Naushadnama

Kyaa cheez hai yeh ulfat bhi, kyaa cheez hai yeh ulfat bhi
Talwaar bhi hai amrit bhi, talwaar bhi hai amrit bhi
Sun sun ke duniya diwaani, ulfat ki hai yeh nishani
Laa ra lu, laa ra lu, laa ra lu
Sun sun ke duniya diwaani, ulfat ki hai yeh nishani
Laa ra lu, laa ra lu, laa ra lu
Jab saawan ke din aaye, tadpaaye koyal ki ku ku
To samjho chal gayaa pyaar kaa jadoo
Laa ra lu, laa ra lu, laa ra lu, laa ra lu, laa ra lu …¹

A HAPPENING-HAPPENING CAREER STUDY IT IS, THE MUSIC THAT NAUSHAD made. Here is one musical happening by which we stay connected with a Shamshad Begum epitomizing, in her vivid vocalizing, a robust Punjabiat. Staged on 11 February 1970 at the Shanmukhananda Hall in the Sion sector of North Bombay, the Shamshad Begum Nite was a timely reminder of that super resonator’s stand-off with Lata Mangeshkar. A stand-off reviving memories of Naushad having been the one to determine Shamshad’s destiny vis-à-vis Lata. By the time the Shamshad Nite came to be held, our Begum was out of the singing reckoning. For all that, Lata Mangeshkar was still a trifle apprehensive of Shamshad Begum. Queried on this point to debate, Naushad suavely chose to travel beyond Shamshad. He pointedly sought to know as to why never ever, for instance, did I elaborate upon how exemplarily he had equated with Shakeel Badayuni. Such was the rhapsodic rapport between Naushad and Shakeel that our maestro could attain a comparable extent of poetic success with no other songwriter after the Badayuni trip. Not even with Saathi Majrooh Sultanpuri (in 1968). Khumar Barabankvi came in on Saaz Aur Awaz (1966) and Love and God (1986) – to no conclusive purpose. Of the ill-starred Love and God, about the cinematic feel with which K. Asif completed 70 per cent of that epic before his untimely death in 1971, Naushad is a gold mine of information.

How come both Lata and Asha dreaded the prospect of a Shamshad comeback? What was so special still about our Begum’s vocals that she continued to unnerve – as late as 1970 – two performers so well established as Lata and Asha? Here’s a singing parallel that is worth considering. Reflect upon Kishore Kumar discomfiting singers far better trained, precisely during the February 1970 time that the Shamshad Begum Nite took place. Was it not a certain vocal transparency that made Kishore Kumar and Shamshad Begum, alike, the challenger singers that they proved to be? Neither Shamshad nor Kishore was classically trained. But that did not make either of them a lesser vocal threat to singers more schooled. Shamshad and Kishore’s ‘O. P. Nayyarized’ Meri neendon mein tum-clarity of Naya Andaz tone rival singers ignored at their 1956 peril. Shamshad Begum for her part – as one from the Master Ghulam Haider order – had a frontal vocal way of dealing with the Mangeshkar sisters as competition. Did Shamshad then have a point when she said that Lata manipulated music directors, including Naushad? How decisive did that sudden Naushad drop prove in the case of Shamshad? The jettisoning of a performer with such distinctive vocals merits serious analysis – I suggested as much to Naushad a full 10 years after he had dispensed with Shamshad Begum. Himself under Lata scrutiny (as something of a Shamshad Begum apologist) by that critical May 1970 Ganwaar release eve, Naushad chose, diplomatically, to evade the issue by apostrophizing: ‘I compose, you dispose!’

‘Compose for Lata, not for Shamshad any more?’ I could have asked. But I demurred, reasoning that Naushad was at a mid-1970 turn in his career where he could afford to be so venturesome and no more. In this context, let us do a swift recap of how the coin rolled against Shamshad – how, sitting on their tails, ‘heads!’ (in a chorus) called our music directors, reduced to a servile tribe by 1960.

‘Heads!’ signalling that it now had to be either Lata or Asha, neither Shamshad Begum nor Geeta Dutt – not any longer. The coin, come to think of it, had ‘dropped’ by that 1960 juncture itself. A juncture by which, if no Lata or no Asha, no go it was. Such a predicament confronting our music makers, how did it come about in the first place? Let us take a peek and see how, unerringly, the jukebox coin found its SJ slot – in that restaurant corner playing the Lata or Rafi tune of our choice in the voice we thought nice. As the female voice ruling the waves by that end-1960 turning point, Lata looked verily invincible. The Shamshad shake-off, how vindicated had it left Lata?

As Naushad and Nayyar alike lost their use for Shamshad Begum by 1960, the fall of the Punjab frontier it was for Lata and Asha. A frontier whose playback lashback both Lata and Asha had faced problems in neutralizing. In fact, Lata could no more halt Shamshad Begum than she could stop the advance of O. P. Nayyar. To hear Lata upon Nalini Jaywant, you sharpened your Jadoo ears. Whereas Shamshad Begum’s Jadoo vocals did the sharpening of your ears for you. Shamshad had not sung for years when O. P. Nayyar remembered her for a 1968 Kismet duet (going upon hero Biswajeet in feminine guise)! Likewise, Shamshad Begum had been rusty when she came to perform, one last time, for Naushad in Mughal-e-Azam (1960) – when she came to render Teri mehfil mein qismat aazma kar hum bhi dekhenge.

If rusty, Shamshad was still gutsy. Get to feel afresh how her contrasting vocals (going upon ‘Bahar’ Nigar Sultana) keep fluent pace with a Lata in fine fettle here (on ‘Anarkali’ Madhubala). It was as if Shamshad had never gone away from Naushad’s recording theatre. It was as if she had been standing behind Lata all the time – for her duet turn to come. Once back in front of the mike, it was as if Shamshad – even in such a toss-up situation at Naushad’s recording studio – was blithely telling our composing virtuoso: ‘Ghadi bhar ko tere nazdeek aa kar hum bhi dekhenge!’ She came, she sang, she contested. Was Lata relieved as Naushad reassuringly told her that she would never be seeing the Begum again?

But now Shamshad Begum was back centre-stage – with Naushad, too, very much in the fray. How? Over to that Wednesday evening of 11 February 1970. Over to an hour in which, to Lata’s disquiet, the Shamshad Begum Nite had seen that sidetracked singer bringing down the house. A noteworthy success that Shamshad Begum Nite turned out to be. It was a show lit up by 13 of our dauntless performer’s life-and-times sparklers rendered with piquancy and panache. With Naushad there on the stage, I had expected Shamshad to favour that composer in her evening listing. But Shamshad, in her selection, showed that she saw no reason to be ultra-grateful to the talismanic Naushad when others, too, had contributed, in a remarkable manner, to her sustained success. In this beacon light, Shamshad Begum’s song picks for the occasion make winsome viewing in the order in which they came that nite without an end:

1. Master Ghulam Haider’s Eik teraa sahaara eik teraa sahaara – on Mehtab in Shama, 1946 (song-lyric: Ehsan Rizvi and Shamim);

2. Naushad’s Aag lagi tann mann mein dil ko padaa thaamna – on Sheela Naik in Aan, 1952 (song-lyric: Shakeel Badayuni);

3. O. P. Nayyar’s Boojh meraa kyaa naanv re nadi kinaare gaanv re – on Minu Mumtaz in C.I.D., 1956 (song-lyric: Majrooh Sultanpuri);

4. Nashad (Shaukat Dehelvi)’s Badi mushkil se dil ki beqaraari ko qaraar aaya – on Nadira in Nagma, 1953 (song-lyric: Nakshab);

5. Nashad (Shaukat Dehelvi)’s Kaahe jaadoo kiyaa mujh ko itnaa bataa jaadoogar baalama jaadoogar baalama – on Nadira in Nagma, 1953 (song-lyric: Nakshab);

6. Ghulam Haider’s Nainaa bhar aaye neer mere hateele raaja – on Veena in Humayun, 1945 (song-lyric: Anjum Pilibhiti and Kavi Shaant);

7. S. D. Burman’s Saiyyaan dil mein aana re aa ke phir na jaana re – on Vyjayanthimala, making her Hindustani cine debut in Bahar, 1951 (song-lyric: Rajendra Krishna);

8. O. P. Nayyar’s O le ke pahelaa-pahelaa pyaar bhar ke aankhon mein khumaar – with Mohammed Rafi: on Sheela Vaz and Shyam Kapoor in C.I.D., 1956 (song-lyric: Majrooh Sultanpuri);

9. C. Ramchandra’s Aana meri jaan meri jaan Sunday ke Sunday aana – with Chitalkar (C. Ramchandra himself): on Rehana, Mumtaz Ali and Dulari in Shehnai, 1947 (song-lyric: Pyare Lal Santoshi); [Shamshad began by vocally replicating, on the stage, the ‘native’ edition of this song too, the edtion rendered on the screen by Meena Kapur with Chitalkar (as picturized on village girl Dulari and Mumtaz Ali)];

10. O. P. Nayyar’s Kajra mohabbat waala akhiyon mein aesaa daala – with Asha Bhosle: on Biswajeet and Babita in Kismet, 1968 (song-lyric: Shamsul Huda Bihari);

11. O. P. Nayyar’s Meri neendon mein tum mere khwaabon mein tum – with Kishore Kumar: on Kishore Kumar and Meena Kumari in Naya Andaz, 1956 (song-lyric: Jan Nisar Akhtar);

12. Naushad’s Chhod babul ka ghar mohe pi ke nagar – on Nargis in Babul, 1950 (song-lyric: Shakeel Badayuni);

13. S. D. Burman’s Yeh duniya roop ki chor bachaa le mujhe baabu – on Kamini Kaushal in Shabnam, 1949 (song-lyric Qamar Jalalabadi: Om Parkash Bhandari in real life).

No favours there to Naushad for his august stage presence that evening! In fact, the Shamshad listing sounded to be astutely carried out to remind our composing wizard that there always was a Nashad to oblige her, if Naushad had no value for her any more. A Nashad invented by songwriter Nakshab when Naushad refused to work with the well-known poet of that name in 1952. You thus sensed Shamshad to be settling scores with Naushad, through Nashad, that evening. You felt the current, as you recalled that Shamshad was no less cut up with C. Ramchandra, S. D. Burman and O. P. Nayyar – for those three having, equally summarily, downgraded her. Chitalkar Ramchandra had profusely apologized – ‘I came under the spell of that woman you know so well as Lata Mangeshkar!’ he had agonized. This while receiving Shamshad Begum truly warmly at his Santa Cruz Sargam bungalow as she took her invitation to him. Upon S. D. (Shabnam-Bahar) Burman, Shamshad did not bother even to call. She argued, with all the Punjab vigour at her command, that Dada Burman was so timid that he would disappear into the upper floor of The Jet bungalow in Khar, the instant she rang the bell – happy to let his wife Meera face the Shamshad music.

O. P. Nayyar, in spite of being present at his Marine Drive Sharda home (in an inside room), had left it to his lyricist-wife, Saroj ‘Mohini’ Nayyar (of Preetam aan milo C. H. Atma fame), to handle Shamshad as she visited him. Even while pronouncing Nayyar – for this act of his far from gallant – to be ‘the only coward to have come out of the Punjab’, Shamshad chose no fewer than four OP songs that evening, just to ‘show’ Naushad. A Naushad who, some 27 months earlier (22-23 October 1967) had extended to Shamshad Begum, via Vividh Bharati’s ‘Vishesh Jaymala’ radio programme, a rare favour. During that 22-23 October 1967 weekend, almost atoningly, Naushad had chosen to play – as one of two Baiju Bawra numbers to be heard in that programme going all over India – the Shamshad-dominated Duur koee gaaye dhun yeh sunaaye. Lata and Rafi, remember, had merely joined in on Duur koee gaaye. Conclusion – Naushad could not, a full 15 years after the occasion, forget that Duur koee gaaye was the end-October 1952 Baiju Bawra stunner with which he had begun the convenient process of shelving Shamshad to facilitate a Lata takeover in his recording room.

If Naushad at all noticed those Nashad and other barbs of Shamshad that evening, he gave no indication on the podium. In fact, Naushad put back the onus upon Shamshad by hailing her, that evening, as the only ‘transparent’ voice of her kind. That way Naushad, if sorry, was not one to worry. He always acted in the way his career curve dictated. If Shamshad (as brought out in Chapter 8) happened to be the one to lose out to Lata in the resultant churning, that is how the Cuckoo crumbles. Dar na mohabbat kar le should have been telling the Begum dethroned that this nacheez called Naushad did such things with an Andaz that no other composer could bring to the art of measured marginalizing.

Still, after such an enthusiastic public response that evening, Begum buffs had expected music directors to give Shamshad a second hearing. All the more so after Naushad, as chief guest on the Shanmukhananda Hall rostrum that evening, had been roundly applauded for a rousing speech that he delivered upon the vocal miracles that Shamshad Begum had performed for his career. Ending it by most befittingly acknowledging: ‘In the success of this humble one that they call Naushad, Shamshad Begum has had a very big hand.’ Naushad had his comeuppance the morning after he made bold to say that on the Wednesday of 11 February 1970. Lata, in her own canny way, made it clear to Naushad that, since he avowedly had another vocal string to his bow, she should be excused from singing for him in his film to come! Remember, Lata was no novice to be giving up on a composing phenomenon like Naushad. Lata had artfully calculated that – in the March 1964–November 1968 meltdown – Leader, Saaz Aur Awaz, Dil Diya Dard Liya, Palki, Sunghursh, Aadmi and Saathi had, each, come a cropper. In such a tragic stumble of Naushad to the bargain basement, even given the positive Radio Ceylon-Vividh Bharati response evoked by his music in five of those seven flop films, Lata saw that Naushad faced a possible career crunch. It was her moment to strike.

If only because, in his only film to succeed in that fatal phase, Ram Aur Shyam (July 1967), Naushad had already looked inclined to favour Asha Bhosle (no fewer than three numbers to her). He had confined Lata, in that B. Nagi Reddi chartbuster, to a single duet with Rafi – Main hoon saaqi tuu hai sharabi sharabi (albeit upon Waheeda Rehman and Dilip Kumar). Nor did the fact go unnoticed by diva Lata that, out of a total of seven songs in such a Madras big bang, her lone Ram Aur Shyam solo (Maine kab tum se kahaa thha ki mujhe pyaar karo) had not got to the stage of being picturized at all (upon Waheeda Rehman). So shall we say that Lata had reason to believe that Asha, by 1967, was beginning to displace her in Naushad’s recording affections? As many as four Naushad numbers to Mohammed Rafi – as his favoured one – upon Dilip Kumar in Ram Aur Shyam, just one duet to Lata (if going upon Waheeda Rehman alongside Dilip Kumar) was not our Mangeshkar nova’s idea of Naushad according a tuneful titan, like her, due vocal recognition. Lata had not fought off Shamshad Begum’s omnipresence in Naushad’s recording room only to be shunted from there, now, with a mere duet – the kind of ‘courtesy’ duet with which our Mangeshkar ‘Maharani’ had begun her (1949 Chandni Raat) association with our composer of composers.

On balance, having spoken up for Shamshad Begum during that Wednesday Nite of 11 February 1970, the future looked bleak for Naushad. With K. Asif’s Love and God hopelessly stuck, our maestro had only one major film in hand by the end of what had proved to be the decade deadly in his case. This was Vyjayanthimala and Rajendra Kumar’s Ganwaar at a time when even that megastar was beginning to feel the onset of the Rajesh Khanna Aradhana wave – a wave touching all heroes by late 1969. Do note how in Ganwaar (May 1970) – following the Shamshad Begum Nite – there is no Lata at all. I had therefore made it my business to attend the (March 1969) first recording of Ganwaar. The idea was to gauge Naushad’s composing gut following a chain of setbacks through 1968: Aadmi, Sunghursh and Saathi. Thus had I now, for Ganwaar (due by mid-1970), got to hear Asha and Rafi rendering, for Naushad, Hum se to achchi teri paayal gori ke baar-baar teraa badan choome.

This sounded a veritable poetic comedown for Naushad as penned by a Rajendra Krishna pairing with him for the first time. I discreetly took it up with our composing ace later. But Naushad remained unruffled, maintaining that there was nothing risqué about the content of that song lyric in the dehati (country) context in which it occurred in Ganwaar upon a Rajendra Kumar eve teasingly celebrating Vyjayanthimala’s pastoral seductivity. ‘Always remember,’ submitted Naushad, ‘that Rajendra Krishna is a poet, a poet not given quite the credit that he deserves. You need to get to view that opening line – as it comes over – with a certain rustic insouciance, upon Rajendra Kumar as Ganwaar, before deciding that it’s a little too suggestive. Don’t forget that we’re going hurtling into the 1970s and that cinema has changed radically in the upmarket colour era in which I am performing. Even the lyrical pattern is undergoing a transformation. Poor Shakeel had been too ill to resume writing for me [d. 20 April 1970] and I am venturing to assert myself, afresh, with different poets.’

I said nothing, knowing Naushad to be no longer master of the song situation. I rationalized it by concluding that even a Naushad had no choice but to move with the ‘chimes’. Yet the music of Ganwaar, how do you bracket it with the name of Naushad? Those Ganwaar tunes, they are embarrassing even to mention here. But worse was to come – in Tangewala (April 1972); My Friend (February 1974); Aaina (December 1974); and Sunehra Sansar (February 1975). The kindest thing that you could do by Naushad, therefore, is not to listen to his music at all in those five films. Was this indeed the Naushad who had shown far better lasting power at the helm (mid-July 1944 to end-December 1968) than Anil Biswas or C. Ramchandra or Shanker-Jaikishan? It was Shanker who had let me into the secret of how this business of chasing the mirage that is success takes its physical and mental toll. How it affects your morale. How it lowers even standards that you had set for yourself. SJ’s decline years, startlingly, had coincided with Naushad’s gradual eclipse, beginning in the middle of 1970 with Ganwaar. I mean that saddest span in an idol composer’s career by which his millions of admirers – after still entertaining expectations from him – become so disenchanted with him as to start giving up on the man.

There is no need, therefore, either to condemn or to defend Naushad for the way in which he went on to uphold Rajendra Krishna’s poetry in the opening line of that 1970 Ganwaar song. It had all to be viewed, at that hairpin bend in Naushad’s career, as the pressures exerted upon a creative mind by the highly permissive avatar that our growingly tawdry mainstream cinema came to assume by 1970. Lata (in the April of 1967) had sweetly identified Naushad as ‘confused about what to give’ (‘Naushad Saab confuse ho gaye hain kyaa denaa iske baare mein’). Were we then (in the March of 1969) hearing a Naushad who was still ‘confused about what to give’ in Ganwaar? This keeping in mind what our composing virtuoso had said in justifying the catchpenny poetry in that Ganwaar duet? In a career spanning 30 years by the time it came to the Ganwaar stretch (1940–70), there were bound to be aberrations. Let us feel grateful, therefore, that Naushad, ultimately, did make the attempt to return to his métier. This came about as he had a poet of Jan Nisar Akhtar’s credentials writing for him anew in Chambal Ki Rani (1979) – after that Tamil-to-Hindi transliterating letdown that had been the initial teaming of those two in K. Balachander’s Aaina (December 1974).

In the aftermath of the Ganwaar boycott by our nightingale, Naushad was set to make a move, on the recording chessboard, that Lata could hope to counter only by going along with him. Naushad, midway through 1971, imperiously rang up Lata to invite her to sing the aalaap (musical prelude) in the title track of Pakeezah – as a taraana forming a part of his background score for that 1972 Kamal Amrohi classic. That aalaap, in such a big-big film, was something that Lata just did not, right then, want to forgo. Did not want to forgo seeing that Naushad, in his Pakeezah background score, had blended the voice of a fresher like Vani Jairam with legendary names like Rajkumari, Naseem Chopra and Parveen Sultana. Therefore Lata came back to Naushad, smugly contending that she had only said that she would not be rendering a single song in his immediate film (to follow the Shamshad Begum Nite)! That immediate film happened to be Ganwaar (releasing May 1970).

Following that mid-1971 aalaap in Pakeezah, with the thin-skating ice broken, Lata was fully back with Naushad by 1972 itself with two Majrooh Sultanpuri solos in Tangewala upon Mumtaz – Aayi re khilaune waali aayi nainon mein kaajal daal ke and Jawaani baar-baar nahein aaye bedardaa ab to nazar milaa le. If she had expected better tunes than these from someone so innovative as our wizard, Lata should have picked something more lofty sounding than Tangewala for her Naushad ‘getback’. Lata now sang in three films, without fuss, for a Naushad composing well below his Midas touch standard – in My Friend (1974); in Aaina (1974); and in Sunehra Sansar (1975). At the end of such a prolonged non-show, Naushad – from thereon – could at least feel free, mentally, to send for Lata if he wanted. He did just that where it came to rendering two meaningful solos written by Jan Nisar Akhtar for Chambal Ki Rani (1979): Yeh bekasi ke andhere zaraa to dhalne de and Aesi najariyaa maare saanwaria.

Those two quality Lata solos, diminishingly, were set to unfold in a film featuring a sans-bindi Bindu playing Chambal Ki Rani (flanked by Amjad Khan and Dara Singh). That was a measure of the compromises that Naushad had been called upon to make at this level-crossing in his career. Violence was the neo credo of our cinema. Up against such a searchlight, it had taken Naushad quite a while to make up his mind upon whether his class of music fitted into such a gun-toting setting. As Naushad rang (after a one-year gap) for Girija and me to come over, we had reason to hope. If only because this Sangeet Samrat sent for us only when he had something musically weighty to play – only when he felt that he was composing in tune with his valorous values. ‘I was undecided about doing something like Chambal Ki Rani,’ Naushad proceeded to explain. ‘But I opted to give it a try when its makers said that I was such a big name, for them, that I could compose at the pace that I wanted. Here, as you’re listening to Aesi najariyaa maare saanwaria, it’s poetry that you’re hearing from the pen of Jan Nisar – you’re sensing that there’s a Gaud Sarang hue to my raag toning. Likewise, it’s Jan Nisar poetry that you’re sampling in Yeh bekasi ke andhere zaraa to dhalne de with a Tilang tang to its raag format.’

He waited for a reaction from us; we obliged by asking for both those songs to be played again for our delectation. On the button by himself always, Naushad played on, feeling rewarded. ‘Given a chance to create something like this, I could still turn up trumps,’ he now exulted. ‘Tell me, is it or is it not your Naushad that you just heard in Yeh bekasi ke andhere zaraa to dhalne de as in Aesi najariyaa maare saanwaria?’ It had got to a career point where, evidently, Naushad needed spot encouraging. Those two Lata solos, superbly composed and rendered, had made refreshing hearing in a cloying climate of murder and mayhem on the silver screen. Yet, as his films became fewer and fewer, calls from Ashiana to come over also got spaced out. We made it a practice, still, to visit Naushad, on our own, at least once in three months. Girija and I knew that it was at such times that someone of his towering stature got to feel left out. The hearty way in which Naushad welcomed us, each time we went there, said it all.

There was this evening, in the March of 1986, when Naushad summoned Girija and me to tell us that Akhtar Asif (wife of K. Asif) was aiming to resurrect Love and God from the cans. A bit of background to it, here, would be in place. Love and God was originally envisioned with Nimmi as Laila and Guru Dutt as Majnoon. Then, on 10 October 1964, Guru Dutt passed away and the film went into limbo. But K. Asif was merely waiting to get his act together. He next brought in that actor’s actor, Sanjeev Kumar, in place of Guru Dutt and resumed shooting. However, K. Asif himself, sadly, passed away on 9 March 1971 and the film was again shelved. Now, 15 years later, K. Asif’s wife and Dilip Kumar’s sister, Akhtar Asif, had set about seeing if she could not salvage something from the wreckage. It was to be a quick-fix thing – to quote Naushad, as he summed it up for us that day: ‘The man putting in the money is from a set-up that I don’t quite go along with after 45 years in the industry. My own feeling is that the late K. Asif’s wife Akhtar, somehow, wants to rescue and release the film. I’ve been called in to ensure musical continuity. I have to help out, seeing that K. Asif’s name is involved.’

Inside a month, he was full of regret as he noted: ‘I might as well have stayed out of it all. In a misguided effort to see that this K. Asif opus hit the screen, come what may, the Love and God prints – that I had been viewing – got taken away from me even as I was notating the film’s background score. They said that what I had composed already was more than enough – that they were releasing the film, as it stood, there and then. I pleaded: “Let me at least connect a final piece of background music to the sequence that is to follow the part on which I’m working ….” They said: “No, there’s no need, the public would be lapping up your tunes, since it is the great Naushad scoring the music in a K. Asif film again!” Just imagine my state of my mind as, by end-May 1986, Love and God was declared as ready for release. They did make their pile out of it while I got nothing. I wanted nothing – this was not K. Asif at all, he handled millions, yet he knew how to share. Love and God, as it came across, was a travesty of his memory.’

After Saathi (November 1968), not until Love and God (mid-1986) had we got to savour Naushad in all his composing splendour. In Love and God, he was teaming anew, by this pressing-on stage in his career, with Khumar Barabankvi, the poet whom he fancied the most after Shakeel Badayuni. The fact of Love and God being left incomplete did limit our Mughal’s scope to show his true calibre in that K. Asif opus. Yet such music as we got to hear from a show so disjointed as this told us that Naushad’s creative impulses were intact given thematic scope. Let us therefore now hear him out on his Love and God experiences – do bear in mind the fact that it is as late as in the March of 1986 that Naushad is speaking:

What are my memories of K. Asif himself relating to Love and God? I’m not indulging in mere rhetoric when I say that it’s a great pity that K. Asif didn’t live to see the project through. I say this because, though that visionary had discussed each musical aspect of the film with me, nothing was put down on paper. That way K. Asif was my antithesis. I’m a very ordered person; I must put down everything in writing. But how do even I get down to doing that when K. Asif’s concept of song creation and song picturization kept changing from scene to scene? People accuse me of being inflexible. They should have been there to see how resilient I had to be to adjust to the mercurial K. Asif. They should have been there, if for nothing else, to see Guru Dutt and K. Asif arguing!

As you know, in our cinema, the shooting is never done in a chronological order or according to the theme’s growth. Scenes are, more often than not, juggled with, so that sometimes the last portion gets shot first, sometimes the first portion gets shot last. But, in the case of Love and God, K. Asif didn’t conform to even this norm. He had his own sense of order rooted in disorder. From my conversations with him, I had a fair idea of what he had in mind. But then I was a music director, not a director, to be in a position to execute those ideas. However, purely as a composer-director team, we had a total understanding. All five songs, as you get to see and hear them in Love and God, were picturized by K. Asif himself. In this sense, the music of Love and God, as it unwinds, is a testimony to the scale of collaboration that I could achieve only in idealist K. Asif’s company. Take the all-important theme song, Mohabbat khuda hai. It was in seven parts, running through the film like a binding thread. But K. Asif had got down to picturizing only three parts of the song – that, too, in mid-shots and long shots – when he so abruptly left us. That stalwart had happily completed 70 per cent of Love and God before that. It was the remaining 30 per cent that found these people so hopelessly groping. K. Asif had so many assistants but they knew so much, and no more, about how the theme finally coalesced.

Naushad had to do the Love and God re-recording by mixing no fewer than five previous recordings. He did so by taking only those portions of the film that were still usable after being retrieved from the godowns of three studios in Bombay. ‘We all know,’ said Naushad, ‘that the film is incomplete. To this extent it’s to be viewed, not with a critical eye, but with a sense of history. It’s to be viewed as a labour of love involving three greats no more with us: K. Asif; Guru Dutt; and Sanjeev Kumar who passed away but months ago [6 November 1985],’ rounded off Naushad.

For our part, in Love and God, the moment we hear Rafi’s voice under the Naushad baton, we are gripped by a tremendous sense of nostalgia. This is Rafi being heard nearly six years after that singing Atlas had so suddenly departed on 31 July 1980. ‘You never could replace such a gifted singer so multifaceted,’ reflected Naushad. ‘Just hear Rafi in Allah tere saath hai Maula tere saath hai from Love and God and you discern that you can’t get another voice in such tremendous sur (harmony). So, too, in the Lata case of Pyaar kehte hai jise shola hai woh shabnam nahein. Tell me, how many years is it since you heard Lata in such voice? Admittedly she sang very well for me in Chambal Ki Rani [1979]. But after that …’

As you heard Naushad so speaking, you felt fascinated by the extent of his journey through the musical panorama of the cinema in India. Starting in 1940 with Prem Nagar, it had proved to be a career so eventful that it was bound to be judged harshly when things began to go awry. As they must go awry in a composing lifetime stretching to 65 years. Flickers of the old creativity are all that you could logically hope – later – to glimpse in a career so long drawn. That Naushad declined with the years is no cause for wonder. That he uplifted himself so inspirationally with Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story in 2005 is what brought a fairy-tale ending to a career with a story-book beginning. What a joy it was to see Naushad giving the finishing musical touches to that ‘period’ pic. Making light of the serious leg trouble that he had developed, he looked a spry 85, as the film gave him all opportunity to rediscover his roots in Urdu poetry.

With Naushad the poetry always came first, the music after. The magic of his music lay in the fact that you never discovered where the poetry merged with the music, where the music merged with the poetry. Shakeel’s poetry and Naushad’s music just intertwined. It was a treat to watch their nok-jhonk (give and take) while the two were at work. As they interacted, so eloquent was the contribution of Naushad that you did fall to introspecting about why he did not write the song himself. But you also saw that, for all his intervention, Naushad left it to Shakeel in the end. ‘My mind views the poetry tunefully,’ explained Naushad. ‘Its function is to ensure that poetry remains poetry, yet is “singable” poetry. It’s with such an objective in mind that I make an intervention. The idea is to attain a poetic musicality in attuning to Shakeel’s verse.

‘I’m here merely asking Shakeel if something that he’s written for me could not be improved in a more hummable way – without sacrificing poetic content. The aim is to keep it poetic in a style that would make the heart sing. But the final word, here, had to be Shakeel’s and Shakeel’s alone. As I chipped in with my musically poetic interpolations, Shakeel formed an idea of how precisely I wanted the tune to swirl. Then he took it home and returned with the final draft. This final draft I found, without fail, to be incorporating – in Urdu verse – the streaming musical surge that I had wanted in the song. After that it was a matter of minutes before I okayed his final draft. Shakeel instinctually understood the flowing way in which I wanted it done. He was an amazingly patient listener for a poet of his sensibilities.

‘We began teaming with Kardar’s Natak [1947] for which Shakeel wrote four songs. I found that Shakeel suited my poetic temperament so well that I gave him all 10 songs of Kardar’s Dard [mid-1947] to write. He wrote well, very well; he picked up confidence as he saw each song that he penned for me to be proving a hit. After that, I wanted Shakeel to write all 12 songs for Mehboob’s Anokhi Ada [releasing 17 September 1948]. But there were three leftover songs penned by Anjum Pilibhiti that Mehboob wanted used, if possible, in Anokhi Ada. That saw Shakeel writing the remaining nine songs of Anokhi Ada. Anjum [Pilibhiti] had written, before Anokhi Ada, only one song for me – for Mehboob’s Anmol Ghadi [1946]. It had been a memorable song though – Kyaa mil gayaa bhagvan tumhen dil ko dukhaa ke. Noorjehan’s vocal elasticity made all the difference here.

‘By the Anokhi Ada start stage – that would be mid-1947 – I had more or less made up my mind upon it being Shakeel all the way. Shakeel wrote all eleven songs of Mela [1948]; it was our first golden jubilee together and he felt fulfilled. But there was another commitment, Majrooh Sultanpuri stood already assigned for Mehboob’s Andaz [1949]. What’s there left for me to say about a cult film like Andaz? Majrooh’s ten Andaz songs for me have deservedly passed into the realm of lore. Yet I was clear in my mind that it had to be Shakeel, for me, from that point. Did you say that Shakeel and I collaborated upon 22 films in succession? They are more, surely? In all, we did 30 films, you now say. A total of 30 films in which, you tell me, that Shakeel wrote a mind-blowing 316 songs for me. Yes, 30 films together is more like it. But how was it only 22 earlier?’

I clarified that what I had thereby meant was that Shakeel and Naushad teamed on 22 films in a row. Thereupon Naushad responded with: ‘Now I understand. Apart from breaks in the early days of my collaboration with Shakeel, you say that Saaz Aur Awaz and Khumar Barabankvi came as an interruption in 1966. I clean forgot about that film.’

Eminently forgettable was Saaz Aur Awaz. Neither Subodh Mukerji directing nor Saira Banu and Joy Mukerji playing the leads, here, was in tune with the tone of Naushad’s music embodying a rare ‘classicolouring’. Rafi just slipped into the Raag Patdeep matrix (if on Joy Mukerji) in Saaz ho tum awaz hoon main. In the same Raag Patdeep, now, did Naushad, matchingly, present Lata (on Saira Banu) via Paayaliyaa baawri baaje. No less proud was Naushad of the depth of feeling that he got Suman Kalyanpur to impart to Poonam ki raat aayi dil ki muraad laayi with its Raag Marwa shadings (on danseuse Padma Khanna). Yet, after all this, the one song that you had to stop to hear was Asha with Rafi – Tum ishq ki mehfil ho tum husn ka jalwaa ho (on Saira Banu and Joy Mukerji). Absorbing the essence of Asha here, you felt astounded by the fact that there was a time, in the 1950s, when Naushad had no ear for this differently blessed younger sister of Lata. Through Tum ishq ki mehfil ho tum husn ka jalwaa ho you discerned – under Naushad by the April 1966 Saaz Aur Awaz stage – that Asha had been shaped, rotundly, into the singer supreme by O. P. Nayyar.

Following the fiscal fiasco that was the lavishly mounted Saaz Aur Awaz, there was one significant development little known. This was Shakeel Badayuni taking ill even as he, spasmodically, wrote out the seven songs of Ram Aur Shyam (1967); the six songs of Aadmi (1968); and the seven songs of Sunghursh (1968). Thus did Majrooh Sultanpuri and Naushad get together afresh – nearly 20 years after Andaz – on Saathi (coming in November 1968). This only after Naushad began doing a serious rethink in the matter of the teaming of composer and songwriter. Observed Naushad: ‘I ran into Jaikishan at this point in time and he told me all about how Shanker had got into no end of difficulty with a number of songwriters, once Shailendra was no more’ [by 14 December 1966]. ‘This was when Jaikishan decided – continued Naushad – ‘that it was no longer advisable to work with only Hasrat Jaipuri. “Hasrat continued to write for me, of course,” Jaikishan told Naushad. But Jaikishan decided as a point of principle from then onwards – he further informed Naushad – to work with more than one poet.’

Maybe Jaikishan had a case there, because Naushad, too, began doing the same thing. Following Saathi (end-1968), it was Naushad pairing with Rajendra Krishna in Ganwaar (1970); with Hasrat Jaipuri in My Friend (1974); with Anand Bakshi in Sunehra Sansar (1975); with Jan Nisar Akhtar in Aaina (1974) and Chambal Ki Rani (1979); with Khumar Barabankvi in Love and God (1986); with Majrooh Sultanpuri in Tangewala (1972), Dharam Kanta (1982) and Guddu (1995); with Hasan Kamaal in Awaaz De Kahan Hai (1990) and Teri Payal Mere Geet (1992); and, finally, in 2005, with Naqsh Lyallpuri and Syed Gulrez in Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story. With no real box-office impact. Not with one of them did Naushad jell in the way he had tuned with Shakeel Badayuni. Not even with Majrooh Sultanpuri could he recapture the Andaz aura.

Yet, as the ‘King of Couplets’, Naushad lived as much for poetry as for music. Here, there was one surprise that he had yet to spring upon me. As Naushad shuffled off this mortal coil (on 5 May 2006) and as we stood grieving for his soul in the Ashiana drawing room, whom should I be seeing there but India’s eminent criminal lawyer Majeed Memon. I came away thinking that Majeed Memon must have helped out Naushad with some legal matter. Since that advocate had given me his card, I rang him up and could you possibly visualize what he told me? ‘Forget my legal side,’ he said, ‘I met Naushad Saab regularly for something far removed from my profession, something highly elevating. Believe it or not, we would be meeting to exchange the best in Urdu poetry. First Naushad Saab would recite something; I would respond; then he would recite something else …’

Poetry knows no law, I suppose. Aathwan Sur (‘With best wishes to Raju Bharatan and Girija Rajendran’), as autographed by ‘Naushad Ali’ on ‘26-4-92’, is an illuminating collection of this composer’s own poetry. What a pity that there is little scope to discuss it here, since each poetic Urdu quote had to carry an English translation for this international edition. The moment you translate the Urdu original, its beauty is lost. Let Aathwan Sur be. Let me whet your appetite by citing, from that work of art, lines in just one Naushad nazm. A verse that translates itself as it stands in Urdu, it is a nazm that has the poet in Naushad pining for a paradise lost, for a Lucknowi paradise lost, in a vein of:

Dil mujh se keh rahaa hai Naushad chal yahaan se
Yeh ajnabee fazaa hai bus ab nikal yahaan se
Tuu jis ko dhoondhta hai yeh woh nagar nahein hai
Yeh shehar woh hai jis mein teraa guzar nahein hai
Ab sirf Lakhnau ke afsaane rah gaye hain
Apnaa nahein hai koee begaane rah gaye hain
Ab ahl-e-Lakhnau mein pehli si khoo kahaan hai?
Dil jis ko dhoondhta hai woh Lakhnau kahaan hai?

______________________

¹ From Musical Pictures’ Jadoo (1951), directed by A. R. Kardar. Music by Naushad. Song-lyric by Shakeel Badayuni. Rendered by Shamshad Begum and chorus.