songs would just float along the storyline?’ wondered Naushad, adding: ‘Remember, such an Andaz script happens, it doesn’t get written. It certainly doesn’t get re-written. Even assuming that I break with Shakeel and Rafi alike – and I see no valid reason for doing that – how do I reproduce the piano persona of Dilip Kumar vis-à-vis Nargis? In vain have I tried sketching out for Rajendra Kumar that an Andaz comes only in its time. But he is adamant that I conjure four Andaz style solos and get them recorded, on the dot, in the vocals of Mukesh.’
‘First and foremost, Naushad Saab,’ I interjected, ‘do you genuinely feel that you could re-evoke four such Andaz heart-touchers as Hum aaj kahein, Tu kahe agar, Toote na dil toote na and Jhoom jhoom ke naacho aaj? You would be touchingly getting back to that piquant piano, I agree. But even as you do so, you would be called upon to think Mukesh, you would be required to tune Majrooh. Do you really feel that you could do that a full 16 years after it all came to pass in Mehboob’s Andaz?’
‘You have a point there,’ responded Naushad. ‘I’ve got so used to Shakeel coming for a song sitting, to Rafi following him – when we’re ready with the melody for that singer – that I would be needing to revolutionize my thinking to accommodate Mukesh and Majrooh together in 1965-66. Never forget that Mukesh – by the [end-March] 1949 stage when Andaz came to be released – had drawn away from me. Mukesh, therefore, would be needing now – unlike in the case of Rafi – to be engaging in no end of rehearsing to be able to get his fresh Andaz act together. What is more, I would be called upon to place myself back in time – so to speak – to return to the 1947–48 season of youth as the backdrop against which I created the music of Andaz. I had no inhibitions then about working with Mukesh. I was still fresh in films, my idea windows were open, so that I was much more amenable to change. But the years have brought with them a powerhouse of knowledge from which I just can’t help drawing at a level more mature, more informed. Gone is that devil-take-the-hindmost attitude by which I so resiliently adjusted to the purely straight-line vocals of Mukesh.’
Did those Naushad misgivings explain why the Andaz idea did not take more concrete outline by 1966, when Rajendra Kumar was still at the zenith of his career? Maybe Naushad took a lot of convincing, as far as Mukesh vocally went, even by Rajendra Kumar. By the time Naushad and Rajendra Kumar decided to test out Mukesh upon our superstar hero in Sridhar’s Saathi (arriving in November 1968), the all-India box-office picture had visibly changed. Rajendra Kumar’s hectic romantic pursuit of the glam Saira Banu had yielded two personality diminishing ‘nosedivers’ in Mohan Kumar’s Aman (1967) and Lekh Tandon’s Jhuk Gaya Asmaan (early 1968). Nor did Saathi fare as well as expected, as it released by the end of 1968. Maybe Saathi in no way set back a Rajendra Kumar still on a roll. But it was a big-big blow to Naushad, arriving as it did after those two long awaited Dilip Kumar starrers of his, A. Bhimsingh’s Aadmi (January 1968) and H. S. Rawail’s Sunghursh (October 1968), had sunk at the box office. Naushad’s approach to Mukesh on Saathi (1968) – as compared to Andaz (1948) – was, sad to say, not exactly gushing (as we shall see in a subsequent chapter). Now, in 1968, the pleasing Raag Pilu lilt that our maestro achieved in that Suman Kalyanpur–Mukesh Saathi duet, Meraa pyaar bhi tuu hai – such spontaneity was fatally missing from mood singer Mukesh’s key Raag Bhairavi solo, Husn-e-jaanan idhar aa, on Rajendra Kumar (vis-à-vis Vyjayanthimala) in Saathi. A Saathi unspooling as Naushad’s make-or-break film – by November 1968.
Why did such spontaneity go missing? Because Naushad had always had this play-safe cinematic approach of waiting upon screen events before cashing in upon them. Thus SJ’s sharp mid-1960s rivals, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, had to prove that Mukesh was still a playback force by himself – via Nutan–Sunil Dutt’s Adurthi Subba Rao-directed Milan (1967) – for Naushad to presume to make his career redefining Saathi move. By then (May 1967) his own Palki had stumbled as a show reviving a totally outdated 1946 story idea of Naushad. Starring Rajendra Kumar and Waheeda Rehman, Palki had so collapsed at the turnstiles as for a clutch of pro-SJ, anti-Naushad Hindi film reviewers to hit out, ignorantly, at his totally classically oriented music score in that ill-starred movie. Thus did the Rajendra Kumar screen scenario come to read somewhat differently by the time Naushad began recording Mukesh for Saathi.
For all that, the idea of a creative Andaz remake – with Rajendra Kumar modelled on Dilip Kumar – is interesting to envision even at this distance in time. The temptation is straight away to pronounce that Rajendra Kumar would have been an unmitigated disaster in the Dilip Kumar role alongside Naushad. But, in drawing such a pat conclusion today, we tend to overlook Rajendra Kumar’s unique status in the dream world of Hindustani cinema by the mid-1960s. He could have pulled off anything then, just anything, such was his screen presence. What is the silver screen but an optical illusion? An optical illusion tunefully re-created it could have been with Rajendra Kumar mooning on the Dilip Kumar piano as Naushad attuned to Mukesh afresh. To get a better feel of the idea, we need to look at the Dilip Kumar picture – as at the Rajendra Kumar picture – as it prevailed in the operative periods of time.
We have by now heard first Rajendra Kumar, then Naushad, on Mehboob’s Andaz. We have heard the name of Mukesh, even Majrooh, mentioned as integral to working the theme anew. But what about the crucial man in the triangular drama – Dilip Kumar himself? His viewpoint, as he came to do Andaz in 1947-48, is it not all-important? In the grand sum, the Andaz phenomenon, as enacted by Dilip Kumar, Nargis and Raj Kapoor via Naushad, Majrooh and Mukesh, surely it calls for a closer examination? Ironically, it was that Andaz vocal hero Mukesh’s demise, on 27 August 1976 in faraway Detroit, that opened up the vista for such a critical scrutiny by me. Emotionally overcome by such an idolized singer’s passing when on a concert tour of the USA with Lata Mangeshkar, my job it was to produce an offbeat obituary overnight. How to get away from the conventional approach in a milieu where everyone was making a beeline for Raj Kapoor to get that hero’s viewpoint on the singer he had identified as his ‘soul’? I recalled in a flash that it was not so much upon Raj Kapoor as upon Dilip Kumar that Mukesh had made his first impact – and that too via Naushad. Taking a chance, I rang up Dilip Kumar and, glory be, got him on the line in one shot. Like any other sentimental Indian, I opened with the gambit of what a great pity it was that Mukesh should have opted to go abroad at a time when he well knew that he had a heart condition. ‘Why do you say that?’ came back Dilip Kumar in measured Toote na dil toote na tones. ‘You have to travel and grow, the world beckons to you. Death could come any time, anywhere. The important thing in life is to keep moving, keep growing.’
The growth of Mukesh as the ‘Naushaded’ voice of Dilip Kumar, as the Shanker-Jaikishanized vocal shadow of Raj Kapoor, is by now an envisioning part of our screen phantasmagoria. True Mukesh, ultimately, emerged as the RK voice of SJ. But he could as well have remained the Naushadian voice of Dilip Kumar. Never forget that, in Mehboob’s Andaz (March 1949), Raj Kapoor had to vie for high histrionic honours with Dilip Kumar. Vie while having, in that trend-changing movie, just one insignificant duet going upon him in the voice of Mohammed Rafi under the baton of Naushad – Yoon to aapas mein bigadte hain khafaa hote hain. (The other Rafi–Lata duet composed to go upon Raj and Nargis, as Dil hai teraa diwaana ho/Apnaa humen banaa ke bhool na jaana, was ruthlessly expunged from Andaz by Naushad as not jelling with the scene!) Set that against those four Mukesh piano perennials upon Dilip Kumar in Andaz and you sense how the Naushad song-odds were stacked against Raj Kapoor here. It was in this light that I asked Dilip Kumar that 27 August 1976 morning: ‘How exactly do you feel, Yusuf Saab, about your magnetic Andaz voice being no more?’
‘Now that you pose the question,’ came back Dilip Kumar, ‘I have to be honest with myself, with you, even in this moment of Mukesh’s going. I felt that those four Mukesh rendered tunes on me at the piano were too simplistic. I didn’t care for them at all and I told Naushad as much. But Naushad, as my senior, blithely overruled me to say: “Just you wait and watch how it gets across on the screen.”’
How spell castingly those four piano tunes came across on Dilip Kumar is now a matter of silver screen history. A full 64 years after they unfolded upon Dilip Kumar, those Naushad tunes sound as fresh as they did when they first fell upon our ears. It was, in fact, Naushad’s music, the way it was used by Mehboob in Andaz, that put the imprimatur upon Dilip Kumar as the tragedian supreme. As Dilip Kumar now relevantly asked me: ‘Could you imagine what a traumatizing experience it must have been for me to be branded as a tragedian at the age of 26?’
Always remember that, via Naushad, it was in the dreamy voice of Mukesh – not Talat Mahmood – that Dilip Kumar first came to be stamped as a tragedian. The process had begun a year before Andaz under who but Naushad, given his personality swinging baton. It had begun with Mukesh singing for the same Dilip Kumar opposite the same Nargis – but with no Raj Kapoor around! The film – J. B. H. Wadia’s S. U. Sunny-directed Mela, coming in the same year, 1948, as Raj Kapoor’s maiden effort as a producer-director: Aag. During 1948, Aag was the film – as Raj Kapoor was to pinpoint later – with which he came to pitch upon Mukesh as his very own voice via Zindaa hoon eis tarah ke gham-e-zindagi nahein (as tuned by ace sitarist Ram Ganguly and as written by Behzad Lucknowi). If Zinda hoon eis tarah ke gham-e-zindagi nahein is in Raag Bhairavi, it explains how Raj Kapoor was to tell me later: ‘Raju, you just referred to Lata’s Barsaat mein as SJ Bhairavi. Never ever forget that there’s no such thing as an SJ Bhairavi – there’s only an RK Bhairavi. An RK Bhairavi devised by me as a screen rejoinder to the Naushad Bhairavi, starting with Barsaat mein hum se milen tum sajan.’ (Jaikishan-tuned, Shailendra-written, in RK’s Barsaat, 1949.)
Before Barsaat, if you recall, the vocal impact that Mukesh made upon Dilip Kumar in Mela was far greater than that single-song Aag-Mukesh mileage that Raj Kapoor drew from Zinda hoon eis tarah ke gham-e-zindagi nahein. Thus Mela became the 1948 Shakeel–Naushad golden jubilee show to cast Dilip Kumar in the mould of a tragedian – as he played Mohan opposite Nargis enacting Radha. Who if not Mukesh it was working the vocal oracle upon Dilip Kumar (in Mela) with such abiding Shakeel–Naushad rhapsodies as Gaaye jaa geet milan ke, Main bhanwra tuu hai phool, Meraa dil tod ne waale, Aayi saawan rutu aayi plus that romantic call turned into an N15920 78-rpm record as a brilliant afterthought – Dharti ko aakash pukaare. That makes it one Mukesh solo and no fewer than four Mukesh duets with Shamshad Begum (of the hypnotic voice). Four Mela duets by the Mukesh–Shamshad twosome that remain Naushad etched in our vocal psyche to this day.
Also, it was from Mela (releasing 8 October 1948) that Dilip Kumar (along with Nargis, Naushad and Mukesh) was to move to Andaz (releasing 31 March 1949). Only to catch a performing tartar in the scene-stealing Raj Kapoor. Many viewers to this day aver that, even minus the aid of a single solo number getting to be viewed as picturized upon him (courtesy, Naushad), Raj Kapoor was Dilip Kumar’s acting peer in every respect in Andaz. Could the fact that Mukesh’s vocals (as sculpted by Naushad), vocals that gave the screen persona of our captive idol a certain permanence as a tragedian, have prompted Dilip Kumar – in less than 25 weeks following the Mela–Andaz phenomenon – to opt for a change of voice? A change of voice making for a switch away from Mukesh? Yet how was it any sort of a switch away when it came to be Talat Mahmood who took over from Mukesh as the Naushad voice of Dilip Kumar in Babul (releasing 6 October 1950)? What was Talat Mahmood in Babul if not a voice in which Dilip Kumar would sigh rather than smile?
Truth to tell, Dilip Kumar – progressively while working with Naushad – gave up on first Mukesh and then Talat Mahmood purely because those two chose to become singing stars. Such a personalized (‘no more playback singing’) decision on the part of those two specialist ghost voices meant that recording studio singing was no longer going to be the all-time occupation of either Mukesh or Talat Mahmood. This was something that neither Naushad nor Dilip Kumar was going to countenance. Professionally, they expected Mukesh and Talat Mahmood alike to concentrate, all the way, upon singing as their métier. The way Dilip Kumar, for his part, concentrated upon acting alone, Naushad upon composing alone.
Was it not appropriate, in those circumstances, for Naushad Ali and Dilip Kumar to have been awarded together in the year 1953? In the year in which Dilip Kumar won that inaugural Filmfare Best Actor Award – for Amiya Chakraborty’s Daag (releasing in the July of 1952) – did Naushad clinch this novel statuette for Vijay Bhatt’s Baiju Bawra (releasing in the October of 1952). Naushad now, inside Bombay’s Regal Cinema, took a long lingering look at that Filmfare statuette as his name was announced, to resounding applause, as the Best Music Director Award winner. It was a black beauty with which Dilip Kumar was to fall so caressingly in love that he would not surrender his Best Actor hold upon her through three years (Azaad, 1955, Devdas, 1956, and Naya Daur, 1957). ‘Worth nothing without Dilip Kumar!’, incidentally, had been the contemptuously dismissive verdict on Naushad by his envious rivals come 1953. So that Baiju Bawra was all about Naushad latching on to a new hero in Bharat Bhooshan. This, remember, was something that came about following the advent of Mela, Andaz, Babul, Deedar and Aan (all five Naushad-scored films starring Dilip Kumar) in the period extending from October 1948 to August 1952. The picture was no different where it came to Mere Mehboob – launched by the end of 1961 and released in the October of 1963. Here (as already recorded) it was all about Naushad, at long last, discovering a new hero with whom to tune – Rajendra Kumar. Naushad, in Mere Mehboob, had come to Rajendra Kumar after three consecutive films by our maestro with Dilip Kumar – Kohinoor, Mughal-e-Azam and Gunga Jumna – through 1960–61.
It was, by way of a cheap thrill, enlightening to hear fellow composers speaking about a ‘vintageing’ Naushad by 1961. ‘He’s still polishing the tune!’ – a filmless Anil Biswas would set the ball rolling. ‘No,’ C. Ramchandra would add, ‘he’s taken the tune to Yusuf Khan [Dilip Kumar] for him to hear before sitting down to polish it further!’ Time for the sharp-tongued Shanker to suggest, speaking from the gut: ‘Which furniture waala in Bandra has he summoned further to polish the tune?’ That would make it Jaikishan’s turn to contribute his bit: ‘How could you people be speaking so lightly of one so senior? Doesn’t his seniority itself entitle him to some time in giving his tune the final polish?’
They would all be meeting convivially (by the Divali season of October 1961), not in the Cine Music Directors’ Association hall (located near the Mahalaxmi Racecourse in Bombay), but at a fellow composer’s home for their bimonthly get-together. O. P. Nayyar, for his shy-at-heart part, never attended such a meet, but you could always get his private input by merely placing the matter before him: ‘You know how many tunes of Naushad I’ve pinched?’ would run the OP barb. ‘Unless he had polished those tunes well, would I have been tempted to pinch them?’
I would patiently hear out each one of them, speaking in the same ‘polished’ manner, as I met up with them individually, wondering why super success always generated super spite. Verily was it like hearing underlings starting to make fun of the boss, once the man was off the scene. Naushad himself well knew how they poked fun, all the time, at his ‘tune polishing’. He just laughed it off, observing that the fruits of his success were bound to taste sour to others. He, in fact, came up with a striking parallel as he remarked: ‘It’s like us music directors referring to Lata Mangeshkar as “Maharani” when she is not present in our midst. Is it not Lata’s unmatched position that leads to such a snide reference? So tell me about it when they stop making light of my polishing a tune. That’s when I’d really have reason to worry.’
How come Naushad was still current coin if they thought so poorly of the rare polish that he continued to bring to his tunes in the 1960s? After all, Naushad had logically explained his Dilip Kumar connection as the vibing of one total perfectionist with another total perfectionist. Maybe that line of argument cut little ice with even our distributor paymasters by 1961. It cut little ice, that is, until Naushad, in the dominant SJ era, delivered sensationally upon Rajendra Kumar (opposite ‘Fringe Girl’ Sadhana) with Mere Mehboob by October 1963. Rajendra Kumar therefore telling Naushad to leave the rest to ‘my drawing power as a star’ – as quoted earlier – was no idle boast. We justly talk of superstar Rajesh Khanna’s peerless pulling power at the box-office window, forgetting that Rajendra Kumar was no less a ‘charismatinee’ idol before him. Indeed, after talisman Karan Dewan, if there has been a luckier star than Rajendra Kumar, I have not encountered him. Such was Rajendra Kumar’s ascendancy then that even that showman of showmen, Raj Kapoor, had to turn to him – as Radha Vyjayanthimala’s younger and more eligible suitor vis-à-vis himself in Sangam, RK’s 1964 gatecrasher marking a watershed in our cinema. Before that, at one stage, Rajendra Kumar was prepared to offer dates to a producer only four years from the day of signing. Yet there were takers.
Maybe Rebel Star Shammi Kapoor’s come-through with Junglee (1961) is without parallel for the highest collections’ feat performed by any one film through 30 years – starting with our first talkie, Alam Ara (March 1931). Yet, by the time Shammi Kapoor arrived as the Junglee-Janwar-Budtameez of the Indian screen in the 1961–66 frame, Rajendra Kumar was well and truly entrenched as Hero No. 1. Never to be displaced from that position right through that decade, leading up from Sasural (1961) to Geet (1970).
Face to face with Kumkum had Rajendra Kumar first attracted star potential notice with Mehboob’s Mother India (end-1957) – through the Naushad-scored and the Lata-sung Ghunghat nahein kholungi saiyyan tore aage. No less did Rajendra Kumar score, opposite Kumkum, with V. M. Vyas’s surprise 1958 runaway hit: Ghar Sansar. After that had come, in a stunning 1959 sequence: Devendra Goel’s Chirag Kahan Roshni Kahan (opposite Meena Kumari); Vijay Bhatt’s Goonj Uthi Shehnai (with Ameeta); and Yash Chopra’s Dhool Ka Phool (opposite Mala Sinha). As we entered 1960, it was Rajendra Kumar all over the screen – given Suraj Prakash’s Patang (opposite Mala Sinha); B. R. Chopra’s Kanoon (with Nanda); and V. M. Vyas’s Maa Baap (opposite Kamini Kadam).
You think Shammi Kapoor’s dancing-prancing Junglee advent deterred Rajendra Kumar’s rise and rise in any way during 1961? Then look at our Jubilee King’s line-up of hits that year – L. V. Prasad’s Sasural (with the sloe-eyed Byrappa Saroja Devi); S. S. Vasan’s Gharana (opposite Asha Parekh, the one to whom Rajendra Kumar habitually referred as Bhagyalakshmi – as the ever-lucky one); and J. Om Prakash–Mohan Kumar’s Aas Ka Panchhi (opposite the lithe-of-limb Vyjayanthimala)? Even as Shammi Kapoor peaked by 1963, Rajendra Kumar had a huge rebutter to offer for each hit from that breakaway hero – H. S. Rawail’s Mere Mehboob (opposite Sadhana); Sridhar’s Dil Ek Mandir (with Meena Kumari); O. P. Ralhan’s Gehra Daag (opposite another lucky mascot of his in Mala Sinha); and, not the least, L. V. Prasad–Prakash Rao’s Hamrahi (featuring the South’s megaheroine Jamuna). There was, by this stage, not a leading lady who was not seeking to ride on the upsurge of the Rajendra Kumar wave.
No way therefore could you argue that Rajendra Kumar – as Naushad’s super new catch – was anything but numero uno right through the Shammi Kapoor reign. Stiffer ‘Madras formula’-oriented box-office competition to Shammi Kapoor, in fact, was offered by the inexplicably underrated Sunil Dutt, while Rajendra Kumar snazzily occupied what was an Amitabh Bachchan-like positioning at the helm. This while certain other heroes in the Eastmancolor fray, like Joy Mukerji and Biswajeet, were content to romp along with the topnotch glamour girls of the day. Ironically, Sanjeev Kumar remained an actor first and a star after. As for Dharmendra, Shashi Kapoor, Jeetendra and Manoj Kumar, their star-power draw began either during 1964 or after. Even those four high-scoring heroes, spectacular as they were in the hits that they proceeded to chalk up, never quite came near Rajendra Kumar in box-office wizardry. If you still insist that Rajendra Kumar was nothing but a ham, my response would be that he was at once ‘the ham and jam’ of mainstream cinema in India. In fact, Rajendra’s Kumar’s dizzying high was yet to come – following his rollicking affair with Saira Banu taking the two skyrocketing to top-pairing status with J. Om Prakash’s Ayee Milan Ki Bela (1964).
If I have chosen to focus at length upon Rajendra Kumar’s career graph, it is to drive home the point that he wielded enough clout, by the end of 1965, to be in a position to tell Naushad, in the matter of their revisiting Mehboob’s 1949 Andaz: ‘Leave the rest to my drawing power as a star!’ For all that, well may one ask: ‘Why was Rajendra Kumar stuck upon “doing an Andaz” at such a heady turn in his career?’ It is such head-spinning popularity that prompts a megastar to reason that he still has an Andaz point to prove on the silver screen. If Dilip Kumar could Naushad sing his way to a dizzying pinnacle with Andaz, why not Rajendra Kumar – with Mukesh and Majrooh still very much on the scene? In any case, how could our Sangeet Samrat say no to our Mere Mehboob hero out to prove that the Andaz of playing Naushad’s piano came as wistfully to one Rajendra Kumar as to the one-and-only Dilip Kumar?
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1 From H. S. Rawail’s Mere Mehboob (1963). Music by Naushad. Song-lyric by Shakeel Badayuni. Rendered by Mohammed Rafi.