...On Shammi Kapoor's Passing

Shammi Kapoor passed away yesterday, and as is usual in this remote location that I currently call home, I only found out today. I was saddened, extremely saddened and more than a little shocked. I mean I know he was in his 70s and a longtime sufferer of renal failure, but he had seemed so hale and hearty until very recently that his death comes as a major shock, at least to me. I hadn't planned to write anything this month but I feel I must express my feelings and thoughts in one way or the other otherwise I might spiral into another one of my black dogs. And since my location precludes what would've been a more fitting tribute to the great actor, namely getting together with some friends and watching his movies and songs, remembering and re-enjoying the hours and hours of pleasure he brought to milllions of his fans, I can try to use my words to somehow pay my respects to one of my favorite actors, and one of my favorite people, the late Shammi Kapoor.

I can remember being a Shammi Kapoor fan for most of my life. I wasn't exposed to Bollywood films very much, especially in my childhoood, but I still remember watching a fair number of Shammi Kapoor films, and more than a fair bit of Shammi Kapoor songs. What had appealed to me even as a child, was the spontaneity, the freshness and the overpowering sense of joy in his performances. As I got older and properly started watching classic Bollywood films, my admiration for his work grew. There is a sizeable number of my friends and possibly a fair chunk of the movie watching public who didn't consider him a serious 'actor' in the Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand mould, thinking of him more as a lightweight (not literally) who was suited for just comedy and a bit of song and dance. I had had the same opinion before I started watching him in earnest, but my opinion didn't last long. There was a vivacity, a natural exuberance, and in films like Brahmachari and Vidhaata, a sense of the melodramatic that was at par with the other 'greats' of that time. That's why I consider him not only a fine performer, but one of the great all-round actors of the Golden Age of Bollywood.

And as for the songs, now they're a whole other story. The Shammi Kapoor-Muhammad Rafi partnership was a match made in heaven. The sheer number of evergreen and immortal songs picturised on Shammi Kapoor and sung by Rafi saheb is unequalled in Bollywood history. The two had more chemistry than any on-screen pair could ever achieve, an affinity so brilliant that you could forget that it was actually a playback singer belting out "Aasmaan Se Aaya Farishta" while Shammi dangled from a helicopter in An Evening In Paris, or that it was someone else and not Shammi singing "Main Gaoon, Tum So Jao" to the cute little critters in Brahmachari. Again, the amount of pure, unadulterated joy that Shammi Kapoor managed to express in the songs was a mark of his consummacy as a performer. He was also the first leading man to incorporate dance - his own trademark style of dance - into the three minute song that was the staple of the Bollywood film. With the jaunty, slightly spastic and ever-so-debonair flicks of the head and jerks of the hips, he was able to communicate an irrepressible joie de vivre to everyone who watched.

Bollywood's answer to Elvis, Shammi also shared the King's unfortunate weight issue, yet for at least ten years - the most fruitful period of his career - he didn't let his weight come in the way of having a grand old time onscreen. He sang, he danced with an exquisite lissomeness that defied logic and he churned out hit after immortal hit all through the sixties. It was only when the weight problem got out of hand that he gracefully changed gears from leading man to character actor and spent the rest of his career as a bearded, benevolent presence in film after film. Kidney failure plagued him for the last two decades of his life, a disease that was precipitated if not aggravated by the same weight issues. But Shammi didn't let an ailment control his life and spent his last years squeezing out as much enjoyment and happiness out of his days as possible, a fact that was borne out by the delightful series of webcasts he made in these last few months titled "Shammi Kapoor Unplugged", a series that I watched eagerly and with great enjoyment. I remember him remarking once that he had dialysis thrice a week, yet on the other four days, he managed to have so much fun that those three days were more than compensated. On his final webcasts, I could see the ravages of age and disease - the laboured breathing, the thinned frame and the raspy voice - but I hadn't thought that they were that serious, which is why his death came as a shock to me.

Life and death are part of the inevitable and vicious circle of life and no matter how much you reconcile yourself to it, the passing of someone special always leaves the geart pained and sorrowful. With Shammi Kapoor's passing a great chapter has closed in the history of Indian cinema. Now only two, albeit two of the greatest - Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand - remain of the Golden Age of Bollywood. Dilip saheb is an infrequent sufferer of health problems and Dev Anand is in his nineties now, so I'm afraid we won't be blessed with their presence for long, but again, their passing will leave the heart sorrowful. Only one thing remains to assuage the heart's pain, and that is the treasure trove of memories immortalized in celluloid that Shammi Kapoor has left behind; memories that might start fading a bit faster after his passing but will never be completely obliterated. The joy he brought - that's a word one has to use often when describing him; joy - to millions around the world, the way he lived his life on his own terms till the very end, and the innumerable memories he has left for his fans are his astonishing and magnificent legacy.

Farewell Shammi Kapoor, and thanks for the memories ......

...Of Another Country

I've been aware of this malady of mine for a long time but it became painfully obvious around a weeek ago. I was sitting in an empty dining hall, perfunctorily changing channels on a beaten down old television when I stopped on PTV. They were showing an interview with the senior character actor AK Hangal. It was some fifteen minutes into watching it raptly that I came to a realization that I was probably the only person in Pakistan who, at 11pm on a Friday night, would willingly tune into PTV of all channels, watch a rather exhaustive interview with a 94 year old actor whom most people would only barely know of, and not only watch it but nod knowingly every time the words "Garam Hawa", "Homi Wadia" or "Prithvi Theatre" were mentioned. While I was thus a revereein' the interview ended and the credits rolled with Mehdi Hassan singing Nasir Kazmi,

"Bhooli bisri chand umeedain, chand fasanay yaad aaye
Tum yaad aaye aur tumhare saath zamanay yad aaye"

Inexplicably, my eyes grew moist.  It was then that I turned off the television in some alarm and left.

Ever since then, I've been trying to figure out this peculiar predicament. Why is it that I live a sort of double life in which the past plays a more important role than the present or the future. Why is it that I will gladly spend days upon days listening to or editing a 40 year old piece of music and consider it the most pleasurable experience imaginable when the very same piece of music will make grown men cover their ears and run for cover. Why do I spend (or did I spend) hours on the internet trying to find a site that will stream Turner Classic Movies so I can sit back and watch Preston Sturges marathons. Why do I know Monty Python jokes better than names of some of my family members?

It's not that I have an overpowering obsession with all things grey and mouldy, it's just that the past is more appealing to me than the present.And when I refer to the past and the present, I mean of course the cultural aspect. I don't want anyone to get the idea that I dream lovingly about the days of kerosene lamps and open air lavatories. It's the cultural, the artistic ephemera from the past that fascinates and captivates me, and I can't seem to find an explanation for it. I have a fairly active social life (or at least I did when I was in Lahore), am fairly proficient professionally and function adequately well in everyday situations. Yet always, and I mean always, at the back of my mind will be snippet of a Rafi song or a line from a Wodehouse novel or a scene from a Humphrey Bogart film. It's a semi-sleepwalking state that I've perfected to such an extent that except for the keenly observant, no one can usually guess that I'm actually thinking of something completely remote from the topic of conversation whenever I'm talking to them. Again, it's not that I have no interest in the present, or like Ignatius J Reilly from The Confederacy Of Dunces, consider everything modern 'an abortion of the highest order". I am a rabid fan of film, literature, television and some of the music of the present day, although I will admit my tastes differ slightly from the average.

Someone once asked Dylan why he played so many old songs on his radio show, "Well, there are more old songs than new ones y'know" was his reply. And I suppose that is an argument that can be advanced in my defence. There are more Rafi songs than Atif Aslam songs, more Wodehouse novels than David Mitchell novels, and according to the law of averages, proportionally more good Rafi songs than good Atif songs and so on. But popular taste, and indeed my taste doesn't work by this logic. It's something else that draws me to what I call entertainment and what others call, in a most appropriate word, "maghziyaat".I guess it's more of what Dylan meant when he wrote in Chronicles, and I'm paraphrasing here, that his world wasn't the world of the '60s, his world was the world of a hundred years ago; the world of the American civil war  that he spent hours every day reading about in the New York Public Library. The events in the daily newspapers of the 1860's were to him more relevant and more resonant than what was going on around him. That was also what attracted him to the folksong in the early part of his career, the fact that something was written decades ago yet was still relevant and alive.

I think maybe that frame of mind comes closest to describing my own. I believe music and film and literature from the past aren't things that come with expiry dates or notices that say 'You must be this old to enjoy this.' The fallacy that most people fall into is thinking that the exact opposite is true, that a Mehdi Hasan ghazal is something only 'Uncles' are supposed to enjoy and we'll be damned if we're caught listening to it. The same is obviously true the other way round and the members of one generation are generally averse to partaking in the pop culture of the ones that succeed it. Thanks to modern means of communication and dissimination, the past and the present are both right in front of us, to partake of as much as we like.

I don't know where I intend to go with this discussion ( or this one-sided ramble if you will ), but I started out attempting to identify what it was that makes me so attracted to the past. I think I tried a similar exercise previously, in a rather execrable little poem if I remember correctly *shudders*.  I haven't come to any conclusion but I think that if I can somehow balance, however precariously, the demands of what my father often refers to as 'PRACTICAL LIFE" (yes, he uses capitals when saying it), with the demands of say, knowing the names and artistic aachievements of Messrs Jerome Kern, Bulwer-Lytton, Bix Beiderbecke, Rex Harrison and Micheal Bloomfield, I might be able to achieve a rare distinction, a dual citizenship of the present and the past, which as they say, is another country.

....Of Leaving Lahore And Long Overdue Admissions.

When I was in Med School, a yearly trip to Lahore was an almost sacred ritual. For a few days every year, spending a sizable chunk of my meager allowance/stipend, I'd grab a bus to Lahore, happily explore the city on rickshaw, meet the few friends I had there and get some shopping done. Summer or winter, I'd make it a point to visit Lahore, even if it meant using false pretences to goad out a permission from my parents. Even though I had lived a sizable chunk of my life in Rawalpindi and hadn't ever LIVED in Lahore, I considered it my , erm my spiritual home if you will. However, when my five years in med school ended and it was time to decide where I wanted to do my house-job, I was in a fix. My family was in Rawalpindi (they'd planned to eventually move to Lahore in a year's time) and I knew and liked the city, but somewhere in the back of my mind was the voice that said, "Go to Lahore!!"

In the end, it was the advice of a friend - a friend of otherwise highly dubious character traits - who implored me to choose Lahore, that, coupled with my parents' decision to bring forward their planned Lahore move ahead by one year, made me decide for Lahore. Looking back, it was probably one of the smarter decisions I've made in a rather checkered decisionmaking history. After spending one whole year in Lahore, I can safely say that I haven't regretted it one bit. I had come here primarily to do my housejob and that I did. It was the most intellectually rewarding one year I could hope for, even better than what most of my coursemates in Rawalpindi had spent. I got the chance to learn at the feet of some of the best teachers in the country and substantially improve my practical and clinical skills. On the personal side, I was lucky to have two of my closest friends -make that three, with the third a recent addition - living literally next door. That meant I was never too hard pressed for companionship.

The exploring/photographing bug bit me at just the right time as I scoured the backroads of Lahore in search of amazing places. If summer had delayed itself just one or two more weeks I'd have visited and photographed just about everything I'd set my sights on. Unfortunately the oppressive Lahore heat (probably the only thing in which Lahore loses brownie points to Pindi) and my tight schedule meant that I still haven't visited or photographed a few very important landmarks - Masjid Wazir Khan for example. Some other time perhaps. It's also been a year where I've indulged almost all my rather varied intersts. I've been to Qawwali performances by the dozens, watched plays and stand-up shows, attended concerts and conferences, and in what must certainly be the highlight of my life so far, met Yusfi sahab. And I've eaten, by God have i eaten. The extra tonnage that I've put on over the last year doesn't do justice to my culinary exploits. In short, I've lived it up - at least according to my definition of living it up.

My one year is now up, and it's time to leave. I'll be moving to a rather remote location in two or three days, as diametrically opposite to Lahore as you can imagine. Even though I knew that I was gonna have to leave Lahore at the end of one year, that still doesn't make the departure any easier. I may be able to live without the food, the exploration or the 'ronaq' but there's one very vulnerable chink in my armor, one that I don't usually let show to others,but one they might notice if they are attentive enough.

When we were completing our training, a newly graduated psychologist joined us for six months. The poor guy had to spend all day dealing with idiots who'd shout out,"Yo shrink, come here and tell me about my personality." And being the nice guy he was, he'd provide them with a rather detailed and unflatteringly accurate description of themselves. One day, when he and I was alone, he asked me why I hadn't ever bothered him with the usual request. i replied that I pretty much knew who I was and didn't need further analysis, thankyouverymuch. He said he'd still tell me one rather important thing he'd noticed about me over the course of six months, it was that I had a 'dependant personality'. I needed people, friends around me to function properly. Without a proper social support structure, I was constantly in danger of collapsing inwardly into a coccoon. I simply nodded my head in assent and left, slightly unhappy that he had discovered my most important weakness.

And that is the chink in my armor that must now confess to. I'll be going to a new place, with a new set of colleagues, which is something I would've been fine with were it not for the fact that the remoteness of my location might make it impossible to establish any contact with the folks back in Lahore, or for that matter anywhere else in Pakistan. Without my 'social support', I'd be a fish out of water, which is a rather frightening proposition. But what gives me some hope is that I've been in a similar situation before. Five years ago when I joined med-school, I was thrust into a group of strangers. It took some adjusting, but after spending five years, I count that group of strangers among some of my very best friends. Maybe this adventure'll turn out the same way too. I can only hope.

What my two year stay at my next port-of-call will lack in friends, it'll more than make up in free time. From people who've served in similar places, I've gathered that killing time is the most important problem one faces. I think I have that covered. There's the extensive study that I'll have to start in order to appear for my specialization exams, then there's the Truckloads of Qawwali recordings that I've been assigned to edit and catalog. There's 160+ gigabytes on my harddrive that I'll devote substantial time to; so that at the end of two years, I ought've listened to all 19571 songs I've accumulated (a daunting task). A trunkfull of unread books goes with me too, none of them related to medicine. With such ample supplies, I think I'm pretty much covered as far as killing time is concerned. And if all else fails, I can still write.

I'll end here, I don't know when I'll get the chance to write again, so readers can consider this another one of my temporary retirements from writing. Consider this also, whether they can read this or not, a thankyou to all the many people who have made this year the most special year of my life. And finally, consider this a thankyou to Lahore, for being so good to me.

....Of Me And Mr. Dylan - A 'New Morning'

"My love, she speaks like silence
Without ideals or violence.
She doesn't have to say she's faithful
Yet she's true like ice, like fire".

Love Minus Zero/No Limit.


I have been putting off Dylan posts ever since I started this blog. There's just so much to say that the thought of writing it all down makes my lazy bones tremble. But now that the great man's turning 70 and it seems that everyone and their mothers have lined up to pay tribute,it only seems fair that I should overcome my procastrination and get writing.. Still, there’s too much to say for a single post. So, laziness permitting, what follows is a series of posts, all of which deal basically with Dylan and how he's affected me…

This first post is about the start of my personal Dylan journey.

I thought I’d begin from the beginning, from the first Dylan song I ever heard. It was “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” and I still wonder how everything would’ve turned out if it had been Dylan himself singing it. As it turns out, it was Rod Stewart. I was in seventh grade and had just bought one of the "Princess Diana Tribute" albums on tape from the local record store. This was immediately after my embarrassing but thankfully short dabbling in Boy-bands (still makes me wake up shuddering at night) and my desire to break free from the all enveloping John Denver.

Of all the songs on the tape, “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” struck me. It was a mixture of Rod Stewart’s ragged “lost boy” voice and the strangely appealing lyrics. It would be presumptuous to say that I understood what the song meant. I didn’t. But I could see the astounding images, see them crystal clear.

“…draw conclusions on the wall.”

“…in ceremonies of the horsemen,
Even the pawn must hold a grudge.”

“The bridge at midnight trembles…”

“The wind howls like a hammer…”

I didn’t know who had written the song, of course. It was only later that I found out. That was the end of that till about seven years ago. By that time I had made up for my earlier misadventures and gradually developed an ear for passable music. What I remember clearly is a series of three events coming in rapid succession that finally got me hooked.

The first was a Readers’ Digest article written by His Bobness himself, about his relationship with Woody Guthrie. Now Guthrie I knew; had read up on him and heard snippets of a few of his songs. Thus Dylan’s name was linked with Woody’s and a relationship had developed.

The second was getting to see Dylan perform. Random channel-flipping brought me to an ubiquitous music channel and there he was. It was a snippet from the MTV Unplugged sessions, hardly the right stuff for a neophyte, and he was singing "Dignity", the outtake from the "Oh Mercy" album. That thin reedy frame,that frumpled mess of hair, those strange, almost Tourette's like twitches and that voice.... this was something new and interesting.

I must admit I was hooked.A quick google of Dylan's name showed one song title again and again, "Like A Rolling Stone". A quick trip to a file sharing site (God bless 'em !!) resulted in a listing of almost a dozen versions of the song (this was before I stopped being amazed by Dylan's chameleon-like re-interpretive skills). I randomly selected one and put it on download. The name of the track was, "Like A Rolling Stone - MAnchester Free Trade Hall 1966". Little did I know that I had, in Dylan's own words,  "bargained for salvation an' they gave me a lethal dose." I played the song, there was a second of silence before someone said "Play it f*ckin' loud!!" and suddenly, a snare-drum went boom! What followed were eight minutes of the purest, most brain-meltingly alive rock and roll I had ever heard. Guitar licks and organ pieces fought with each other behind the impudent screech-howl that was Bob's voice. At the end of those eight minutes, I was an honest-to-goodness convert. I still think that if I'd heard any other version , even the studio version of 'LARS', it wouldn't have affected me the way that (as I was to find out later) legendary recording did. It was like a 'Corkscrew to my heart' and Dylan had found his way in.


In the next installment, I'll write about how, among all his various faces and phases, I found 'my' Dylan.

...Of Five Forgotten Voices

One of the many things I try in order to get myself out of ruts like the one I have been in for the past month and a half is to make lists. Lists help me organize the clutter that is my mind and provide me with rudimentary scaffolding on which I can string up the one or two ideas that I may have. More often than not, my blogger's block stems from having an excess of, rather than a dearth of ideas, topics and themes to write about. The photo/video studded posts about my Great Roadtrip remain unwritten, my photographing trips across Lahore remain undocumented and the long-brewing piece on Dylan languishes in the drafts (though that is something I should push to the front of the 'pending' cue given Bob's 70th birthday in less than two weeks time.) So today, on one of those rare occasions called 'a day off', I've decided to force myself to sit down and finish two posts that are all but complete and have only my extraordinary sloth to blame for being kept from the reading public.


The hallmark of a great book is that not only does it enlighten/entertain/inform during the read itself, it opens up new avenues of thought and exploration that go on long after the book's been read. Possibly my most rewarding read of the year has been Raza Ali Abidi's "Naghma Gar", an exhaustive history of songwriting and popular songs in the subcontinent. I've already written about one of the many amazing new songs/musicians/singers that I've discovered after reading about them in the book. A tangential effect has been a re-exploration of some of my favorite musical touchstones from the golden age of Sub-continental film music (which I now think spans three decades rather than just two). One of the things I discovered was that a lot of great music and great talent lies forgotten, and it's not just because of the dusts of time that cover it. Names like Lata Mangeshkar, Mukesh, Kishore Kumar and Rafi sahab, even Geeta Dutt, Manna Dey, Shamshad Begum etc are known to most people with mnore than a passing interest in old film music. But there are certain artists that were headed for obscurity even before their careers were over.

The history of Playback singing in Bollywood has been of two or three towering figures, with other artists restricted to secondary billing. There were Rafi, Kishore, Mukesh and Talat and there were the Mangeshkar sisters, and for all practical purposes, that was it. People like Hemant Kumar, Manna Dey, Bhupinder and Mahendra Kapoor among the men and Geeta Dutt, Suman Kalyanpur, Suraiyya, Shamshad Begum etc among the women were more like bit players in the industry and their contributions, though great, can not compare to the handful of "superstars" that reigned over Bollywood film music. An interesting observation is that there was still a sizeable number of men singing in Bollywood, with each having his own distinctive voice suited for his own type of song. Among the women, the story was different.

The arrival on the scene of Lata Mangeshkar (and what an arrival !!) in 1949 sounded the death knell for the careers of a number of playback singers who had been jointly ruling the roost since the mid '30s. Their more 'mature' voices soon lost favour with cinemagoers who preferred the sweeter, younger voice of Lata. Over the years, as the Mangeshkar sisters strengthened their hold over Bollywood playback, the careers of many promising singers fell by the way-side as a result of a combination of professional intrigue and audience tastes. Some names are still remembered as smaller stars on the firmament, but there are a few who shone so briefly that their names have all been forgotten. That is a pity, because even though they shone for a painfully brief moment, they produced a most brilliant light. What follows is a selection of performances from five of the most gifted singers ever to have sung playback, who are now sadly, all but forgotten.

Mubarak Begum

I first wrote about Mubarak Begum three years ago. At the time, she was living in absolute obscurity. At one time, she was among one of the most promising singers of Bollywood with a number of hits under her belt. But her fall into obscurity was sudden. When I heard of her, she was in her seventies, living in a one room house in the Bombay slums with a daughter who suffered from early onset Parkinson's and a son who barely made ends meet as a Taxi-driver. Thankfully, as a result of efforts of a number of her fans, she has been somewhat rehabilitated. She regularly performs and has a steady (though still small) source of income. I still remember the first time I heard her voice, it was hair-raising, crystal clear, sharp as a dagger and very mellifluous. I've heard a few of her other songs, but the one that still moves me the most is the first one I heard, "Kabhi Yanhaiyon Main Yun Hamari Yaad Ayegi" from the film "Hamari Yaad Ayegi". It's a haunting melody, and Mubarak sings it with immense feeling, making an obscure song from an obscure film by an obscure music director one of the great musical performances of the golden age of Playback.

Jagjit Kaur
 

Another of the 'niche singers' who made a small but extremely important contribution to the Indian playback industry is Jagjit Kaur. The wife of the great music director Khayyam, Jagjit started singing in the mid-fifties, mostly for films scored by her husband. If I were to use just one song to introduce someone to her work, it would be from 1964's Shagun, which features some of the most beautiful music and lyrics of any film from that era. This isn't surprising considering it was scored by Khayyam and had lyrics by the great Sahir Ludhainvi. It also contains Jagjit Kaur's signature tune, one of the greatest songs in Bollywood's history. Picturised on Nivideta, with the luminous Waheeda Rehman and her husband Kanwaljeet providing the requisite emotional backdrop, "Tum Apna Ranj-o-Ghum,Apni Pareshani Mujhe De Do" is an amazing evocation of the love that's been lost but still lingers in the heart, a tenderness that persists despite betrayal and separation.

Jagjit Kaur kept on singing sporadically, again mainly compositions by her husband. Highlights from her later career include "Dekh Lo Aaj Hum Ko Ji Bhar Ke" from 1982's 'Bazar', which again featured brilliant Khayyam compositions, and her duet with Khayyam on his beautiful composition of Faiz Ahmed Faiz's "Kab Yaad Main Tera Saath Nahi".

Meena Kapoor

From the wife of one great music director to the wife of another. Meena Kapoor was a semi-successful playback singer who started her career in the late '40s. One of her earliest hits was from 1947's Shehnai, "Sunday Ke Sunday" the super-hit novelty/comedy number that Meena Kapoor sung with Shamshad Begum and the film's music director C. Ramchandra. Early in the fifties, she married the legendary composer Anil Biswas and all but left the film industry, instead dedvoting her time to her family. One of her greatest songs was "Kuch Aur Zaman Kehta Hai" for a film that was significant for a number of reasons. "Choti Choti Baatain" was the last film scored by Anil Biswas, it was a labour of love produced by one of Bollywood's greatest character actors, Motilal and starred him and his wife, the ravishing Nadira in lead roles. Sadly, the film was a failure and Motilal died before seeing it completed. Thus, it was the bookend to four Bollywood careers that had flourished with varying degrees of success.

Zohrabai Ambalewali

One of pre-partition cinema's greatest singers, Zohrabai had one of those full-throated, deep voices that exuded a sort of rustic maturity that was to disappear from Bollywood following the arrival of Lata Mangeshkar. Her greatest songs were for Naushad and  Master Ghulam Haider. The songs of 1944's Rattan are especially beautiful, scored by Naushad in his star-making turn and picturised on Karan Devan and a young Swarnalata (who later migrated to Pakistan to become the country's first female film producer). She didn't sing much after partition, restricting herself to ghazals in stage performances, but her expressive voice lives on in the few recordings that remain. Her greatest hit was from Rattan, a song that catapulted both the singer and the music director to instant fame.

Rajkumari


The final artist in this list is the great Rajkumari, one of the most beautiful voices of Indian film. She started her career as a singing actress in the late '30s but soon had to quit acting because in her own words she 'couldn't keep herself off food' and gained a lot of weight. But a loss for the screen was a gain for the listening public as she concentrated on her voice and soon became one of the pre-eminent singers of the pre-partition era. After partition, her career slowed down to a few songs per year. She however had two superhit films to her credit in the immediate post-partition years, 1950's "Bawre Nain" in which she provided playback for the vivacious Geeta Bali, and 1949's Kamal Amrohi masterpiece "Mahal", a film that heralded a great change in the Indian film industry. It thrust a young Madhubala into superstardom and it provided Lata Mangeshkar with her first, career altering hit. Scored by the immensely talented Khemchand Prakash (who unfortunately died rather young), Mahal was an immaculately produced supernatural thriller and early Noir that still holds up more than 60 years later as one of the greatest films produced in the sub-continent. Rajkumari sang one of the film's, and indeed Indian cinema's most haunting songs, "Ghabra Ke Jo Hum Sar Ko Takrayen To Accha Ho"

Unfortunately, after Rajkumari's career fizzled out, she was reduced to penury and made her living singing in the backing choruses on film songs. It was while she was singing on the chorus for another great Kamal Amrohi film, 1972's "Pakeezah" that she was spotted by Naushad, who thought her condition exceedingly pitiful, having worked with her in her heydey. He offered her the chance to sing one of the thumris he had composed for the film and so Rajkumari sang for the first time in nearly two decades.

Rajkumari lived out her last days in strained circumstances, occasionally going on stage to perform songs from her golden days. She died in 2000 at a broken down house in Bombay.



  As a footnote to this list of some of the greatest singers of the 20th Century is another song from Kamal Amrohi's Mahal. It is sung by two of the luminaries mentioned above, Zohrabai Ambalewali and Rajkumari. Everything that made the film a masterpiece is evident in the song - from the haunting melody to the brilliant cinematography to the expressive and emotive performances. Also, the song serves as a final glimpse at the passing parade of Old Bollywood at the brink of a major upheaval, when the faces, voices and names of the pre-partition era were suddenly thrust aside to make way for the new lot that was to rule sub-continental film for the next three decades.

Zohrabai Ambalewali And Rajkumari - "Yeh Raat Beet Jayegi, Jawani Phir Na Ayegi"

...Of An Alarming Change

There are thought-out, worked-upon posts and then there is hack work to keep the juices flowing. This is probably the latter.
        -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My weekends have changed.

In my five years in med-school, weekends were like pit-stops. We used to look forward to them, counting down the days and generally living a weekend-to-weekend existence. The whole work week was considered a tedious preamble to the really important stuff, namely the weekend.

Sunday was an almost hallowed day and I would go to great lengths to keep it that way. Saturday mornings at the college were spent dreaming up weekend escapades and any study or ward-duty was done grudgingly and with complete disinterestedness. Playing hookey (quite a dangerous exercise considering where I was studying) and trying to get home as early as possible was an accepted practice. Throughout my stay in med-school, I never stayed in the hostels for a weekend unless it was absolutely unavoidable, i.e there were exams or the weekend was -in official parlance- a closed weekend.

The fact that my family moved four times during the five years I was in hostel meant that going home on weekends was a rather tedious and,in hindsight, expensive task. Except for the two and a half years that the family was settled in Pindi , going home generally meant a taxi-cab from college to the bus station, a hundred kilometre bus ride, and another cab from the bus-station to home. This process was repeated in reverse less than 24 hours later for the return journey. This ensured that at least 8 of the possible 30 hours were spent traveling.

What I didn't realize or probably realized but didn't care about at the time was the obvious monetary cost of performing the same ritual week in week out in the face of rising fuel prices and bus fares. All in all, I may've spent in the neighborhood of 50-60000 rupees simply on traveling to and from home on weekends. But here's the thing; looking back I can safely say that the time spent away from the hostels was worth every penny.

Weekends at the hostel were usually mind-numbingly dull affairs with most of my dorm-mates either home or out about town and nothing but 8-10 hours of sleep to while away the time, waking from which I had to endure the hostel-food which descended to unthinkable levels of blandness on Saturdays and Sundays. An unhealthy gloom descended on me every time I knew I was going to have to spend a weekend in the hostels.

Weekends at home were a completely different story, with every hour utilized to its fullest. I wasn't (and still am not) a very sociable person in that I didn't make friends in whatever neighborhood we were living in at the time. Hence there weren't many social calls to pay. I usually stayed home, and if I went out at all it was probably to go to
a) a bookstore or,
b) the now deceased Sadaf CD Store

The lack of a social circle also meant that I could spend my time in catching up on my reading or writing, spending a few hours on earnest undisturbed study or painstakingly downloading the next week's supply of music (those were pre-broadband days). If there was nothing else to do, I'd spend hours upon hours in front of the telly, getting my money's worth out of the couch in the living room,oblivious to the world around me.

Sleep was strictly rationed to the bare minimum. I rarely slept more than 5 to 6 hours on weekends, preferring to sleep off all the fatigue on Sunday night when I was back in the hostel. Afternoon naps were eschewed even in the balmiest weather and it was usual for me to sleep at 4 in the morning and wake up 4 or 5 hours later.

That was then, this is now.

It's almost four months now since I started working on my house-job and there are precious few weekends left. Sundays are working days unless by a freak of nature my name is not on the weekend duty-roster. On the average, I get every sixth Sunday off, with a non-stop succession of workdays in between. Add to that thrice weekly night duties and I have my hands full most days of the month. I can't complain however. The workload isn't unbearable and the fact that I'm finally learning actively after years of passively imbibing knowledge means that I don't consider myself an overburdened drone.

I get around two to three evenings free every week, which is more than what I used to have in Med-school,especially during final year. It's the weekends that have dried up, and that's a tragedy of gargantuan levels. Still, things would be acceptable if the level of activity on those precious few weekends equaled if not exceeded the R&R of weekends past. If I could get a bit of reading, a bit of writing, a bit of listening and viewing done over the weekend, I'd be a happy man.

But the balance of R&R has swung from recreation to rest. Where once sleep was strictly rationed, it has now spread itself over the day to such an extent that I wake up on Sundays at the ungodly hour of twelve in the afternoon, most times only to grab a two to three hour nap in the afternoon. I've replaced Jeff 'The Dude' Lebowski the poster-boy for unshaven slacking. Downloaded music remains unlistened to, movies that were eagerly awaited and downloaded gather dust in the DVD rack and newest contents of my overburdened bookshelf go untouched for months. Most disturbingly, it's been almost three and a half months since I acquired a new car-my first car mind you- and I feel absolutely no urge to grab the keys and take it out for a spin and practice my driving on the only day I have time for it. The result is that even after 3 months of being a car-owner, my driving skills are cretinous at best.

This is an alarming situation and I'm worried over it. Strangely, worrying only makes me want to snooze even more. I can't put my finger on the cause of the blight that has descended on the holiest of days in my calendar. The only reason I can think of is that I unconsciously accumulate fatigue over the weeks and weeks of ceaseless work and the only time I have to unburden myself is a Sunday. Try as I might, I can't maintain the same levels of activity I used to produce in the preceding years. My friends and acquaintances ensure me that what I'm going through is actually a return to normalcy after years of what they consider fairly deviant behaviour. Weekends were meant for sleeping ,they say, congratulating me on the fact that I have finally seen the light.

The sad bit is that I slowly feel myself warming to their point of view.

...Of A Long Awaited Package

It has taken 6 months of coaxing,blackmailing and pleading, but finally it's here. My DVD of 30 Mehfils of Haji Mehboob Qawwal has finally arrived. Wrapped in a page from the funny papers, the DVD has helped me fill the gaps in my admittedly meagre, but moderately satisfying collection. I was expecting some truly mesmerizing stuff and I have not been disappointed, but what I wasn't expecting was the reawakening of a very very fond childhood memory. I've written before about how a secret memory haunted me for almost half a dozen years before I finally tracked it down. My family isn't very musical (if you count out my elder mamu, who more than makes up for the rest of our musical ineptitude), but we like singing. At shaadis and aqeeqas and the occasional family picnics, almost everybody either sings or contributes with voice or gesture. 

 My nano is always pretty active in such affairs, and the few old-time songs she sings can't be heard anywhere else. Two of her songs are my special favorites, one is the traditional seraiki tune "Rohi" which apparently everyone among my relatives (except me it seems) seems to know by heart. The other song is again in Seraiki, a Khwaaja Ghulam Fareed R.A ki kafi that I have only heard from her. As I was going through the various Mehfils in my DVD, I chanced upon it. It had been a few years since I'd heard it so it took me a few moments to recognize it, but if someone had seen the mile-long grin on my face when I finally recognized it, they'dve thought I was off my rocker. I've managed to listen to it about a billion times since morning, imprinting the melody and the words in my mind. And since it's sung by Haji Mehboob Qawwal, the actual body of the kalaam is embellished by girahs in Seraiki,Persian and Arabic that not only bring out it's spiritual essence, but are utterly charming in themselves. Haji Mushtaq is in fine fettle with his alaaps and Mehboob sahab's sitar adds the golden touch. I've spent some time actually sitting down and transcribing the recordings, taking special care to note down all the girahs, (which I've put in italics). Not only is the Qawwali a treat for the ears, but in the true tradition of Haji Mehboob Qawwal, is a piece of spiritual instruction. 

 As a special treat to myself, I'm posting another brilliant recording of Haji sahab, where again the sitar and the girahs give it an otherworldly feel. One of my friends who doesn't understand the sub-continental languages asked me recently if I could translate the kalaam for him, as well as explain some of the slighly obtruse references to various folk romances. I'll take this transcription as a working reference and try to see if i can try my hand at translating. If anyone else wants to give it a try, they're most welcome.

   

Na mi goyam ke dar chashmak azeezam 

Kaneezaan-e-turaa kam tar kaneezam. 

Che baashad gar kaneez-e-raa nawaazi, 

Ze band-e-mehnatash azaad saazi 

Ki hosi chaah nawaazain bolri noon 

Ziyaada na kareen gal thorri noon. 

Ki hosi je karain aajiz nawaazi, 

Tu bakhshain khaak taeen sarfarazi. 

Kithon taheen tussaan theen duur rehsaan, 

Tusaade hijr theen ranjoor rehsaan

Baandi te bardi, tain dilbar di O yaar 

Janeen mahi, mahr na janeen O yaar. 

Hijr tere vich aaheen main maraan 

Aa mahi, mukh dass asanoon, jaan tere to vaari 

Jaan iman dile da tu hain, te tujh bin main kis kaari) 

(Kade tussi asaanoon sikde aahe, hun assi tusanoon sikde, 

Khattaan uttay nit dua salamaan,assi roz hamesha likhde. 

Kade te baah sirhaane aaheen,hun nain vekhan noo sikde 

Je janaa tussaan evain karni, te assi neoon laavan na sikde 

Hijr tere vich aaheen main maraan 

Tujh bin kaun lavay hun saaran 

Tain bin sooniaan dissan bahaaran 

Jind sikdi mahi,taindne bhaanain O yaar

Sevaan main peer, te falaan main paavaan 

Naam tere da vird pakavaan 

Je tu aavain, sadqe main javaan 

Jag peya denda hi,taindre taane O yaar

Saade naalon phul changere, jo sajan gal lagde 

Sanoon sardeyan muddat guzri,te vich birhoon di agg de 

Seene bhaah bale nit gham di,te nain rahen nit vagde 

Eesa ik maahi na pucche,te doojay ta'ane jag de

Jag peya denda hi,taindre taane O yaar. 

Baandi te bardi, tain dilbar di O yaar 

Janeen mahi, mahr na janeen O yaar. 

Ishq kahaani be-andaaz ay 

Mann vich vajda, ishq da saaz ay 

Yaar Farid ki dasse raaz ay

Taba'a aleel Sassi noon milya,Ishq tabeeb siyaana 

Aakhe dard dawa,parhez araamon khoon jigar khaana 

Aab-o-hawa ma'afiq nahi tere,te kar Kech'on tark thikaana 

Ja kar sair kareem Thallaan di, te tad hosiya fazl Rabbaana

Iss aatish theen aatishe hijraan,vich tezi sakht puchaati 

Sohni roz tarray daryaeen,attay sard na hoyus chaati 

Orhak ais Ishq de sozon, baith nadi vich na'ati 

Hashim baaj moyan nahi milda,asaan theek sahi kar jaati

Ishq majaazi, te sar di baazi, jaan sukkay dar dar ke 

Yaar sukhalyaan kise na paaya, te jis paaya mar mar ke

Yousuf aakhya,"Shakl asaadi,te naqsh kareen vich dil de 

Yaariyaan waale sakht pushaale, te yaar na sokhay milde

Ishq kahaani be-andaaz ay 

Man vich vajda, ishq da saaz ay 

Yaar Farid ki dassay raaz ay 

Aithay bhul gaye nain sugghar siyaane O yaar

Baandi te bardi, taain dilbar di O yaar

Jaanay mahi, te mehr na jaane O yaar

 

Aashiqui paida'ast az zaari-e-dil 

Naist beemaari chun beemaari-e-dil

Kya se kya do din main haalat ho gyi 

Al ishq'o naaruhum

Ishq main khwaab ka khayaal kahaan 

Na lagi aankh jab se aankh lagi

Saajan jo main jaanti, jo preet kiye dukh hoye 

Nagar dhandora peet'ti jo preet na karyo koye

Saajan yeh mat jaaniyo,jo tum bichrat mohe chain 

Geelay ban ki laakri, jo sulgat hoon din rain

Mohabbat main naseehat ko to aksar gham-gusaar aaye, 

Usse koi na laaya jis ke dekhe se qaraar aaye

Tum ko taras na aaye,ta'ajjub ki baat hai 

Dushman bhi ro rahe hain mere haal-e-zaar par

Jo dekhe ga rotay mujhe,tum ko hanste

Meri baat choro,tumhain kya kahay ga?

Raain andheri,bijli chamke, jiya rahe be-chain 

Jab tum paas nahi ho saajan,kaise kate gi raain

Aare aamad, yaad-e ma'ashooqam bashab bedaar kard 

Ishq lazzat r'a boyad dar mi kunad ba ranj-o-dard

Kya se kya do din main haalat ho gyi 

Dil na aaya, ik qayamat ho gyi

Saanjh bhayi aur diya jale, piya na aaye paas 

Do naainan se Ganga bhayee, aur tu ban'raa ki aas

Liye phirta hai mujh ka ja-ba-ja dil...

Jaa ka piya bichrat,waa ko nahee chain 

Diya jalat hai raain ko,aur jiya jalat din raain

Sagri raain sukar gayi,jo khalqat gyi sab so

Jin ko chinta pi ki,so neend kahan se ho

Ab jo chaahain woh karain,mukhtar hain 

Aashiqui cheest bego, banda-e janaan boodam 

Dil ba-dastay digaray daadam - hairaan boodam

Ab jo chaahain woh karain,mukhtar hain

Ho gyi ab to mohabbat ho gyi

Chaanta hoon raat din ab khaak main

Ulfat main jo hota hai,wohi haal hai mera

Yeh dekhne waale mujhe kya dekh rahe hain?

Chaanta hoon raat din ab khaak main

Teri furqat main yeh haalat ho gyi

Jal ban lakri koyla bhayee, aur koylay se bhayee raakh

Main paapan aisi jali, jo koyla bhayee na raakh

Aankh se ansoo nikal sakta naheen

Na-tawaani se yeh soorat ho gyi

Ba'ad marne ke hui matti azeez

Tere kooche main jo turbat ho gyi

Bajaa hai jitna karoon naaz apni qismat par... 

Muztar meri nazar main shaahon ki kya haqeeqat 

Muztar meri nazar main jannat ki kya haqeeqat

Kya kahoon naaseh,mohabbat kyun hui

Ho gyi bas un se ulfat ho gyi

Aap to Mushtaq ka chorain na saath

Barbaadi-e aashiq se,kab rehti hai ma'ashooqi

Aap to Mushtaq ka chorain na saath

Ho gyi dunya ko nafrat ho gyi

Kya se kya do din main haalat ho gyi

Dil na aaya, ik qayamat ho gyi

....Of Rafi Yet Again

 I guess it's true what the sentimentalists say about first love, no matter how many times you find new people and settle into new relationships, it's always your very first infatuation that you treasure the deepest and let your mind wander back to when it needs solace.

Rafi sahab has been and always will be my favorite singer. And though I go through phases where Qawwali, Ghazal,Kafi,Folk and the Blues are foremost on my playlists, Rafi sahab is always my first and final port-of-call. Here's something brilliant I found on Youtube, an excellent program on Rafi sahab produced by HumTV. I saw it in the morning today and have been on a Rafi 'trip' ever since. Arshad Mehmood and Anwar Maqsood are probably the most "qualified" people to discuss the life and art of Rafi sahab, and they do an admirable job. Interspersed with tastefully chosen songs, the conversation is both enlightening and entertaining.















Movie Of The Week, How To Train Your Dragon,America, A Personal History By Alistair Cooke (Brilliant!!)

...In Memoriam

    There was only one place in Pindi worth spending time in, and now that's burned to the ground.
    There were at least a hundred odd shops and businesses in Gakkhar Plaza, and many people that I used to see on a monthly if not weekly basis, like the bloke who would sell us a new stage play every week and promise to find the old NTM/STN comedy shows if he had to dig Rainbow Centre Karachi inside out and who found out that I had a counterfeit 500 bucks note and told me to go spend it somewhere else before anyone found out.
     Cheap chinese shoes,occasionally a decent pair of denims and the Garden Grill on the top floor (which I'd been to only once) were all reasons to go to Gakkhar. But the one thing that made Pindi worth living in was on the 3rd floor and it was what they called "The largest DVD store in Asia". Sadaf CD was the centre of all my excursions and 3 or 4 days wouldn't pass without me taking a peek up there and leaving with a shopping bag full of (grossly overpriced) CDs or DVDs.I figure I've spent more than 60% of all my money in that one place.
     The screwed up internet (a result of some undersea cables being cut, so they tell me) prevents me from waxing too lyrical about the place.Suffice to say that without everything I've bought from that place over the last 4.5 years, I don't know where I'd be...
       I bought my first Dylan there. I bought my first Bergman there. First Kubrick. First Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. Hell, first of almost everything...my entire education. I'll end by going to my DVD rack and writing down everything I bought from Sadaf and sparing a moment to thank my lucky stars that I got here 5 years ahead of the game.
     In no specific order,
                        Fantasia
                        Wild Strawberries
                        Smiles Of A Summer Night
                        The Bicycle Thief
                        Porridge (Season1)
                        Yes Minister,Yes Prime Minister
                        Red Dwarf
                        The Monty Python movies
                        Kind Hearts And Coronets,Passport To Pimlico
                        The Birth Of A Nation
                        Metropolis
                        Chori Chori
                        Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi
                        Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro
                        The Haunting
                        All Quiet On The Western Front
                        Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
                        The Adventures Of Robin Hood
                        Citizen Kane
                        All About Eve
                        Sunset Boulevard
                        Stagecoach
                        Judgement At Nuremberg
                        A Streetcar Named Desire
                        The Maltese Falcon
                        North By Northwest
                        Strangers On A Train
                        Spellbound
                        A Clockwork Orange
                        Easy Rider
                        Blow Up
                        The Producers
                        Dr. Strangelove
                        Woody Allen's Sleeper
                        Being There
                        The Big Lebowski
                        Ed Wood
                        I'm Not There
                        Masked And Anonymous
                        Walk The Line
                        The LastWaltz .....................

               I shudder to think what I'd be without any of these.
                May God grant those who died eternal rest, and those who lost their loved ones or suffered monetary losses, the composure to overcome their grief and their loss.

...Of Nostalgia ??

Nostalgia ?
No,that's not it.
Isn't nostalgia for the times you've lived through ?
For things you've seen,things you've felt in your own lifetime.
Yet these things are not mine.
These snippets of song,these flashes of light and dark.


I was not there when they shot Lincoln,
Or was I?
So why do I have a faint recollection;a gunshot,a scream,a bounding leap.
Sic Semper Tyrannis !!
Or when they shot Oswald,or Garfield or Wild Bill Hickock...


When they first showed Nosferatu,or Casblanca or Pyaasa.
I wasn't among the teeming crowds.
I wasn't in the art-house cinemas where Bergman The Lion roared,
While the audience smoked and tried to deconstruct his pain.
These grainy relics are not mine.


When Rafi cooed in Bombay,I wasn't there to listen,
Nor was I with Cash,or ol' Muddy,or Bob 'n Joanie.
But I was there..
I tell you I was there,right beside her,right beside them all.
But how's that possible,and why am I missing them ??


I've never been to Wooster's London,or Lake Wobegon.
Then why is it that all my friends live there.
Long gone friends,long dead friends.
But still alive,still full of elan.


If these aren't my memories,why are they mine?
Why are these foreign emotions more personal than my own ??
And why do I sit staring at them,staring at the dates,
1915,1931,1962,1865.
My own life seeming trivial before these swathes of time...


It can't be nostalgia,can it?Isn't nostalgia supposed to be personal?Well,this is personal,isn't it ??

....Of Teeth And Such

I've got an old picture of mine,taken when I was an unsuspecting two year old(a pretty dirty trick,if you ask me).And I wince when i see it.No,no it aint one of those with the poor unsuspecting subject caught with his pants down(or in my case,with his pants off),though i've got plenty of those.It aint the one where i look like something outta a David Lynch horror movie,again my album's full of 'em too.It's just a simple portrait,me in my red overalls,digging in our lawn in Abbottabad,flashing my teeth like someone on the toot of a lifetime.The problem is that the teeth i'm flashing are,......wait for it,PURPLE !!!

Now how did that happen?Perhaps a freak radiation accident that turned me into "Maroon Molars Man" instead of Spiderman?A heady sip of Parker Ink?or a bite into an unsuspecting beetle(had many of those too)?Not really.It's a long story...

When I was born,my parents heard strange growling and shreiking sounds when I breathed.Worried(so would I be if i'da given birth to a tea kettle),they took me to a doctor who,in a moment of divine inspiration,diagnosed me with Asthma! Then started my parents' desperate hunt for a cure.Doctors,Peers,Hakeems, even Vets were tried,but to no avail.

And here's where my purple teeth come in.You see,when I was brought to the hospital,one of the more intelligent doctors found an excellent way to dispose off all the expired antibiotics that'd been piling up.Namely,to pump me full of 'em!!I was fed,injected and infused with gallons of the stuff,and in three months,the hospital stock was clear and my teeth were a rather lovely aquamarine.

Ultimately,the verdict delivered was that it'd wear off with age.As i'd grow older,the breathing would change in pattern from a rather sozzled Wildebeast to a wee little purring feline and ultimately become normal.Talk about the hoax of the century!!I'm gonna be twenty on Monday,and as i write,I've got my inhaler by my side and my breathing's as quiet as two hippopotamuses fighting it out on a sheet of tin in an earthquake...

It's not just the sounds.I could live with my own personal jazz band in my chest.It's the breathing itself that's turning my hairs white.Only an asthmatic(or a resident of Karachi) can understand the feeling when you inhale hard enough to bust your guts and no air comes in.And the exhaling's a whole different story....