DEEPA (Vidya Sinha) and Navin (Dinesh Thakur) were in college together and were lovers until she got tired of his firebrand politics. She is now in a relationship with Sanjay (Amol Palekar), a Delhi-based clerk. A job interview brings Deepa from Delhi to Bombay. It is here that she runs into Navin again. Navin’s love for Deepa, she surmises, has not waned. Unlike Navin, who is punctual, attentive to her and makes genuine effort to help her in Bombay, Sanjay is never on time for his dates with Deepa, frequently forgets things that matter to her, and is too engrossed in narrating his own experiences to listen to what she has to say. Deepa is torn between the two men in her life, a predicament the song articulates. Interestingly enough, and in what seems a masterstroke, Salil Chowdhury overrides intuition and scores the song on a male playback.
‘The base metre is a standard 2x4 one with syncopated beats used to great innovative effect,’ say fiddler Nandu Chavathe and his son, Rohan. The latter has flowered into an established bass guitarist under the mentorship of veteran guitarist, Ramesh Iyer. There is also a touch of the bossa nova in the rhythm albeit cloaked.
The intro starts off with the first two lines, sung without any rhythm accompaniment, followed by an offbeat pick-up on the drums. The trademark trumpet solo (something that seemed to have become Chowdhury’s favourite instrument since Anand, replacing the flute) follows. The prelude is woven in an almost jazz-like progression with spanning octaves. After a thirty-second prelude, the actual song begins.
‘Kai baar yun bhi’ marks one of the rare occasions in Mukesh’s career when he wasn’t singing for a hero. In this song, he is singing for the story. And he is dazzling in his tonal modulation and his sensitivity to the song’s theme, almost telling film-makers that they might have missed out on leveraging voices by using them purely as playback. Mukesh’s sonorous voice and heartfelt rendition are brilliantly supplemented by the brass/wind obbligatos in the song. The twenty-one-second interlude, used before both the stanzas, is done mostly on strings, percussion, piccolo and the drums, and generates sense of urgency as there is little movement by the characters in the sequence.
The entire song plays over a taxi ride. Navin is sitting next to Deepa, who can be seen tentatively touching the windowpane to her right, almost as if she wants to increase the distance between herself and Navin. Navin’s hand accidentally touches Deepa’s blue sari, making her shiver. Images of Deepa and Sanjay cuddling inside a taxi invade her mind, but only to be replaced with images of her and Navin being amorous in the same cab.
Poet Yogesh paints Deepa’s indecision with his legendary intellect. Does Deepa really have a choice? Is she sure that Navin will confess his love for her? Or does she hope he will? But why does she hope for this if she has already committed herself to Sanjay? Mannu Bhandari’s (the author on whose story, ‘Yehi Sach Hai’, Rajnigandha is based) Deepa is far ahead of her time.
Writing lyrics to something based on thought rather than action was not easy. Yogesh had to constantly reference the script for finer details. As he says, ‘There was a dialogue in the film “Jo samne hai wohi sach hai”. Now, there may be someone in mind, but the truth is what the eyes behold. So the mind breaks through the boundary to reality. That’s how I came upon the lines Yeh jo mann ki seema rekha, mann todne lagta hai.’
Basu Chatterjee, in a tribute to Yogesh, says, ‘“Kai baar yun bhi dekha hai” was based on a Bangla song by Salil, “Ami cholte cholte theme gechi”. Yogesh’s words summed up the film’s essence well.’ Yogesh, Salil Chowdhury and Basu Chatterjee narrate the story of Rajnigandha in this song, stealing the proverbial thunder from the official title track sung by Lata Mangeshkar.
Yogesh says, ‘For the title song, Basu-da sketched the outline of a man arriving to meet the woman with a bouquet of Rajnigandha stalks. There was a background score in Mere Bhaiyya (1972) with a lot of sax and flute pieces. I suggested to Salil-da that the same tune be used for the title song of Rajnigandha and he did just that. After the recording, Didi [Lata] personally told me, “Bahut achha likha hai.” For me it was a memorable day.’
Something odd happened after the recording of the Lata title solo. Yogesh reveals a behind-the-scene incident. ‘There was some discussion between Salil-da and Basu-da. When I enquired, Salil-da said, “Basu-da is saying that the song has come out lengthier by a few seconds.” Perplexed I enquired how this was possible. And even if this was so, all that needed to be done was to edit the extra seconds and not shoot the extra bit. It was then that we were told that the song sequence had already been shot! (Usually the songs are recorded prior to the shooting of the sequence). That was because the song was in the background and hence had no lip sync. I had written the second antara as “Apna unka kya du parichay/pichle janmon ke naate hain/har baar badalkar ye kaya/hum dono milne aate hain/ dharti ke is aangan me, Rajnigandha phool tumhare”. I saw the sequence, felt something missing in my lyrics, ran into the Irani hotel across the road and changed the second antara. To Basu-da it would have made no difference but I would have rued the fact that I did not connect with the character properly.’
Selling Rajnigandha to financers and distributors was a tough proposition. Suresh Jindal, during the promotion of his film, found prospective buyers making comments like ‘Kis ki gandha? Class ki boo ati hai.’ (What is this ‘Gandha’? The film reeks of class.) Incidentally, Chatterjee had plans to do the film with a more saleable star cast. In the process, the star cast went through multiple changes. He shares some trivia about the same: ‘Vidya was doing some film at that time, but I saw her photo in a magazine and liked her. Prior to that we had seen four or five girls for Rajnigandha, of which Aparna Sen was one and Sharmila Tagore was another. I was also doing Manzil with Amitabh Bachchan then, and I thought of asking him if he would like to play the role of Sanjay. I also had Shashi Kapoor in mind for the role of Navin. Shashi had to be left out as he did not want me to sell the film to distributors for anything less than the prevalent rates. I then thought of Samit Bhanja for the role. Meanwhile, Aparna Sen said, “This is an ordinary story. Don’t give me money. Give me something in kind. Also, take any new actor if you have to, but not any B-grade actor”, referring to Bhanja. I had agreed upon the Bombay stars, and had also thought of giving Aparna a Fiat car that would cost Rs 32,000. Suresh Jindal, the producer, was okay with the arrangement. But both the producer and I were sceptical about star tantrums. That is when we zeroed on Vidya, Amol and Dinesh.’
Thus, Rajnigandha introduced two newcomers to Hindi cinema: Vidya Sinha and JJ School of Arts pass-out, Amol Palekar though, for all practical purposes, Vidya had acted in Raja Kaka released earlier. The film won the Filmfare Best Film award in both the popular as well as the critics’ categories. ‘Since Mukesh won the National Award for Best Male Playback for “Kai baar yun bhi”, he sang “Yeh din kya aaye” (Chhoti Si Baat, 1975) for free,’ says Chatterjee.
Marathi theatre artiste Amol Palekar’s career took off after Rajnigandha. He became the quintessential Everyman of Hindi cinema, a character hitherto not seen. He made being ordinary fashionable. Vidya Sinha, on the other hand, might have scaled greater heights had she not crossed over to mainstream cinema. The aesthetic of the 1970s mainstream cinema did not quite suit a woman of her reserve and intelligence. Her predicament may have been similar to what Yogesh penned in the last antara of ‘Kai baar’: ‘Jaanoon na, jaanoon na, uljhan ye jaanoon na, suljhaaun kaise kuchh samajh na pauun.’