 "Naushadnama")
NAUSHADNAMA: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF NAUSHAD
Author: Raju Bharatan
Publisher: Hay House India
Pages: 356
Price: Rs 599
My days begin happily with Bhoole Biseray Geet, Vividh Bharati's hour-long tribute to old film songs, especially those from the golden age of Hindi film music, 1945 to 1965. These gems are fit anodyne for the despair the newspapers that I read would otherwise cause. No matter if there is an occasional high-pitched Mahendra Kapoor number composed by that king of beggar songs, Ravi, or an ear-piercing Kamal Barot monstrosity.
But what if the entire hour comprised just such discordant notes? That would be devastating. That is my reaction to Raju Bharatan's obvious labour of love. This tiresome book, an unabashed hagiography of one of the greatest film composers, the late Naushad Ali, attempts manfully, page after page, to demolish the romance of that era in general and music in particular (though that is the exact opposite of its intent). Its reading is made all the more painful by the violence Bharatan visits upon the basic decorum of style and language, this time quite by design.
Despite having become weary of Bharatan's writings on music and cricket and stopped reading his columns some three decades ago in my Times group days, I volunteered to review this book, believing the sub-title (music). A more appropriate one, in view of its content, would have been Competition Success Review, after that hardy perennial for profession-seekers.
The epicentre of Hindi cinema shifted to Mumbai after Partition. A sea change in all aspects of film-making followed in its wake, none more so than in case of its staple, the music. New voices - Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Geeta Roy, Mohammad Rafi, Talat Mahmood, Mukesh, Kishore Kumar, Manna Dey - brought a gust of fresh air, under the batons of new and old music directors - Shankar-Jaikishan, S D Burman, O P Nayyar, Madan Mohan, Roshan, C Ramachandra and Naushad, not yet 30, were the seniors. That meant a whole new musical idiom and grammar, synthesising the best in Indian classical traditions with western instruments, orchestration and trends. Latter-day classical stalwarts, Ravi Shankar (sitar), Ali Akbar Khan (sarod), Ram Narain (sarangi), Pannalal Ghosh (flute) and Bismillah Khan (shehnai) happily contributed their bits to the 78-rpm, three-minute discs. Even Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Bhimsen Joshi, D V Paluskar and Amir Khan lent their voices to enrich the musical fare. Budding young western musicians - Sunny Castellino, Goody Seervai, Chic Chocolate, Cawas Lord - freely jammed for Hindi film songs. Radio Ceylon reached everywhere, static notwithstanding. The country came to a standstill Wednesday evenings between 8 and 9 for Binaca Geetmala. A young nation, though desperately poor, tried merrily to sing its way to what it believed to be its tryst with destiny.
None of this exuberance comes alive in the 350-page Bharatan opus, except perhaps for just two paragraphs on page 315 when he compares the two 'Anarkalis', Beena Rai of 1953 and Madhubala of 1960, singing the haunting Lata Mangeshkar melodies tuned by Ramchandra and Naushad, respectively. Clearly, the author is not an aesthete capable of critical appreciation. He is a compulsive compiler, listing who wrote what, sang what, composed what, gave how many hits (especially of the jubilee kind) and earned how much. These do not add up to the enchantment cast by music. Does it matter whether Ramchandra was number one in 1953 or Naushad? Sixty years later, we remember only the lyrical Lata songs, Yeh zindagi usiki hai by the former and Mohe bhool gaye sanwariya by the latter from that year. Is it worth a whole chapter to debate whether Naushad touched up or composed afresh some songs from Pakeezah released at last in 1972 and credited to his erstwhile assistant Ghulam Mohammed? Four decades later, we are still mesmerised by Yunhi koi mil gaya tha and Thare rahiyo, regardless of who composed them. When Usain Bolt's records are shattered and medals tally exceeded, we will still see the green-and-gold blur slicing through air as the epitome of enduring athletic grace.
The book has little by way of order. There is a semblance of chronological progression at the start. We reach Naushad's point of decline by the ninth chapter, not even halfway through. But we reckon without Bharatan's penchant for recycling the same details in other contexts and stretching the book to its eventual length. Exhaustive and exhausting digressions about Suraiyya's life and romance, or Talat Mahmood's perfidy, add little to Naushadnama. Oddly, we also see the not-so elevating aspects (scheming and plotting for awards, imperiousness) of the author's otherwise noble hero.
Bharatan outdoes himself in the mayhem he wreaks on the language and style. No name escapes his pathologically puerile puns. If you survive Anarkalingering, Meenaku-marivetting, Madhubaladeer, Sairazzmattazz, worse awaits you. Any noun turns into a verb with -ize whether Noah Webster approves of it or not. Double-barrelled adverbs stop you in your tracks. Dictionary definitions mean nothing. Why would a self-confessed devotee of sur unleash such violence on that equally primal urge, the word?
But no matter. Nothing, not even Bharatan's meandering and murderous prose, can diminish the ethereal magic of that ode to joy by a divine 19-year-old Lata, our hero Naushad's song, "Koi mere dil me aaya khushi banakar, andhera tha ghar, roshni banke aaya."
The reviewer is terminally addicted to Hindi golden oldies
