Light of the Universe: Essays on Hindustani Film Music 8188789070, 9788188789078

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ht of the Universe

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ys on Hindustani Film music Ashraf Aziz

2075

2003

READINGS This series from Three Essays Collective focuses on those works of schol~ arship wbich touch upon issues of contemporary concern. They address a wide range of themes in history, society, politics, culture, eJucation and meJia. South Asian themes would preJominate, but not exhaust, the scope of these publications. Titles in this series would familiarise readers with the current debates in their respective fields, even aa they enlarge the field of enquiry.

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Light of the Universe

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Light of the Universe Essays on Hindustani Film. Music

Three Essays COLLECTIVE

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copyright CThree Essays, 2003 AU rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any mcans,clectronic or mechanical, including photocopying,rccording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN Hb 81-88789-07-0 Pb 8l -88789-06-2

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This modest book is dedicated to the loving memory of my dear brothers: M.AyubAziz M. Akram Aziz

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Contents

Introduction xv NoorJahan Portrait of a Female Indo-Pakistani Artist 1 Lyrical Griefwork The genius of Sajjad Hussain 25 Shailendra The Lyrical Romance of Suicide 37 Baiju Bawra Musical Reaction or Revolution? 83 The Fetnale Voice in Hindustani Film Songs 115

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Acknowledgements

The love of the popular Hindustani film and its music is the gift to me of my brothers, Ayub Aziz and Akram Aziz, who are no more. I have not met many people who love the popular Indian film as they did. How deeply I miss them! The very first time I read an analysis of the popular Hindustani film song was in the early 1950s; it was an article by Mr. Raju Bharatan. I have always regarded him my guru, although we have never actually met. I also humbly acknowledge my debt to Mr. Nalin Shah, Ms Girija Rajendran and Mr. V.A.K. Ranga Rao. They write for the popular press, yet their works contain profound thoughts about our cinema music. They are our pioneers in the field and deserve our deep gratitude. I am also very grateful to Ms Vijaylaxmi Desaram (The Voice of America) and to Prof. Javrimal Parakh (IGNOU, New Delhi) for their encouragement and good wishes.

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Foreword Prof. J.M. Parakh Indira Gandhi National Open University

I first heard of Dr. Mohd. Ashraf Aziz from a friend Ms Vijaylaxmi, who works with the Hindi Service of Voice of America. She had read my article on cinema in the Hindi journal Kathan and called all the way from Washington, D.C. In our discussion she mentioned that one of her friends, Dr. Mohd. Ashraf Aziz had also liked it and he would write to me directly. I think it was August 1999. Some days later, I received a letter from Aziz Sahib. It was accompanied by two audiocassettes. Listening to those audiocassettes was an incredible experience. It was an experience that opened a new world for me, a world that was unknown to me until then. I have always appreciated Hindi film music as a vehicle of unity in India's diversity. I am also aware of its nostalgic influence on people of Indian origin living abroad. But I was unprepared for such forceful expression where cine-music actually assumes an influence whereby the Hindi films and music become the soul of the India of those people's desires and dreams. A popular medium can become the beacon for many people to look into the past and distant present. The narrative in these cassettes intertwined film songs with the history of the Hindustani film music, the lives, times and history of the people of Indian origin. Replete with rich

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experiences, incidents and emotions, it became a profoundly moving and aesthetic experience for me, an experience I had never had even as I grew up with these very songs. Familiar songs • acquired a new meaning as I listened to this radio programme on the cassettes. This was my first contact with him. Later, we often exchanged our writings and ideas on Hindi cinema and South Asian culture. When I read his articles, I felt that his analysis of Hindi cinema and film music was unique in many ways. That popular music could also be analyzed so successfully in terms of its socio-political context was a revelation to me. His articles on Hindustani film songs, renowned singer Noorjahan, musicians Sajjad Hussain and Naushad, lyricist Shailendra, and analysis of films like Awara,Baiju Bawra, Kaghaz ke Phool provoke and even stun by their bolsness and sweep. Although I agreed with his perspective and approach, I have not always fully agreed with his conclusions. This however is no reflection of his power of argument and analysis. In one letter to Mr. Lalit Mohan Joshi, editor of South Asian Cinema, he wrote, "It is my view that contemporary Indian (South Asian) reality cannot be understood without assessments of its popular cinema. It is this cinema - the expression of the ordinary person's dreams and aspirations - through which democracy expresses (or otherwise) itself:' In another letter to him, he wrote, "So the biggest problem with the popular Hindustani /Hindi Film is the failure of critical analysis, failure of knowledgeable people to evaluate this kind of film. There is no justification for considering Satyajit Ray superior to Bimal Roy or Mehboob Khan. They made different kinds of audiences. How can one compare apples and oranges? We are mixing categories. It betrays a failure of logic of analysis:' This is the passion and perspective he brings to his writings. Whether we agree with him or not, we enjoy reading him.

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The article on Noorjahan expresses his view that an artist should be evaluated not only in the light of his/her artistic contribution but also his/her contribution to society as an artist and as a person, as well as the way his/her personality reflects the face of history of his/her time. The same criterion applies to the creative work of an artist. The articles on Sajjad Hussain and Shailendra show that Ashraf Aziz is concerned not only the sociopolitical aspects of their art but that he also uses psychoanalytical method for an in-depth analysis of their works. His article on Shailendra's songs is remarkable in many ways. Film songs are written for predetermined situations that inhibit the creative freedom of the writer. But Shailendra used this limitation in a very imaginative manner. Aziz sahib carefully reveals the peculiar ~ imagery and vocabulary of his songs. This specific imagery can be understood better if we know more about Shailendra. Shailendra (1923-1966} was born in a Bhojpuri-speaking Dalit family in rural Uttar Pradesh, which had its origin in Punjab. As a young man he joined the progressive cultural movement and became one of the well-known faces of IPTA (Indian People's Theatre Association), the harbingers of anti-imperialist and antifeudal expression in theatre and performing arts. Beginning in late 1930s, IPTA, along with PWA (Progressive Writers' Association), became the most powerful current which radically re-drafted the cultural agenda in art, literature, theatre and cinema in all the modern Indian languages and regions. Shailendra, who had earlier worked as a railwayman in Jhansi and been involved in trade union activities, later emerged as a popular revolutionary song-writer. He also translated a number of important political and cultural works into Hindi. He coined one of the most enduring slogans of the working class in the subcontinent: har zor-zulum ki takkar men, sangharsh hamara nara hai. In the late 40s, in one of the IPTA

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programmes, when Raj Kapoor heard Shailendra's poems, he offered him the opportunity to write the lyrics for his next film. Shailendra initially refused, but changed his mind when circumstances meant he needed the income after the birth of his son. The film was Barsaat, starting a partnership which lasted till the end. Today India is passing through very challenging times. India's composite culture and its rich heritage built by all communities and nationalities, which is reflected not only in our art and literature but also in our popular media like cinema, is under grave threat. The threat comes from chauvinistic and ultra-right wing forces who wish to destroy the social fabric and its constitutional basis in order to establish a fascist state. These forces are now trying to influence even the popular cinema. This is a dangerous development. Asharaf Aziz's articles on the Hindi cinema will certainly give us a proper perspective to understand it. Hindustani cinema is a common heritage of South Asia, and it can strengthen the unity of South Asian people of the different nations and communities.

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Introduction

I think there is in so-called popular music a kind of absolute excellence. Stephen Jay Gould

Despite condescending remarks by leading theoreticians of the cinema, the popular Hindustani (Hindi/Urdu) film continues to multiply, thrive and enthral! audiences in the developing world. This film first went into production when Mahatma Gandhi led the march from Sabarmati to Dandi beach (1930) to protest excessive taxation on salt by the British colonial government. Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that the popular film was a protest - in speech, song, dance and graphics - against • oppression. Based on its longevity, retelling of old Indian myths, mass appeal, and principles based on traditional aesthetic theories, it can be argued that the Bombay musical constitutes the national cinema of India. All other cinemas of India (including Satyajit Ray's Bengali art films and Shyam Benegal's amalgam of the art and popular Hindi film - the "alternative" Indian cinema ) are later elaborations of the basic Indian film. They are part of the diverse cinemas of India. On the other hand the Bombay musical,

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due to its acceptance on the urban street as well as in the village (where it now reaches via television), is a barometer of the aspirations of the Indian people. No discussion of Indian culture and democracy is feasible in entirety without a discussion of the popular film and the principal ingredient which makes it popular - its songs. However, no single feature of the Hindustani popular film baffles serious international critics more than its soundtrack, especially "those songs" (Satyajit Ray). To non-Indians the song sequences - even more than dances - so fragment the film narrative as to render it incoherent. Clearly, as long as the song of the popular Hindustani film remains opaque, serious critical appraisal of the popular Hindustani film is out of the question. Not until the Hindustani film song is decoded will the international critics be able to study and really appreciate the popular film. On the other hand, for Indian audiences no single feature of their popular cinema is as natural as its songs; it is these songs which give emotional and spiritual meaning to the narrative. The film remains in their hearts and minds long after it has ceased to be a visual experience. Many, many Indian movies, including the first talkie (Alam Ara), continue to live only as songs. For South Asians (and audiences of the popular Indian film throughout the developing world) the song does not interrupt the narrative - it is the narrative. So ubiquitous is the Hindustani film song in South Asia (and among the South Asian communities in diaspora) that it seems, to its people at least, that this song type has always existed. That is not the case at all. The cinema song began-its life in the 30s and 40s; even in the 50s furious experimentation by Naushad, Shankar-Jaikishan and Salil Chaudhury in the use ofsophisticated "western style" orchestration techniques continued. It was during

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those years that Indian cinema music composers created the larger Indian orchestra made of Indian and Western instruments. It can even be argued that the Indian film song is still - especially in the hands of creative artists such as Ilyaraja and A.R. Rahman - very much evolving. · There is a bitter irony in the fact that Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Allah Rakha, Chaturlal and others are given exclusive credit for developing the first dialogue between Indian music, jazz, and with (Western) symphonic music. This is only partly true. Long before these experiments, which occurred in the United States, Indian cinema music composers, Naushad, ShankarJaikishan and Salil Choudhury, had done pioneering work in employing large orchestras in their raga-based songs. Similarly C. Ramchandra, Shyam Sunder, Sajjad, O.P. Nayyar and ShankarJaikishan had succeeded in employing jazz, rock-and-roll, doo wop, rhumba, tango and the samba in many Indian cinema songs. To this day these composers have not been recognized for their brilliant experiments in fusing the music of the East and the West. This unfortunate neglect is largely due to the fact that Western critics have no knowledge of Indian cinema music or its history. Furthermore, Indian critics have failed to translate their cinema songs to non-indigenous audiences in the West (however, in the Middle East, Africa, Russia and the Central Asian nations, the popular Indian cinema song has developed appreciative audiences). One of the principal inhibitory factors in the analysis of the Hindustani ftlm song has been the tendency to confuse it with classical or folk musics ofSouth Asia. Many commentators regard the ftlm song as a degraded (even degenerate) form of Indian classical or folk genres. Actually the ftlm song is neither; it is a new genre of song obligatorily created for and associated with

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the cinematic narrative. Although the film song may be inspired by the classical and (especially) the various regional folk traditions of greater India, it was, categorically, a new synthesis resulting in an entirely new form of music. Amongst the best examples illustrating my point is the thumri Jogan ban ja from K. Asif's Mughal-e-Azam. This song was inspired by a famous 1940s thumri by Bade Ghulam Ali Khan: · Prem ki maar katar. Naushad used the latter as an inspiration for his background song. The Jogan ban ja sequence shows a late night tryst between Prince Salim (Dilip Kumar) and the dancer Anarkali (Madhubala). Since it is a late night romantic scene Naushad used raga Sohini (a late night raga) for the bulk of the melody; however, as the moon is shown leaving the sky - prior to daybreak - Sohini dissolved into raga Lalit, an early morning raga. Thus a congruence of the visual and the auditory narratives was achieved. The song increased the emotional power of this extraordinary (visual) sequence exponentially. However, Prem ki maar katar, a traditional thumri, is utterly different from Jogan ban ja, a cinema thumri. They belong to separate genres of Indian music and must be evaluated as such. Even the lyrics of the two songs are different; those of the cinema song were written to auditorily illustrate and amplify the visual plot. The traditional thumri was composed for live kathak performance. To compare these two songs is to engage in taxonomic confusion and obfuscation. It is silly to say that the apple is superior to an orange; they are different fruits. Even Bade Ghulam Ali Khan expressed great reservation about the structure of the cinematic thumri; indeed, initially he refused to sing it because tradition forbade the mixing of two ragas within a single song. He was concerned that he would be ridiculed. Naushad explained the rationale for "mixing" the ragas

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and told the great Ustad that he (Naushad) would shoulder the public's ridicule. It is clear{rem-th-is-incidence that even a musical stalwart like Bade Ghulam Ali Khan (who was himself a composer who used the name 'Sabrang', i.e. all colors) did· not appreciate the difference between the traditional and the cinema thumri. Similarly, in a recent interview the shehnai wizard Ustad Bismillah Khan stated that the song Dil ka khilona hai toot gaya (Lata; Goonj uthi shehnai) was inspired by a traditional melody which he hummed to the cinema music composer Vasant Desai. The latter altered it and formatted it for the cinema. But Ustad Bismillah Khan said, "Vasantrao so altered the song that it is no longer ours now!" What he meant to say - and rightly so - was that the cinema and traditional melodies of Dil ka khilona occupied separate category spots. We may compare this to the situation of American music in the last century. The foundation of distinctly American music is the blues, a genre which utilizes the 12 bars/3 lines structure; the blue feel (melancholy affect) of the melody results from the employment of flattened 3rd and 7th keys - the so called "blue notes". This song type was derived from the oral traditions of the African slave laborers. The blues contain the memory of pain and suffering. All other genres, viz., jazz, gospel/spiritual, ·rockand-roll and hip-hop, are distinct American musical genres which partake of the fundamental blues yet remain distinct from it. The inclusion of the blues and jazz modalities into European classical music by Copeland, the Gershwins and Bernstein, amongst others, created the so-called American classical music, again a distinct form of 'Eurocentric' classical music. Nevertheless, the employment of melodic and harmonic improvisation - the freedom to create musical novelty during performance - makes the blues and the jazz the quintessential musical forms of

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American democracy; this view was, of course, proposed by none other than Edward "Duke" Ellington, the great American jazz and pianist composer. Similarly, it is·possible to suggest that the Indian folk music is the root music of India. It is a mechanism by which Indians communicated (and still do) with the environment and with each other in order to survive. This music contains important information regarding the passage of the seasons; of the behaviors of plants and animals in relation to the changing seasons; and the rituals through which humans interacted with the environment to obtain sustenance and succour. Indian classical music is the elaboration of the folk tradition and its formalization and purification, such that it could act as a mediator between humans and the Creator. Thus, in its original function, Indian classical music is sacred. Later, it was secularized in the courts and was used as the trademark of a specific ruler and his/her time. Encoded in the classical music are the sacred and historical dimensions of Indian history. The cinema song - initially a musical miniature (3.0-3.5 minutes duration; the limit of a 78 rpm disc) - is associated with a particular movie. Ideally it is a part of the visual narrative, a source conveying added meaning to the plot. Each cinema song is a premeditated exercise meant to serve a particular juncture of the narrative in a particular film. In addition to the traditional rhythm and melody it also employs harmony and coloration derived from arrangement and orchestration-including nonindigenous instruments. Thus, the cinema song is multi-tiered, perhaps due to its brevity. However, contrary to unexamined views, the Indian cinema orchestra (in a song) employs non-indigenous instruments to obtain Indian auditory flavor. The orchestra used in the Indian film is decidedly not a corrupted ("impure") form

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of Western orchestra. It is an orchestra constituted of indigenous and non-indigenous instruments in which the former complement and extrapolate the aural capabilities of Indian instruments; the objective is to produce Indian sounds. Thus, although not present when earliest Indian popular films were made, Naushad is a pioneer of Indian film music. He is the principal architect of the use of a large-sized symphonic orchestra in folk and classical inspired film songs. Significantly, this change occurred around the time of Indian independence! The music of Baiju Bawra is revolutionary not because Naushad used classical songs for a popular film, as critics have maintained. Many other music composers, especially Khemchand Prakash and Jhande Ali Khan, had used songs inspired by traditional classical Indian music long before Naushad did. What was revolutionary in Baiju Bawra was the fact that Naushad dared to employ heavy "western style" symphonic sound in several songs (e.g., 0 duniya ke rakhwµle) of the movie. Despite the use of the large orchestra, the songs remain Indian. Although written in English the novels of R.K. Narayan or Arundhati Roy cannot be considered "not Indian". Similarly, the utilization of symphonic techniques does not render the songs of Baiju Bawra or its background score "not Indian enough" or "impure", as is claimed by cultural chauvinists. The point of this discussion is to argue that folk, classical and cinema musics are distinct Indian musical genres with their own purposes, histories, aesthetics and measures. To mix up these genres is contrary to logic and not conducive to meaningful discussion. It is an invitation to incoherence. It is equally essential to stress that the classical, folk and cinema musics should not be arranged in a particular hierarchy. In a society that is still beleaguered by casteism it seems only

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"natural" to view cinema music as a "lower caste" of musical genres. Educated champions of democracy in India put cinema music at the bottom of their scale in evaluating music genres. Hierarchical scaling of various musical genres of India is intellectually, aesthetically, politically and morally indefensible. All musical genres of India are equal although they have different tones and functions. Cinema songs must not be evaluated with the yardsticks appropriate for the other genres. The Hindustani film song has already developed formally to allow us to evaluate it by its own measure. For example, any film song which is oriented in the classical direction must not be evaluated by comparison with a purely classical song; the songs of Baiju Bawra can only be evaluated by comparison with those of the film Tansen. Similarly, the cinema folk songs of Mother India should not be compared with the actual traditional folk songs of Uttar Pradesh which inspired many of the film's songs. The narrative of Mother India partly unfolds as an opera; orchestrated cinema folk melodies of the film augment its meaning. It is uneducated to berate Mother India songs because they employ orchestration. The popularity of the Hindustani film song is often cited as proof of its inferiority and frivolity. The fact that Alfred Hitchcock's movies are popular, does not make them frivolous; they are now regarded as pinnacle of cinematic art, perhaps even constituting a particular genre of film itself. The Hindustani film song deserves the same serious critical evaluation as the highly popular, yet absolutely serious, music theater/cinema works of the Gershwins, Rogers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Elton John and others. It would be erroneous to compare the Hindustani film with Hollywood or Broadway musical. The "Bombay talkie" is a unique

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form of film, it is the signature film of greater India. It has become a national trade mark. Structurally it is much more complex than the Hollywood musical. Amongst the most extraordinary developments in 20th century India was the creation of its particular popular film and its equally particular soundtrack. Like the currency, the railway, the telegraph, the postal serviceJ the radio, the newspapers, the gramophone record, the popular cinema and its music are unifying and modernizing forces in India. Despite linguistic, religious and other cultural differences, the popular film and (especially) its soundtrack bind South Asians in a common culture. As indicated earlier ever since the origin and development of the Indian popular cinema the song has been inseparable from India's struggle for independence, and we need to evaluate it as a new medium giving voice to the history and aspirations of the colonized Indian people. The history of Indian independence (and its crack up!) must include the analysis of popular music of those decades. Much can be gleaned about the agitated emotional and spiritual state of Indians during the terminal two decades of colonialism through the study of the cinema songs. Is it unreasonable to suggest that the hyper-emotional affect of the popular film is a legacy of its extraordinary origins? The movement of Indian history - the trials and tribulations of the people - of those decades can be gauged and sensed through a careful inspection and evaluation of the cinema songs. Is it unreasonable to propose that the hyper-dramatic popular film contains the memory of the passion of the times of its origin? In the 30s Raichand Boral and Pankaj Mullick laid the melodic ( using Bengali folk and Rabindra sangeet as their inspiration) foundation of the cinema song. However, it was Ghulam Haider who gave the song its (Punjabi) rhythmic and

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percussive vivacity. Indeed, the whole "feel" of the streamlined cinema songs was the creation of Ghulam Haider. Thus, whereas Boral's and Mullick's songs sound dated, Ghulam Haider's melodies appear surprisingly contemporary. Then again, perhaps Haider was the medium through which the growing tensions and violence of those times spoke. The key "modern" ingredient of Haider's songs is its percussion. Of course, these songs also give us vital information regarding many other specific important historical issues of those times: the privations caused by the Great Depression; the steady migration of people from rural to urban India; the incremental industrialization of the Indian cities; the gathering clouds of World War II and the service of the British Indian Army in it (thousands of Indians suffered injury and death during this war); the growing fury of and non-cooperation in the war effort by Indian leaders and the Indian people; the estrangement of a sizeable segment of the Indian Muslim community from their Hindu countrymen and from their own Muslim brothers and sisters opposed to the Partition; the growing aspirations of Indian women for fairer economic, social and political treatment; the Partition and its associated South Asian Holocaust (for example Mehboob Khan's Aan, far from being a frivolous musical romp, is the first post-Independence film to discuss the origins of democracy in India and to allude to the catastrophe caused by the Partition); the slow awakening of hope associated with freedom following the internecine bloodshed of the nation's crack up; the unfulfilled promise of a better deal for women in post-independence India; the emphasis on industrial development rather than rural progress in the early Indian Five Year Plans, the social disruptions caused by the urban sprawl associated with the phenomenal explosion of the population, especially for the poor, etc. Contrary to assumptions, the popular

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ftlm does address serious socio-political issues. All these are found recorded in film songs and in the popular movies associated with them. Analyses of the Hindustani ftlm songs illuminate most, if not all, the above-mentioned issues. Similarly, the progress, or lack thereof, since 1947 can also be understood better by the analysis of popular cinema songs and their movies. For instance, contrary to the popular view, Baiju Bawra is much more than a mere effort to use classical devices for the construction of the Hindustani ftlm song. It is a serious discussion - refracted through a particular phase of Indian history - about the importance of free speech/expression in the newly independent India. The film will remain relevant as long as democracy is alive. The Hindustani ftlm song (and the popular ftlm itself) are berated for its "hybrid" construction and feel; it is dismissed as being pastiche. However, it is no more cut-and-paste than Mahler's 2nd Symphony or Shostakovich's symphonies, or Jazz, or the Broadway song, or the Gershwins or Wolfgang Korngold, or Rogers and Hammerstein, etc. It is as "hybrid" as any great city in India or the emerging world; it is as hybrid as the contemporary world. Many songs, even those which appear as musical collages, are actually sincere exercises by Indian film composers in making meaning of the traditional society getting fragmented by its encounter with the industrial economic and socio-political reality. When the first cinema songs were pressed onto the vinyl, India was a British colony. At least two generations of British Indians had been sent to the Caribbean Southeast Asia, and Eastern Africa; they would become the "sugar" or "tea" or "railway" or "rubber" Indians exiled in strange lands. British Indians had shed blood in the Gallipoli campaign and the Great War (1914-

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1918); they continue to be ignored by history. Much more than letters or the telegraph, the Hindustani popular film and its songs began - after 1931 - to reconnect the overseas South Asians with their nation(s) of origin. Despite the Partition the love of the Hindustani film songs and the films continues to unite South Asians. Furthermore, because the immigrant Indians experienced the polyglot cultures of their new lands of residence, the cinematic Indian pastiche - in particular, its songs - seemed to capture their actual fragmented experience of life - especially in the great metropolises of the industrialized world where they have migrated in search of better lives. The blues, jazz, and rock-and-roll informed urban Indian ftlm songs of C. Ramchandra, O.P. Nayyar, Shankar-Jaikishan, and S.D. Burman continue to mediate between our traditional life and the emerging urban world order. Similarly, A.R. Rahman's film music connects North and South Indians to each other and to the contemporary globalized world. Then again, the classical (both Indian and Western) and folk inflected songs of Raichand Boral, Ghulam Haider, Khamchand Prakash,Anil Biswas, Naushad, Madan Mohan, Roshan, Khurshid Anwar, Sajjad, Bulo C. Rani, Feroz Nizami and others connect the South Asians to their older traditions. Thus, the cinema song continues to mediate between the home and abroad, the city and the village, and between the now and the now that has dissolved into then. To say that the Hindustani film song neither belongs to the classical nor the folk musics of South Asia does not mean that it is unrelated to them. Both older traditions form the bedrock from where the ftlm song emerges. However, all these genres are connected with the oral tradition of India. Actually insofar as the cinema music is notated - since it employs Western techniques of orchestration and arrangement - it is literate in ways that the

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old traditions are not. Then again, whereas the older genres are decidedly feudal in form, the Hindustani film song is literate and democratic; it is certainly more amenable to democratic organization than the older forms. The political dimensions of the three genres of music in South Asia need to be explored. For example, despite their differences, these three principal genres of Indian music partake of the raga system. The raga is learned orally through disciplined study over a long duration, yet improvisation is a mandatory part of the raga system. Improvisation in music allows for a great deal of experimentation and is a potential source of freedom. Can it not, as in jazz, be used to unglue Indian social life from its adherence to outdated tradition? Especially those traditions which are not conducive to the exercise of free choice, being the bedrock of democracy. Indian film music has been quite complex in this regard. The articles offered in this collection were written by me between the decades of the 70s and the 90s. The issues raised in them have been with me for many, many years; they began in my boyhood in Tanzania (East Africa). They were written with profound humility and offered as points of discussion; that is the intention of this book as well. There is no desire on my part to be rigid about my views; they need to be discussed by readers. I cannot overemphasize the fact that my views are the work ofan American oflndo-Pakistani (with experiential contributions of Africa) descent. I have never been to India; not yet! Perhaps there is value in the contemplation of South Asian culture and polity by those who moved away from their ancestral land. Amongst the advantages ofexile is the development of perspective regarding one's object of contemplation. Perspective is essential for understanding. Finally, whatever the degree of exile, it is the duty of all those

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who love the peoples of South Asia - our brothers and sisters to live up to the true creed of their faiths. This creed speaks to our common humanity; no border should separate us from our humanity. It is necessary for the immigrant South Asian community to help connect their peoples and help to steer them away from narrow and reactionary chauvinism. The Hindustani cinema songs and films are among the most useful instruments in helping us to achieve this important objective. The most important function of the Indian popular song is its potential to connect us to our humanity.

Bas ke dushvar hai har kam ka asan hona Admi ko bhi muyassar nahin insan hona! Ghalib

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NoorJahan Portrait of a Female Indo-Pakistani Artist

Geet suna mat aye diwane Patthar ki deewaron ko Soye huye ghamkharon ko ~ shah na khatm hogi Shama bhuja ke so ja... Ja apni hasraton pe Ansoo baha ke so ja ... Munir Niyazi/Noor Jahan (Susral, 1962)

In the numerous eulogies of chanteuse/actress/star Noor Jahan who passed away on December 23, 2000 in Karachi, Pakistan, she was repeatedly identified as a "Pakistani" artist. This designation, although technically correct, attenuates her revolutionary contributions to the growth of the popular arts throughout the Indian subcontinent (including Sri Lanka), and the application of these for national awakening. Indeed, before she chose to move to Pakistan in I 947, she was, by birth, a colonized "British" Indian artist: she remained so for twenty tumultuous years during which she participated, as an artist, in propelling India towards Independence and dismemberment. Beginning with songs of

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Sheila/Pind di Kuri (Punjabi) in 1935 up to Jugnu (1947) and beyond - including her early songs in the newly created Pakistan during the 1949-1952 period - we find in her songs the ecstasy and the agony of the cataclysmic historical changes associated with Independence and Partition of India. During this period Noor Jahan played a significant role in the evolution of the cinema and noncinema popular Indian song. Any discussion of the evolution of the Hindustani/Hindi/Urdu and the Punjabi film song (and nonfilm popular songs) is incomplete and flawed without the assessment of Noor Jahan's seminal contributions to the maturation of the recorded popular song and its application in the struggle for freedom in South Asia. The popular arts are the mirror containing the frozen images of their time; they embody and reflect, among other things, the aspirations of the masses. Even though the popular Hindustani film was a fiction constructed in the highly-controlled studio setting, truth seeped through its fictional facade like the Freudian slip. Given the censorship applied by the Colonial Office, often truth could only be told through fictional means, including songs and other covert media. Contrary to the conventional view, the popular Inda-Pakistan-Bangladesh cinema contains very valuable documentary information regarding South Asian history beginning with 1931 - the year when the first talkie was released in Bombay. The Hindustani film song and its associated melodramatic singing-dancing masala genre film deeply influenced the social organization of South Asian society. The movie and its peculiar soundtrack joined the railway, the telegraph, the radio, shipping and aerial transport, to unify Southern Asia in ways not previously achieved. Despite several fissions, South Asia is united in its appreciation of the masala Indian film - especially its songs. So ubiquitous is the Hindustani film song (and associated popular

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music) that it has become a signature of the geographical region; to deprive South Asians of their cinema song would cause them auditory asphyxiation. More recently, the young visionary composer A. R. Rahman has succeeded in removing the "Dravidian divide" to create a unified musical culture in India itself. A comprehensive assessment of South Asian reality is impossible without analysis of its masala movie and its associated soundtrack. Noor Jahan is an important part of the story of the Indian musical picture. An evaluation of Noor Jahan's songs is critical for understanding a significant phase of Indian history - the phase during which the current shape of South Asia was decided. Similarly, analysis of her post-Independence songs also bears testimony to the checkered story of democracy 1n Pakistan especially the erosion of women's rights concomitantly with the rise of the Islamic Right. However, such analysis must first place Noor Jahan's songs in the context of the history of the sound cinema in India. The first talking film, Alam Ara, was in production when Mahatma Gandhi was marching from Sabarmati to Dandi (1930) to protest the institution of the excessive Salt Tax by the British colonial government. It may be argued that the unique talking, singing,dancing Indian popular film was the artistic manifestation of the Indian struggle for liberation. Human actions had become supercharged, taking on operatic, i.e., hyperkinetic dimensions. The arrival of the "talkie" in India coincided with the revved up movement towards freedom. The "talkie" spoke in dialogue-songdance about the necessity for liberation. At the core of cinema was romantic love which was in actuality denied by the tradition hinging on arranged marriage. The depiction of dating and heterosexual relationships based on love made the Indian talkie a subversive

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work of art. Romantic relations assumed the exercise of free choice - a prerequisite of democracy. Therefore, it can be contended that the melodramatic masala ftlm of "Bombay" is the true national film of India. From 1931 to 1935, when P. C. Barua's Devdas was released, the unique Indian musical film took shape. Amongst the earliest visionaries of this artistically synthetic (masala) creation was the actor/writer/director Debaki Bose who conceived the semioperatic/ balletic structure of the popular Indian film. He believed that songs and dances integrated with the film narrative were necessary to appeal to the Indian people. He also believed that such a film was in keeping with the synthetic/aesthetical mores of Indian culture. Clearly, Debaki Bose saw the popular Hindustani film as part of the vernacular culture. Thus, the cinematographed song, dance and dialogues were to be the building blocks of the Indian movie made to appeal to the masses, including those lakhs who were swelling the major Indian cities during the Depression. Cinema songs and dances based on folk melodies were also deemed necessary to capture the attention of the (overwhelmingly) non-literate masses reared in the preliterate oral tradition; these songs connected the village with the city. Besides, the raga, ta/a and lyrics of cinema songs contained symbols drawn from the vernacular mythic culture (Hindu, Muslim and Sikh), which helped to give emotional depth to the visual narrative. The plots of many Indian ftlms were derived directly or by analogy from the sacred texts (Mahabharata, Ramayana, etc.), biographies of singer poets or mythic love legends of traditional/folk India, and from the nascent Hindi/Urdu/ Bengali literature. The movies depicted certain archetypes derived from the vernacular culture. The early Hindustani film songs, which were recorded on primitive recording instruments with a limited capacity for

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amplification, involved rather strained, formal and stilted vocalization; this type of singing was derived from the traditional oral culture of the masses. It was also the style adopted by the classical vocalists also reared in the oral gharana tradition. It was in the songs by the legendary singer-actor K.L. Saigal - again in P.C. Barua's Devdas (1935) - that a naturalistic rendition (i.e., crooning style) of the film song made its first appearance. With better recording instruments Saigal cou.ld sing in a relaxed, naturalistic, conversational, intimate style; his songs were essentially dialogues in the melodic form. The creators of Devdas' songs were the pioneers of the Indian film music, Raichand Boral, Pankaj Mullick and Timir Baran (who was the composer of the Hindustani version of Devdas). Their songs were mostly derived from Nazrulgeet, Rabindrageet and older rural Bengali folk songs. The reason for this was the fact that many of their films told Bengali stories in Hindustani language. In their songs, the voice was accompanied by the traditional instruments such as the sitar, bansuri, sarod, sarangi and tablas augmented by Western instruments such as the violin, harmonium, saxophone, flute, etc. This was the synthetic Indian orchestra in its nascent form. Orchestration permitted the introduction of harmony (chords) and additional coloring devices in the popular Indian song. Orchestration and arrangement also necessitated notation; thus, with orchestration, composers began to score/arrange Indian popular music. For the first time Indian vernacular music began to be constructed on a studied, rational basis. The cinema song/ music made the vernacular music incrementally literate (notated). It also urb~nized it. Indeed, many of the songs of the thirties and the forties connected the rural (lyrics, melody and percussion) with the urban (orchestration). It is instructive to analyze the extraordinary duet Uran khatole

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pe ur jaoon (Anmol Ghari; Shamshad and Zohrabai) recorded just prior to Independence. This is a folk melody dressed up by composer Naushad in the urban garb of an orchestra of Indian and Western instruments. It is a folk song speeding towards the modern city. Its percussion suggests a person running (the past) while the interlude music creates the sounds of revolving wheels [the motor car (the future) and manually operated wheel - the poor boy's vehicle]. Naushad gives us the sound of -running feet and their extrapolation as manually and mechanically operated wheels. The increasing musical sophistication of the song shows the speedy movement of the folk melody towards the city. The song contains rural and urban sounds. In its movement we also experience the rapid unfolding of history. The songs of the earliest two decades of t~e Indian sound film engage in covert protest against colonial repression and sometimes show open agitation. They also envision an egalitarian, democratic social order engendered by greater productivity in the industrialized urban centers. In form and content they chart a journey from the rural past towards an urban future. The songs link the memory with the dream. However, a study of the pioneering Indian cinema songs also shows that the melody-driven, Bengal-oriented Hindustani film songs (1931-1935} were a bit too staid and. relaxed - even anemic -. to accurately capture the gathering fury of the economic, political, and historical changes occurring in India and elsewhere at that time. Because they lacked rhythmic/percussive assertiveness, they failed to record time and the gathering tempo of British and Indian history. That was yet to come. Europe was experiencing the Depression (which had spread to its colonies) and preparing for yet another major war while in India Hindu-Muslim relations were incrementally strained. Civil

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strife was also initiated within the Indian Muslim community: between those against (Maulana Abul Kalam Azad) and those for (Muhammad Ali Jinnah) the creation .of two nations. Indeed, the idea of a Pakistan had already been proposed by Chaudhry Rehmat Ali in Cambridge (UK) in the year of the making of Alam Ara (1930} - the year of Gandhiji's Salt March. The New Theater's (Calcutta) musical pioneers (Boral-Mullick-Baran) had the libretto and melody but lacked the emphatic rhythm and percussion with which to capture the gathering fury of these unfolding historical events. The blueprint of the recorded popular song was as yet only a sketch. . Ironically, Noor Jahan - then a child - was taken to Calcutta (recently renamed Kolkata) by the theater owner Diwan Sardari Lal in the early 30's - just when the earliest New Theater's film songs were being composed. She was employed by music director Ghulam Haider ("Masterji") to sing for K.D. Mehra's Punjabi movie called Sheila!Pind di Kuri ( 1935} which was actually shot in Calcutta (it is quite possible that Noor Jahan sang in pictures earlier than Sheila). Her name was changed from Allah Rakhi/Wasai to 'Baby' Noor Jahan and she acted and sang with her older sisters Eiden Bai and Haider Bandi - they were a musical trio. The fact that Allah Rakhi was singled out for a screen name - Noor Jahan (Illumination of the World, or, more broadly, Light of the Universe) - indicated that something in her was more equal than her sisters. The movie Pind Di Kuri included the Punjabi song Lang aja patan chana de Oyaar which became her earliest hit. Another one of her popular songs from that period is from Dalsukh Pancholi's Punjabi film Gul Bakawli ( 1937): Shala jawaniyan mane. Time has not blurred the exceptional vocal energy - the quicksilver vocal quality - of these introductory Noor Jahan songs. Even today they leap out of the scratchy 78 rpm records and reach for one's heart.

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In Shala jawaniyan she asks her lover to grab the cup of Life and drink lustily because its pleasures are fleet-footed. In these Punjabi melodies Ghulam Haider began to give definitive shape and feel and a new dynamism to the popular Indian song. With his songs the 78 rpm disc started to spin. In his later Hinustani hit ftlms Khazanchi (Treasurer, 1941) and Khandan (Family, 1942), he - in the voices of Shamshad Begum (also Ghulam Haider's gift) and Noor Jahan, respectively - revolutionized the rhythmic and percussive components of the ftlm song. Whereas earlier songs were constructed around the melody, Ghulam Haider based his songs on rhythm and percussion. This is illustrated by one of his earliest Hindustani songs - Tu kaunsi badli mein mere chand hai aja (Noor Jahan; Khandan, 1942). This is a nocturnal melody sung on a lonely night.Another composer may have dispensed with percussion altogether in order to create the picture of quiet and loneliness, but Ghulam Haider used the tabla beats to ring against the nocturnal quiet such that they deepen the sense of tranquility and forlornness. The night became dense and dreadful and spoke in the tabla beats. Whereas the Calcutta songs had movement, the Lahore ones had velocity, i.e., speed and direction. Ghulam Haider put the clock in the popular Indian song. It appeared that the Hindustani ftlm song was being born all over again. Certainly he made the popular song actually sing. Ghulam Haider succeeded in binding together melody, lyrics and percussion into a connected, fluid whole. The popular song began to sound a unified vocal product. Whereas in the New Theaters song the melody dominated over rhythm and percussion, Ghulam Haider democratized the popular song by putting melody, rhythm and percussion on equal footing. This arrangement crystallized the hope of a democratic and egalitarian political order during and after the struggle for

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Indian Freedom. His preferred instrument of percussion was the Punjabi dholak, which sounded like the metronome (i.e., a musical dock) in the song. The dholak, the Punjabi folk drum, is easier to play than the more subtle ta:bla which, for mastery, required arduous tutelage in Indian classical music. By employing the dholak, Ghulam Haider also implicitly championed the use of folk music as the basis of Indian cinema/ popular music. This single drum, which is often played at a brisk pace, brought a sparkling fluidity to the song. It gave it a warm glow. Certainly, the dholakdriven, bubbly popular song documented the gathering pace of Indian history better. Thus, although Ghulam Haider did not create the earliest Indian cinema songs, he revolutionized their conceptual basis completely and earned a spot amongst the pioneers of cinema/ popular music in South Asia. According to the conventional view · the Thirties and Forties decades are the "Golden Age of Melody" in Indian cinema music; however, more careful consideration leads to the conclusion that this description is best applied to the thirties' songs. The songs of the forties constitute the ''.Age of Melody, Rhythm and Percussion". This age was authored by Ghulam Haider. To suggest that Ghulam Haider gave a complete form to the Indian cinema song would be an exaggeration. What he did do was to give this song its rhythmic grounding - a very important forward step. Following this quantum change, other composers like Anil Biswas, Khemchand Prakash, Mir Sahib, Naushad and C. Ramchandra added novel melodic, harmonic and percussive ingredients to complete the musical blueprint of the popular song. (To this were also added innovations in lyric construction of these songs). Nevertheless, Ghulam Haider is credited with negotiating a critical impediment in the construction of the popular Indian song.

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He also discovered the unique quality of Noor Jahan's (and Shamshad Begum's) vocal style and envisioned its application as an instrument of national agitation. Noor Jahan employed the art of ragi singing derived from the rural oral tradition.This style is - when necessary - loud, earthy and declamatory. In ragi it is the objective of the singer to project the voice as far as possible because the older tradition did not employ electronic amplifying instruments. The song was a speech delivered in melody and rhythm. Thus the singer often strained in order to reach the farthest ear. In addition to possessing a formidable voice, Noor Jahan translated vocalization into overt action. Whether in the upper or the lower frequency, she filled her voice with action. The key to Noor Jahan's approach to the song was movement. Thus, necessity for activity can be detected even in a song such as Baithi hoon teriyaad ka (Gaon ki gori, l 944). It is a song of the lover's vigil and yet it moves, in melody and percussion, with deliberate hurry - as if to appeal to her lover to return with dispatch. Noor Jahan always attempted to "act out", i.e., dramatize the meanings of the lyrics in the manner of the opera singer (there are similarities between her and Maria Callas). Added to these "lyrics-in-action" was the fact that, from the beginning, Noor Jahan was an actress. She was trained to connect the song with the narrative - the pictorial and verbal description of human action - of the film. Noor Jahan created vivid images pointing to the actions in the narrative. The wide range of color in her voice also helped to "give voice" to a great variety of emotions evoked by the lyrics. For example, the inflected play with the word badnam in the famous Badnam mohabhat kaun kare gives it multiple meanings (Dost, 1944). Noor Jahan had an uncanny ability to get under the skin of the lyrics and ferret out hidden meanings. She was also a supreme stylist

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who possessed unique phrasing abilities which interpreted the lyrics in unique ways. Like K.L. Saigal before her, her unique vocal interpretation of songs made her, at the least, the co-author of those songs. The great Indo-Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad 'Faiz' recognized this and gave away his famous poem Mujh se pehli si muhabbat to her on account of her unique vocal interpretation of the lyrics. She gave it meaning which even he did not know his poem possessed. She was never afraid to extract the emotional message within the lyrics and imbue the song with feeling. This could be risky because the song could have become maudlin, i.e., a vehicle of cheap sentimentality. However, she had such command over her craft that the song illustrated the emotions rather than suffocate in them. Thus, in the songs of Anmol Ghari she modulated her voice with uncanny ease: she is sunny in Jawan hai muhabbat and desolate in Kya mi/ gaya bhagwan. In her songs the voice quality/ timbre itself was an important vehicle of information. Noor Jahan employed her voice as a musical instrument such that it is often difficult to separate the voice from the instrumental part of the song. For instance in Dost her voice closely tracks the sound of the saxophones/trombones while in the tragic Zeenat solos she reproduced the tones of the Veena, the dominant melodic instrument. She endeavored to unify the song into a seamless musical whole. Thus, the song which flew from her lips was a vehicle of powerful messages - a call for action. Noor Jahan implicitly understood the true challenge of singing the cinema song. She respected its brevity (3 min. duration on 78 rpm disc) and the necessity to compress maximum information using the briefest means. She recognized,like the fabled painters of the Indian miniature painting, that information had to be compressed into a very limited space. Therefore, she used the most dense and compact vocal tools to get the message across.

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She employed vocal metaphors to achieve her goal. Her training in classical music allowed her to understand and domesticate the notes, such that she succeeded in embellishing the folk-derived popular song with a rich musical vocabulary. With the briefest taan and its sudden inflection she could interpret the deeper levels of the lyrics even as she pointed towards the action being portrayed on screen. Even when not singing overtly political lyrics; her declamatory and articulate vocalization became a defiant cry for freedom; she was certainly a provocative singer. In the oppressive colonial setting, .her muscular songs (as those by Shamshad Begum) constituted protest and covert political action. No singer of the pre-Independence era, singer-actor period - not even K.L. Saigal - sang as provocatively as Noor Jahan. In keeping with the essence of Punjabi folk music, she employed rhythmic and percussive vocal techniques. Thus the song became animated and urgent. The linkage of rhythmic vocal with the Punjabi, dholakdriven percussion injected militancy to the popular song of the Forties. Noor Jahan emerged in these times as the first diva of Indian . . cinema music. To listen to her-songs is to hear the following: the footsteps of the freedom fighters; the rat-a tat of gunfire on the various fronts where Indian soldiers served; the protest against the subjugation of all Indians, men and women; the protest against the oppression of women in the feudal Indian society. With the introduction of the percussion-driven song, Ghulam Haider/Noor Jahan began the true musical countdown to Freedom. Their songs are the essential soundtrack of the Forties. In 1939 the Second World War broke in Europe; in 1940 the Pakistan Resolution was passed in Lahore by the Muslim League; in 1940 Gandhi started his ~atyagarha campaign against the War;

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in 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and forced the entry of the U.S.A. in the War; in 1942 Col. Hunt surrendered 6000 'British' Indian soldiers to Japan (later the Japanese would hand those defeated soldiers over to "Netaji" Subhash Chandra Bose to form his 'Indian National Army'); in 1942 Gandhi initiated the'Quit India' campaign; in 1943 Bengal endured a devastating famine; between 1939 and 1943 the 'British' Indian Army swelled from 175,000 to two million soldiers. 1 Many, many would be injured and/or die at home and abroad. It is this fury which - in libretto, melody, rhythm and percussion - was captured with urgency by Ghulam Haider and other Punjabi composers such as Shyam Sunder, Khurshid Anwar, Feroz Nizami, Pandit Amarnath, Hafiz Khan. This was the historical backdrop of Noor Jahan's songs. Given her vocal prowess, it is not surprising that the passionate Noor Jahan was the preferred voice of her era. Forty seven years after she left India, the Gramophone Company of India (Calcutta) released a set of four audiocassettes featuring fifty-five film songs of Noor Jahan, covering the period 1939-1947.2 A study of these songs reveals the following in the . lyrics: separation; abandonment; confinement; joy; hope; hopelessness; loneliness; betrayal. .. When we hear her Zeenat (1945) solo Bulbulo mat ro yahan ansoo bahana hai mana, we get connected with the repeated imprisonment of the freedom fighters; the sacrifices of Indian soldiers during the War; and the denial of free speech in India. Then again, her Zeenat solos repeatedly speak about the despoiled garden (India). For those who regarded i\llama' Iqbal's poem: Sara Jahan se achchha Hindostan hamara Hum bulbulen hain iski Yeh gulsitan hamara...

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as a national anthem, the extraordinary songs of Zeenat leave the decided impression that they speak about a larger reality. Similarly, it is instructive to listen to the historic all-female qawwali (Muslim gospel-type choral song) from Zeenat (The Glow, 1945; lyrics by Nakshab and music by Hafiz Khan) to appreciate Noor Jahan's vocal skill: Aahen na bharin, sltikwe na kiye, kuchh bhi na zaban se kam liya. In this bitter critique of and protest against . the subjugation of women in traditional, pre-Independence India, Noor Jahan is teamed with the contralto Zohrabai Ambalawali, Rajkumari and Kalyani. Noor Jahan appropriates the song by the sheer force of her vocal virtuosity. She lifts her voice from deep contralto to high soprano with bewildering ease - in between she employs dazzling coloratura (taans). Thus the song rises from despair to defiance and, with vocal dexterity, is transported around and about obstacles. To this day it remains the national anthem of Women's Liberation in South Asia largely due to Noor Jahan's . vigorous rendition. The qawwali - the traditional domain just of male singers - became a weapon of female protest under Noor Jahan's leadership. She reversed the direction of the qawwali - the instrument of male domination and expression - and pointed it at men. The medium and the message became one. It is odd that this qawwali is not featured amongst Indian patriotic songs. But then again, the compilers of Indian patriotic songs are men - who seeing their own oppressive selves in it would not wish to promote it. What is not realized is that this song protests colonial oppression in general as well. The exclusion of the Zeenat qawwali from the canon of Indian patriotic music indicates the continued discrimination against women in South Asia. It is a deliberate effort to erase their role in the struggle for Independence. Of course, this is in keeping with the fact that two years after the creation of the song, in 1947, Independence arrived

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unequally for men and women on both sides of the Indo-Pakistani border. The 'controlled chaos' produced by Noor Jahan's vocalization also pointed towards the steady loss of control over the historical forces which the Indian freedom fighters had unleashed. After all, it was precisely during the age of the "Bombay Talkie" (1930-1947) that Indian leaders - even as they struggled for freedom - failed to arrive at a power-sharing formula which was necessary for the Independence·of a United Greater India. The songs of Anmol Ghari (The Priceless Moment; 1946) and Jugnu (The Firefly, 1947) capture, in Noor Jahan's voice, the hope as well as the loss connected with Independence and its associated failures. Thus, Noor Jahan's songs of the 1940s contain the emotional record of the approach of the Midnight Hour - they document that era. Noor Jahan and Ghulam Haider (and other Punjabi composers, e.g., Shyam Sunder, Hafiz Khan, Khurshid Anwar, Feroze Nizami, Rafiq Ghaznavi, G.A. Chishti) began to create songs of protest and defiance against colonial repression and the . anticipatory songs of the joy of approaching liberation. It seemed that the dholak-led, fast-paced percussion propelled, not just the melody, but History itself. Noor Jahan, the Indian warrior woman, became a voice of the freedom fighters; she was also the voice of the hopes of those women who marched along with men. Fortunately or otherwise - depending upon one's political leaning - she is also symbolic of the partition of 'British' India. Thus the singer who epitomized protest against domination and oppression of all Indians under British rule also awakens the memory of India's bloody fragmentation. As late as 1946, she sang the patriotic Yeh desh hamara pyara Hindustan (in Humjoli) - and yet would abandon the land she extolled in this song. In the year of Independence/Partition (1947), two of her films - Jugnu and

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Mirza Sahiban - were hits in the partitioned independent India! The songs of Anmol Ghari (1946), Jugnu (1947) and Mirza Sahiban (1947) paint a haunting, heartbreaking picture of the blood-stained Indo-Pakistani freedom. In a song which captures the confusion of the days leading to Independence and the shattering of India, we hear her singing the extraordinary Umangen dil ki machleen Uugnu, 1947). This song is cleverly perched between movement and its truncation - of the need to act and the need to stop and reflect upon the consequences of movement. Midway, she breaks into broken taans - each break punctuated by the tabla beats, trembling mid-movement. The lyrics move from hope to nostalgia - the remembrance of a squandered moment of possibility. In her earlier duet (with Surendra) in Anmol Ghari (Awaz de kahan hai), there is mention of the passage of stars from the sky and the gathering of darkness. In Jugnu, she asks us and herself to forget about the passed times of togetherness ( Tum bhi bhula do, hum bhi bhula den); and yet this song - even today - powerfully forces us to remember, in depth, those very times.Amongst her last songs recorded in India is the Jugnu solo Hamen to sham-i-gham main katni hai zindagi apni; it is sung with barely perceptible percussion. This signifies near cessation of movement/time. She sings haltingly and coughs periodically. It creates an aural picture of asphyxiation. Obviously, Noor Jahan, unlike millions of Indian Muslims who committed themselves to Gandhi/Nehru's dream of a united, secular India, had no confidence in the continuation of its promised secularity; in the midst of a bloodbath she left India. Therefore, it is logical that for all Punjabis (Indo-Pakistani) and for all Indians (Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs) Noor Jahan's voice produces pleasure and pain - simultaneously. Her songs tie us in emotional knots. Her songs document the hope of freedom and its bloody wages. We relive troubled times.

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However, when we listen carefully to her songs in Anmol Ghari and Jugnu we get evidence of the torment she endured in making the fateful decision to leave India. Obviously, at some catastrophic moment she must have felt 'safer' on the other side. Obviously, too, she must have dreamed of greater freedom and democracy in Pakistan. Did she achieve these? Did she even work for them?Were her fears for the Muslim minority in an independent India justified? What does the unfolded history of postIndependence India and Pakistan say about her fateful decision of 1947? She herself never spoke about the actual reasons for leaving India. Meanwhile, Noor Jahan's fifty-four years in Pakistan are summarized in two ofher tragic songs - Mujh se peheli si muhabbat mere mehboob na mang (Qati/, 1962) and Ja apni hasraton pe ansoo baha ke so ja (Susral, 1962). These songs indicate her exhaustion and defeat in Pakistan. Following the Independence of Pakistan, she witnessed: ethnic clensing (of Hindus and Sikhs); abrogation of democracy; the reduction of the minorities (the remaining Hindus, Sikhs and Christians) to second class citizenship; the assassination of two prime ministers (one was actually hanged); the oppression of Bengali Muslims by Muslims of West Pakistan; the bloody dismemberment of Pakistan associated with the creation of Bangladesh ( 1971 ); the rise of militarism and Islamic fundamentalism (and its associated abrogation of the rights of Muslim women based on a narrow interpretation of the Sharia); several futile wars with India; the creation of the so-called "Islamic" nuclear bomb following, of course, the earlier detonation of the Indian ("Hindu"?) bomb. Noor Jahan joined most Pakistanis in their journey into despair. Her voice failed to bring about the sort of liberation that

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Pakistani (secular) Muslims hoped for. Noor Jahan, who did much for the liberation of men and women in pre-Partition India, was compelled by her husband Ejaz to abandon action (i.e., movies) and restrict herself to playback singing. Thus, Noor Jahan, a pioneering singing actress who propelled India (and Pakistan) towards Independence and was amongst those artists who laid the foundation of film ma)

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struggle knew they were meeting an artist freedom-fighter and a pioneer of the South Asian popular song. Noor Jahan, the Indian who became a Pakistani returned to India as an Inda-Pakistani. On the stage she sang an Indian song (Awaz de kahan hai), a Pakistani Ghazal (Mujh se pehli si muhabat mere mehboob) and a Punjabi song-the language which is the common heritage of India and Pakistan , and also the language in which her career began in or around 1935. Especially noteworthy is that during her visit to India she insisted on singing Awaz de kahan hai as a solo. Thus she sang the following lines originally rendered by Surendra in 1946: Qismat pe chha rahi Kyun raat ki siyahi?

This was a premonition of the darkening prospects in South Asia. Economically, socially and politically Pakistan would experience eroding possibilities. Religious fundamentalism would gain greater currency leading to decreasing cultural tolerance. Meanwhile, India witnessed the near collapse of the secular political culture of Gandhi-Nehru-Azad. Hysterical mobs tore down the Bahri Mosque and the cultur~of Gandhi-Nehru-Azad, and thousands of Muslims were murdered in the bloody riots which follwed the tawdry, violent attempt to re-establish the fabled '~yodhya". Bhartiya Janta Party came to power in coalition with several parties, including the openly fascist Shiv Sena party. The Indian Cabinet includes several members who actually participated in the destruction of Bahri Masjid. Both India and Pakistan continue to lurch towards religious and political intolerance. The bloody war in Kashmir claims victims daily. Former US President Bill Clinton declared South Asia amongst the most perilous geographical regions of the world. Few objective

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observers would argue the truth of this sober assessment. Noor Jahan's voice could no longer rise above the noisy political Indop~ mutual recriminations. In the eighties she was diagnosed to have coronary heart disease. She only had enough breath to keep herself alive. Time was speeding on ahead, South Asia was beyond reason. The great Indo-Pakistani sufi qawwal, (late) Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, hollered and screamed in protest in the great musical halls of the world. Just before his death, he invited Noor Jahan to record a duet with him and she obliged. Her voice was colored in faded sepia tone. The sun was slowly but surely dying on the horizon. Noor Jahan's personal life (marriages, love affairs, greed) has been the source of much gossip and innuendo. Those who wag their tongues/pens conveniently forget that Noor Jahan ventured forth as a professional artist in a male-dominated world of colonized, feudal India, in 1930's and 1940's. For all practical purposes it regarded women as property. This was an unforgiving universe. The world of music, theater and the cinema - especially as regards women - was seen as the domain of the ill repute, the sphere of the Devil. It was not for "decent women" (i.e., women of . . free will). In her struggle to find a footing in the world controlled by men she did not have an easy time. But -she succeeded (along with other women artists) in opening the door of the popular arts for other women. As the movement towards Independence progressed and women like Sarojini Naidu, Aruna Asaf Ali and others marched alongside men to struggle for freedom, the weighty voiced warrior women singers such as Zohrabai Ambalawali, Khurshid,Amirbai Karnataki,Shamshad Begum joined R.ajkumari, Umadevi, Suraiya in singing_ India's Freedom Song. In this context, it is instructive to mention the extraordinary Ghulam Haider composition Sawan ke naare aye (Shamshad

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Begum and chorus; Khazanchi, 1941 ). A group of young Indian women sing the song as they ride their bicycles. They are in charge of their fates and they choose to collectively ride away from oppression toward freedom. It is a fact, though, that events did not leave Noor Jahan untainted. The most regrettable action by Noor Jahan (and her first husband, Shaukat Hussain Rizvi) was to accept the keys to the ethnically cleansed Shorey Studios (Lahore) after she arrived in Pakistan following the Partition. It is not easy to understand their action - especially in the light of the fact that Noor Jahan was nurtured by Kajjan Bai, Dewan Sardari Lal (who also directed the first Pakistani film, Teri Yaad, 1948), K.D. Mehra, and Dalsukh Pancholi. Her career was propelled by music directors Shyam Sunder, Datta Korgaonkar, Pandit Amarnath and others. They were fellow artists - they only prayed to different God (s). Many were forced to leave Pakistan against their wishes (as, of course, were many Muslims on the Indian side). Even though ethnic cleansing was a mutual, equal opportunity Indo-Pakistani crime (indeed, it still continues), it does not behove anyone to live off another's misfortune - especially artists who, in matters of ethnicity/religion, were liberal people. Thus, Noor Jahan's personal affairs remain just that, personal; yet her public occupation of Shorey Studios (renamed Shah Noor Studios) is the single egregious, unkind act of her life. One wishes that - as a tribute to her Hindu mentors and fellow artists - indeed friends - she had chosen to reject the offer to occupy Shorey Studios. More importantly, had she campaigned to preserve the destroyed film studios (in that form) of pre-Partition Lahore, she would have contributed to keeping alive on record an important legacy of South Asian history in Pakistan. The charred remains of those studios would have memorialized Lahore's vital contribution to the development of a unique art form - the

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Hindustani film and its extraordinary music. She would have left behind a foundation of truth upon which to rebuild Indo-Pakistani amity. But then, Noor Jahan never claimed to be an angel - she was as fallible as the next person. Meanwhile Noor Jahan's (and Ghulam Haider's) songs_ perhaps remain the best memorials to hope and its loss in South Asia. They may yet inspire us to find what we have lost. That is, when we care or decide to recover squandered possibilities. The past is not dead. It is not even past. William Faulkner

(I am especially grateful to Vijaylaxmi Desaram of the Voice of

America, Washington, DC, for allowing me to listen to several interviews with Noor Jahan prior to her death. The information in these interviews helped clarify several important issues. I am also thankful to her for encouranging me to write about Noor Jahan.)

References 1 S. Wolpert ( 1997). A New History of India. Word: Oxford Univ. Press. 2 RPG/HMV (1994). Hindi Film Hits of Noor Jahan. Calcutta: The Gramophone Company of India, Ltd.

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Lyrical griefwork The Genius of Sajjad Hussain

Bujha do! Sitaron ki shamaen bujha do, Chhupa do! Haseen chand ko bhi chhupa do, Yahan roshni mehmaan ho gayi hai, Ajab dastaan ho gayi hai. 'Rustom aur Sohrab'

On a moonless night, in 1945, my elder brother Masood unpacked a small crate which he had brought from Mombasa (Kenya) - about a hundred miles north of our hometown, Tanga (Tanzania, East Africa). Under the gentle light of a hissing gas-lamp, aided by a hundred fireflies, the crate was opened and its precious contents arranged carefully on a table. Piece-by-piece the unlikely contraption, a gramophone, was assembled...a shiny mahogany box mounted by a metallic revolving platter. It had a huge, plastic resonator - it looked like a giant frozen lily in full bloom. Unlike the lily though, it was translucent and maroon in colour. It also had a golden border. Even in the darkness it appeared to gleam. It had the look of a precious sculpture.

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A small steel needle was resolutely screwed onto the gramophone's head. The machine was hand-cranked, a lever was released and the platter began to revolve at 78 rounds per minute. A shiny, round grooved plastic disc had been dropped onto the revolving platter. The needle met the groove and for the first time ever our hometown heard an Hindustani film song. After a short musical prelude, Noor Jahan's crystalline voice filled the giant plastic lily and advanced forth into space. She was singing with unhesitating flair and confidence. The song, from Gaon ki Gori, was composed by Shyam Sunder and the lyrics went Bhaithi hun teri yad ka lekar yeh sahara. I was then a small boy and did not know what the words really meant. From its opening bars this melody had no difficulty in establishing an irrevocable dominion over the night. As the song approached its conclusion, I was certain that it would be a difficult act to follow. The notes of Baithi hun were still chasing each other in the air when an aural act did follow.Again, it was in Noor Jahan's voice: Koi prem ka deke sandesa, hai loot gaya, hai loot gaya, composed by the elusive maestro Sajjad Hussain for Dost. That 1945 night, now long extinguished, still lingers in my memory with the sweet pain of Sajjad's muted but immutable creation. His melody- de I iberate, diffident, gentle, subtly mournful and yes, elusive - has chased the inner recesses of my mind and heart down the years with a tenacity which defies reason. On the night when I first heard the song, its notes - scent-like - had diffused into the air and found their own niches beside those of the earlier song. The two songs have continued to play in the manner of a fugue in my consciousness... a fascinating study in contrast. The contrast reflects contradictory attitudes, philosophies and world-views of two superb composers of Hindustani film songs.

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For Shyam Sunder - as for Khemchand Prakash and Naushad - words (lyrics) have primacy in a cinema song. They must be kept in the foreground - in clear focus - while instrumental music must be a medium, a matrix, an ambience, a backdrop. True! Baithi hun starts with an instrumental prelude, but this section only ushers in the musical 'river' over which the lyrics are, so to speak, 'floated'. Noor Jahan's vocal potentiality is unleased like a restless steed which gallops with the melody. If there are restraints they are applied by the singer at her own discretion. Shyam Sunder, the trainer watches the galloping voice from the sidelines. For Sajjad (as for Khurshid Anwar) there is no dichotomy between the lyrical and the instrumental sections in a song. The song is a seamless musical piece where the voice and instrumental · music merge or fuse inseparably. The dominion of words over music is substantially negated. Indeed a careful examination of their songs reveals that the voice which is treated as just another instrument, improvises with and extrapolates other instruments. Sajjad establishes a democracy of words and instrumental music. He wraps the instrumental music around the lyrics such that the two meld into a mesmerizing continuum. Above all Sajjad's art is of limitation... of containment. .. of restraint. .. of excruciating minimalism. Thus the first ironic thing we note in Koi prem ka is that the voice commences the melody...almost in a recitative mode. The song7>egins as if a sigh has been made audible ... the controlled, langorous voice barely rises in our perception... as if something submerged slowly floats up becoming vaguely visible. Perceiving the listener's preconceived views, Sajjad throws out an appetizing fly. ..hidden within which is the hook to catch us "by the gills". Sajjad hunts our emotions down by camoulflage ... by enchanting stealth. By the time the mukhda reaches the sandesa the saxophones have

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raised their wail...we have swallowed the fly and the hook has found its target. Then on the lyrics (and we) are submerged... (drowned) in music. Sajjad's melody is actually a deep sigh of emotion which • rises when the heat of love has died down. It is the sigh (note how often the singer vocalizes haaa) of one in the throes of a great defeat in love. Noor Jahan sings so intimately (and is uncharacteristically restrained) that the song may be regarded as a confidential soliloquy which we are priviledged to hear. We play peeping toms to her expressed hopelessness. And, everywhere the lyrics are packed into music...end-to-end ... above-and-below... side-toside... captured! The lyrics are immersed in music and we perceive them refracted and reflected. We get to "see" the lyrics "through a glass darkly". An elusive face behind a translucent curtain. For Ghulam Haider, Shyam Sunder or Naushad, the lyrics are expressed centrifugally...the song is on an outward journey...while for Sajjad the song is impressed centripetally (we journey inwards), taking us to explore the hidden underside of our emotions. The principal instrument of melodic and (especially) harmonic progression in Sajjad songs is the saxophone - used singly (alto sax) or in combination (alto, soprano saxes). Harmony, or counter-melody, was introduced to the Hindustani song by Punkaj Mullick in Dharti Mata ( ~ duniya rang rangeeli); the instrument of harmony was a saxophone. Anil Biswas, Sajjad and others used it repeatedly in their songs. The saxophone became a musical cliche denoting feelings of loss, yearning and unquenchable longing for the happiness of yesterday. Sajjad stayed with the instru1nent to the very end. A clear case of what biographer/critic Leon Edel calls "tristimania...the persistent sadness of the artist". Sajjad seems to be haunted by an unflinching, often paralyzing obsession with completeness, wholeness and perfection. Whenever he had the opportunity, Sajja~ created songs

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which epitomise "lyrical griefwork". His songs are steeped in lyrical despair, muted rage and a longing for just-departed bliss and barely audible solitude. Always the unyielding perfectionist, Sajjad sweated over the musical details of his songs. His keen observations of the complexity and nuances of emotions are evident everywhere. I can visualize this catastrophic minimalist, a magnifying glass in the left hand and a calipers-with-a-millimeter scale on the other, minutely measuring his repertoire of notes. Sajjad's melodies are measured to the micron. I have stated that Sajjad is a minimalist. If minimalism is defined in terms of paucity of instruments then I miss the point. Sajjad is not averse to using a large orchestra (and what a rich and individua 1texture his orchestra had; e.g.,Ai dilruba song in Rustom aur Sohrab). Neverthless, I have a decided feeling that Sajjad employs no more, no less than the absolute number of instruments necessary to make his point. Sajjad's orchestra sounds like a symphony on a lean diet. Furthermore, there is this peculiar combination of instruments - both Western and Indian - that creates an antique musical flavor. His orchestra sounds like a musical daguerreotype.. .it has an antique yet timeless sound. He seems to work best under limitation; the more economical the raw material the greater the challenge for creating a great work of art. The notes selected, he would embroider them meticulously into melodies which have the complexity and delicacy of intricate lace. Everyone of his songs - of which there are unfortunately not too many - attests to his unmitigated creativity. There is gravity to his songs, no doubt. But they are never too heavy to take wing. Many of his contemporaries were quite satisfied if their songs merely flapped about; his had to soar. They, however, did not soar capriciously as do idle papers at the mercy of restless winds. His songs soared with nonchalant grace and nobility.

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As an example I cite a song from K. Asif's Hulchul sung by Lata Mangeshkar: Aaj mere naseeb ne mujhko rula, rula diya. An intricate, mind-boggling melody, this one. Many a gifted singer known to me has met her waterloo before it. One of them analyzed for me the difficulties of reproducing the song. This song is a delicate dialectic between weight and lightness, between spring and autumn. Instead of spreading the two states at even intervals, Sajjad scrambles them, modulating thein at unexpected loci. Actually, the melody remains close to a collapse of the sur. Only deft inflections (note the varieties of tremolo in the word naseeb) by the agile Lata Mangeshkar rescue the melody at the very edge of a precipice. Actually, Sajjad barely allows Lata to touch the melody; she treads ever so lightly over it. Her voice only alludes to the real melody which exists in its essence somewhere else. We only contemplete the Bauplan but never get a palpable sense of it. Mystery prevails. Line. Form. Texture. Color. And, of course, Nuance. There is Balance, too. All these necessary ingredients of exceptional music are to be found in Sajjad's music. However, he delivers more. Others merely pay a simple musical interest on the principal, Sajjad gives compound interest - including interest on the accumulated interest. What separates Sajjad from the musical horde is the meticulous measure and mix of the above-mentioned ingredients of good music. The magic lies in his instinctive knowledge of how much of these ingredients to apportion in each song to transmute a particular potentiality into actuality. It is the unexpected proportions of each ingredient and their balanced interrelationships which constitute Sajjad's musical handwriting. One is reminded of philosopher Al-Tawhidi's observation: "Handwriting is the tongue of the hand. Style is the tongue of the intellect~'

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In India, home of the art of yoga, balance is the keystone supporting life's arch. Yoga involves physical, psychological and spiritual calisthenics to find balance in one's center. The most important means of attaining balance is breathing...a Sajjad song might well_be seen as a particular way of breathing and being in the world. Without hesitation I designate Sajjad's compositions as the art of excellence. His heightened aesthetic sensitivity is attributable to his discipline, rigor and the avoidance of musical promiscuity. His songs appear to have passed through a narrow bottleneck ofexcruciating self-scrutiny before being let loose. They are examples of "freeform art''. Let it be it noted that "freeform" consists of two words. One has to master form in order to be free. At this juncture it would be useful to outline a few distinguishing traits of Sajjad's songs. Above all his music aims towards transcendence; the main purpose of his compositions is to induce a trance or mild hypnosis in the listener such that he/ she experiences a world beyond the practical or the empirical. This is often believed to be the key objective of Indian classical music ... to transcend the world of common-sense and connect with the spiritual world. It is also the key tenet of Sajjad's music. He strives towards the spiritual dimension by using time-tested musical techniques: those developed over centuries by Indian classical musicians. These include Sajjad's frequent use of the simplest, nonobtrusive, tabla-beat such that the metronomic repetition induces hypnosis. Even contemporary psychologists use repetitive sounds or statements to produce hypnosis. Sajjad overlays level-upon-level of repetition to ensure hypnosis. For example, riding atop repetitive tabla beats in his songs are formidable lyrics which - when one thinks about it - rebel against melodious statements. Lyrics such as Ai dilruba, Maujandaran (Rustom aur Sohrab), Gham-i ashiana ( 1857), Aaj mere nasib ne (Sangdil) are not easily amenable to lyrical

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expression. Somehow, Sajjad seemed to have coaxed, cajoled - even flogged - the recalcitrant words into intoxicating melodies. Again, repetition is used to coral word.s into music and to subdue the listener's common sense: two birds with a stone! Very few music directors make as imaginative a use of repetitive phrasing as Sajjad. Most songs of 1857, Sangdil and Rustom aur Sohrab display the hypnotic use of repeated musical arabesques. Where words or phrases are not repeated, the music is ...his songs are intricate constructs of lyrical and musical reprises. These reprises also involve incremental scrambling and substitutions of the voice and other instruments such that the voice sounds like instruments and vice-versa; futhermore, even mere vocables repeat themselves. As easily as Sajjad can cast a spell, he can also, with the snap of his fingers, end it. Note how he suddenly brings the listener out of the hypnotic state by not doing the expected (the art of repetition thrives on satisfied expectation) in Gham-i-ashiana (1857). At a climactic juncture (Teri aaj duniya jahannum bani hai) he stops Suraiya from completing the lyric initially...we suddenly wake up ...just as suddenly she goes on to complete it later, fulfilling expectation and restoring calm. It appears that Sajjad made his songs using an arcane form of musical cryptography. So well does he cover his footprints that other composers cannot...get to those privileged vantage points where he has been. Madan Mohan rued his attempt ( Tujhe kya bataun in Aakhri Dao) to copy a Sajjad tune ( Yeh hawa ye raat from Sangdil). Madan was able to duplicate everything except Sajjad's excellence. Ordinary goldsmiths work with submissive metals. Sajjad gave exquisite form to steel. So exquisite are Sajjad's songs that even "Daddy" Burman (easily amongst our more illustrious, though considerably over-rated composers) appeared to have done his musical painting using numbers.

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The peculiarity of Sajjad's music rests on an integrated fusion of two disparate musical traditions: the Hindustani and the midEastern. The architectural (euclidian) clarity of India is fused with the curvaceous, fluid, arabesque forms derived from the Mid-East. I have noted the simplicity of percussion in his songs. Furthermore, unlike in most film songs he preferred to maintain continuous percussion - this gives the song a seamless quality. Most cinema songs are broken into percussive and nonpercussive segments. Sajjad creates musical waves, eddies and curlicues within his songs. His songs are consistently and insistently fluid. Whenever I15ee the Arabic/Farsi calligraphy known as Nastaliq, I am reminded of Sajjad's music. Art historian M. U. Zakariya writes that the Nastaliq script "is elaborate and variable, yet the whole gives an impression of swiftness, calm, and fluidity". The intimate, sensuous, "emotional" yet lucid, feel of a Sajjad song is due to a thorough assimilation of Indian and mid-Eastern traditions. His songs are not "arabic" in the sense of Halaku.(Shankar-Jaikishan) where the "arabic" motifs have been externally imposed. Halaku songs are lovely but not as subtle and integrated as those of Sajjad. Incidentallly, Khayyam - in Razia Sultan - has sincerely attempted - and nearly succeeded - in capturing the mid-Eastern ambience of Sajjad. Khayyam almost gets there...almost! What is missing in Khayyam's praiseworthy effort in Razia Sultan is the sheer exoticism - the other-worldly texture and feel encountered, for instance, in Sajjad's Rustom aur Sohrab. In the latter movie, in songs such as Mojandaran, Yeh kaisi ajab, Ae dil ruba we encounter an extraordinary array of musical instruments and effects. Even where ordinary instruments are employed, Sajjad puts them to extraordinary use. Let me cite an example from Sangdil to illustrate my point. In the pastoral Lata-Talat duet Dil men sama gaye sanam Sajjad makes the violins screech and chirp like birds. This is

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unusual because almost all composers use the flute to produce bird calls. Clearly, Sajjad stretches the violin beyond its expected function. And yet he refrains from completely coopting the flute ... indeed we hear multiple flutes which repetitively produce melancholy refrains. Thus, what Sajjad takes from the flute with one hand, he gives back with the other. Sajjad denies the listener "easy reception" or "easy listening". His songs cannot be fed into the dentist's "muzak machine". Appreciation of his music extracts a cost. We have to listen to his · music rather than hear it. There is a difference. One hears with ears but listens with the heart; his music refuses to engage dwarfed hearts. Because, to listen is to lay bare the heart, to exhibit vulnerability. Such cardiac revelation is not always easy to achieve. For most of us (this author included) it is easier to receive than to give. Sajjad is willing to give no more than he will receive. Repeatedly one hears that Sajjad's songs are "remote", "obscure", and "difficult". The French cinema auteur, Robert Bresson has said: "Hide ideas, but so that people can find them... the most important (ideas) will be most hidden:' We live in an astoundingly complex and obscure universe. It is, therefore, naive and unreasonable to demand moronic simplicity in everything. Our psychological and emotional lives are more intricate than we often admit. To stay and struggle with Sajjad's music is to receive a rich lesson in the appreciation of our subtler selves. We learn a thing or two about emotional and spiritual linguistics. The universe of an individual is no larger than his/her consciousness. Finally, I close with a description of one of Sajjad's most challenging compositions from Sangdil: Kahan ho kahan mere jeevan sahare, tumhen dil pukare. Talat's ever blue voice shapes this melody in subterranean space. We view the landscape of loss and hurt as if submerged in stormy seas. Around the lyrics, Sajjad

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creates a furious orchestral storm which, at strategic intervals, raises the forlorn saxophone's wail. From start to end the lyrics are pelted by showers of piano notes - as if some heinous celestial storm keeps bursting over the melody. This is hardly a shower of rain.. .it seems like the stars are exploding over the song. It is an original... a tour de foree. How did Sajjad pack so much sheer merit into his songs? One can only conjecture, of course. I suggest that he was always dancing a minuet with commercial death. The end of his career always seemed, like the morning's shadow, ahead of him. Like those whispering witches in a Shakespearean tragedy, someone had muttered mournful tidings into Sajjad's ears. His songs appear to have been conceived and executed in a delirium which one experiences at the precipice. Each song seems to have been composed as if it was to be his last testament; the same song is also, of course, a testimony of his musical genius. Furthermore, his song indicts the atmosphere in which mediocrity passes for excellence.. .in which quality is confused with c6mmercial viability alone; the fact that artistic merit might not translate into a bank deposit slip never seems to have crossed the minds of most producers, reviewers and even a good part of cinema's public. The run-of-the-mill vendors compose to ingratiate, Sajjad created to provoke. What? The subliminal feeling in the listener that he/she had, in exhaustion and turpor, accepted mediocrity, when he/she - with a bit of patience and work - could have experienced ecstasy instead of mere pleasure. Unexceptional composers, exploiting reviewers/critics and disc jockeys on the payola (some had their pockets lined with silver, others gained access to celebrity and power...both equally payola), mesmerized the nonvigilant public into believing that the ring of the cash box was the real music. In this set-up Sajjad literally asphyxiated, professionally. He packed

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up his baton (for good?) after composing the delirious and delicious music of Rustom aur Sohrab (1963). Afew years ago there was a rumor floating that Kamal Amrohi was interested in commissioning Sajjad for the music of Aakhri Mughal. Lord, have mercy! It would be extremely callous for anyone to ask Sajjad to put to music...Do gaz zamin bhi na mili ku-i-yar men...

(This article is dedicated to my daughter Ms Karnila Aziz, in the hope that she will one day cherish Hindustani cine-music).

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Shailendra The Lyrical Romance of Suicide

Qaid-i hayat o band-i gham, as1 men donon ek hain Maut se pehle admi gham se nijat paye kyun ? Ghalib ~h khak par jo chamken, zarre na inko samjho Phenka gaya hai dil lea, sheesha kuchal kuchal ke Noor Lakhnavi Kehte hain gyan~ duniya hai Jani, pani pe likkhi likhai Hai sab ki dekhi, hai sab ki jan~ haath kisi ke na ai Shailendra'

An Occupational Disease

In the late Sixties, after riding a dizzying crest of poetic creativity, lyricist Shailendra brought his life to a rude and abrupt conclusion; this violent breach paralleled the partial life of Teesri Kasam, which he was producing under difficult circumstances. I first heard Shailendra's lyrics in Raj Kapoor's Barsaat (1949: Barsaat men hum se mile tum, sajan) and last, again, in Raj Kapoor's Mera Naam Joker (1968: Ang lagja balama). Between the heady success of Barsaat and the agonizing nadir of Mera Naam Joker there was a two-decade span of furious creativity by Shailendra in the company of composers Shankar-Jaikishan, C. Ramchandra,

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Roshan,Salil Chowdhury and S.D. Burman. He also wrote lyrics for Chitragupta, and Kishore Kumar. Indeed, the Shankar-Jaikishan team which was poetically fueled by Shailendra-Hasrat Jaipuri complement had very nearly cornered the film music market in the late Fifties and early Sixties; little did we realize that the intoxicating success was being paid for by their lives. Shortly after Shailendra's voluntary exit, a procession of his colleagues, Jaikishan, Mukesh, S.D. Burman, Roshan, C. Ramchandra and Nargis, followed him involuntarily into "the void"; Ramchandra's career had died long before he breathed his last; the Shankar-Jaikishan team lay mortally wounded following Shailendra's death. Raj Kapoor parted ways with Shankar-Jaikishan upon the completion of Mera Naam Joker. S.D. Burman, too, was at the tail-end of his brilliant careerthe brief ecstatic finale (Guide) was a parting gift from Shailendra to the ageing maestro; his subsequent score of Sagina scarcely contained a hummable tune. Similarly, after the spectacular successes of Madhumati and Parakh, Salil Chowdhury had entered an undistinguished professional phase from which he never recovered in an authoritative way. One day, in the mid-Sixties, Roshan's cardiac tabalchi quit on him permanently; Chitragupta's career was spiraling downward. The on- and off-screen romance of Raj Kapoor and Nargis did not survive the fifties. It appears that the "fallout" from Shailendra's collision with death touched almost all his colleagues and laid them to waste. Mortality multiplied! Tamheed-i-kharabi ki, takmeel kharabi hai. Seemab

This inexorable procession of exits would not have surprised Shailendra a bit. The gift of poetry, quite often, confers on its

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practitioners extrasensory perception of dangers which lurk in the future. Good poets have the gift of prophecy; Shailendra was possessed of such a gift from the very beginning of his career. Thus, even in a "happy" song such as Barsaat men he injected the pain of loss and separation in human relations and existence: Der na karna kahin ye aas toot jaye, saath chhootjaye, Tum na ao dil ki lagi mujh ko bhi jalae, khak men milae, Akhari lafzon men pukare yun mera gham Mil na sake hai, mil na sake hu111.

The meeting of lovers (=happiness) takes place in a weeping universe. ( Shailendra translated rain into tears in countless songs; he also contrasted rain with fire which consumes body and love alike.) This song which began in the ecstasy of meeting concludes with inevitable separation. As will be obvious later, songs of impending or actual separation constituted a significant portion of his poetic corpus. Actually, Shailendra contrived to infect his happiest songs with inexorable melancholy, even menace. He was too alive not to have heard the murmurs of dread in the silences of life. He pointedly did not adopt the life of a poet whose work is written; rather, he wrote lyrics which were sung, i.e. heard. For one so acutely tuned to poetry which is auditorily perceived, it was not impossible to hear life's "sounds of dread". One of his last songs, more ang lag ja balama is conceived in dread: Kare kare badra, sooni sooni ratyan ...Sajna Bijuri jo chamke, dharak jayen chhatiyan... Sajna Main akeli piya, larje mora jiya, Aise men too na ja... 'Mera Naam Joker'

It is sung at a deceptively brisk tempo which is broken by Asha,

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fearfully shivering (audibly) at the close of each stanza. It is a song of impending separation at two levels of meaning - it refers to the fate of the character singing it in the movie and, more to the point, the fate of the poet himself. This was the strategem employed by Shailendra from the beginning to the end of his career. In a sense, through his songs, he shared with us his deepest fears of dying indeed his songs were his soliloquies on suicide. He had snared his quarry (i.e. death) early and started to contemplate it. In due course, the roles were reversed and he was the quarry. But prior to this violent metamorphosis, Shailendra had joined Khwaja Haider Ali i\atish' in wondering: Aati hai kis tarha se meri qabz-i-rooh ko Dekhoon to maut dhoond rahi hai bahana kya?

Not content with playing a drawn out hide-and-seek with death, Shailendra had plunged and met his fate head on. He had vowed to live on his terms. His death had to be a chosen, voluntary act. In fact, in his songs, he was dying in "endless moments". The songs were transient bursts of lyrical splendor. They had been wrested from his tortured consciousness by his stubborn will. In his lyrics we "participate in the dialogue of absurdity, hope and death:' 2 Of course, Shailendra was not the first poet to commit suicide; such violent escapes from life had also been made by others, e.g., Hart Crane, Harry Crosby, Heinrich von Kleist, John Berryman, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Poet-critic Malcolm Cowley, in his studies of Crane and Crosby, observed: Poets in particular, among whom suicide is almost an occupational disease, are likely to write messages to the world that neglected them.1

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Poets·have a lpecial kinship with mathematicians and physicists in dwelling at the outer edges of human imagination; these professionals continually find themselves facing the unknown which they attempt to name, describe and classify. Collectively they bring the unknown within human apprehension and comprehension. Nevertheless, suicide is rare amongst mathematicians and physicists. The etiology of the poet's malady perhaps lies in the fact that he explores the inner reaches of human consciousness with intensified words. This exploration often brings him face-to-face with what philosophers call "existential angst'' (i.e. anxiety) born out of a poet's confrontation with human "nothingness". Whereas the absfract adventures of the mathematician and the physicist provide protective "distancing mechanisms" contained in the act of abstraction, the poet has no such escape. The inward journey, an intense subjective experience, leaves him with no such protection. Further, once the poet adopts his particular method of studying reality, he finds it very difficult t-0 give it up. Poetry is frequently addictive. Mirza Asadullah Khan 'Ghalib' is even more fatalistic about it: Main ne shairi khud nahin ikhtiyar ki; balki shairi ne khud mujhe majboor kiya ke men usko apna fan qaraar doon.

If we accept this view, then Shailendra was marked by his profession; poetry had sealed his fate. Shailendra's difficulty was compounded by the subjects of his poetic exploration: alienation, infidelity, duplicity, separation, despair and death. He was "undermined by life"; his poetry was the lyric expression of his steady collapse. Albert Camus, in his seminal study of suicide, The Myth of the Sisyphus, observed that the act of "suicide is prepared in the heart" and that suicide is a melodramatic way of"confessing that

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life is too much for you or that you don't ut1derstand it''. These observations apply to Shailendra's case. For, what is poetry if not a journey into that unknown, complex and elusive territory we call "the heart"? According to Camus "passions burn the heart they exalt". It is my thesis that Shailendra's lyrics (i.e. musicalized words) formed a delicate chi/man between his life and death. His lyrics were an investigation (indeed, an inquisition) of various kinds of dying in life and of the finality of death. Since life cannot be meaningfully experienced or understood except within the context of death, Shailendra viewed life through a screen of mortality. On this score Shailendra was obessive and relentless We would have to have truth-repelling ears to claim that we did not suspect the poet's true motives and mission. Even a cursory study of Shailendra's poetry leaves the listener without surprise about the method he chose to end his life. His was an "informed heart'' and such a heart is heavy. As he stated in the bhatiali song, Naiyya teri majhdhar (Awara, 1951): Kaath ka tukda beh jata hai Loha doob ke reh jata hai

Shailendra recognized that consciousness adds its own weight on human shoulders and engenders possible collapse. Buddhist and Judaeo-Christian-Islamic faiths strongly eschew suicide; Camus, the existential prophet, also, vehemently declares that "even if one does not believe in God, suicide is not legitimate". On the other hand, Hinduism and Jainism permit suicide in the form of a protracted fast - itvara or santhara.4 Nevertheless, these faiths also prepare a person to endure the vicissitudes of karma such that suicide becomes an unnecessary

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side-issue. The suicides of Shailendra and Guru Dutt are peculiar and deserve special study. In India,Shailendra's"poetry of suicide"has kinship only with the equally desperate poetry of Shiv Kumar 'Batalvi'. Here again we catch the same dark thread of despair meticulously woven in Punjabi language. However, in the Hindustani cinema, no poet matched Shailendra in his dogged insistence in giving voice to the melacholy and the desperate - indeed suicidal- aspects of human existence. He dipped his songs in tears and let them hang in the • • rainy evening. A Social Mission

Shailendra's consciousness was awakened in Uttar Pradesh, i.e. in the Middle Ganges basin. This land, so imbued with religious resonances for the Hindus, sustains more than mere life; since ancient times it has given birth to supramundane ways of self. expression. Acatalogue ofSanskrit, Brij Bhasha, Bhojpuri, Hindi and Urdu poets who were born in this area of India would constitute a hefty tome. If the river starts the cycle of life, it also concludes it. The Middle Ganges consists of water plus the remains of millions of departed humans. In the area where Shailendra was born, the Ganges is a concentrated solution ofhuman death. Acontemplation of this truth by the human mind cannot be without its consequences. Camus notes: ...during every day of an illustrious life, time carries us. But a moment comes when we have to carry it.

Shailendra had arrived at the cinema with such a baggage.

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What childhood wound had brought him to this moment, I cannot say. Suffice it to note that the awareness of mortality and transience is apparent in his first two songs composed for Barsaat - the barsaat men song and patli kamar hai in which there is a poetic minuet between two contrary attitudes. Mukesh sings of the free spirit and transcience in relations: Main behte darya ka pani, khel kinaron se badh jaoon Bandh na paoon, naya nagar nit, nai dagar hai...

While Lata keeps promising a permanent home: Aa, aja mere man chahe balam Aja tera ankhon men ghar hai.

The song follows a strategy charted by C. Ramchandra in his Sunday ke Sunday (Shehnai) song in that Mukesh follows a Western melody (=change) while Lata repeats a traditional melody (=permanence). Significantly, Mukesh "flows" on to complete the song (i.e. impermanence wins the dialogue). Whether Shailendra was an established poet within North Indian literary circles prior to his entry into the cinema, I do not know. He was a young man when he joined an ensemble of young actors, musicians and other cinema craftsmen associated with R.K. Films which had been formed by Raj Kapoor shortly following the independence of India. The R.K. film unit was an outgrowth of Prithvi Theatre (founded by Prithviraj Kapoor), the spawning ground of so many cinema actors and technicians. In a sense, the R.K. film unit was the cinematic branch of Prithvi Theatre. Raj Kapoor had already directed Aag (1947) with Nargis and

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Kamini Kaushal. The music was composed by Ram Ganguly with lyrics provided by Deepak, Behzad Lucknavi and Majrooh Sultanpuri. Raj Kapoor was, at this time, at a crucial stage of his formation as a director and an actor. He was tutored by his father, Prithviraj Kapoor, and introduced to the cinema by Kidar Sharma (Neel Kamal). 5 But it was the combined influence of A.R. Kardar (in Dastaan) and Mehboob Khan (in Andaz) - especially the latter - that was to lay the foundations of Raj Kapoor as an artiste. The development, by Kardar, of a highly entertaining cinema consisting of slick "production values", e.g., music (Naushad) and cinematography (Dwarka Divecha), and Mehboob's insistence on the social relevance of films combined with his dem~nd of topquality acting, music (Naushad, again) and cinematography (Faredoon A. Irani), had a deep influence on Raj Kapoor. Above all, Raj Kapoor had met a creation ofMehboob's - Nargis -with whom (in combination with a young and rising Dilip Kumar) he had appeared in a crucial Hindustani film of the late -Forties - Andaz. It was this film that was to leave a lasting effect on Raj Kapoor as a maker of films. Raj's later films, e.g., Awara, Shree 420 and Sangam had the visual ambience of Mehboob's Andaz. However, he was insistent on forming his own youthful ensemble to give shape to his films. In Barsaat he had discovered key elements which would guarantee the commercial success of his films - the.,musical duo of Shankar-Jaikishan and their lyricists, Shailendra and Hasrat Jaipuri. To be sure, in Barsaat the latter poets were joined by Ramesh Shastri and Jalal Malihabadi, while the cinematography was handled by Fali Mistry. Key changes occurred between Barsaat(1949) andAwara (1951). Raj Kapoor was offered the script of the latter by the socialist writer and critic, K.A. Abbas (the script had been turned down by Mehboob), and with the help of Prithviraj, Nargis, Shankar-Jaikishan and the now-consolidated

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team of Shailendra and Hasrat Jaipuri, the film was completed.With the entry of K.A. Abbas, and cinematographer Radhu Karmarkar, the R.K. ensemble was complete; this group was to blaze a trail of 'socially-relevant' but entertaining films during the Fifties. Awara - with its nature vs nurture theme - went on to become the most popular Hindustani commercial film on the international scene. Its title song Awara hoon, written by Shailendra, remains the best-appreciated Hindustani film song in foreign countries. Starting with Barsaat, Shailendra wrote the title songs of all Raj Kapoor-directed films upto Mera Naam Joker, the title song of the latter was written by Neeraj - only because Shailendra was dead. Shailendra became Raj Kapoor's poetic persona and his songs distilled the essence of the characters depicted by Raj and set the tone of his films. Indeed, the title songs were brief"gestalts" of the movies. Almost immediately following the formation of the ShankarJaikishan/Shailendra-Hasrat Jaipuri combinations, th~ teams connected with yet another brilliant (but sadly neglected) Hindustani film maker, Amiya Chakrabarty, who made Daagh (1952), Patita (1953} and Seema (1955). Again, it was Shailendra who gave poetic depth to Amiya's socially relevent films. This brief and brilliant association ended abruptly with Amiya's tragic death following the release of Seema - a great loss to all those who knew him, especially to Shailendra whose songs for Amiya's films were filled with a prophetic sense of foreboding: Doob gaya din, sham ho gai, Jaise umr tamaam ho gai Meri maut khadi hai dekho Apna ghunghat khol re Preetye kaisi? Bol duniya ... 'Daagh'

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Yet another significant influence on the young Shailendra was Bimal Roy; the lyrics of Do Bighalamin (l953),Madhumati(l958} and Bandini (1963) were principally written by Shailendra and given musical form by Salil Chowdhury and S.D.Burman.All Bimal Roy movies were drenched in meloncholy and anguish; the selection of Shailendra to give poetic expression to Bimal Roy's subdued, autumnal and frequently fatalistic films was entirely appropriate. Also to the point was the fact that the plots of these films unfolded in the Ganges basin or neighboring areas whose ethos Shailendra understood only too well. . Shailendra could not have expected a more auspicious professional birth and childhood. Nevertheless, he was filled with inner anguish and insecurity. Shakeel Badayuni (Deedar, 1951) summarized his fellow poet's mood: Chaman men reh ke veerana, mera di[ hota jata hai, Khushi men aaj kat kuch gham bhi shamil hota jata hai

Shailendra himself echoed the same mood in the following lines from Chori Chori (1956): Aise men bhi kyun bechain hai dil feevan men na jane kya hai kami?

Whereas it is undeniable that Shailendra was consumed by an inner dread of dying and was insecure, it is not true that there was anything tentative or timid in his apprehension of the absurdity of life in the face of annihilation. Quite to the contrary, he met the crisis head on: Si vis vitam, para mortem. 6 This is Sigmund Freud's paraphrase of an ancient Latin saying (=If you would endure life, be prepared for death); the Father of Psychoanalysis had earlier written: Life loses in interest, when the

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highest stake in the game of living, life itself, may not be risked. 7 Shailendra, in his lyric poetry, took just such risks, and ultimately paid for them with his life. Close to the end of his life, in a song from Guide ( 1966), he wrote: Aaj phir jeene ki tamanna hai Aaj phir marne ka irada hai.

A Lyricist Amongst Poets

In the previous section I have tried to locate Shailendra in an historical context; in this section I will attempt to situate him in the context of his craft - Hindustani literary and cinema poetry. Cinema is not indigenous to India; it was imported from the West (during British colonial rule) in the first decade of the twentieth century. The makers of the first Hindustani movies had the difficult task of selecting themes, forms etc., from Hindustani traditional arts for cinematic presentation , using a new technology and medium. With the arrival of sound in the early thirties, Indian film makers did not have ready-made musicians and lyricists who could formulate the special music of the new medium. Early musicians and lyricists of Hindustani films were recruited from amongst classical musicians and literary Urdu and Hindi poets. The poets included such luminaries as Safdar Aah, Kidar Sharma, Nakshab, Pradeep, D.N. Madhok, Qamar Jalalabadi etc., who were later joined by Majrooh Sultanpuri, Shakeel Badayuni, Raja Mehdi Ali Khan, Rajinder Krishan, Sabir Ludhianvi and others. Significantly, these poets were established literary figures who secondarily adopted the role of cinema lyricists in order to (i) augment their incomes and (ii) to explore the lyrical possibilities of their craft. These literary poets quickly found that cinema lyrics called for a new kind of poetic expression. The

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problem essentially was one of restriction; ideally, a film song expressed a situation and/or emotion that could not adequately be expressed by visuals alone within the cinema-story. Furthermore, the content of the lyrics had to: (i) conform to and define the situation depicted in the story (ii) had to have popular appeal and (iii} maintain the continuity of the film's narrative. It is instructive to note that Josh Malihabadi, a towering Urdu poet, experienced impossible difficulties while composing cinema lyrics. Admitting defeat, he retreated into the literary world. Cinema lyric represents a genre of poetic expression in its own right; it is an art with its own requirements, discipline, principles and effects. It is curious that director James Ivory8 leads one to believe that the lyrics of Hindustani films are written by "Urdu poets fallen on evil days". Whereas it is no evil to make a living using one's craft, one hopes that Ivory does not mean to suggest that a cinema lyricist is a poet run out of creative powers. Cinema lyricists have created a new genre of Urdu and Hindi poetry which has enriched the Indian literary arts. Shailendra, I suggest, should be distinguished from literary poets who adopted cinema lyrics as a parallel to their original craft; he was a cinema lyricist of the purest variety. His poetry was precisely cut and fitted within the film narrative. His lyrics were brief and fashioned from the simplest basic vocabulary. In his lyrics he made use of "imagistic" metaphors which were designed for a visual medium. Signficantly, in choosing the cinema as a vehicle of his poetry, he made sure that the poetry was heard rather than written. Poetry which is heard has immediacy, verve and vivaciousness that is not to be found in written poetry. Further, for the Indian masses, reared within an oral tradition of story-telling and poetic expression, Shailendra's choice was appropriately in harmony with these traditions.

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There was, of course, a more ominous motive behind Shailendra's attraction to the cinema. French cinema poet Jean Cocteau and the French "New Wave" director Jean-Luc Godard have emphasized that the cinema is, above all, a recorder of human "death-in-action". For example, even though Saigal is dead, we can always go and see Devdas and see him die all over again before our eyes. During the making of Devdas the camera had recorded Saigal in the process of dying. This macabre aspect of cinema could not have escaped Shailendra, who had decided to commit suicide a long time before he actually carried out the act. Furthermore, in choosing the cinema song as his medium of expression he had chosen the art of lyrical brevity. The Hindustani cinema song, generally, has a life-time of 2-3 minutes. A significant body of Shailendra's lyrics dwells on the woeful transcience of life. Lyric writing was his desperate effort to seek permanence (i.e. immortality) within flux. Since the cinema song is (i) written, (ii) sung, (iii) recorded on tape, (iv) pressed on to a disc, (v) recorded on the sound track and (vi) visualized on the screen, he had, paradoxically, chosen a medium that would guarantee his craft maximum "life". I say that this is a paradox because Shailendra also sought oblivion. Within a short time in his career, Shailendra had conjured a concise, limited vocabulary of words and metaphors which was recycled in his songs. Whereas poets such as Shakcel Badayuni, Majrooh Sultanpuri and Sabir Ludhianvi had a formidable vocabulary which gave their lyrics enormous width and depth, Shailendra had drawn a shorter radius of words. I have made a careful study of about 220 complete sound tracks (and a few additional single songs) containing Shailendra's songs and have drawn the following list of recurring words/metaphors in his corpus:

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Zamin/aasman; nadiya/sagar/toofaan/naiyya; chand/chanda, tare/sitare/sitaron; mausam/sawan/bahar; badal/barsaat, bheega/bheegi/ansoo; ghaat/paar; aag/chita, jalta; loota/ lutne; raat, sapna/sapnon, khwab; doob/dooba; mehmaan; intezaar; bewafa/bewafai; manzil/seema; yaad; aas; umeed/ umeedon;bhool/bhoolna; zindagi/maut; ghata; andhera; taqdeer; duniya; akela/akele/akeli; sans/sanson; diya/jot; nishan/nishaniyan, etc.

It is curious that this limited vocabulary sustained Shailendra close to the top of his profession for about two decades. By addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, permutation and modulation he succeeded in fashioning a torrent of melodies. Yet it was the same limited vocabulary from which he drew his portraits of life and death (especially the latter). A cursory study of this limited source of words in Shailendra's dictionary might lead one to reject him as a minor figure amongst Indian poets. He was anything but that. He exhibited abundant resourcefulness amidst verbal scarcity. By restricting himself to a few key metaphors and by their continuous repetition he was able to intensify and sharply focus on his suicidal proclivities. It was as if he were repeating some mantra in order to hypnotize himself into commiting the dreadful act of suicide. One need not be a psycholinguist to define the consciousness which lurked behind the vocabulary cited above. With reference to another poet, Sylvia Plath (who committed suicide), Alvarez9 also wondered about the "desperate corner her own poetry had boxed her into". It appears that this is exactly what Shailendra had done; through his poetry he continued to narrow his options until none were left. While he was writing his dark odes, one may have supposed that through his art, Shailendra was dissipating his menaced thoughts by giving them artistic expression. However, Alvarez

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(again with reference to Sylvia Plath) writes that to the artist art is not necessarily therapeutic. Instead, the poet's gift may"clarify and intensify'' his/her intentions. Shailendra would have understood Sylvia only too well: Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well

However, to die "exceptionally well" is also to live "exceptionally well" - at least to live fully. The psychologist David Cooper10 echoed Shailendra's philosophy: "In some moments I am tempted to think that life is a boring distraction from death. But dying is certainly a boring distraction from life. So now, with detachment, let us let death die. That is the most vital political act of all. The political problem is that of achieving a sufficient closeness to our deaths within living experience so that, with our fear well contained,we may lucidly...free ,. ourse1ves...

The Impending Doom Numerous songs written by Shailendra dwell on the finality ofdeath and the brevity of life. This awareness heightened his experience of life. He was keenly aware of the rites of passage of life: birth, childhood, courtship and marriage. The only phase of life which does not prominently feature in his songs is old age. For Boot Polish (1954) he wrote only those songs which dealt with childhood and youth; Hasrat wrote the "old age" songs. Only in his last film, the uncompleted (note that the movie never reached full age!) Teesri Kasam (1965), do I note a reference to old age:

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Ladakpan khel men khoya /awani neend bhar soya Bhudhapa dekh kar roya ...

Whereas he wrote experientially about childhood and youth, he had the most indirect knowledge of old age, because he did not plan to live that long. However, of childhood he wrote again and again. Few lyricists have written as many lullabies (loris) as did Shailendra. In my collection (which consists of roughly a third of his total output) I have counted, five such songs from Do Bigha Zamin, Char Diwari, Ek Dil Sau Afsane, Beti Bete and Door Gagan ki Chhaon Men; I have no doubt that he wrote many more: Aa ja ri nindiya...

Khoi kali, khoya chaman, Peepal tale soyi hawa Sab rang gayen ik rang men, Tune ye kya jadoo kiya. 'Do Bigha Zamin' Neend pari lori... Too na hota zindagi men Aahen hoteen sooni sooni Pheli, pheli mamta ki bahen Hoti sooni, sooni Hoti mere dil ki raahen sooni sooni. 'Char Diwari' Door ke O! Chanda... Ghar, ghar sawan barse hai Pyasi mamta tarse hai Bin tere mera angan soona, soona. 'Ek Dil Sau Afsane' Aaj kal men dhal gaya ... Hai bhuja, bhuja sa dil, bojh sans sans par Jee rahen hain phir bhi hum, sirf kal ki aas par. 'Beti Bete'

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Khoya, khoya chand... Sab pe ik rang pade, koi bhi bach na sake Pyar aur mel ka gulal yun udhe Khelen mil ke, koi jeete, koi hare. 'Door Gagan Ki..~

All these gentle melodies transport the baby into sleep; all of them are infused with messages of apprehensiveness and melancholy (there is repeated emphasis on sooni-sooni, soonasoona, khoya-khoya, etc.) .Most important, they place the child in the dark night and close to sleep. Sleep is Nature's gentle way of allowing us a foretaste of death; in effect, death is "permanent sleep". Shailendra's obsession with loris filled with suggestions of life's dread gives us hints of the wounds that birthed his despairing outlook on life; I have already noted the sense of dread in the barsaat men song which was written in his "professional childhood" in the cinema. A careful study of Shailendra's development as a lyricist over the years reveals a significant shift from Hindi/Urdu to Bhojpuri his childhood dialect - in his later films. The closer he approached his death the stronger did his memory of his lost (always lost) childhood get; this memory was evoked in the language with which the world first reached his mind. He composed the lyrics of the Bhojpuri film Ganga Maiya Tohe Piyari Chadhaibo (music: Chitragupta), and the lyrics of his own Teesri Kasam emphasize the Bhojpuri dialect. Shailendra wrote many many marriage songs. On this crucial passage of life, i.e. marriage, we find Shailendra gripped with uncertainties and loneliness. The marriage was seen by him as a tragic event, a journey to inevitable sadness, endless loss and alienation:

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eye so that the "clouds" now appeared in the organs of vision: Ghayal manka pagalpanchi, udne ko bekaraar, Pankh hain komal aankh hai dhundhli Jana hai sagar paar. 'Seema'

Amongst his night songs a category especially dear to Shailendra was the dream song. The dream song had first appeared in a brief sequence in S. U. Sunny's Babul; the idea was siezed with electric eagerness by Mehboob Khan (in Aan) and Raj Kapoor (in Awara). However, it was the Awara one which became the prototype of numerous dream songs which became very nearly mandatory parts of Hindustani films. Whereas Aan's dream sequence was relieved of its frightening aspects by color, Awara's was a black-and-white nightmare. Mehboob Khan visualized the dream against instrumental (plus chorus) music while Raj Kapoor chose Shailendra, the citizen poet of nightly terror, to compose two songs to heighten the nightmare. Against a backdrop of Carl Orff-type (Carmina Burana) chorus, there was a nightmarish song which says: Tere bina aagye chandni, tu aaja ... ll nahin zindagi, zindagi yeh nahin... Zindagi ki is chita men zinda jal raha hoon main Sans ke, ye aag ke, yeh teer cheerte hain aar paar.

The words khwab (=dream) or sapna (=dream) appear repeatedly in his songs. His romantic songs, or those about a cosmic utopia, were generally about a dream world; lovers were allowed only crumbs of happiness and fulfillment in sleep. Even when nightmares were resolved into "happy endings", the weight of the nightmare drowned optimism. Sylvia Plath shared the vision:

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Through the black amnesias of heaven Why am I given these lamps, these planets Falling like blessings, like flakes 'The Night Dances' 12

Shailendra sought the night everywhere (of course, in his songs night was always longer than day). Thus, the woman in Jogi jab se (Bandini) song seeks oblivion in the black Krishna while in 0 basanti Uis Desh Men ... ) she complains about her lover escaping with the mascara (=darkness) from her eye lashes. There is yet another device employed by Shailendra to create the effect of night (i.e. oblivion=death) in his poetry: the averted glance. This gesture occurs repeatedly in his poetry and requires further exploration. I have suggested that Shailendra was attracted to the cinema because it is essentially a visual record of dying. This idea can now be extrapolated further. I believe that, to Shailendra,to live was (above all) to see and to be seen. To bring someone within one's gaze was to make the other person alive; to be gazed by the one gazed at was a ratification of one's own existence. In the visual medium of cinema this acquires a special relevance. In Shailendra's lyrics love begins with eye contact and ends with its aversion: Tere bina aagyeh chandni... O! Mujh ko ye narak na chahiye Mujh ko phool, mujh ko deed, Mujh ko preet chahiye. 'Awara Unhen too bhul ja ae dil... Nazare kar gaye jadoo Nigahen de gayin dhoka 'NayaGhar'

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Andhe jahan ke andhe raste... Hum ko na koi bulae, na koi palken bichhaye, Ae gham ke maro, manzil wahin hai dum ye toote jahan. 'Patita' Tujhe apne paas bulati hai, teri duniya... Nazron se gira denge kabhi, Do din men bhula denge sabhi... 'Patita' Aja re pardesi... Main to kab se khari is paar Ye akhiyan thak gayin pankh nihar. 'Madhumati' Toote hue khwabon ne hum ko ye sikhaya hai Dil ne jise paya tha, ankhon ne ganwaya hai. 'Madhumati' Poocho na kaise main ne rain bitayi... Na kahin chanda, na kahin tare Jyot ke pyase ,nere naina bichare. 'Mer1. Soorat...' Wahan kaun hai tera? Musafir. .. Koi bhi teri raah na dekhe Nain bichhaye na koi, Dard se tere koi na tarpa Ankh kisi ki na roi. 'Guide' Muhabbat ke jhoote saharon ne loota. .. Charaghan jeeon men jalayen to kaise? Hamari nazar ko nazaron ne loota. 'Sanskar' Chahe nain churao, chahe daman bachao Pyar hoke rahega ... 'Aah'

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The selection of eye contact as a metaphor for love/life exhibits Shailendra's supreme awareness of the transcience of both states. In so far as it is difficult for humans to maintain steady gaze (eyes are notoriously playful and fickle - indeed there is a built-in mechanism which keeps the eyeball constantly on the move just so that visual perception becomes possible), Shailendra made sure that his metaphor guaranteed infidelity and oblivion. The latter because the moment one's gaze is averted from the person observed, this person is relegated to oblivion. To Shailendra, such relegation meant that a person out of range of the field of vision was condemned to oblivion. To avert one's eyes was to make the night descend upon the person who is no longer being gazed at. River of Despair In this section I will attempt to chart the limits of Shailendra's universe in order to further understand his melancholy consciousness. His penchant for describing the "outer limits" of his life and then hitching a temporary post there shows that he was a "man on the brink". He used poetry as a journey that would lead him to such dead-ends. Having got wind of mortality's scent he pursued it to the spot of origin; close to the origin he waited and contemplated the ultimate before submitting to it. The peripheries of life also described the "space" within which his life was possible; limits were necessary in order to give meaning to his poetry and for intensifying its effect. He located himself firmly in the Middle Ganges valley. The proximate "space" of his poetry was defined by the banks of the Ganges; the problem of life was to get from one shore to the other. His songs are filled with images of the river itself and the seasons which determined its vicissitudes. The monsoons (the gathering clouds, winds, thunder, rain and flood), appear incessantly in his

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lyrics. His very first song barsaat men was about the monsoons; Awara his second movie with Raj Kapoor, contained a bhatiali song (=Bengali river song) filled with predictions about the dangers lurking downstream/ midstream (=the future). He was to write many more bhatiali songs (e.g. Bandini, Guide, etc.) which were sung by an authentic interpretative voice - S.D. Burman's; the subject was always transcience, alienation, hopelessness and despair. The other bank ("us paar") was more than physical territory; it connoted the other side of life itself. In some songs the other shore held some hope of fulfillment; one's problem was merely to get across the unpredictable and dangerous river: Oremanjhi. Mere sajan hain us paar, main manmaar Tu is paar, 0 mere manjhi! Ah ki baar, le chal paar. 'Bandini'

Most of these "other shore" melodies were dark and brooding: 0jane wale ho sake to laut ke aana ...

De de ke aawaz koi har ghari bulaye Phir jaye jo us paar kabhi laut ke na aaye... 'Bandini'

This song, amongst the eeriest ever composed for the Hindustani cinema, begins with the foreboding"black" chords of the cello. The dark beauties of this melody are augmented by a forlorn flute and a mourning chorus. The beats of the tabla and the metronomic beats of a temple bell provide a feeling of steady progression towards "nothingness"; the bells keep secure the song in a linear and inevitable, inexorable, trajectory into oblivion. Were it not for its lyric and musical beauty, the song would be considered morbid.

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As the grip of hopelessness tightened, the "other shore" was shorn of any promise (e.g., Wahan kaun hai tera? Musafir.. .in Guide). Shailendra, the meticulous cartographer of life's edges, defined yet another, larger territory: the Lower Ganges where the river ended its life. Whereas he was, from the beginning to the end, to maintain a consistent relationship with Shankar-Jaikishan, he also worked with Salil Chowdhury and S.D. Burman (also, of course, with directors Amiya Chakrabarty and Bimal Roy), both of whom hailed from the Lower Ganges. Shailendra knew that the ashes interred into the Middle Ganges travelled down to the Delta. To him, Chowdhury and Burman were messengers from that other land. Shailendra's poetry gained in its dark fury, especially in songs composed by these Bengali composers. Philosophically and musically there was a deep rapport here that was not to be found in his association with Shankar-Jaikishan. Significantly, Chowdhury and Burman also entrusted Shailendra with the lyric compositions of entire sound tracks. If Bengal represented the eastern limit of his life, then Rajasthan represented the opposite edge. Whereas Bengal is mostly the watery Ganges Delta, Rajasthan is a desert. His association with lyricist Hasrat Jaipuri (from Rajasthan) takes on a deeper meaning if understood in this light. Shailendra's lyrics are full of references to desolate ("sunsaan") places where life loses its bearings. The desert provided a violent contrast to the Ganges Plain and intensified its symbolism, just as did the funeral pyres ("aag' and "chita" are common words in his lyrics) on the river's banks. The geography and meteorology of the Ganges basin left their indelible marks on his lyrics. ]is Desh Men Ganga Behti Hai; Ganga Maiya Tore Piyari Charhaibo and Sangam had his lyrics. He must have wept when he was not invited by Naushad to write the lyrics of Ganga Jamuna; but to Shailendra, a perpetual loser in his own

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lyrics, this must have seemed yet another cruel slap dealt on him by his adverse fate. Another alibi to die. Similarly, he must have raged when S.D. Burnman did not call upon him to write the lyrics of Devdas. He almost had proprietory rights on "riverine vocabulary'': Ghat, pan~ naiyya, too/an, badal, barsaat, manjh~ paar, bhanwar, etc. Whenever other poets used these words, he must have felt robbed (Shailendra frequently used "robbery" or "theft" i.e., loota or churaya, in his lyrics; he was always being robbed of his toys, childhood, youth, glances and especially his heart - love was seen essentially as being robbed of one's heart). The terrestrial world of Shailendra was limited to the Ganges valley and Rajasthan; his picture of life in this realm was bleak and grim. The earth was tainted by a horde of biological and human failings. To escape this world he looked up to the skies; and the black sky of the night was the cosmic limit of his despair. He looked at the stars and the moon as if they were portals in the black sky through which he might escape into the world beyond; because, it is only in this world ofdreams that he created his impossible utopia: Tujhe apne paas bulati hai, teri duniya .. Wahan chhote, bare sab ek se Nahin koi jo tere dukh pe hanse Wahan rishte na honge jhoont ke Sub ko seene se lagati hai, teri duniya. 'Patita'

Geography is more than mere space; Einstein's Theory of Relativity defines reality in terms of space-time continuum. I shall now consider the temporal dimension of Shailendra's universe. The following songs contain his explicit views on this subject: Do din ke liye mehmaan yahan

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Maloom nahin manzil hai kahan. 'Badal' Anmol pyar bin mol bike... Khilte hi is phulwari men Pyar ki kaliyan jal jaati hain. 'Badal' Preet yeh kaisi bol duniya... Doob gaya din sham ho gayi Jaise umr tamam ho gai. 'Daagh' Chhoti si yeh zindagani re, Chaar din ki kahani teri. Hae re hae... ~ah'

According to the above lyrics life is a two-to-four-days' sojourn. Nevertheless, for all his temporal penury (even stinginess), he lavishly illuminated "the moment". Revolt and Submission

It is instructive to view Shailendra's entire corpus of poetry as a continuous homophony, which is defined as music consisting of "one part (or voice) carrying the melody supported by other voiceparts making up a chordal accompaniment''.13 The principal voices that were used as the central melody carriers from the beginning to the end were those of Lata Mangeshkar and Mukesh. Both are "straight singers" with a limited vocal range. The voices of Talat Mahmood, Mohammed Rafi, Manna Dey and Asha Bhosle (and a few others) were used as "chordal accompaniment" to provide counterpoint and/or chromatic effects. Whereas Talat's voice explored the subterranean depths of Shailendra's despair, that of Rafi reached cosmic heights. Significantly, Talat's ghazals and geets

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were frequently accompanied by the funereal church organ and the watery sounds of the harp (Nay~ Ghar,Shilcast,Daagh,etc. )With passing time Talat was completely replaced by Rafi and Manna Dey who, respectively, provided Shailendra's revolt against his fate and his submission to it. This is best seen in the numerous bhajans (Hindu spirituals) sung by them (again, Shailendra probably wrote more bhajans than any other cinema lyricist) . It is only natural that a death-obsessed poet should engage in a furious dialogue with Eternity. His quarrel with fate and revolt against it may be found in the following bhajans sung by Rafi: Kahan ja raha hai tu ae jane wale? Andhera hai man ka, diya to jala le. 'Seema' Duniya na hhaye mohe ah to hula le Charnon men, charnon men... 'Basant Bahar' Bari der hhaee, hari der hhaee, Kah loge khahar, more Ram? 'Basant Bahar'

Bhajans or related prayer songs of submission were sung in Manna Dey's ingratiating voice: Toopyarkasagarhai Teri ik hoond ke pyase hum. 'Seema' Sur na saje kya gaoon main Sur ke hina jeevan soona. 'Basant Bahar' Bhay hhanjana sun vandana hamari

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Bhay bhanjana sun... 'Basant Bahar' Poocho na kaise maine raina beetai lk pal jaise ik jug beeta... 'Mer1. Soorat. ..' Hey Ram, Radhesham... Sitaram... 'Guide'

His last bhajan (in Guide) was in the voice of Manna Dey. The revolt had ended and he had submitted to his fate. Oblivion or Immortality?

To say that Shailendra did not envisage hope or optimism in life is oversimplifying the story. There are quite a few songs in which he attempted to find light within general gloom. He groped for hope in defiance of his natural dire instincts. Let us listen: Tere bina aagye chandni... Of Mujh ko ye narakh na chahiye Mujh ko phoot mujh ko deed, mujh ko preet chahiye, Mujh ko chahiye bahar... 'Awara Tujhe apne paas bulati hai... Wahan chhote, bare sab ek hain Nahin koi jo tere dukh pe hanse Wahan rishte na honge jhoot ke Sab ko seene se lagati hai, teri duniya. 'Patita Hain sab se madhur woh geet... Jab gham ka andhera ghir aye

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Samjho ke savera door nahin Har raat ka hai paigham yehi Tare bhi yehi dohrate hain. 'Patita' Nanhe munne bachche Teri mutthi men kya hai? Hamne kismat ko bas men kiya hai. 'Boot Polish' Pyaar hua, iqrar hua hai... Geet hamare pyar ke dohrayengi jawaniyan Men na rahungi, tum na rahoge, Phir bhi rahengi nishaniyan. 'Shree 420'

The hope expressed in these lyrics is slim. It almost seems that his songs of hope were minor excursions (respite, if you will) that he needed in order to return to his theme of death with doubled vigor. I doubt that Shailendra ever wrote a song about unequivocal joy in life. For example, the Pyaar hua (Shree 420) song is a dialogue of hope and caution; his other "hope songs" are peppered with negative words or phrases. Further, he needed the paltry hope only to provide us a scale by which to measure his voluminous melancholy. Had it not been for the breezy and brisk melodies composed by Shankar-Jaikishan to camouflage his dark brooding, the Indian cinema-going public and the producers would have sent him into early oblivion. The bouncy melodies and their commercial success gave Shailendra a new lease of life. He gained a reprieve which allowed him to continue his musings on his impending suicide. That he intended to end his own life is implicitly and/or explicitly stated in the following lyrics:

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Ai mere dil kahin aur chal Gham ki duniya se dil bhar gaya Dhoond le ab koi ghar naya. 'Daagh' Taqdeer ke maron ka itna hi fasana hai... Dil ek khilona hai taqdeer ke hathon men Marne ki tamanna hai, jeena ka bahana hai. 'Daagh' Dua kar gham-e-dil, khuda se dua kar. .. . Salamat rahe tu, meri jaan jaye Mujhe is bahane se hi maut ae. ~narkali' Andhe jahan ke andhe raste... Ae gham ke maro manzil wahin hai Dam ye toote jahan. 'Patita' Tu pyar ka sagar hai... Idhar jhoom ke gaye zindagi, udhar hai maut khari, Koi kya jane kahan hai seema? Uljhan aan pari, Kanon men zara keh de, ki ayen kaun disha se hum. 'Seema' 1l mera deewanapan hai...

Aise weerane men ik din, ghut ke mar jayenge hum Jitna jee chahe pukaro, phir nahin ayenge hum. 'Yahudi' Sab kuchh seekha hum ne na seekhi hoshiyari... Khud hi mar mitne ki ye zid hai hamari Sach hai duniya walo, ke hum hain anari. ~nari'

Dost, dost na raha ... Zindagi hamen tera aitbar na raha 'Sangam'

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Har dil jo pyar karega woh gana gayega Khamoshi ka ye afsana, reh jayega baad mere, Apna ke har kisi ko begana jayega. 'Sangarn'

One does not need a course in basic psychology to get to Shailendra's intentions; he wrote plainly and dearly about them. For his friends to claim ignorance of this naked fact shows their shameful exploitation of Shailendra's vulnerabilities. What his friends knew about his intentions; when they knew about them; and what they did (or did not do) is one of the more fascinating stories in the annals of the Hindustani cinema. It is a subject worthy of further exploration. Shailendra himself damned his friends, in the Dost, dost na raha song (Sangam ); it is filled with recriminations and accusations. On the other hand, what his friends knew or did not know probably would not matter; the die had been cast a long time ago. For, Shailendra wished for a "compound death", rather, "death plus interest" (i.e. total annihilation): Taqdeer ke maron ka itna hifasana hai... Dete hain duaen hum duniya ki jafaon ko Kyun unko bhulayen hum? Ab khud ko bhulana hai. 'Daagh' Andhe Jahan ke andhe raste... Hum ko na koi bulaye Na koi palkein bichaye... Aghaaz ke din tera anjam teh ho chuka. 'Patita' Teri duniya sejate hain, chhupae di[ men gham apna Taze di[ pe kabhi hum ne Milke gaye the do naghme Unhen tum bhula hi dena

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Hamen bhiyaad mat karna. 'Halaku'

Wahan kaun hai tera? Musa.fir. .. Beet gaye din, pyaar ke pal chhin Sapna bani woh raaten Bhool jayenge woh, tu bhi bhulade Pyar ki woh mulaqatein... Sub ghor andhera ...Musafir. .. 'Guide'

There is sweet irony in the fact that HMV-EMI (India) completely omitted listing the Teri duniya se jate hain song (Halaku) on the dust-jacket of the album. Would such literal oblivion have brought succor to Shailendra? The answer is - No. The reasons are as follows. It is paradoxical that suicides meet their fate kicking and screaming. They leave all sorts of explicit messages for their relatives and friends hoping for a last-minute reprieve. Suicide itself is frequently a desperate "cry for help". Shailendra planted such "cries for help" in many of his songs: 0 basanti pavan pagal Na ja re na ja, roko koi. 'Jis Desh Men ..: Kare, kare badra, sooni sooni ratiyan Main akeli piya, larje mora jiya , Aise men tu na ja Ang lagja balama... 'Mera Naam Joker'

There was a desperate last minute attempt to save him. Shaili Shailendra (his son) wrote Jeena yahan, marna yahan (Mera Naam Joker) to keep hope alive. The song even contained "The

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Anniversary Waltz"14 quote used in BarsaatLShailendra's first film. But this was too little, too late. Shailendra had cut his moorings with life. I suggest that, above all, what Shailendra most strenuously objected to in life was its mutability. He feared death in all its manifestations...even mere change was a form of death (which, of course, it must be, since life is perforce a process!). However, the poetry which arose out of his anxiety and dread of dying gave him a measure of immortality. He secured this eventuality almost wilfully; for,Shailendra was a great "rememberer" and left us a swarm of songs to remember him by and to miss him by. Not only did he want us to miss him, he also provided carefully tailored lyrics by which to miss him(i.e. he had his own peculiar specifications of remembrance). He remembered all those who were dear to him (by name) in his songs; a study of his songs contains the names of Raj Kapoor (Raju), Nargis (nargisi), Hasrat, Ramchandra, Pancham,etc. He also remembered the names of movies for which he composed lyrics. In one song he named three Raj Kapoor films: Hum tujh se muhabbat kar ke sanam... Yeh dil jo jala ik aag lagi Ansoo jo bahe barsaat hui Badal ki tarha awara the hum... Rote bhi rahe, hanste bhi rahe.

'Awara

He too was missed and remembered by his poetic alter ego, Hasrat Jaipuri. I have no doubt that the song Jane kahan gaye woh din, kehte the teri raah men, nazron ko hum bichhayenge was written in Shailendra's memory. The vocabulary used throughout this song is Shailendra's:

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Jane kahan gaye woh din, kehte the teri yaad men Nazron ko hum bichhayenge. Chahe kahin bhi tum raho, chahenge tum ko umr bhar Tum ko na bhool payenge. Mere qadam jahan pare, sajde kiye theyaar ne Mujh ko rula, rula diya, jati hui bahar ne. Apni nazar men aaj kai din bhi andheri raat hai Saya hi apne saath tha, saya hi apne saath hai. 'Mera Naam Joker'

Lessons

While I was writing this analysis of Shailendra's lyrics, I felt that his heavy heart had touched my thoughts. A pall of melancholy ~ad spread over my mind. Here was a lyricist who sometimes groped for hope while his "inner eye" perceived only despair. A chronological study of his songs illustrates the steadily tightening grip of hopelessness on Shailendra's life. His vocabulary of hope-denied rang with the conviviality of his deathly thoughts. His view of this world was bleak. The world, as he saw it, reverberated with transcience, flux, deceit, infidelity, squalor; his brightest songs contained optimistic words which were obliterated by their ominous shadows. If there were avenues by which he may have escaped the fate indicated by his perceptions, then he went about sealing the portals thafled to them. His career in the Hindustani cinema began with thundering success and he was at his zenith during the late fifties and early sixties. However, the more successful he became, the busier he got trying to negate the positive reality. Indeed,he became increasingly morose and desperate. His later songs have a dirge-like, elegiac quality. He was mourning in advance of his exit and he mourned beautifully. Many of his songs are lyrical epitaphs to himself. I

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believe that Shailendra lived as long as he did only because his lyrics provided a delicate barrier between him and his fate; one day, even his poetic resources could not carry the weight of his grief. For reasons unknown to me Shailendra was a deeply wounded man; he was psychologically and emotionally unbalanced and became more so with the passage of time. He was intensely masochistic and violent; as is common to persons ofhigh sensitivity, he turned this violence on himself. His poetry is essentially "poetry of negation". There is a catalogue of life's minuses in his lyrics. He was abysmally alone-love and friendship were seen by him as mechanisms by which people conspired to betray and destroy each other. In his lyrics the day was short and the night endless: It jale deepalc, ut man mera Phir bhi na jaye mere dil lea andhera Tarpat, tarsat, umrganwaee. 'Mer1·5oorat ...'

These are thoughts of a psychically shipwrecked man.This being the case, of what possible merit could his poetry or life have been? What lessons can we learn from Shailendra's grim life? What were his real contributions to the Hindustani cinema? I shall attempt to answer these questions. In my opinion, Shailendra was not of the league of the topnotch literary poets who later adopted cinema lyric writing as a career. Compared with the poetry of Majrooh Sultanpuri, Rajinder Krishan, Shakeel Badayuni, Sabir Ludhianvi and others, Shailendra comes short in depth and breadth. However, to compare him with these literary poets is to miss the point completely, because Shailendra was purely a cinema lyricist; cinema lyrics is a genre of

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poetry different from literary poetry. As a cinema lyricist, Shailendra was amongst the best. His lyrics were simple, streamlined and imagistic; they were the source of some of the best songs composed for the Hindustani cinema. Furthermore, Shailendra continued to experiment with Bhojpuri idioms and melodic structures so that they could form the raw material for numerous first-rate cinema songs. The music and poetry of Uttar Pradesh, first introduced to the Hindustani cinema by composer Naushad and lyricist D.N. Madhok (in Rattan), was greatly augmented by Shailendra in association with Shankar-Jaikishan, Salil Chowdhury and S.D. Burman. Few lyricists have extracted as many songs from as limited a vocabulary and themes as Shailendra. Essentially his subject was varieties of dying. He adopted the simplest and the most direct words to convey his message. Hearing his songs is to see his heart at work; seeing his heart at work is like seeing light pass through a prism and refracted into a rainbow of mourning colors. He extracted the maximum meaning out of a w~rd by juxtaposing it with other complementary or opposed words. We must adrnir~ Shailendra's fidelity to his chosen subject, death. It required enormous poetic resourcefulness and tenacity in him to stick with his theme for so long. He was a man of great poetic fortitude. Perhaps Shailendra's greatest distinction lies in the fact that he amplified the most colloquial and simple Urdu/Hindi/Bhojpuri words connoting various states of despair and melancholia. He was an unswerving explorer of the desolate and forlorn regions of existence. Is there value in dwelling in this shadowy zone of life? The answer has to be in the affirmative. Life is often (and for most of humanity) no bed of roses. This has been (and is) the case under the best of historical and personal

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circumstances. As human population increases and depletes the earth of resources necessary to sustain life; as class distinctions increase and exploitation of the majority by powerful minorities continues; as the shadow of highly-developed instruments specifically designed to annihilate humanity at mass-level spreads above us, we will need to understand human suffering and despair more precisely and fully. Shailendra provided us with just the vocabulary to accomplish this. It is possible that an understanding of human desperation will lead to action which will, somewhat, alleviate human burdens. Shailendra had dearly taken up his position along with suffering humanity: Tumhara dil mere dil ke barabar ho nahin sakta Woh sheesha ho nahin sakta, yeh pathar ho nahin sakta. 'Madhumati'

Shailendra was also a moralist and a philosopher of merit: Rishta dil se dil kt aetebar ka Zinda hai hameen se naam pyar ka Keh mar ke jee, kisi ko yaad ayenge Kisi ke ansoo'on men muskurayenge feena isi ki naam hai. ~nari'

By juxtaposing life and death he made us aware of how precious life is; life is precious precisely because it is vulnerable. The depth at which one experiences sorrow is also the measure of the height of one's capability of experiencing joy. The worst lesson from Shailendra's poetry and life is that suicide is an answer. I believe that it is not; the reason for eschewing suicide is given by Camus:

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Aaj ik harfko Phir dhundta phirta hai khayaL .. Faiz

Prakash Pictures' Baiju Bawra (1952) directed by Vijay Bhatt is exceptional because of its unorthodox musical score. Naushad, its composer, had startled almost everyone by overtly basing several of its songs on Hindustani classical music; he even had some of these rendered by the normally reclusive classical vocalists. Towards the close of the Forties Hindustani classical music was deemed inappropriate for the popular film whose chief objective was to provide emotional respite to the growing (and harried) urbanized masses. Increasingly the cinema song - at least superficially- resembled a light-hearted commercial jingle crafted by fusing Indian geet and/or ghazal with motifs derived from popular American (including Latin American) and Middle Eastern songs. The ftlmi geet stimulated the moviegoer to part with his money with pleasure! Sometimes the song was a diversion, used by a few unscrupulous producers to pick the moviegoer's pocket. Music quickly became the lubricant of commercial Hindustani

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cinema. Song and film reciprocally advertised and sold each other to the masses to the extent that they became an ubiquitous fixture of Indian cultural life. That popular music was serving sociopolitical functions was not generally appreciated. Baiju Bawra arrived in the midst of a furious debate regarding the cultural value of Indian cinemusic. Mr 8.V. Keskar, the then Minister for Information and Broadcasting, proscribed film song from state-sponsored All India Radio. Therefore, Naushad's overt use of classical music in the score appeared to contribute to the view that popular music of India exemplified cultural blight. At the very least, Baiju Bawra and its composer came to be associated with Hindustani classical music; indeed, the sound track of the film is itself regarded as "classical music" composed by some bearded ustad/guru. The generally ignored fact is that Naushad was awarded the ballot-based Filmfare Award for a reprocessed folk melody (Tu Ganga ki mauj main Jamna ki dhara) rather than for one of its "classical" songs. From a distance of so many decades it is difficult to describe the seismic impact of Baiju Bawra's music. I do remember the following conversation : Statement : Suna hai is baras Hindustan men bahut garmi hai. Comment : Ji han! Music directron ke liye!

Indeed, Naushad appeared to be in competition with himself, with exemplary scores in Mehboob Khan's Aan and A.R. Kardar's Diwana. The music of his three films was so different that most listeners were unable to detect Naushad's fingerprints on these soundtracks. Almost all of Naushad's colleagues and competitors were shocked by the impact of Baiju Bawra's score; there was nothing in Naushad's past that prepared them for this thunder and lightening. Even C. Ramchandra - never a slouch when it came to

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novelty- was caught hopelessly flat-footed. His score of Anarkali (1953) was excellent yet conformist. Baiju Bawra is amongst the most crucial films in this evolution of the cinesong (and music in general); it continues to inform cinemusic to this day. Historical analysis of Hindustani cinemusic without discussion of Baiju Bawra's score would be uneducated, incomplete and even misleading. Implicit in the score of the film are several persistent questions about Hindustani cinemusic: (i) Is cinemusic (and especially the cinesong) a genre in its own right? (ii) To what extent should this music be derived from (exclusive) classical (including "semi classical") and community-based (inclusive) folk music,respectively? (iii) To what extent should cinemusic use Western instruments (orchestra) and techniques (harmony, col or, etc)? (iv) Who does cinemusic address and to what extent should the socio-economic development of the addressee govern its creation? (v) Can cinemusic be a tool in the cultural evolution of a society which is being altered by fast-paced technological change? And (vi) what is the political significance of the cinesong/music? In Baiju Bawra, none of these questions is overtly posed onscreen, of course. Nevertheless, in a crucial encounter between an ageing classical musician (Mian Tansen) and youthful folk musician (Baiju Bawra), the former challenges his adversary to create new music in place of the music he is rebelling against. This suggestive comment aside, all other questions are subsumed in the plot and in the instruments (music among them) used to actualize them in the film. The questions posed in and by this film strike at the very core of Hindustani ("Hindi") sound cinema. Ever since its formal origin (1931), this cinema deviated from international norms by mandatory (barring a few notable exceptions), excessive use of

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dialogue, ("extraneous") songs and dances. In so far as the Hindustani film is pivoted on the song, it is more appropriately called a "singie" than a "talkie". The song is the very point of the popular film. Music is the message ofthe Hindustani Film! Contrary to Greenbaum, 1 it is the story which is "extraneous" to the film in that the song tells the real "story'' (indeed it is the "story") of the movie. And, the "story" of the song is political. Conventional wisdom regards the song as bit of musical fluff - mere entertainment. On the contrary, poetry, lyrics, songs are (often) fundamentally political in nature. Even a cursory look at Third World political movements in this century shows that poets/ lyricists/ musicians have been key promoters of nationalist massmovements. Pablo Neruda, Victor Jara (Chile), Mao Tse-tung (China), Miriam Mikeba (South Africa), Rabindranath Tagore, Nazrul Islam, Mohammad Iqbal, Fait Ahmed Faiz, Sabir, Pradeep (Indo-Pakistan) are essentially"political" poets. Gandhi led Indian national independence movement against the backdrop of Raghupati raghav raja Ram. Throughout the 30s and the 40s cinema songs were the soundtrack of the Indian national movement. To be sure, the precise political content of cinema music remains largely unresearched. Suffice it to note that crooner K.L Saigal (in voice and content) was in mourning long before India was dismembered: Hum jee ke kya karenge, jab dil hi toot gaya. India was partitioned shortly after Saigal's timely death. Baiju Bawra needs to be reinterpreted from a socio-political perspective. Despite its numerous cinematic flaws this film has a radical, liberating message. It employs its soundtrack to exhort the masses to resist tyranny and its associated authoritarianism; this extraordinary film offers its poetry and songs as instruments for resisting injustice and repression. Interest in Baiju Bawra is also warranted because it is the

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key to understanding Naushad's art; in this film he realized himself as an artist to the fullest. From then on he only refined his art until a paradoxical collapse in the late Sixties (Ganwaar, Tangewala). Yet despite this sudden eclipse, he is among the principal architects 'of Hindustani film music. (The fact that Albert Einstein did not contribute significantly to the development of physics following the formulation of the Theory of Relativity in 1905, in no way diminishes his stature as one of the greatest physicists ever). An understanding of Naushad's music contributes towards the elucidation of the evolution, structure and function of cinemusic in India. Baiju Bawra (Baiju le Fou/Crazy Baiju) tells the story of a folk musician who, during the reign of Mughal Emperor Jalaluddin Akbar, rises in opposition to repressive decrees enacted by the Emperor at the behest of the court musician, Mian Tansen; Akbar and Tansen had proscribed musical performance by ordinary citizens at designated times and locations. During a confrontation, Tansen exhorts Baiju to create superior music in order to achieve rescindment of the decree. With the help of Swamj Haridas (Tansen's mentor) Baiju masters Hindustani classical music, and in a contest before the Emperor Baiju defeats Tansen. The Emperor rescinds his decree and Baiju wins complete freedom of musical • expression. Amisconception regarding Baiju Bawra's music is the belief that its songs are classical Hindustani melodies. None of the movie's songs conforms to the pukka gana in the strictest sense; indeed, the so-called "classical" songs also deviate from "semiclassical" thumri/dadra forms in several important ways. Strictly classical songs - Dhrupad and Khayal - are long, ponderous melodies which are divisible into several sections characterized by the absence/presence of percussion (also variations of layas or tempo).

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Furthermore, these classical songs are built on very small bits of poetry (generally a stanza or two of religious text) which are musically "processed" such that they become almost unrecognizable as words. It is said that the aim of the pukka gana is to negate/subvert the world of "meaning" (which in Hinduism, connotes 'maya' the false world of appearances) and induce the transcendental mental state (i.e. "highern consciousness approaching atman, the soul). The "semiclassical" forms such as thumri and dadra normally accompany nritya!bhava/hasta (i.e. dance or other movements delineating emotions) and expound highly romantic poetry pertaining to Radha/Krishna themes. The song in Baiju Bawra which most closely resembles a pukka gana is Tori jai, jai sung as prayer in raga Puria-dhanashri by Tansen in the voice of Ustad Amir Khan (Indore Gharana). The melody is a severely truncated khayal which deviates from its traditional prototype by its longish text and by its excruciating overall brevity. In the prayer, Tansen beseeches God to grant him strength to cope with the on-coming day; the song is rendered against the titles, and judging by the duskiness of the shot it appears to have been sung in the evening. Puriya-dhanashri - a serious melody - is generally rendered in the evening; in Tori Jai Jai God is treated as the beloved. Tansen's prayer clearly alludes to anxiety caused by bad conscience about a contemplated decree restricting citizens' musical expression. Tansen is now Akbar's nauratan ("court jewel"); he is a power- broker of the Establishment. The musical czar's bad conscience is in no small measure due to the fact that he is a traitor to the very class from which he had originated. Amir Khan's heavy voice, somewhat labored delivery, and the evening's late hour suggest the weight of years on the singer's shoulders and his diminishing powers. Of course, evening also connotes a morally darkening universe created by oppression.

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The country is ripe for upheaval. Rebellion will (unknown to Tansen) be fomented by a youthful, rustic folk singer named Baiju. He will be crazy enough to defy the "Great One" and his musical peon, Tansen. The other song, which in its "classicism" is a notch or two below the previous one, is the sargam in raga Darbari, again rendered by Tansen (Amir Khan). This sargam is in progress when the angry Baiju attempts to impale Tansen. As the ·sargam progresses action builds towards climax with the use of choral reprises. Tansen's mesmerizing singing momentarily neutralizes Baiju's rage - he is briefly hypnotised. Suddenly, he wakes up and strikes a blow at Tansen's tanpura, shattering the instrument and the sargam. In effect Baiju beheads the Darbari raga in the same way that Tansen had throttled people's right to sing. Baiju's catastrophic substitution of his target (he had come to kill Tansen!) indicates that Baiju subconsciously differentiates between individuals and their actions. He does not hate Tansen, only his "sell out" to the Establishment. Tansen's response to Baiju's attack is to challenge the latter into creating a melody superior to the one he had heard. Tansen may be old and authoritarian but is not devoid of sagacity. He offers Baiju song/music as a tool of freedom: the young rebel would have to liberate himself with the very raga he had tried t extinguish. Ironically, Tansen - during the sargam - had given Baiju his first lesson in formal music; Tansen becomes Baiju's first formal mentor. He wouldn't be the last. Being wise to Tansen's suggestion (one fights fire with fire!), Baiju goes to the source of the elder musician's disciplined creativity - Swami Haridas. The latter accepts Baiju's apprenticeship only after he renounces music as an instrument of personal vengeance. There is no suggestion that Haridas opposes music as a tool of

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social redress. It is more than likely that the wily master prepares Baiju precisely in order to restore the citizens' inalienable right to sing when they please, where they please, and to whoIJl they please. Baiju does not object to Tansen's right to entertain his boss until the elder musician attempts musical censorship. In due course, his apprenticeship complete, Baiju picks up the Darbari sargam where Tansen had suspended it and starts to sing O Duniya ke rakhwale . Whereas Tansen had developed this raga for the ears of a few privileged (indeed, exclusively for Akbar!) courtiers sequestered in private space around Akbar, Baiju sings it in streets full of people. In effect, Baiju reclaims the Darbari raga for the people, and converting the street into an open durbar, restores people's sovereignty over it. Curiously, 0 Duniya ke is commonly regarded as a "classical song"; it most certainly is not. It is a cinesong inspired by the raga Darbari. It is more accurate to define it as a reprocessed folk song structured on the Darbari. Comparing Tansen's Darbari sargam and Baiju's Darbari geet leads to the following conclusions: (i) The sargam was a play of sensational notes whose function was no more than to induce hypnosis/amnesia (i.e. forgetting - What? Whom? Why?) while Baiju has a long text of woes and complaints, (ii) Tansen is exclusive and private, whereas Baiju is painfully inclusive and communal (in the end, unable to bear Baiju's grief, a listener shouts:"Gana band karo"). (iii) Tansen's sargam is continuous and without percussion (i.e. without heartbeats; dead!) whereas Baiju's song has an alap,several interlude sections, a taan and an operatic finale, (iv) Tansen is excruciatingly formal and monophonic (the only "Western" device is the choral refrain), while Baiju is semiformal and symphonic (his song uses dramatic orchestra composed of Indian and European instruments; it has sections of percussion (lyrical) and non-percussion (interlude), (v)Tansen is

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accompanied only by his tanpura (one 'voice'), Baiju sings in the company of many instruments (many 'voices'), and (vi) Tansen uses only Indian instruments (i.e., he is chauvinistic, xenophobic) while Baiju is accompanied by many instruments ofdiverse origins (i.e., Baiju is humanistic and cosmopolitan). At all levels the monomaniacal exclusivity of Tansen is contrasted with the communal inclusivity of Baiju. Tansen is singular (authoritarian), Baiju is plural (democratic). 0 Duniya ke makes maximal use of Baiju's (Rafi's) tenor voice which oscillates violently as well as expands and contracts. In defiance ofTansen's ordinance against singing, Baiju freely occupies large and small "spaces"; his voice "comes" and "goes" at the behest of his free will. Rafi even shouts to make sure that his story will be heard. Shouting is entirely justified because his song is a protest song - a protest against silence in the face of tyranny. Moreover, the protest is directed against the Supreme Dictator - God. Baiju's defiance of "sacred" authoritarianism is entirely politicallymotivated because his tormentors (Akbar/Tansen) also dread the Dealer of Death. Baiju achieves egalitarianism of fear and loathing of a merciless God. The song also attempts, by association, to foster in Akbar and Tansen knowledge of their pathological oppression. Why does Baiju, originally a folk singer, no longer sing in the simple, rustic style? First, because he is now a trained singer and his song attests to his new-found discipline. Furthermore, he is on "his way" to confront Tansen, so the song contains information about the gathering vocal ammunition in Baiju's arsenal. The jugalbandi song,Aaj gavat, in which Tansen (Amir Khan) and Baiju (D.V. Paluskar) have their final confrontation, is yet another putatively "classical" song. It differs from the traditional khayal in the following ways: (i) its brevity and increased speed, and (ii) a melodramatic finale including splashes of piano and

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cymbals. What is most significant about the song is its raga which is Desi. Actually it is rendered in Desi ragini, which is ideally rendered in the morning. As the name suggests, this ragini (connoting passion, youth, and joy) has its origin in the regional melodies which the conquering Aryans assimilated into their own music. Goswami2 states that desi sangeet is derived from and . symbolic of ordinary people. Thus, if raga Darbari symbolizes royal authority, tyranny and darkness (Akbar/Tansen) then Desi ragini connotes passion, freedom and light (Baiju). In Aj gavat God is treated as the loved one and the singers engage in vocal courtship of the Lord with a view towards the reward of victory. Oddly, Tansen does not recognize his liabilities: a heavy, tired voice, and that he has already submitted to earthly authority. Baiju, on the contrary, sits before God with his youth and passion; he is relatively unfettered. Freedom is ferociously erotic! The young D.V. Paluskar (Baiju's voice), doyen of Gwalior gayaki but equally adept at employing techniques of Atrauli and Agra gharanas is able to out-maneuver the flat-footed Amir Khan (Tansen) at almost every turn of Aj gavat. 3 Significantly, "Dee Vee Pee" was quite capable of "f~minizing" his voice in·the manner of Kirana gharana singers. Amir Khan sings with the weighted voice of a man. An old man. God loves youth. And, is heterosexual. As the singers prepare for the final climb towards the heights of Aj gavat, Tansen's veena-string snaps, strangulating his voice. Earlier his sargam had been amputated by Baiju, and now an act of God/ Accident cuts him short. Baiju's voice continues its way up and trysts with God. He wins the day. Of course, Aj gavat may also (and preferably) receive a secular interpretation: Baiju subdues Tansen by his youth, superior concentration and by the moral power of his just cause.

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The selection of Paluskar and Amir Khan as Baiju and Tansen, respectively, is instructive in other ways too. Paluskar was the son of Vishnu Digambar Paluskar who, in the earlier decades of this century, had "used music as an instrument of national awakening" principally by sensitizing the masses to the beauty of Indian classical music. 4 The younger Paluskar had furthered his father's work by performing extensively at public functions. His performances combined exemplary renditions of popular bhajans and the more austere khayals which were sung without excessive ornamentation. Paluskar sang rather deformalized versions of ragas such that they appealed to the masses. Ustad Amir Khan, on the contrary, had distinguished himself as an urbane, modern-day version of the courtly singer."Grandeur" is the commonly applied word to the ustad's work.5 Thus, if Amir Khan points to the courtly past, Paluskar is facing a populist future. Excepting Aj gavat, Baiju sings in Mohammad Raft's voice. Of the songs rendered in the latter's voice, the most formal and "classical" leaning is Man tarpat hari darshan which is inspired by the serious, evening raga Malkauns. The song is a bhajan addressed to Swami Haridas (and Lord Krishna), and at that point in Raft's career represented his best effort. Within the film, too, Man tarpat is Rafi's peak song, every other song points to this exquisite bhajan. It is also amongst Naushad's most tightly-structured, successful compositions. Unlike most ftlmi geets this song is a continuous, seamless melody which dispenses with non-traditional musical devices. Amongst its truly clever features is the ingenuous use of taan to bridge the lyrics. The only other songs which nod toward classical music are a cycle of ragas sung when Baiju trains with Haridas and Insan bano. All other songs are ftlmi geets based on folk music - although shaped by ragas/thats: Door koyi gaye (Mishra Mand); Tu Ganga ki

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(Bhairavi); Mohe bhool gaye (Bhairav); Jhule mein pavan (Pilu); and Bachpan ki (Mishra Desh). These songs are segmented (or sectioned) and emboldened by an orchestra ofWestern and Indian instruments. Incidentally, Naushad and Shakeel Badayuni designed an ingenuous strategy to make the boatman Baiju's songs suggest his intimate relationship with water (fluid, free). In Tu Ganga ki mauj they used the fluid sarangi and images (including sounds of oars) from the Ganges and the Jamuna rivers; the duet Jhule men has references to clouds, rain (jaltarang) and koel (flute); the objective of O Duniya ke is to make God weep (neer); in man tarpat the sarangi and taans suggest watery fluidity. No wonder, then, Baiju is able to command the water to boil over spontaneously ( Tanon se patal pighlaye, Baiju ke sangeet se data jal mein ag laga de). Baiju is never far (in fact or imagination) from his "medium'' of existence; he retains a magical/spiritual association and/or empathy with water. Tansen is shown as cut-off from his milieu; he creates his estranged music as a prisoner in Akbar's court. In the end, Baiju leaves Akbar's palace a free man while Tansen is restrained; Baiju becomes a poor citizen while Tansen remains a wealthy slave. Baiju "flows on"while Tansen remains static as a piece of ornate furniture in Akbar's palace. Further exploration of the voices used to "personify" various characters of the movie leads to interesting socio-political revelations. Tansen sings throughout in Amir Khan's voice, which does not seem to alter very much as the story unfolds. This lack of evolutionary change signifies his commitment to socio-political status quo. Amir Khan's soothing and mellow voice asks for submission/resignation before indefatigable power. Tansen's voice whispers: 'Don't make waves! Give up! Join the Establishment and stay Established.' Vijay Bhatt and Naushad reject this option and

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send Tansen to ignominious defeat. They join Baiju's revolt and give him Rafi's (and Paluskar's) seditious and subversive voice. Their choice was impeccable because Rafi had "many voices", amongst which was his rebellious tenor. Indeed, Rafi was rebellion become voice. The fact that he could excessively modulate his voice made him an ideal vocal guerrilla fighter; his opponents never knew behind which note or key he was lurking. As the plot unfolds, Rafi's voice becomes richer, louder, and formal. He graduates from a mere "caller" in Door koyi gaye to the folk-singer of Tu Ganga ki; finally, he is singing the quite daunting Man tarpat. Thus, Baiju connotes growth, evolution and change. Baiju moves and therefore is cinematic, while Tansen is static and is no more than an ornate painting hanging on a museum wall. Vijay Bhatt/Naushad do not stop at presenting Baiju as connoting mere change; he is not shown as some slow-paced reformer. He is portrayed as a revolutionary. Therefore, before Baiju enters the court to compete against Tansen, Rafi's voice vacates his larynx and is replaced by Paluskar's. This sudden change signifies revolution. However, because Baiju had not gone to join the Establishment he returns with his 'owri voice. In the end he is again singing the"same song" (Tu Ganga ki) in the"same voice"(Rafi's). The choice of symbols like Ganga and Jumna in the song suggest Baiju's fidelity to his origin. He returns to his people and his milieu. Like Tansen, Gauri - Baiju's lover - is also saddled by a statusquo seeking, unchanging voice of Lata Mangeshkar. When Gauri's sakhi exhorts her (in Shamshad Begum's muscular voice) to come out to meet Baiju, Gauri replies: More angana laaj ka pehra... Paon pari zanjeer; are Rama! Paon pari zanjeer re...

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The poor woman is twice-chained: by oppressive tradition and by the voice of the Queen of Subservient Women, Lata Mangeshkar.6 In Ranjit Movietone's Tansen (1943), Tani (Khursheed) boldly goes after her stricken lover, Tansen, and saves (Baraso re) him from the severe wounds incurred while singing raga Dipak (Diya jalao). Gauri does nothing of the sort; she sits, waits, and suffers. All Gauri offers Baiju (and us) is compound suffering and resignation. Had Baiju lost the contest against Tansen, Gauri would do nothing except look miserable and sing in Lata's pathetic voice. Incidentally, Gauri is played by the supremely masochistic Meena Kumari who has left us the deadliest model of regressive femininity. Meena Kumari was the female Devdas of Indian cinema! A more incisive analysis of the plot reveals the troubling attitudes ofVijay Bhatt/Naushad/Shakeel towards gender relations and status. Baiju and Gauri do approach equality while they sing Jhule men. However, a closer look at this song reveals the layers of inequality oppressing Gauri. For example Baiju sings: Meri taan se uncha tera Jhoolna, Gori

How does Gauri respond? Mere jhoolne ke sang tere pyar ki dori

Forgetting the Freudian reading of dori {!), Gauri immediately surrenders her gains; she quickly hands over the control of the jhoolna to Baiju. Further, throughout this duet Rafi's voice hovers over Lata's. There is yet another attempt to establish equality (at least genuine empathy) between Gauri and Baiju. The latter sings Tu Ganga ki in Bhairavi ragini (female) while Gauri sings Mohe bhool

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gaye in Bhairav raga (male). This reciprocal swapping of melodic gender is amongst the most ingenuous ways of establishing the identity of lovers in the Indian cinema. Furthermore, the Bhairav(r) raga/ragini connoting morning/hope are associated with Baiju and Gauri (who represent regular people). Like Darbari, which is associated with the "royal bunch", Bhairav( r) is also sung twice in the film. Baiju Bawra is suspended between these two extremes. Rosenthal writes that Bhairav(i) "is the foundation of many folksongs and melodies sung by the peasants when at work". 7 Unfortunately, Baiju Bawra's overall stance regarding gender equality is negative. This is amplified by the director's attitude towards female deceit (played by one of the "bloody mamas" of the Fifties Indian cinema, Kuldip Kaur). This woman, aspiring to • power, is shown as a grotesque being who brings death and destruction upon poor villagers. When Baiju sings Jnsaan bano in Todi ragini our"warrior woman"begins to experience a meltdown. However, we know that Baiju can never love her because, by her very attempt to wield power, she has irretrievably gone beyond the limits of desire. Of course, it would be historically incorrect to show gender equality in 16th century India when such equality was uncommon. Had the director shown the situation with some irony he may have pointed towards a more hopeful future. Indeed, between Tani (Tansen, 1943) and Gauri (Baiju Bawra, 1952) women suffered loss of power and status.8 Baiju Bawra is among a handful of films which discuss the socio-political role of music in India. The fact that it was made shortly following Indian independence, when Mr. B.V. Keskar had eliminated Hindustani cinema music from AIR in the interest of fostering cultural "purity" (Mr. Keskar joined those dubious lumi.naries of the Indian subcontinent who, in the name of caste

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and/or religious purity,have devastated it), is of utmost significanc.e. Interestingly, the movie harks back to the raison d' etre of the Hindustani sound film: that it was meant as vocal protest against the British Raj. The entire Indian cine track from 1931 onwards can be distilled into Gandhiji's two words "Purna Swaraj".9 Contrary to acc.epted views the purpose of the sound track in the Hindustani film has been political. The Hindustani film song has always been assertive. Many lyricists who flocked towards Calcutta, Bombay or Lahore, did indeed come to fill hungry stomachs, but also (especially) to protest and agitate; they had found a powerful medium to reach the masses. There are messages of covert (i.e., couched in symbols) protest and defiance even in innocuous • sounding "romantic" Hindustani film songs (a rich area for future research). With cries of "Swadeshi" in the air it is not at all surprising that so many pioneering music composers such as Timir Baran, Shankar Rao Vyas, Khemchand Prakash, Gyan Dutt and Vasant Desai (amongst others) searched for "pure" (Here we go again!) tunes to which the masses would march (or dance). "Pure" pointed in the direction of Hindustani classical music. The folly of this view crackles like thunder because Hindustani classical music is as pure as the number of times India has been conquered in the last 3,000 years. Aposteriori pasteurization of Hindustani classical sangeet is a bitter joke we play on each other when we run out on frivolous laughter. Baiju Bawra resurrects the debate about the type of music that should best be used in Hindustani cinema. The reprise of this debate, in the wake of India's independenc-e and its partition, was entirely warranted. That no analysis from this perspective has been attempted of Baiju Bawra in the last few decades is astonishing.

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Naushad was in his teens when he was recruited by the studios as a piano player (he also played the harmonium - both Western instruments!). He was not born into music; what he lacked in pedigree he more than made up in enthusiasm and passion for music. He was apprenticed to composers Mushtaque Hussain, Jhande Ali Khan, and Khemchand Prakash. It was from Jhande Ali Khan that he learned the most valuable and revolutionary lesson about composition: music should not upstage poetry/lyrics. Although a musician, Jhande Ali Khan was wise to the political import of poetry; to him music's function was to sharpen poetry's bite. To this day Naushad's music stays clear of lyrics. The mechanism that he employed to achieve this was to partition the song into lyrical (melodic, with percussion) and interlude (musical; generally non-percussive and with orchestra) sections. Experiments involving the use of Western instruments/harmony were generally employed in the musical (i.e. the more"non-Indian" part of the song); the lyrical (i. e., melodic or "Indian") part of the song was played along traditional lines; melody was sacrosanct! Armed with these preliminaries, Naushad's career as an independent music composer was launched against the backdrop of the "Second War" (he was born at the close of the "Great War"; hence the name "New Happiness", i.e., Naushad) in 1940 in Mohan Bhavnani's Prem Nagar. At the same time a seasoned Anil Biswas composed the score of Mehboob Khan's Aurat, and later Mother India in 1957, with Naushad's score. Naushad entered the film industry with a burning desire to promote the folk music of U.P. (the United Provinces/Uttar Pradesh), the land of his birth. He had been inspired by the use of Bengali (Timir Baran; ltC. Boral; Pankaj Mullick), Punjabi (Mir Saheb; Ghulam Haider), and Rajasthani music (Khemchand Prakash) in films; he was certain that folk melodies from U.P. would enrich the repertoire of cinesongs.

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Being precocious, Naushad was unafraid to experiment; he readily used western orchestra to "decorate" his folk-derived melodies. He found Western orchestra (and its associated attributes) particularly valuable as a source of background music for melodramatic Indian films. In the early Forties Naushad was the enfant terrible of Hindustani cinemusic; he was bitterly criticized by his cautious mentor, Khemchand Prakash ("Khemrajji") , for tinkering with the "integrity" (i.e. purity) of Hindustani traditional music. Therefore, it is odd that following Baiju Bawra Naushad has violently spun 180 degrees and come to stand in Khemrajji's position. Ever since the release of Baiju Bawra Naushad has (for better or worse) been inseparable from - even synonymous with - "classical" music in the cinema. 10 Naushad has ~ppeared (even to this author) a culturally reactionary ( as opposed to revolutionary) force. Clearer definitions of "reactionary" and "revolutionary" are now necessary for further comment.A reactionary is a person who favors "a return to old, especially conservative ways and methods" (Webster's Dictionary), while a revolutionary favors futuristic, drastic, radical change. A reactionary is a right wing "Tory" (i.e. politically authoritarian, oppressive, at least a conformist); a revolutionary is a left wing "Whig" (democratic, populist). A reactionary favors concentration of power among elites; a revolutionary sees the majority as the legitimate repository of power. A reactionary loves the court and courtiers (and their attending pomp and circumstance), a revolutionary is informal and in the shop or street. Areactionary sings Darbari raga in Amir Khan's voice; a revolutionary sings Bhairavi raga in Paluskar's (or Moharnmad Rafi's) voice. A reactionary cheerlessly extols the virtues of "pure" Hindustani classical music; a revolutionary

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cheerfully sings or whistles the folk song (including the film song); the tabla and piano are reactionary; the dholak and harmonium are revolutionary... Let me now restate the proposition to be discussed: "Is Naushad musically reactionary or revolutionary?"It is best to begin answering this question with a quote from Naushad himself (this comment was made shortly following Baiju Bawra's release): Classical sangeet has never been the art of the masses. It was born in the sacred temples and later flourished in the glamorous courts of the Rajahs, Maharajas and Nawabs...The common people who had no access to the durbars were never offered the opportunity of listening to classical music. They could not; therefore, acquire an appreciative ear for it. 11

Any ambiguity regarding this statement is dispelled by Barnouw and Krishnaswamy: In the view of Naushad Ali, film music - a spontaneous and exuberant grov.'th,emerging from an older folk music and adapting itself to a new era and its influences - was the real folk of modern India. 12

The fact that, starting with Baiju Bawra, Naushad has drawn inspiration from Hindustani classical music (e.g. in Shabab, Mughal-e-Azam, Kohinoor, Saaz aur Awaz) in no way changes his fundamental view that folk music is amongst the best source material for cinema songs. Naushad has even ridiculed classical music (i.e. the more traditional variety) in modern cinema setting. For example, in Shabab classical musicians give the insomniac princess violent headaches but she is soothed by O Chandan ka palna, a restructured folk tune; in Kohinoor he used silly sounding taans

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(sung by a classical musician) in his reprocessed "classical" song Madhuban men; in Mughal-e-Azam Salim trysts with a commoner against Prem Jogan. To suggest that Naushad sees no value in Hindustani classical music is obviously incorrect; rather, he fmds the pukka gan11 unsuitable (except in highly specialized circumstances) for the popular film. What Naushad does say is that the raga system is a very valuable tool for structuring and designing traditional cinema songs. He sees the raga system as quite open to experimental expression. He calls for innovation within a distinctly Indian musical framework. These very pragmatic views of the composer have been extrapolated to suggest that Naushad is a partisan of Hindustani classical music in•the popular film. I believe that this is incorrect. Naushad demands the declassification of Indian classical music for mass use. Years ago, when Khemrajji composed the classically-oriented songs of Tansen (1943 ), Naushad confronted and eclipsed his mentor's "noble" melodies with his brash folk songs of Rattan ( I 944). Khemrajji never forgot (or forgave) this piece of"freshness" from his pupil. Naushad has always accepted and rejoiced in the cinema as a popular medium. He has, by example, attempted to further the popularity of the Hindustani film by using folk music as the primary source for his songs. Even Naushad's detractors acknowledge him as a master of chorus songs; this is the clearest evidence of the maestro's intimate association with folk music. A bit of cinema history contexts Naushad's approach to music. It is well-nigh impossible to disentangle Hindustani soundtrack from its struggle to be independent. Indian cinema was born in silent bondage 75 years ago. The movie stimulates very powerful (subconscious) "memories of underdevelopment". Therefore, it

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is not at all surprising that there exists in India a very powerful urge to use instruments of cinema towards independent cultural expression. Cinema was always asked by its artists to create images contrary to the images of bondage which surrounded Phalke's generation (it is also not at all surprising that so many early Indian films were mythologicals). It was hoped that Gods would exorcise the foreign Devil from the tools of movie-making. When the sound track was adopted by Indians the problem was reborn because, once again, they were borrowing a technology from the West. Exorcism had to begin all over again. It was "muhurat" time. Sorcerers/magicians/soothsayers got into their act. Extra prayers were in order: the very first Hindustani song was of beggary: De de khuda ke naam pe (Alam Ara, 1931). Appalled by this inauspicious posture of cupped hands, many composers looked towards what they thought was the best, the freest, and the "purest'' in their music: classical Hindustani sangeet. It was not realized that this quest did not uncup their hands; composers were still begging because they were looking for crumbs from a music created for the Indian ruling class. A whole cadre of composers in the first decade of the Indian sound film in India were attempting to "uplift" cinemusic to the "classical level". They were asking the masses to cup their hands and bow their heads to the rajah/nawab or his surrogates. Like a magical elevator, classical music was supposed to make ordinary Indians into instant rajahs/ nawabs. Yes! It is as ridiculous as it sounds. In Ranjit Movietone's Tansen (1943), Khemrajji distilled a decade's feverish effort to forge cinemusic out of Hindustani classical sangeet. Impressed by Tansen's musical ingenuity "His Master's Voice" summons the folk-singer to join his civil service in Agra. Akbar even sends Tansen "moving expenses" including a horse and a courtier's turban (both symbols of wealth and power!).

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The sounds of Tansen's steady estrangement from his lover, Tani, and his community are recorded in the heart-rending duet More balapan ke. Tani, simple yet not devoid of foresight, is distraught: Kabhi na Jhule, bagh hindole, kabhi na baithe chhaon re... Kabhi na poochhi baat jiya k~ Kahe chale bar gaon re?

The disingenuous Tansen (Oh! Men! Men!) replies: Di/ ke darpan men hi sajaniya lunga tujhe nihar re

Tansen offers Tani space in a heart that he has already mortgaged to Akbar for a seat in the court! For Tansen, the village is soon a distant memory. A broken-hearted Tani sings: Ab rajah bhaye more balma, woh din bhool gaye

Tansen is a movie about upward mobility; Tansen becomes a medieval climber by forsaking folk music for classical music. (Of course, this is also offered as the aspiration of cinemusic). In the most dramatic moment of the film Akbar asks Tansen to sing the incendiary raga Dipak (Diya jalao.0; Dipak "purifies" Tansen of his commonality - he crosses over to the ruling class forever. At all levels the movie is upwardly mobile.After Tansen singer-actor K.L. Saigal would also be dubbed "golden voiced", i.e., the royal family of voice. Khemrajji, too, composed his songs as if Akbar was waiting - his gramophone cranked - in the Panch Mahal of Fatehpur Sikri to listen to freshly-minted 78 r.p.m. records of the film! Khernrajji was amongst the most creative pioneer composers of Hindustani film music. He was responsible for many innovative contributions to cinemusic, especially the use of Hindustani classical music in film. Baiju Bawra's music rests on foundations

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erected by Khemrajji. Naushad has persistently acknowledged his debt to his mentor.Yet, Khemrajji's excessive homage to Hindustani classical sangeet revealed his elitism - even snobbery. Even in his later, less classical scores such as Ziddi and Mahal, one hears his roaring and rumbling percussion - cloudburst over the Himalayas. Imposing. Daunting. Royal. In retrospect Tansen (1943) appears quite troubling - even spooky. In anticipation of independence it asks Indian go-getters to reserve a ticket on the Rajdhani Express in preparation of occupying seats of power to be vacated by"His Majesty's Servants". Tansen charts the path to upward mobility, success, power...and (neo) oppression. Made in the wake of Indian independence, Baiju Bawra contemplates Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's haunting statement made on August 14, 1947: Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now...we shall redeem our pledge not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India will wake to life and freedom. 13

Baiju Bawra attempts to chart the unexplored dimensions of being independent "not wholly" and "(not) in full measure". At the very least, at several levels, it encourages Indians to reject the "Jansen solution". Baiju Bawra is a revolt against those "neo-nauratans" who took over from the British and were now bent upon forcefeeding the masses on regurgitated music of the.ruling class. (Even in East Africa we used to tell our parents: itap AIR par Darbari suniye. Hum Radio Ceylon ki Bhairavi sunenge." ) In Baiju Bawra, Naushad identified with a simple boatman/ folk singer who after delivering a sharp tongue lashing to Akbar/ Tansen, rejoins his people a freer man. If Tansen extolled Hindustani

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classical music, Baiju Bawra celebrated folk music - actually it strongly sided with the "real folk music of modern India", cinemusic. In Baiju Bawra Naushad asked for a radical redefinition of"dassical" and "folk" musics of India. He challenged himself (and other composers) to transform and adapt traditional music to a newer, more equal and freer democratic India. Naushad asked for the liberation of "classical" and "folk" musics from the durbar and village, respectively, into the growing, modern cities of India. He chose Rafi's voice to portray Baiju. Rafi's muscular yet malleable voice was ideally suited to post-Independence times; the strength of Rafi's voice proclaimed India's conviction in its cultural identity even while its versatility left open the possibility to experiment with whatever a newer, more accessible world had to offer. K.L. Saigal's voice evoked lost opportunities, resignation and their associated past (i.e. Devdasism). All those who attempted to copy him in the post-independence times met with limited success; Mukesh and C.H.Atma were, in that sense, atavistic. The torch had passed on to Rafi, the people's voice of defiance. Inspite of a very modest beginning in the Hindustani cinema (in a chorus from Pehle Aap; Hindustan ke hum hain; his first song in Gul Baloch was in Punjabi) Rafi went on to become the most formidable voice of the cinema. Yet he never lost his simplicity and rusticness - he refused to "cleanse" his voice of its jaat Punjabi lustre. At all levels, Tansen and Baiju Bawra are reciprocally illuminating. Hidden behind these movies is the bitter-sweet tussle between two supremely gifted composers, Khemchand Prakash and Naushad - mentor and student, respectively. It recalls a similar confrontation between the conservative mentor Frantz Joseph Haydn and the revolutionary pupil Ludwig van Beethoven. Naushad's dalliance with Western music had troubled his urbane predecessor. For Naushad his career's first decade was devoted to

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fierce experimentation to confront his.eminent teacher. His excursion into alien music was his preparation to reform cinema music. Sadly, his opportunity to respond to Tansen did not arise until Khemrajji's demise. It has been heartbreaking for Naushad not to have had Baiju Bawra's music evaluated by his esteemed mentor. In Baiju Bawra Naushad criticised his mentor; more importantly, even while rejecting·the classical "solution", Naushad rejoiced in Khemrajji's genius because Baiju Bawra's music stands on Khemrajji's shoulders. Ever since Khemrajji's death, Naushad - like Hamlet - has been engaged in a dialogue with a ghost. He has been trying to clap with one hand. Considerable criticism has been levelled at the use ofWestern instruments and other techniques (harmony, color, etc.) in Baiju Bawra's songs and background score. Those who raise these objections fail to appreciate a number of significant attributes of the commercial cinema. Baiju Bawra is a fictional film rather than a documentary. Furthermore, it is a (melo )dramatic movie designed for modern, urbanized Indian masses. Vijay Bhatt and Naushad are not making a movie for a 14th Century audience; Baiju Bawra is made for the audience of post-independence India. Indeed, it uses Mughal India only as a "case study'' of repression and of opposition to it (with music as a tool of national liberation). Just as classical Hindustani music during Akbar's reign was a fusion of Native, Aryan, Turkish, Mughal, Persian (amongst other) traditions so the music of 20th Century (including cinemusic) includes Western instruments/idioms in the company of Indian ones. Baiju Bawra acknowledges that Indian music, a fruit of its history, has an association with Europe (the West). It does not deny British Raj as an historic fact. Thus, Baiju Bawra exhibits Mughal India refracted through the 20th Century. Western instruments assist contemporary audiences in their "journey" from the

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familiarity of the present to the enigma of the past. (Even Akira Kurosawa has employed Western orchestra in Kagemusha and Ran, stories of medieval Japan). Contrary to popular belief, Naushad is definitely not advocating chauvinistic insularity. He has been amongst the principal innovators in fusing Indian, European and Middle Eastern musical traditions. For example, he has borrowed from, or been influenced by, music of the Middle East (Shah Jehan ), Spain/Latin America (Jadoo) and American Jazz (Ram aur Shyam). Furthermore, there are overt references, in his music, to European classical composers such as Peter Tchaikovsky Uadoo), Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (Anmol Ghari), Camille St. Sans (Dulari), Ludwig van Beethoven (Uran Khatola), and Richard Wagner (Mughal-e-Azam) . He has attempted to decorate and augment Indian folk music by using alien influences. Naushad's 'journey' to the West was to improve Indian cinema music. To this day no Indian cine-composer has quite equalled Naushad's command over Western orchestra. Naushad is very concerned that in the face of fast-paced technological change Indians may become so disillusioned with their own traditions that they might disinherit the music of their ancestors. To Naushad that is tantamount to cultural suicide. He sees no need for such dark eventuality; he rejects the orphan status for Indian cinemusic. He challenges younger composers to build the present and the future on the foundation of Indian folk music. He asks for the modernization of people's music. It is astonishing that Naushad uncritically accepts the simplistic view that Indian classical music "was born in sacred temples". In a well-researched book on Indian music - in a chapter that reads more like a court brief on cultural larceny than music history - 0. Goswami writes:

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The history of Indian music from Aryan invasion to our days is thus the history of this assimilation, appropriation and Indianization through the long centuries. 14

This oddly discreet declaration is followed by another odd statement: It is quite clear that the Aryans borrowed the tunes from these tribes and, adding a note or two here and there in such a way as not to disturb the original tune, usurped them.

What this statement cleverly tries to hide is the wholesale larceny (indeed robbery) by which Hindustani classical music was constructed. The unbearable melancholy of much of Hindustani classical music, its funereal dourness are attributable, at least in part, to 3,000 years of cruelties, defeats and futility. The music records the angst of the robbed, the maimed and the dispossessed.A lesser art would certainly have succumbed to grief, Indian classical sangeet survives. The exasperated Goswami finally states: The borrowing offolk-tunes to build the art of music has been the practice of almost all the nations as it is in which the musical art is based.

So there! Akbar, then, appropriated Tansen and then employed him to pilfer folk music to construct ragas. Later these ragas would be called with proprietary names such as Mian-ki-yeh, Mian-ki-voh, Mian-ki-sub kuchh. No wonder, Baiju asks: Kyun tumne lagaye hain yahan zulm ke dere? Dhan sath na jayega, bane kyun ho lutere?

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Khud paap karo, Naam ho shaitan lea badnaam!

Baiju asks the people to appropriate back their own music. Tacitly, though, he acknowledges Tansen's genius in "disciplining" folk tunes into ragas. Baiju does not reject Tansen's contribution to the development of more structured, powerful music; Baiju learns that discipline leads to freedom. Cinema is much more than any one (or even all) of its ingredients. More than "x" is missing from Baiju Bawra's cinematic equation. Robert Bresson, the great French master, observes that cinema involves: The relationship between the eye and the ear. Listening/seeing/ listening/seeing - and combining them...to have harmony. 15

Baiju Bawra feasts the ear and sta_rves the eye; the primary ingredients of cinema seldom interrelate to yield a high cinematic "whole". Naushad's triumphant music keeps this cinematic jalopy on course. The direction, sets, photography - the mis en scene are dowdy. . The most inexcusable sin of Baiju Bawra's producer was his failure to cast Mubarak in the role of Akbar. Since he created the role in Tansen, Mubarak had come to embody the essence of the Emperor; indeed (to this author at least!) the real Akbar could have been no more than an futuristic parody of Mubarak's Akbar! The milquetoast chosen to portray Akbar in Baiju Bawra whittles him down so much that Baiju's rebellion appears almost pointless. The movie's Akbar is devoid of the menacing power which the magnificent Mughal commanded. Consequently, on the screen, the competition song Aj gavat sounds more like a lullaby for a moronic rather than a lionine Akbar.

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