An epitome of romanticism

Rafisaab has sung so many songs that epitomise various moods, from rakishness to romance, sadness to spirituality and everything in between. This was an unmatched ability to bring in every conceivable mood into his unique voice. His voice was unfortunately exploited by composers who just wanted to make a quick buck out of a saleable brand. This led to a proliferation of Rafisaab songs with little attention to the quality.

He did leave us a large number of utterly unforgettable numbers, though.

None better to show a dreamy romanticism than this song from Kala Bazar, with Devsaab and Wahida Rehman in the lead. Devsaab, the quintessential patron saint of all wannabe romeos, starts in the movie as a bus conductor who gets fired for being argumentative, gets reduced to being a hungry and uneducated person with an ailing mother (Leela Chitnis in her patented role, its tough to imagine her as the romantic leading lady with Ashok Kumar), then changes to a black-marketer selling Mother India tickets to a gang leader who beats up his rival Madan Puri (and later employs him in his own gang), falls in love with a lady who is going steady with a guy who is headed for England for his higher studies (a recurrent theme in Bollywood movies those days, with everyone from Arts graduates, Lawyers and Doctors invariably headed for “Vilayat” for their higher education) and smitten by the love for a woman with a strong sense of right and wrong, reforms to face a court trial. His former gang members now come and testify for him and he is absolved and freed to romancer the lady love of his life.

Sachin Dev Burman, Dev Anand, Waheeda Rehman and Shailendra together again… are irresistibly romantic in this number too.

Vijay Anand shot the songs with Devsaab in a giddy state of lovelorn euphoria running across a meadow in the throes of love. How can a man run at that speed sing so beautifully without getting breathless? When you are Dev Anand you can do anything.

When you have Rafisaab singing for you, you can scale the moon.

This is a rare Navketan movie (the only one actually) which stars all three Anand Brothers. Vijay Anand wrote the script and directed the movie, his second after Nau Do Gyarah. He also acts the role of the man Waheeda Rehman is going steady with before he goes abroad. Dev Anand romances her on the train and in Ooty with songs like these. Waheeda looks sublime and elegant oozing charm and grace as she did in movies made in this period. Many of Dev Anand’s mannerisms including his rag doll impersonation are on view.

Chetan Anand is the lawyer whose pocket is picked by Dev Anand at the very beginning (to bankroll his ticket blackmarketing business) and who later defends Devsaab in the court case (and gets him out of the cooler too). Sublime music by S D Burmanda, and great lyrics by Shailendra and great, incomparable vocals by Rafisaab give the right dreamy and romantic feel. Remember there was no echo effect that could be introduced by electronic circuitry that time. The modulation and effects were achieved by changes in the volume and distance from the microphone. Human ingenuity topping the ease of technology. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbS9jAPl3xU

Vijay Anand also very intelligently incorporated the real-life premiere footage of the film Mother India in the initial reels of Kala Bazar, to launch Dev Anand’s career as a ticket black-marketer with his sidekick Kanu (Rashid Khan, a constant in a number of Devsaab and Gurudutt movies) thereby adding immense (cameo) star value to the film, showing the likes of Dilip Kumar, Geeta Dutt, Guru Dutt, Kishore Kumar, Raaj Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Sohrab Modi, Mohammed Rafi, Nargis, Nadira and Nimmi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvyUL7rFL6E

Interesting to see Jagdish Raj the man who acted the greatest number of times in a single role (Police Inspector) is seen as a small time criminal in this sequence.

Although the movie was digitally colorised later and rereleased, I feel the beauty is in the original monochrome movie. The charm is distinctly lacking in the colorised version. Rafisaab’s voice could thankfully not be tinkered with and remained unsullied and pristine.

Have a great Sunday, folks, stay happy…. Stay safe.. Beat the second surge of the Wuhan Virus with the three W’s

Oozing romance

I have always admired Rafisaab all my life. The most complete singer for a far wider variety of songs than many others, with perhaps the exception of those based on Jazz and Rock and Roll. No one better than the man to convey unalloyed love and romance. So many of his songs are simply unforgettable over the decades, with the movies and actors confined to the archive or even the trashcan long ago.

This song from the movie “Ye Raat Phir Na Aayegi ” epitomises exactly that.

Visually the song strikes very discordant notes. Biswajeet in a bold jacket that seems fashioned out of a thick blanket, the design is clearly more suited for a different kind of winter wear, while Sharmila Tagore goes around prancing in an all white outfit that is quite difficult to classify as any style/ genre/ nationality. Some parts bear a distinct resemblance to the stuff coming out of the ancient Greek sculptures and paintings.

The movie was directed by Brij Sadanah who made a curious potpourri of films, some good, some trash, some very successful and some that bombed outright at the box office. This one is made using the central theme of reincarnation that had been introduced into Bollywood by Mahal and taken successfully further across multiple generations by Madhumati. The genre of monochrome films were perhaps far better suited to create the atmosphere of mystery and an aura of anxious expectation with the palpable uncertainty of what would unfold next. The audience would be suddenly struck by an epidemic of sweaty palms, racing hearts and shortness of breath as well as an urgent need to clutch tightly on to the arm or the armrest till your knuckles turned white. Lots of gasps and even a shriek or two would break the silence at the right moments. This charm and gripping continuity is of course lost when watching the same movie off a disc or on one of the movie channels with several inane advertisements (some stupid automobile, drink or whatever) repeated ad nauseam that only serve to break the link and act as diversions and as excuses to take washroom breaks (or conduct quick raids on the Fridge). I would definitely say that if I have the choice between watching a movie in a theatre against seeing it at home on TV/ DVD I would definitely opt for the former 103 times out of 100.

Yeh Raat Phir Na Aayegi is a sleek and racy adaptation of a hackneyed and an extremely predictable storyline. Biswajeet and Sharmila Tagore are the lead pair with Prithiviraj Kapoor, Mumtaz and Sailesh Kumar completing the cast. Prithviraj Kapoor is the famous archaeologist who while conducting an excavation at an ancient site, stumbles upon a figurine that is supposed to be a couple of millennia old (dated by Papaji himself visually, as he is such an experienced archeologist, you can’t challenge his professional opinion!) . A bracelet adorns the wrist of the statuette of the female dancer. The other matching bracelet is spookily enough found on the wrist of a skeleton. A story is thus born of Kiran the dancer, who is eternally searching for her Suraj. Isn’t it amazing that there are people still around who can narrate a story with even the names of characters a couple of thousand years old? But then this is Bollywood and one MUST always follow the first two commandments of watching Hindi Films: 1. THOU SHALT NOT THINK… and 2. THOU SHALT NOT QUESTION.

The unseen driving force of the story holds the aces. Rita (Mumtaz) is engaged to Suraj (how can it be any other name) (Biswajeet), who is a painter of promise. Suraj of course is drawn to a mysterious Kiran, who appears and disappears, heightening the suspense. Is she real or just an ethereal figure clad in all white and sporting a flawless depilated skin? Her forced rather artificial diction is quite jarring (as it always was, she somehow never could manage anything like a normal conversational tone). Brij is in his forte handling his favourite theme of a thriller/ suspense movie and gets great performances out of his cast. Even Biswajeet manages to pass off as a painter who is better at singing in the open than wielding a brush and a palette. I didn’t quite like Mumtaz being shown in negative (almost villainesque) hues, she is only the fiancé of our painter who’s flipped for a nymph who mysteriously appears and disappears to entice her gullible beau. How would one expect any woman in love to react but the way she does?

O P Nayyar composed the score and that is predictably sublime. This song has lyrics by one of OPN’s favourite partners-in-crime, S H Bihari. Rafisaab’s honey soaked voice is pure divinity. It engulfs me in bliss every time I hear songs of this genre from him, as only he can do justice to such songs. Asha Bhosle, OPN’s favourite vocalist is on song (pun intended) in the movie, she has 6 solos, two duets with Rafisaab and one with Minoo Purushottam. Surprisingly the only male solo in the movie is rendered by Mahendra Kapoor. The musical score is just awesome, with so many songs one can never forget in a lifetime. Even the “Huzurewaala, jo ho ijaazat” duet with Minoo Purushottam is easy to recall. That was OPN’s magic, his mastery over his craft was complete and brought out by the fact that he started asking for a Lakh of Rupees as his fees per project (and gladly getting it too) even before the leading men graduated to that league. This song is dedicated to my dear schoolmate Flora Torres who requested this song, one of my favourites. We were the lead pair in the school play in our final year at Barfivala and have stayed in touch ever since. She is a rare beauty who hasn’t been touched by age. So here’s to you, Flora, hope you like it.

Enjoy one more rendition for the road, as I get busy with the day’s workload. Stay safe folks, the festival of lights is just a few weeks away as I shudder to think what will happen to the COVID count if we slacken our safety measures and throw caution to the winds… That’s the only way to beat the Wuhan Virus…

The part IS greater than the whole….

On the face of it, the moviemaker did it all right. He chose Emily Brontë’s  only completed novel, Wuthering Heights, as the “creative inspiration” for his new project.

He chose a cast which included the leading man of the day, Yusuf Khan aka Dilip Kumar, the wonderful Waheeda Rehman, Pran (the eternal villain always up to his usual villainy), added Johnny Walker and Tun Tun to the mix for comic relief, Rehman, Sapru, Murad and Shyama for the other roles, and took Naushad for the musical score. But the adaptation was so badly botched up, the movie is a dud and an utter pain in the butt, neck (and everywhere else) to watch. Despite that the magic of the names of the cast and the sublime musical score ensured the movie was a big commercial success.

I remember seeing the movie at Jalandhar while we were at Adampur, post the 1965 war.

The movie begins with a raging storm that churns the seas and sinks a ship that somehow has only 3 passengers on board!! The two adults drown, and miraculously leave an infant child as the sole survivor. The child’s surviving the storm is somehow conveyed to the grandfather, the king (Murad) who is shown dying waiting for his son to come with his wife and infant son. He dies waiting but bequeaths his property to his grandchild, Shankar. The name and the survival has been reported to him faithfully, but the person(s) who do it don’t bother to get the infant child along, as they don’t know where the infant has disappeared!! (That’s Bollywood for you!) The movie was directed by A R Kardar and Dilip Kumar is listed in the directorial credits as well. After starting off on this inane note, the movie blunders along in typical, predictable Bollywood melodramatic style. The orphaned child grows up to be Dilip Kumar who is belittled and brutalised by the villain of the piece (Pran, who had a rate contract on such roles those days) who even gets him thrown off a cliff. Presumed dead, the lady he loves (Waheeda Rehman, the sister of the villain Thakur: Pran) and the daughter of the Thakur that has given the orphan child refuge (Sapru in a kind hearted persona for a change) has got betrothed to Rehman. That more than anything breaks the miraculous-survivor-of-the-fall-off-the-cliff-now-finally-the-coronated-Raja-of-the-fiefdom viz. Dilip Kumar‘s heart. He takes to the bottle, introduced to him by the kindly (??!!) Johnny Walker- always VAT69, which was promoted by Bollywood those days as the only brand that would effectively drown your sorrows (the manna from Heaven) and provide effective succour. Dilip Kumar hasn’t got access to piffling and thoroughly useless stuff like glasses in his fiefdom (where being Raja, he is forced de rigueur to don Silk Pajamas in outrageous designs- just to show how rich Rajas were) and gulps it down as if it were mineral water straight from the bottle. For a beginner , he would be Bacchus’s favourite child. The magic potion takes its effect and drunken stupor is induced.

In the hoary tradition of Bollywood, a wonderful song follows. Rafisaab sings as only he can with a wonderful composition from Naushad Sahab in the extremely (and aptly named) melodious raag Janasammohini. Even as a young child, I remember the musical score saving my sanity and made me sit in the cinema hall. The rest of the movie is an atrocious story of rather predictable revenge and retribution from the Raja directed at just about everyone in sight.

Rafisaab and Naushad made a wonderful partnership. They have given countless absolutely unforgettable melodies together. Shakeel Badayuni was Naushad sahab’s favourite lyricist and what a magical web he weaves with his sublime wordcraft, entrapping every listener in its inescapable mesh.

I recently watched this film despite knowing all this sacrilege wondering how the famous director could have adapted Wuthering Heights for an Indian crowd. There is something so completely un-Bollywood film-like about Emily Brontë’s dark classic that I was much more than curious and sceptical. But the movie Dil Diya Dard Liya (which should have been correctly called Paise diye Sardard liya) is only based partially on Wuthering Heights; it stops about midway through, and then makes an expectedly abrupt and ‘happy’ turn to make it palatable to a loyal Hindi film audience.

Another of my inglorious “Love the music and songs, forget watching the movie” series of “MUST NOT WATCH” movie list.

Have a great day ahead folks as August draws to a close, the dams around my city are (Finally!!) full, let us observe the basics right and finally get a control on the Wuhan Virus.

In a maudlin mood..

Bollywood has always considered Talat Mahmood as the Emperor of the Blue mood, for a very good reason. So many of his eternal ghazals are laments and touch the soul. So many of them are known to my generation without actually having seen many of these movies.

However there are some others by other singers that are equally (if not more) effective. Talat Mahmood got to sing the blues a lot more as a percentage of his total body of work, but others have also been able to convey the same effectively. Rafisaab, Kishoreda and Mukeshji have all had their share of sad songs and have left lasting impression in the genre.

Take this example from Lal Qila. A movie that focuses on the last days of the War of Independence fought in 1857 with the last figurehead Moghul notionally in charge in Delhi, Bahadurshah Zafar.

The movie was made on a shoestring budget by Nanabhai Bhatt. It had some great music by S N Tripathi. The “lyrics” have been credited to be penned by Bahadurshah Zafar himself, but are actually by Muztar Khairabadi.

By all accounts available in contemporary historical texts, the power of the Moghul rule from Delhi had dwindled to its being reduced to a virtual non entity by then. Delhi had been repeatedly overrun by Marathas but the Moghuls not unseated. Symbolically they continued to rule with a lot of factionalism and internecine fights amongst the members of the family and the courtiers as well. As the power of the Moghuls withered, the satraps were increasingly emboldened and accumulated both power and wealth to themselves. To the point where Bahadurshah Zafar spent more time in writing poetry, attending dance performances and generally whiling away time and reducing himself increasingly to a nonentity over time. Amazing how history repeats itself. No moghul princeling bothered to change the situation or challenge him to the top job for the sake of good governance, they were preoccupied with their own hedonistic pursuits. I find traces of that part of moghul history being played out once again in the decadent dynasty with a far less talented scion of an irrelevant family of criminals reducing himself to a pitiful spectacle over the last 20 years.

न किसी की आँख का नूर हूँ, न किसी के दिल का क़रार हूँ
जो किसी के काम न आ सके, मैं वो एक मुश्त-ए-ग़ुबार हूँ

न तो मैं किसी का हबीब हूँ, न तो मैं किसी का रक़ीब हूँ
जो बिगड़ गया वो नसीब हूँ, जो उजड़ गया वो दयार हूँ
न किसी की आँख का…

मेरा रंग रूप बिगड़ गया, मेरा यार मुझसे बिछड़ गया
जो चमन ख़िज़ां से उजड़ गया, मैं उसी की फ़स्ल-ए-बहार हूँ
न किसी की आँख का…

पए-फ़ातेहा कोई आये क्यूँ, कोई चार फूल चढ़ाये क्यूँ
कोई आ के शम्मा जलाये क्यूँ, मैं वो बेकसी का मज़ार हूँ
न किसी की आँख का…

One of the best songs ever rendered by Rafisaab with minimal instrumentation. Truly a magnificent composition. The movie had Jairaj and Nirupa Roy as the lead pair with Helen, Bharat Bhushan and Kamal Kapoor as other members of the cast.

S N Tripathi was born in a traditional family with his father being a headmaster. He was more interested in music and trained in the Pandit Bhatkhande’s Morris College of Music in Lucknow after graduating from Varanasi. He moved into Bollywood and was a multifaceted, creative person. The spectrum of Tripathi’s multi-faceted work included being a composer, writer, actor, and director of films. The first of the movies he directed Rani Rupmati was unique and had a great musical score by himself. His acting career, which actually started in Jeevan Naiya (more famous as being Ashok Kumar‘s debut film) was quaintly associated with his portrayal of Hanuman, which he did in a number of movies, including producing one himself. His quality as a composer, not reflected in most lists by casual observers nor ordinary critics was extraordinary. Ustad Amir Khan of the Gwalior Gharana, who was usually quite dismissive of the merits of the film music composers, rated only Naushad Ali, S. N. Tripathi and Vasant Desai  and to some extent C Ramachandra as notable composers.

Stay happy folks, stay calm, we have a Chinese Virus to beat.

An actor lost but a singer gained

In the 40s and 50s many wannabe actors tried their luck in Bollywood as leading men who could sing. Luckily for us (and Bollywood) they discovered they were not making quite the degree of progress in their careers on the acting front and gave up their acting ambitions and happily stuck to being only singers instead. This was a very happy set of decisions, because the country gained a divine singer every time in return, although we might apparently have lost an actor or two.

Mukesh Chand Mathur and Talat Mahmood are the two most outstanding examples I can think of. Although Mukesh’s acting career was aborted soon after conception, lasting a very small number of movies, Talat Mahmood did continue to act in just over a dozen films (14 to be exact) in an equal number of years. The man clearly took a long time to realise he wasn’t quite cut out for acting (or vice versa) and seems to have buried his acting ambitions a tad reluctantly.

This was a quaintly named movie Sone Ki Chidiya, where he acts with Nutan as his leading lady. The movie is about the travails of Nutan as an orphan lady Lakshmi who is being shunted from one distant relative to another and everyone is reluctant to take care of her, one even tries to sell her off into the flesh trade to fund his addiction. She escapes the unwelcome attention of the “buyer” and stumbles (as actresses frequently did those days) into a theatre and land up directly on stage!! ( A strangely recurring sequence in Hindi Movies where the lead actor/ actress escaping from a chasing predator/ police land up in theatres that too directly on stage!)

I have never seen a stage directly leading to the street and vice versa.. May be in the 50s they needed such an exit for the cast to escape an irate audience venting its anger in a rather violent way. This happened in so many films Bandish, Mujrim and Kismat apart from this movie.

The theatre director surprisingly asks Nutan to sing, now that she is on stage anyway. She sings and captivates enough people that include a film producer who happens to be in the audience. Bollywood being starved of established film actresses, takes to the new talent immediately ( a collage of images and film clips showing her acting with established stars of the day including Ashok Kumar, Dev Anand flash on screen to show her getting lots of work and even getting a Filmfare!) and she suddenly finds herself inundated by the very same relations (vultures) claiming to be close family who descend upon her in scores with the single purpose of sponging off her earnings, which they do successfully.

She then discovers a journalist Amar ( Talat Mahmood) who can sing well (does he!!!) . He, after getting her infatuated , forces producers to make him act. Of course with the most famous actress of the day, viz. Nutan. All seems hunky dory between the duo with Talat Mahmood convincing Nutan he loves her and would like to marry her. While the happiness envelops her at having finally discovered what she desires from life, when she tells all to him – especially the fact that despite being a famous actress she is quite penniless thanks to the multitude of parasites she is forced to feed, he mouths endearing words, fixes a rendezvous and disappears… A huge heartbreak for the lady.

She then discovers her alcoholic (and exploiting) “Brother” has floated a film production company and has bound her hand and foot for the next few years by a written contract (obviously signed through deception).

Sadly the Asha Bhosle version of the same song, which I love as much as the duet, has been omitted from the movie. I thought it was worth a listen too.

Lakshmi, now pushed to the brink, runs away to a seaside cliff and is about to jump off when she is stopped by the singing of a man, who she discovers to be a poet whose writings she has adored and idol worshipped all her life. The song is a very positive, optimistic one : Raat bhar ka mehmaan hai andhera… (Sung beautifully by Rafisaab as only he can)

The words compel Nutan to shelve the suicide plan and is she magnetically drawn inexorably towards the house from which the song is coming. She follows the song, and discovers the poet who finally does the right thing by her. The movie finally ends on a very positive, optimistic note with Nutan and Balraj Sahni (the poet) who walk away (or rather get away on a bicycle) from the cruel, exploitative world to face a better tomorrow.

O P Nayyar composes a score that is absolutely unforgettable and sublime, very unlike his “normal” music. All his songs in the movie are so very different from the “mould” that OPN made for himself later and pretty much patented .

I would have loved Nutan to be a bit more proactive and assertive for her own rights and not be shown as a meek, submissive type who gives in to pretty much every unfair demand made on her.

C’est la vie.

Stay calm folks as we come to the end of the month and look forward to a new month where only resolute, firm action we have not shown thus far will help us beat the Chinese threat.

 

A poignant self abnegation

I first heard this song in the early 60s when we were at Hakimpet near Secunderabad.

Even at the time, I was very impressed with the poignant notes struck by the great Rafisaab. To my mind very few singers could manage such sublime singing with an apparently calm voice and yet convey such immense depths of raw pain, the palpable pathos is all engulfing, almost smothering even the most flippant of listeners.

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It is from a storyline that romanticizes and fictionalizes the history around the first war of Independence of 1857, when various Indian regimes and forces fought separately against the invaders/looters from England. The lack of unity did the Indians in as well as the insane adherence to the “rules of war”. The Brits resorted to all manners of treachery and barbarity to slaughter the Indians and were of course aided and abetted in achieving this goal by the Indians, in a manner similar to eulogising and deifying the Mafiosi today.

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Lal Qila was a movie directed by Nanabhai Bhatt. A relatively low budget movie, it had Jairaj & Nirupa Roy as the lead pair. The movie is about the last days of the last Moghul to “rule” India, Bahadurshah Zafar.

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By all accounts, Bahadurshah was quite the wimp, being more interested in exercising his poetic drives rather than dabble in affairs of the state (too mundane for his taste anyway). He notionally ruled the vestiges of the Moghul empire. But even he felt the pain of the loss of a kingdom and the attendant deprivation of all the trappings of power .

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The amazingly haunting Musical composition at a deliberately slow tempo is by an unsung genius. S N Tripathi. His immense worth was never quite recognised nor celebrated as much as it should have been.

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Poignant, thoughtful cry from the very soul, it will keep me engrossed for the day. Have a wonderful Sunday, folks