Songwriter Shailendra’s romance with death and a clash of cultures!

In his fine book, Light of the Universe: Essays on Hindustani Film Music, Ashraf Aziz contends that death was a steady theme in the songwriter Shailendra’s work. Aziz states that many of Shailendra’s songs such as ‘Tu pyaar ka saagar hai’ (Seema, 1955), which had the line ‘Idhar jhoom ke gaaye zindagi, udhar hai maut khadi’ or ‘Yeh mera deewanapan hai’ (Yahudi, 1958), whose second antara went, ‘Aisey veeraney mein ek din ghutke mar jaayengey hum’, touched upon this subject. In his essay, Shailendra: The Lyrical Romance of Suicide, Aziz writes, ‘We must admire Shailendra’s fidelity to his chosen subject, death. It required enormous poetic resourcefulness and tenacity in him to stick with this theme for so long.”

Two other songs that brought Shailendra’s fondness for this subject to the fore were from the 1959 film Anari. In ‘Sab kuchh seekha humney’, the last line of the first antara goes, ‘khud hi mar mitne ki yeh zidd hai humaari’, while in ‘Kisi ki muskaraahaton pe ho nisaar’, Raj Kapoor’s character sings, ‘ke marke bhi kisi ko yaad aayengey’. In the upcoming episode of The Golden Years: 1950-1975 Javed Akhtar comments on ‘Sab kuchh seekha humney’ and says, “This song is a sad song. It is defeatist in nature. But Raj Kapoor had a talent. He used to sing such songs with a smile on his face. That smile had a tinge of sadness in it but instead of portraying tragedy, it looked like that this man, who has a lot of despondency in his heart, is hiding his pain from the world and singing with a smile instead. He did this in a lot of films and only he knew how to do this.” 

A couple of other songs which were steeped in abject despondency were from Guru Dutt’s Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959). ‘Waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam’ sung in Geeta Dutt’s voice and ‘Dekhi zamaaney ki yaari’ sung by Mohammed Rafi articulated the tragic nature of the film. The former song is included in National Award-winning authors, Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Balaji Vittal’s book, Gaata Rahe Mera Dil: 50 Classic Hindi Film Songs. The authors say the song best expressed “the increasing state of confusion and disillusionment Dutt was going through at the time… And in what is the ultimate irony of fate: it needed the wife (GeetaDutt) to give voice to the anguish of her husband’s love for another woman.”

But not everything about the Hindi film songs from 1959 was sad and melancholic. Shammi Kapoor delighted audiences with his rather animated expressions in Ujaala’s upbeat song, ‘Jhoomta mausam, mast mahina’. Shammi, whose career had got a new lease of life with Nasir Husain’s Tumsa Nahin Dekha (1957), also had another big hit, partnering with the same filmmaker in 1959 in Dil Deke Dekho. The film’s composer was Usha Khanna, who made her debut as music director. While Shammi played a drum player, Khanna’s Western music-inspired score, helped pull off the many rock-n-roll, jazz music interludes in the film. At least three of the songs— ‘Dil deke dekho’ (based on the McGuire Sisters’ ‘Sugar in the Morning’), ‘Kaun yeh aaya mehfil mein’ (Paul Anka’s ‘Diana’) and ‘Pyaar ki kasam hai’ (Ivory Joe Hunter’s ‘Since I Met You Baby’) were borrowed from western tunes.

Music directors in Hindi cinema had been composing or referencing western musictunesright from the late-1940s. The popularity of the rock-n-roll oriented ‘Eena Meena Deeka’  (Aasha, 1957) and other songs around this time, proved the genre’s growing acceptance among Hindi film audiences. This wasn’t necessarily well received by all. There was an underlying emotion of contempt for such western influences, which was perhaps best articulated in Subodh Mukerji’s Love Marriage (1959). The film, which starred Dev Anand and Mala Sinha, and had the song ‘Teen kanastar peet-peetke gala phaad kar chillana, yaar mere mat buramaan, yeh gaana haina bajaana’. The lyrics were an obvious indictment of rock-n-roll’s negative influence. Akhtar says, “The song may have been for the film, but I do think that a message was being given that, ‘Hindustani music is so sweet and melodious. Our ragas are so beautiful. The noise that emanates from this teen kanastar or by screaming at the top of your voice, can you term it music? Can you call it a song?’There was certainly a hidden taunt in it.”

You can catch the next episode of The Golden Years: 1950-1975 with Javed Akhtar this Sunday at 8 pm to know more about the many fine Hindi film songs from 1959.