INSIDE THE ‘ASHIANA’ OF HIS DREAMS
Mahalon mein rahne waale humen tere dar se kyaa
Mahalon mein rahne waale humen tere dar se kyaa
Nagri hai apni pyaari humen oonche ghar se kyaa
Mahalon mein rahne waale …
NAUSHAD’S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE IS SUCCINCTLY SUMMED UP, ABOVE, by the 1954 Mohammed Rafi & co. Raag Shahana Shabab qawwali penned by Shakeel Badayuni – as ‘harmoniumized’ by our maestro’s chief assistant: Mohammad Ibrahim. About being on Broadway did Naushad dream. About finding his name upon the Broadway Cinema marquee did he fantasize, as he stretched himself upon the Dadar pavement opposite that theatre during his years of struggle. Set against this ground reality, a veritable palace did his nest, Ashiana, look from the outside. But the instant you stepped into the bungalow, you were inside a purely traditional Muslim household. Naushad headed a family you could sense to be God-fearing. They were viewed to lead such simple, straightforward lives that you soon felt you were part of the family. The family was large – ‘I could put my own cricket eleven in the field!’ as Naushad would jest.
I had arrived at Ashiana, half an hour before the time scheduled, during a cool January afternoon of 1968. This a week after Waheeda Rehman–Dilip Kumar’s Aadmi, its music scored by Naushad, had missed, unnervingly, its box-office mark. I had found the main entrance door, somehow, not locked this one time. I had therefore just walked in, reasoning perhaps that it always was open house for me here. I could have knocked at least. For, as I turned left towards the living room, I could sense husband and wife to be keenly arguing about something. Embarrassed, I tarried, as their talk came to an abrupt halt. Unfazed, Naushad Ali, seated in the living-room sofa, accorded me a warm welcome in which his begum naturally joined. ‘But where’s Girija?’ swiftly enquired Ahliya Naushad, all courtesy. I said that Girija had been held up, unexpectedly, on her studio beat and would be joining us soon. That was the cue for Naushad to ask me to accompany him into the music room. Once inside, Naushad said: ‘Well might you have wondered what that little to-do between the two of us was about as you entered.’
‘No, Naushad Saab,’ I said emphatically, ‘it has absolutely nothing to do with me. In fact, I now feel that it would’ve been far better for me to have waited for Girija to return home before coming out here.’
‘Oh but you might as well know since it’s about the style of music that I continue to make in this day and age,’ observed Naushad. ‘To her credit, never has my begum got involved in the nitty-gritty of my music. But now she’s begun to talk about my moving with the times – in the way Dada Burman’s done, she points out. So far she had concentrated upon creating the atmosphere for me to be able to work in total harmony. But now she says it is her gut feeling that I simply have to do something different, that I have to consider coming out of my classical ivory tower. She feels that I have to begin thinking in terms of revising my outlook on the style of music that I’m still making. As you well know, right now I’m in the process of tying up loose ends and getting my act together for recording the songs of Saathi starring Vyjayanthimala and Rajendra Kumar.’
I just sat there, stunned, agonizing about how to react. I do not know how but I finally summoned the gumption to look the maestro in the eye and say: ‘Naushad Saab, I know – but you do not know that I know – that Ahliyaji had been proven right in the matter of at least one career decision on playback singers that she personally facilitated in your making. In fact, it was a decision altering the course of your music career at that 1948 time. I won’t go into details. She’s spoken her mind. She might have a point; a woman’s instinct tells her the commonsense thing to do. Yet your style is pre-eminently your own, Naushad Saab, so that the final decision rests with you and you alone.’
The moments to follow could have turned out to be even more awkward as I wondered how I had ventured to say what I did. At that point, the room door opened to apprise Naushad of the fact that Rajendra Kumar was on the line. Obviously, this was one call that had to be put through. Now, while the two of them, Naushad and Rajendra Kumar, were speaking on the phone, I certainly did not want to be present in the music room. I made that my ready alibi discreetly to slip out, saying that I wanted to check up on Girija. Happily, she arrived inside five minutes. After 10–15 minutes, Naushad himself came out. Seeing Girija already there, he warmed to her, before inviting both of us inside. What a fortuitous intervention it had been by Rajendra Kumar.
Over then to the point that Ahliya Naushad so pertinently made. I always took Ahliya at her word when she said that she never ever came in the way of Naushad doing his music in the manner that he wanted. Yet which wife has not had a part to play in rounding her husband’s career? I know it for a fact – since Shamshad Begum herself told me so – that the decision to switch wholesale to Lata Mangeshkar had been made at the instance of Ahliya Naushad. Ahliya understood things, if not at the musical base, certainly at the roots. She had divined, by late 1948, that Lata Mangeshkar was the coming force. She did not want her husband to get left behind in the matter of a timely switch on the female playback front. She certainly influenced Naushad in the matter of his suddenly shifting his allegiance from the golden glow of Shamshad Begum to the silver flow of Lata Mangeskhar with A. R. Kardar’s Dulari (releasing on 18 November 1949). A totally unexpected windfall of nine Naushad songs thus accrued to Lata upon Dulari Madhubala. This boon to Lata had come alongside the career influencing 31 March 1949 Andaz Nargis bonus of Uthaye jaa unke sitam in compelling Kedara, Tod diya dil mera in pensive Pahadi and Meri laadli ri meri laadli ri bani hai in buoyant Bilawal.
There is a momentous Lata miss-out there – Koee mere dil mein khushi ban ke aaya. Do we music habitués tend to concentrate less and less upon this Nargis heart-warmer because it is the one Majrooh–Naushad Lata number, from Andaz, that mentally moves us away from Dilip Kumar (on the poignant piano)? Moves us away to a Raj Kapoor surfacing for the first time on the scene in that Andaz show? That is as may be, but Shamshad Begum certainly felt outraged that she should have been Andaz marginalized – with nothing better than Dar na mohabbat kar le to ghost upon side heroine Cuckoo. (‘I actually felt that I was singing Dar na mohabbat kar le, playback, to go upon heroine Nargis!’ Shamshad had told me.) Our Begum got so sidelined even as Naushad and Shamshad came to celebrate – coincidentally, on the Andaz release date of 31 March 1949 – the silver jubilee of their Mela, a film by then set to advance to a golden jubilee. Such a happening placed Shamshad Begum in a state of unprecedented bewilderment. Shamshad was left so cogitating when Naushad, surprisingly, returned big time to her vibrant vocals with Babul (end-1950). That way Naushad always hedged his bet. He gave that huge opening to Lata with Dulari but would not let her take him for granted after that.
Yet Shamshad Begum, by this determinant stage, shrewdly discerned that her Babul return under Naushad – while Lata still commanded two key solos and one duet with her in the film – meant so much and no more. Sure enough, Naushad was back to Lata as his main performer (five songs – as many as three of them solos) with Deedar (April 1951) against three numbers (only one of them a solo) to Shamshad in that sensitive four-way drama as enacted by Dilip Kumar, Nimmi, Nargis and Ashok Kumar. After that it was only a matter of Baiju Bawra happening and Lata taking over, almost full time, by late 1952. But not before Shamshad Begum had shown her vocal class to be transparently intact under the wand of Naushad in A. R. Kardar’s Jadoo (May 1951) and Mehboob Khan’s Aan (August 1952). Shamshad – by getting to share songs more equitably with Lata in those two films – moved out of the Naushad mainstream with a resonance all her own.
Outcome: Shamshad never really forgave Ahliya for planting Lata in Naushad’s mind. There were, to be sure, other decisions in which Ahliya Naushad motivated her husband. But the phased easing out of Shamshad Begum is an important enough development to underscore the broad Ahliya point.
Ahliya, something of a presence, was always there. One day Naushad’s daughter Fehmida (an MA Litt.) had come home for some career consultation with my wife and me. Fehmida had been with us for hardly half an hour when promptly on the telephone line was Ahliya Naushad to say that the car was on its way to collect that young lady and fetch her home! Ahliya’s thinking was crystal clear here – that Fehmida’s future lay in marriage. We came to attend Fehmida’s wedding within a year of that August 1977 visit by her to our home. After that, we really got to see Fehmida (with her two utterly charming children) only when she returned home from the United States following Naushad’s iconic demise on the 5th of May 2006. By that stage, Ahliya Naushad, too, was sadly no more, after having been a hawk-eyed presence in that Ashiana abode.
A remarkable woman, Ahliya Naushad. I had lost my mother in March 1977 and someone in Filmfare had conveyed the tidings to Naushad’s home. Whereupon Ahliya Naushad had picked up the phone and rung me up herself this time. ‘Naushad Saab and I are coming over right away. We rang up your Marine Drive home first to go there straight. But we were told that Girija and you had gone to your Bandra stopover flat for something. Please wait, we two are coming forthwith.’ Inside the half-hour, Ahliya and Naushad were at our Bandra flat to condole with us. His flair for the right gesture in the right hour is what set Naushad apart from the rest of the composing breed. After that visit had taken place, at the first opportunity that presented itself, I ran a ‘40 Years of Naushad’ eight-page feature in the 15 May 1977 issue of The Illustrated Weekly of India. Naushad’s revered senior Anil Biswas – by then associated in our minds with All India Radio, Delhi – glimpsed this feature and, while in Bombay on a sojourn, could not help remarking: ‘I notice that we now have time and space only for Naushad.’
I well knew that, ever since our maestro had taken over from Anil Biswas the music of K. Asif’s prestigious Mughal-e-Azam, the man had this thing going about Naushad. Anil Biswas felt that he had been superseded by a lesser talent. I now explained to Anil Biswas how Naushad had promptly come home with his wife. ‘Should such an occurrence have been counting with a critic of your professional standing?’ Anil Biswas had validly sought to know. ‘It shouldn’t have been counting, yet it did count!’ I honestly responded. ‘The problem with you, Anilda,’ I went on to explain, ‘is that you did your work and just sat back. But Naushad doesn’t do that. He’s savvy enough to know that his real work – of propagating his music – begins only after the film’s score is done.’ To which Anil Biswas replied with typical Bengali intellectual flourish: ‘Your music should be good enough to speak for you at all times. I concede that Naushad is cleverer than all of us. Yet I’m deeply disappointed that you should have been influenced by a personalized gesture on his part having nothing really to do with creating music.’
Any such touchy point involving our maestro, I never stopped to argue for long with a peerless pioneer like Anil Biswas, if only because the man could be deadly in his logic of accounting for Naushad’s ascent and ascent coinciding with his descent and descent. Well before Naushad came on the music scene with Prem Nagar (1940), Anil Biswas had been working notably with Mehboob Khan at Sagar Movietone upon: Jagirdar (1937); Hum Tum Aur Woh (1938); Watan (1938); Ek Hi Rasta (1939); plus Alibaba (1940). As Sagar Movietone became National Studios, Mehboob Khan and Anil Biswas had further collaborated upon: Aurat (1940); Bahen (1941); plus Roti (1942). As Naushad himself so tellingly put it: ‘We were still in chaddis [half-pants] at Lucknow as Anil Biswas was upon the nation’s lips via Surendra–Bibbo’s Tumhein ne mujh ko prem sikhaaya.’ ‘In this one case,’ revealed Naushad, ‘Anil Biswas had been called in to re-work Ashok Ghosh’s music score at Sagar Movietone in Mehboob’s Manmohan [1936]. In fact, that is how the Sagar Movietone association of Anil Biswas and Mehboob had begun – Unki to karoron saal ki umar hai!’ When this Naushad quote – of the Bengal music stalwart having a lifespan extending to crores and crores of years – was carried to Anil Biswas, even that ultra-articulate composer was tongue-tied for once and failed to produce a fitting response.
About Naushad’s Urdu erudition, I cannot forget the time, in the April of 1977, when Khushwant Singh, my maverick editor (of The Illustrated Weekly of India), met this maestro and was floored by his musical eloquence. Khushwant Singh naturally expressed a desire to see his music room and Naushad promptly extended an invitation to him for lunch. This was when Ahliya Naushad came anew into the picture. I dare say she must have given her Naushad Saab an earful for having invited such a ‘wicked’ old man to a home with daughters at a sensitive age. Convent-educated daughters, in truth, young ladies well aware of Khushwant Singh’s editorial standing and therefore obviously eager to meet such an idolized editor. Ahliya Naushad, for her part, clearly had in mind ‘the other image’ of Khushwant Singh. So much so that, soon, Fehmida was on the phone, laughing away, to describe how her mother was feeling terrified at the prospect of the Khushwant Singh visit.
This was when Ahliya Naushad just took the phone from Fehmida and communicated with me direct. I told Ahliya not to worry even for a second, explaining how Khushwant Singh with his correct manners was sure to charm them all off their feet. I do not know whether or not Ahliya Naushad was in any way convinced by my reassuring counsel. Yet, quite predictably, it turned out exactly as I had said it would. Khushwant Singh went on to delight the whole Naushad family with his natural wit and polish, being (at my prompting) extra courteous towards Ahliya Naushad. As he came to the office the following morning (April end, 1977), Khushwant Singh zestfully directed me to produce an extensive feature on Naushad’s musical life and times. The earlier mentioned ‘40 Years of Naushad’ (in The Illustrated Weekly of India of 15 May 1977) was the upshot – to Anil Biswas’s chagrin.
Some 17 years before that, Anil Biswas’s career was clearly drawing to a close (by the September of 1959) as younger composers led by Shanker-Jaikishan and O. P. Nayyar raced ahead. Also, it was around this time that Rajendra Kumar, too, began his journey to superstardom. A pertinent word here, therefore, on the enviable niche that Rajendra Kumar came to command in the Naushad household. He was the only actor I knew to visit their house and be taken up to the living quarters – even to the zenana, the women’s quarters, normally inaccessible to outsiders. The bond that grew between Rajendra Kumar and Naushad was amazing. Over the years Rajendra Kumar blossomed from a professional friend into a family friend. Naushad trusted him implicitly. So much so that Naushad would bare his heart to Rajendra Kumar in terms of placing his personal problems before him. These problems would range from family illnesses to financial matters. For a Naushad Ali who had scrupulously kept his family away from the shimmer-glimmer of the show world, this was no ordinary bonding. Not even Dilip Kumar appeared to have the kind of access to the inner recesses of Naushad’s mind and heart that Rajendra Kumar did where it came to personal matters.
The family loved him. Ah, the Naushad family. My journalist wife, the late Girija Rajendran, had, as a woman, a closer rapport with the Naushad family than I ever did. She habitually stepped beyond the drawing room and the music room for a conspiratorial whisper. As for myself, a mere male, I made it a point never to cross the threshold. In a conventional Muslim household, I knew where to draw the line. But was Naushad all that conventional? No purdah was observed in their Ashiana home. Of his nine children, the six girls went to Angrezi-oriented schools. Yet he kept them all – including his three sons – far away from the music that he made. The middle son was taken on as an assistant only very late in his career. Naushad was clearly not pleased when two of his sons professed an interest in joining films. The eldest son, Rehman, wanted to be a film director; Raju, as the lad next to him, sought to be a music director like his father. But there was no early encouragement I saw to be forthcoming from Naushad. Maybe he thought the world of films to be too insecure to offer his sons a viable career.
This perhaps explains why Rehman Naushad still turns to me for the odd telephonic clarification on his father’s early music. He is a lovable guy, this Rehman. His deep interest in cricket, its subtler points, more than once found him waiting at the door to receive me as I was due at Ashiana for a music session. ‘But, of course, you’ve come to discuss music with daddy, so please carry on,’ Rehman would say – after having swiftly cleared three-four cricketing doubts with me! He would not join us; maybe he was not allowed to do so. Clearly, Naushad always wanted it kept musically private as between Girija and me – on the one side – and him on the other. Each time he sent for us, we knew that Naushad would be having something special to play for us. An aural preview of his latest film’s music could be the resulting treat. But the family never came into the picture here.
Let us then take a look at the Naushad family of eleven in batting order. Literally alongside the composer stood Ahliya, looking every inch the ‘all-rounder’ in that Naushad eleven. A performer with an air all her own was Ahliya – as the power behind the throne. For proud at heart of his compositions was Naushad. This was a level of pride far removed from the humble aspect that Naushad unfailingly presented in public. Ahliya was Naushad’s second wife, his first marriage having been to her elder sister Aashia. That young lady had died after their first child was born. That eldest child in the family is son Mati-ur-Rehman (the affable Rehman Naushad on stage and on TV), followed by daughter Zubeida and son Sami-ur-Rehman (Raju Naushad on stage and on TV, a cheery lad at all times enjoying excellent musical vibes with me). After that comes Mohammed Iqbal, occupying the fourth slot in the six bringing up the rear.
One of the six girls would often pick up the phone as I rang. They were all exemplarily behaved each time we encountered them. It became obvious how superbly, if sternly, Ahliya Naushad had trained them with the help of the first daughter, the winsomely homely Zubeida – before that young lady married a well-placed electrical engineer answering to the name of Zain Ahmed and moved to Los Angeles in the United States. Of the six girls, Girija and I drew closest to the fourth-born Fehmida in whom I spotted the Naushad spark. Nothing like an insider’s view on what manner of man, what calibre of composing personality, was Naushad. What I have so far outlined could not possibly match the insights – spread over 24 hours of the day – that we now have Fehmida Naushad offering on her father and his way of life.
For instance, his millions of fans always wondered how Naushad stayed so admirably fit to the end. I had viewed Naushad playing a regular game of badminton. I had even heard, in an aside at Dada Burman’s The Jet bungalow, SD chivvying our Midas on this. ‘It’s a sissy’s sport, badminton!’ Dada Burman would say to Naushad as the two converged during their morning walk. ‘Lawn tennis is the game for men. Come on, Naushad, pick up a racket and learn what it is to counter an ace served by me.’ Dada Burman’s ace tune, remember, had left much younger composers standing in their time. Kumar Sachin Dev Burman had been an accomplished tennis player in his prime – in a position to take on anyone on a Calcutta court. Son Rahul Dev Burman, by contrast, settled for roadside cycling! Cycling and Dada: the two were as far apart as Nayyar and Naushad. That badminton was but part of the Naushad fitness story emerges clear only as Fehmida comes up with a startling revelation in noting:
Daddy keeps himself trim and slim by daily exercises and long walks. He rises early and begins the day with his session of exercise, which includes yoga, isometrics, bull-worker, dumb-bells, skipping, jumping and hanging from doors. [Just envision Naushad suspending himself from the door sill!] In short, every muscle is stretched, turned, twisted and brought back to place. Then he leaves for his morning walk that covers a distance of at least a mile. He rarely walks on the main road but prefers to go by the lanes and the bylanes which sometimes end in cul-de-sacs. He does not have an inch of superfluous fat on his body; he is as wiry as his young son, while most of his friends have already grown into laughing Buddhas …. He works hard to maintain his health .… No fried and spicy food, no rice, no sugar .… he literally runs miles away from ice-creams and puddings.
Scrupulously as he observed his daily regimen, how deeply pious a man was Naushad? Pious enough to have religiously disapproved of Suraiya, as the darling of his Muslim community, marrying the Hindu Dev Anand in 1948? All that I would presume to submit here is that this was Naushad’s conviction – take it or leave it. Such a magnetic singing star as Suraiya, he believed, should be marrying only within his own Muslim community.
Suraiya ended up by not marrying at all, as her ‘counter’ to Dev Anand slapping her for finally coming up with a hesitant ‘no’. A hesitant ‘no’ after having started it all with a hearty: ‘Yes, yes, I love you, I love you!’ – before offering her lips to her Dev. The two were clearly ‘mate’ for each other. But Naushad, for his part, had no regrets on the Dev Anand score; it was a matter of faith with him. Naushad had his beliefs and stayed with them.
‘He sings the praises of God because he is a God-fearing man,’ points out Fehmida. ‘His faith is as simple as it is intense. He prays regularly five times a day. On Fridays he goes to the local mosque, on Thursdays he visits dargahs [shrines] – and he is a teetotaller. He wears a bunch of taweez [amulets], around his neck and arm, and rings studded with precious stones on the advice of holy men. The simplicity of his religious belief is reflected in his lifestyle. Though he lives in a magnificent two-storey bungalow facing the sea, he is a very modest man. Born in dire poverty, he never forgot the value of money that he had earned the hard way. It was certainly a long distance for him to travel from the footpaths of Dadar (where he spent his first days in Bombay) to Ashiana, the name of his bungalow that means nest. He moves about in a desi Fiat, no flashing limousines for him. He never gambles, nor has he ever visited the racecourse – a place he detests because his father lost everything there, reducing the family to utter poverty. The only luxuries he indulges in are annual shikar trips. He works and sleeps in an airconditioned room; he is fond of French perfumes; and he smokes Craven A, but has cut down on the number of cigarettes following the exorbitant rise in their price.’
‘Woh aadmi kyaa jeeyaa itne paise banane ke baad?’ (‘Where did he live life after all the money that he made?’) contemptuously remarked C. Ramchandra. Yet CR was an alcoholic burnout a full 10 years before Naushad himself lost out to the younger order as the 1961–70 decade drew to a close. A Naushad who had never ceased to advise his confrères to abandon the bottle.
‘Does father like the music of his colleagues?’ Fehmida poses the query, then answers it herself: ‘Of course he does, after all he is well past the narcissistic age. He is fond of the late Madan Mohan’s music – he considers [from Anpadh, 1962] Hai isi mein pyaar ki aabroo as that composer’s best.’ Having stated that, Fehmida Naushad, I recall, was not too happy with her father on one point. Disapproving was Fehmida about the way Naushad had (on the 14th of July 1975, the day Madan Mohan passed away) singled out, on India’s national TV channel Doordarshan, those Madan Mohan ghazals from Anpadh written by Raja Mehdi Ali Khan: Aap ki nazron ne samjha pyaar ke qaabil mujhe and the above-cited Hai isi mein pyaar ki aabroo. Naushad, in timely tune with the sad Madan Mohan happening, had proceeded to name those two ghazals as approximating, in musical worth, to the entire work that he did in his lifetime.
His was a tribute couched in the high-flown style of Urdu at once gracious and generous – not to be taken literally. Not at least where it came to Naushad’s lifetime repertoire. But it was taken literally and, in fact, it was recurringly quoted as a testimony to Naushad openly confessing to being a composer far inferior to Madan Mohan! What astounded me was to find Madan Mohan’s eldest son Sanjeev Kohli, as senior marketing consultant to HMV, falling for the bait. I have shared, at HMV, some memorable musical moments with Sanjeev Kohli; therefore I was taken aback to find him observing in the December 1997 issue of Filmfare: ‘Naushad goes on and on about the two ghazals from Anpadh [1962], Aap ki nazron ne samjha and Hai isi mein pyaar ki aabroo, being equal to his entire oeuvre. I don’t remember him saying that when my father was alive.’ After Madan Mohan passed away on 14 July 1975, well may you argue that his son had a right to so interpret Naushad. By the same token, did not Naushad’s daughter Fehmida have a matching right to be annoyed with her father for making himself out to be, if unwittingly, a lesser ghazal composer than Madan Mohan? As Fehmida put it in the June of 1977: ‘I totally fail to understand why daddy should be pausing to sing the praises of Madan Mohan when he himself is such a master composer of the ghazal.’
It was a daughter jealously guarding her father’s composing reputation, of course, but who can say that Fehmida did not have a case? As Fehmida, Girija and I debated the issue, Lata’s ghazal, O o o tamanna lut gayi phir bhi tere dam se mohabbat hai …. Na miltaa gham to barbaadi ke afsaane kahaan jaate, came to be held up as a (1954) Shakeel–Naushad Amar composition on a par with any in this genre any time. It is a ghazal in which Shakeel and Naushad match each other measure for measure. You now discern Shakeel to be excelling, you now sense Naushad to be compelling. ‘The closest and dearest of father’s friends,’ Fehmida significantly adds, ‘was the late Shakeel Badayuni. The two families were neighbours [13-A Rosewood Cottage, Bandra West] and on such intimate terms were they that wooden ladders were installed on either side of the compound.’
But here is something that Fehmida would not know. It once so happened that Shakeel Badayuni was momentarily away at a nearby hill station. That at a crucial tuning point when Naushad and Shakeel were collaborating upon the musical score of Ram Aur Shyam. Naushad thereupon persuaded that 1967 film’s famed producer, B. Nagi Reddi, to send the poet Rs 10,000 as his dues overall. Shakeel acknowledged the favour by return of post with the complete song-lyric of Aayi hain bahaaren mite zulm-o-sitam – written to the metre that Naushad had laid down. How tellingly Dilip Kumar went on to enact Rafi and chorus’s Aayi hain bahaaren on the Ram Aur Shyam screen is by now part of our cine lexicon.
‘He often,’ goes on Fehmida, ‘stands by the radio to hear Pankaj Mullick’s [Arzoo Lucknowi-written 1941 classic from New Theatres’ Doctor] Aayi bahaar aaj aayi bahaar, one of his favourites as a young man. I remember when we were small and he used to take us in his lap, turn by turn, and sing either C. Ramchandra’s [Samadhi, 1950] Gore gore o baanke chhore or Salil Chowdhury’s [Madhumati, 1958] Suhana safar aur yeh mausam haseen. Though a staunch supporter of Indian classical music, father immensely enjoys Western music. He has preserved those huge 78-rpm discs purchased in London way back in 1952. The lilting waltz of John Strauss; the enchanting melodies of Peter Tchaikovsky; the fiery rhythms of Georges Bizet; and the evergreen music of Claude Debussy are his favourites to which he often listens in his spare time …
‘All of us know father as a good musician,’ continues Fehimida, proceeding to give a different dimension to even the oft-told tale of Naushad on shikar. ‘Music and shikar are like East and West – the twain can meet. Just as the East has successfully mingled with the West over the last few years, so have music and shikar mingled together to give father a state of mental tranquillity so essential for his creative work. He is not a born shikari; on the contrary, he was mortally afraid of animals. He took up hunting on medical advice. As a young man he suffered from a morbid fear of thunder and lightning. The monsoons were his most trying months. He hated to be left alone and, throughout the night, mother and his friends kept a strong vigil over him. At times he even went under the bed! This terror made him a victim of insomnia. Tranquillizers, hypnosis, native medicines – all proved to be of no avail. A doctor-friend advised him to take up a sport like hunting, one which called for great courage and bravery.
‘With great reluctance,’ reports Fehmida, ‘father agreed to go on a hunting spree, accompanied by his friend, a commissioner of police, who offered to be his mentor and guide. After having learnt the elementary points of shikar, one night father was propped up on a machan, while his friend sat on a nearby tree. Down below lay the dead prey for a man-eater tiger. Soon the tiger came along to dine and father, finding himself alone, alone, all alone – with no saint or friend taking pity on his poor soul in agony – was forced to fire his rifle. The traumatic effect of that single night had a cathartic effect on his mind. The victory over the tiger purged him of the fear of thunder and lightning, lizards and cockroaches.’
That stuffed tiger, strategically placed behind the Ashiana entrance door, was the imposing sight that greeted you as you stepped into Naushad’s bungalow. Girija and I must have seen it some 14-15 times during our visits to Ashiana. Then one day it just disappeared. Its whisking away coincided with India’s one-time cricket captain, Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi – popularly known as ‘Tiger’ – getting into trouble over having indulged in shikar. Almost side by side, that Naushad souvenir, a rare showpiece in his drawing room, was taken away – to where, no one knows. Naushad’s regular guests must have missed it too – Dilip Kumar among them. ‘There is the inimitable Dilip Kumar,’ says Fehmida. ‘Though they have known each other for the last 25 years, he has remained for us the handsome, legendary, tragic hero and no more. I still remember peeping at him from the balcony – with the help of a periscope – while he sat in the garden downstairs.’
To the Gaaye jaa geet milan ke Mukesh solo does the Dilip Kumar–Naushad Ali screen association date back. It so dates back to the 8 October 1948-releasing Mela, Dilip Kumar’s Nargis co-starrer arriving even before Fehmida was born. ‘Father does not discuss his music with us,’ reveals Fehmida. ‘While most musicians force their music down their children’s throat, father did not even let us taste his. When small, we were not allowed to enter his working room and tamper with his radiogram, tape recorder, piano and all. Until recently, we were totally unaware of his early music composed before we were born. We owe a great obligation to a friend who acquainted us with his delightful music of the early ’40s and ’50s. I always thought that S. D. Burman had composed the music of Natak [1947] and Jadoo [1951]. It is as bad as coming to know your Indian cultural heritage from outsiders. Which is his best song? I don’t know because he never answers; the most one can draw out of him is: “The best is yet to come.” Though I personally rate the [1954] music of Shabab as his best, it is impossible to name any one song in particular. I wonder why he is so taciturn about his music.’
So taciturn because there was the whole nation to sing his praises, to go crazy over his quality tunes and his quintessential orchestration. How did Naushad Ali work upon a qawwali so standout as Phir aah dil se niklee tapkaa lahoo jigar se – as Zohrabai Ambalewali staged a one-song comeback under his baton in Mela (1948)? Our maestro worked upon Phir aah dil se niklee like he had worked upon any other composition – that is, with total dedication and concentration. Yet Naushad went through an instant of self-doubt about whether Zohra would come for just one song. Naushad was living with the reality of the summary way in which he had eliminated Zohra from his playback armoury, as Shamshad Begum came to take over, by the end of 1947, as his chief female artiste. Yet Zohra’s pet, tabla player Peeru, was then still functional in Naushad’s orchestra. Hesitantly Naushad asked Peeru if Zohra would be nodding assent to the idea of just one solo in the entire film.
‘Why not?’ responded Peeru, sensing a comeback opportunity for that singer. For a Zohrabai Ambalewali set to total 228 songs through the 1941–50 decade. In that pathfinding 1941–50 decade witnessing playback singers coming to the forefront as a new tribe altogether, no performer, male or female, got to surpass Shamshad Begum – as the singer commanding a total of 724 songs. Lata Mangeshkar, by comparison, showed a 1941–50 tally of 383 songs. Yet these were the 383 songs that were to take Lata Mangeshkar (on sheer vocal merit) to the very top by the end of 1950 – alongside Naushad. Just reflect upon the meticulously ordered way in which our Sangeet Samrat worked upon polishing a Lata tune. I saw Naushad doing it time and time again. Yet Fehmida is the one worth hearing here:
How does father work? Well, no one knows, because no one has ever observed him at work. He sits alone in his room – with all the doors and windows shut. All that one can hear from the outside is an occasional humming, very very soft, accompanied by the notes of the harmonium or the piano. He does not have any of those so-called ‘peak periods’ when an artist’s creativity is supposed to be at its zenith. He works while walking, eating, driving and sleeping. The call of the mysterious stranger astride a black horse, who visits the heroine [Nargis] in her dreams in Babul, was composed in his sleep. Often he works so hard that he loses all contact with his surroundings. Once, when in such a mood, he handed over an envelope containing a [1962 Shakeel] song from Son of India to the bridegroom instead of the cover containing the cash! The bridegroom must have been shocked at father’s audacity to wish him through the song: Insaan thhaa pahele bandar.
From where then did Naushad draw his inspiration? ‘Angling has been one of his old sports,’ says Fehmida. ‘He goes to [Bombay’s] Powai Lake every Sunday and comes back home, either with a big haul of fish or a new melody in his mind. Often, when in a troubled state of mind, he goes off to Powai Lake and finds solace in its placid and calm surroundings. He has created a good deal of music amidst the blue lapping waters, the rich green foliage and the huge inverted blue bowl of the sky. He is essentially an outdoor man. [Surprise, surprise!] He prefers to relax in the open spaces of the countryside rather than catch the next plane to Paris. Every outing enriches his repertoire by a song, a poem or a story.
‘Of his nine children, he loves his six daughters the most.’ adds Fehmida. ‘He does not take them to mahurats, to premieres or to shootings of even his own films. I suppose daughters are so dear to him because they are, in his view, the “weaker” sex. Therefore they must be protected from the claws and clutches of the cruel and evil world. So he locks them up in golden cages like exquisite little nightingales …. He lives by the principle: “All my girls are equal.” But we know that some are more equal than the others and the third one [Farida] – I am the second – happens to be his favourite, probably because she resembles him the most. He naïvely displays his love for her by passing her, at the dinner table, half the bowl of curds specially prepared for him or leaving her his share of dessert.
‘Father, as a rule, is a very patient and tolerant man,’ adds Fehmida. ‘It is very easy to hurt or to placate him. He stoically bears his fate when people pinch his tunes or attack and criticize his music in the most prejudiced manner …. He flies into a temper only when the telephone goes dead; or when people talk incoherently over the phone; or when people come late for meetings; or when I forget to give him his medicines ….
‘Right at this moment, I can see him standing in the balcony, meditating on the beauty of the Arabian Sea, and I wonder if he is happy having me as one of his daughters. But I am glad indeed that the stork dropped me here and nowhere else – I certainly would have hated being someone else’s daughter.’