FROM EK KALI MUSKAYI TO DASTAK
By Kohinoor Dasgupta
Na tum bewafa ho / Lata Mangeshkar
Madan Mohan’s music was sensitive. I am using the word 'sensitive' as in this definition by Webster’s New World Dictionary: "highly perceptive or responsive intellectually, aesthetically etc." The composer sought this kind of sensitivity from the artistes and musicians who rendered his music.
In 1967-70 Lata Mangeshkar was at a mellow, middle phase of her career. She was pushing forty. Her voice was finely tuned to the collective soul of India. She practised rigorously to maintain it (“Gala chalte rehna chahiye,” she said casually in a late-life interview) and to incorporate perfectly nuanced emotion.
Na tum bewafa ho, na hum bewafa hain (Neither of us is unfaithful) from Ek Kali Muskayi (1968) is one of Rajinder Krishen’s many striking compositions for Hindi cinema. Debutant actress Meera plays a young woman who has not received love from her parents. As such, the commonplace dilemma of love versus duty is for her an uncommonly difficult test. The tune of this talky song catches her mood, and Madan Mohan himself pointed out the "soz” (deep emotion) of Mangeshkar’s voice here.
Ek Kali Muskayi hit theaters in late 1967. Madan Mohan composed music for a few other films of 1967.
During a period in Jab Yaad Kisi Ki Aati Hai (1967), when the hero is thought to be dead, Madan Mohan uses as theme a lovely stanza from Mahendra Kapoor’s solo version of Dhoonde tujhko nain diwane (My crazed eyes seek you), in the way he had used Mera qarar le ja in Ashiana.
Aaj mile man ke meet / Manna Dey
Nawab Sirajuddaulah (1967) provided an opportunity to Madan Mohan to compose a thumri-ang number for Manna Dey. Sitar sets the durbar scene. Madan Mohan never used the sitar in a wishy-washy way. The instrument is either played like a heartstring made of grace notes to give more information about the character's mood, or it is heard in its traditional flow, as if we caught a minute of a concert solo by Ustad Rais Khan.
Aaj mile man ke meet (I found my soulmate) starts sedately in Raag Bhairavi and slips briefly into Chandrakauns and ends on a tabla tehai. Madan Mohan was enamored of the idea of tehai and frequently ended stanzas with a word repeated thrice. Even in this personal indulgence, he was full of ideas. He used the skill so organically in different songs that we hardly notice the pattern.
The unusual, imaginative lyrics by Raja Mehdi Ali Khan themselves wear dance anklets. Madan Mohan composed the tune with a Classical artiste's mastery of rhythm: the last word of every stanza in the body of the song is like the last piece grabbed out of the air by a juggler.
“Chandrama-sa gora badan jhilmilaye jaise kiran
Choom raha unke charan jhoom-jhoom ke sangeet.
Unki preet unki lagan lipat gayi jaise agan
Man mein mere aan base jaise bansuri mein geet.
Ankhiya yeh banke chakor dekhe hain chanda ki or
Sawali-saloni rayn aaj dheere-dheere beet.”
Moon-white, she sparkles as if with sun rays.
Lively music kisses my beloved’s feet.
Her love, her devotion has engulfed me like fire.
She inhabits my mind as a song inhabits the flute.
My eyes, amorous chakor birds, are fixed on my Moon.
Oh, dark, beautiful night, slow down your transit. [My translation]
Ek paise ka sawal hai / Lata Mangeshkar
Lata Mangeshkar’s emotional immersion in her work is evident when she voices a hungry child’s plea in Ek paise ka sawal hai (It’s the question of one paisa), written by Kaifi Azmi for Ghar Ka Chirag (1967). (Adult female voices were conventionally used in Hindi films for children’s songs.)
"Ek roti kha loonga, main pyas bujha loonga.
Phir nanhe dil se tumko jee bharke dua doonga.”
I will eat a roti, quench my thirst.
A child’s pure heart will bless you. [My translation]
In the same film, Asha Bhosle’s Jaane kaise chori-chori (Don’t know how, slyly) is a street dancer’s song, embellished by some expert playing of the peti. With what zest Bhosle renders the dil-dil-dil tehai!
Teri ankhon ke siwa /Lata Mangeshkar
Tei ankhon ke siwa / Mohammed Rafi
Chhayi barkha bahar / Lata Mangeshkar
Raj Khosla delivered another hit in 1969: the Sunil Dutt-Asha Parekh starrer Chirag (1969). Majrooh Sultanpuri’s songs take a long, hard look at the concept of "ghar ka chirag”. A child, usually the eldest son, used to be called "the light of the home” in many traditional Indian families.
Teri ankhon ke siva duniya mein rakkha kya hai (What’s to love in this world except your eyes?), a light-hearted Rafi song praising the beauty of a woman's eyes, morphs into Mangeshkar’s version which is a blind wife’s acknowledgment of her spouse’s unchanging love and support. Later, when the woman is presumed dead, the husband feels as though he lives in a dark house, without love and goodness. He sings (in Rafi’s voice) Chirag dil ka jalao, bahut andhera hai (Without the light of your love, I live in darkness). Who or what, the film asks us to consider, is the light of one's home?
Here is a couplet from Teri ankhon ke siwa (Rafi’s version):
"In mein mere aanewale zamane ki tasveer hai
Chaahat ke kajal se likkhi hui meri taqdeer hai.”
Your eyes hold the promise of my future.
My destiny has been etched with the kohl of your loving eyes. [My translation]
Sultanpuri said Madan Mohan had a unique understanding of the ghazal genre, its essential nature and romance. The above couplet gives an idea of Sultanpuri’s own ability to write cinematic ghazals.
Chhayi barkha bahar (Rain clouds gather) is a pretty song based on Megh Malhar. It is used in the film in one of those implausible situations in which the heroine is whisked away by a troupe of tribal or village dancers, to be costumed, accessorized, and inserted into the performance as the lead. It happened to Waheeda Rehman in Solva Saal (1958). Raj Khosla directed that film too and Sultanpuri wrote the songs, though S.D. Burman, not Madan Mohan, was the music director. Lead actresses who were trained dancers were thus able to enact cutesy, earthy performance numbers. The other way to pull in a conventional, middle-class young woman into one of these dances was to make her an imaginary participant. Thus, Nutan in Dulhan Ek Raat Ki, playing governess/teacher Nirmal, joined a show organized to celebrate her own wedding.
Baiyan na dharo / Lata Mangeshkar
Mai ri, main ka se/ Lata Mangeshkar
Hum hain mata-e-koocha-o /Lata Mangeshkar
Finally, we come to the song which I love best out of all Madan Mohan’s compositions, Baiyan na dharo, o balma (Keep your distance, Love). I heard about this song when I was little, from my Ma, who was a trained Hindustani Classical music vocalist, a Gold Medalist from Prayag Sangeet Samiti, who even performed at Sadarang Music Conference. Ma was a busy woman, with no time left over from household duties and her riyaz. She did not watch movies. She knew few Hindi film songs. She had not watched Dastak. But she would stop in her tracks if she heard Baiyan na dharo playing anywhere. The other Hindi song she hummed was Main to tum sang. "Madan Mohan” was thus a hallowed name in my family, in Kolkata (then Calcutta).
Madan Mohan won the National Film Award for Best Music Direction (1970) for Dastak.
Baiyan na dharo is a wondrous extension of another tune that Madan Mohan found at the time for another situation and another film, Tum se bichad ke (Separated from you) from Maharaj (1970). Tum se bichad ke is very different; yet, one picks up a whisper of Baiyan na dharo in it.
Superb sitar fragments accompany Baiyan na dharo. The entire musical arrangement is inspired, an aural palimpsest. Mangeshkar’s voice rises to the surface as if from an echoing pool. Music laps at the words. Beautifully simple, aptly chaste (Hindustani Classical-based music, thumri-style bol written by Sultanpuri for the character of Salma, who has learnt Classical music and has a tanpura), Baiyan na dharo is a graceful song, enacted by Rehana Sultan.
Dastak was written and directed by Rajinder Singh Bedi. The film is about a young couple, Hameed and Salma (played by Sanjeev Kumar and Rehana Sultan, both of whom won National Awards for their work in Dastak), new renters of a tiny flat at Yahya Manzil in Bombay Central. They cannot afford to move to a more residential locality. They do not know that the previous tenant of their flat was a sex worker. When Salma sings or does riyaz, tradesmen up and down the street gossip that she is soliciting and that the man living with her is her pimp.
The three songs sung by Mangeshkar for this film find Salma at different psychological stages during her stay in the flat. While Baiyan na dharo makes it through before the scandal-mongering and harassment starts, Mai ri, main ka se kahoon? (Mother, whom shall I tell?) and Hum hain mata-e-koocha-o-bazaar ki tarah (I am like a piece of merchandise in a bazaar) are sung when Salma feels oppressed.
In the collage:
Row 1 (l to r): Lata Mangeshkar (in the cover design of a cassette of her Bangla songs), Sanjeev Kumar and Rehana Sultan
Row 2 (l to r): Manna Dey, Madan Mohan, Meera, Mohammed Rafi
Row 3 (l to r): Sunil Dutt, Sunil Dutt & Asha Parekh, Rehana Sultan
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