In Memoriam

I. Relics

You didn’t leave much behind when you slipped

silent through some unseen crevice in time.

The scent of a name swiftly rent by tearful

chords (shreds hung in the air, just out of reach).

Biannual torrents of dayspring rites

when payasam and prayer flash-flooded

the neighbourhood – baffling me for nine years …

Shadows from laughing eyes I had found

frozen on cellulose strips ( and long thought

were mine) crypted within the covers of

velveteen books on a high, unfriendly shelf.

A three-line memorial in a pale blue file:

life and love scaled to disease, diagnosis,

death with date and description, nothing

more – aseptic headstone raised for a ghost

star who didn’t leave much behind.

Other remains crowded out yours by and by.

Wordless fury at survival kept under cobalt

paternal lock, bluebeard’s chamber that opened

only to one knock;

glaciers of growing

loss left as moraines on a mother’s face;

    rising

debris from the link between you and me –

neatly piled beside the same crevice I lose

my way back to, over and over, with no effort at all.

You didn’t leave much behind, but nothingness

can expand into a red giant with grief at its core.

II. Resurrection

I tried remaking you with swatches of stolen

memory, seaming a harlequin next-of-kin.

First raided the maternal troves: traced

shapes out of mother’s soundlessness; snipped

yarn from her three chirpy younger sisters.

I didn’t spare granny either, sifting her

cataractal mind for traces of your smile.

(kept clear off the men folk though: they stood

guard night and day over theirs, buried ten-foot

deep in child and prowler-proof vaults.)

You stayed sketchy, all dots, shades and split

helixes – a silhouette behind a shattered

pane, touching which made thoughts bleed.

So the thieving spread wider and wilder.

I sought your colours, contours all over:

A head among tousled monsoon clouds

your gaze on the burnished afternoon earth

the voice in local summer tides.

The name, the name grew everywhere:

in myths and magazines, or family

trees, fiction, television – any one I chose

could wipe out another possible you.

You walked with me, travelling through

childhood, teenage, voting-right-hood …

I changed templates, crafted new ones through the ride.

Till the time it felt too much like work,

too much a snail within a turtle’s shuck.

Unravelled you on land’s edge, then watched

my patchwork sibling return to the clouds,

the sun, the sea – and someone’s memory.

Karthika Naïr, 10/02/2008

Because sometimes I can forget, though not what lies just ahead. And today is a time to remember.



In Memoriam was first published in Bearings, HarperCollins India, 2009.

Amaranth

It is a myth. Of course, it is. Everything dies. Why we are dying as we speak. Or write. Or read. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise, should it? To learn that icons that one has grown up hearing, reading, watching, have died (the French euphemism disappeared seems so apt, less brutal but more final) should not be such a shock.

But it is, and when it is news one gathers, in the midst of the mad hurly-burly of daily existence, it seems a bigger one. Here we are, racing like motorcycle riders in the Ring of Death sequence that was de rigueur in most Indian circuses in the 80s, and there comes the reminder that there is deep chasm under the ring, and that we are falling through all the time.

I learnt of the death of composer Ravi Shankar Sharma – popularly known as Ravi, and in Kerala, as Bombay Ravi – while in a hotel somewhere not too far from the Arctic Circle, perched beside a window, laptop inclined at a crazy angle in an attempt to log on to a Wifi network playing hide-and-seek. I read it not in a newspaper obit (those came much later) but on a friend’s Facebook post – a friend who also had heard the news “in another bench, in another airport, in another town”. Ravi died on March 7, 2012 at the age of 86, after a career spanning fifty years: the first three decades in the Hindi film industry where he composed some truly remarkable soundtracks – Dilli ka Thug, Chaudhvin kaChand, China Town, Gharana, Waqt, Nikaah are just a few from a long list – but remained underrated, undeservedly slightly obscured, in the shadow of other greats of the golden era, Khayyam, Shankar-Jaikishen, O.P. Nayyar, S.D. Burman… oh, there was truly a pantheon of music-makers then; and, as the eighties proved somewhat of a long winter for melody in Bombay with the rise of the action era, he moved to Malayalam cinema where each of the dozen or so films he composed music for was crowned with critical and public acclaim: Panchagni, Vaishali, Oru VadakkanVeeragatha, Nakhakshyathgal, Sargam, to mention the earliest ones.

Most of us did not even realise that that the man who had composed the exuberant Aemeri Zohra Jabeen was the one who had written the complex and beauteous score of Sargam, rooted in Carnatic music. When I did, it was not so much because of my interest in composers as in lyricists, and one lyricist/poet in particular: Sahir Ludhianvi. Sahir Ludhianvi, the socialist, the atheist, the cynic, the eternal bachelor, the uncompromising, the “arrogant” — the last being an epithet he won for insisting that lyricists be credited by All India Radio alongside singers and composers, and, not insignificantly, that he be paid a rupee more than Lata Mangeshkar. Sahir Ludhianvi, whose pen could sear conscience and celluloid with a Yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaye to kya hai (Pyaasa, 1957) and, in the same film, deliver the rollicking Sar jo terachakraye along with a Jaane kya tunekahin radiating sensuousness. Sahir Ludhianvi, whose words and images grabbed my pre-adolescent imagination with both hands and never really let go. Sahir Ludhianvi, whose 91^st birth anniversary fell on March 8, 2012 — a day after Ravi’s demise.

I grew up on one’s words (and continue to do so, I think) and the other’s music. While Sahir’s influence on my writing and my imaginaire (a near-untranslatable word the French have for something like a creative ethos) is incalculable, I would never have first heard his words if it hadn’t been for composers like Ravi and his contemporaries: this was the music that my parents and uncles and aunts and elder cousins listened to, this was the music that seeped into my bloodstream.

This post is dedicated to the lyricist and the composer, and to their collaboration, often alchemical. It is a random selection of their songs, chosen for either the lyrics or the music or – often – both.  I have included a couple of translations, but they are rough, hurried ones, and do not do any justice to the penmanship of Sahir. And because I have focussed primarily on the songs as poems set to music, I have not been attentive enough to filmed song sequences themselves, often lyrical in their own right.

If heaven exists, it is a lucky place to host both of them. As for us, we are left with their work, which is how we knew them in the first place. And, as choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui says, at the end of centuries, at the end of civilisation, art – not tyranny, not oppression, not the various daily cruelties we inflict on each other – is what best survives the march of time. Is umeed pe duniya qayam hai.

1. Waqt (1965): In a soundtrack bursting at the seams with melodious songs, Aage bhi jaane na tu stands out. Today, more than ever, perhaps because Time is very much on my mind:

Anjaane saayon ka, raahon mein deera hai

Andekhi baahon ne hum sab ko ghera hai

Ye pal ujala hai, baki andhera hai

Ye pal gavana na, ye pal hii tera hai

Unknown shadows corral the paths.

Unseen arms cordon us all.

This moment is radiant; the rest is darkness.

Don’t squander this moment: this alone is yours.

Oh, and the orchestration – even to a philistine like me – stands out. I love the way it begins, the soft tinkling behind the dialogues opening a path to Asha Bhonsle’s voice, the instruments woven dexterously to place the spotlight to her tessitura. As Dusted Off says in her wonderful tribute to/obit on Ravi, “the quintessential crooner song.”

2. Gumraah (1963): This one, more for the startling beauty of the lyrics, that inarticulate thought which must occur to so many of us at the end of a relationship given full, forceful, eloquent expression by Sahir, with the music allowing the lyrics to rise to the fore. One of Ravi’s strengths that, it occurred to me often: he could allow the words to breathe, and that he didn’t at all grudge them their power, their pre-eminence when required. A feat he was to repeat time and again in Malayalam cinema.

And another song from the same film, to contrast moods words and composition: here, there is the conviction of requited desire, illicit as it may be, the words are few and the refrain is underscored by music in majestic command. The melody magnifies both nature in all its splendour and the ache of love, the restrained fervour to meet the beloved.

3. Dhund (1973):  I know, there is no respect for chronology on this post! Here is one of Sahir's portentous, philosophical pieces. I saw this film as a child, and I remember little more than a general air of impending doom, a very scary Danny Denzongpa (who could deliver quiet menace like few others — he had no need for wigs and prosthetics to convey evil) and a constantly sari-clad (unusual an occurrence), petrified but beautiful Zeenat Aman. And a title song that snagged in some corner of the mind:

4. Ek Mahal Ho Sapnon Ka (1975): This, I believe, was Sahir’s and Ravi’s last collaboration together. Again, a film, I saw as a child, but one I had found a little too relentlessly weepy. Sacrifice, unless by Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities (the book, not the film) has never appealed much to me. But there were some pleasant songs, and this one remained with me. The cynicism is vintage Sahir. And it is nice to see Sharmila Tagore without too much of a bouffant.

Neelam ho raha tha kisi naaznin ka pyar

Keemat nahin chookayi gayee, ek gareeb se

Dekha hai zindagi ko kuch itna kareeb se

Chehre tamaam lagne lage hain ajeeb se

Up there for bidding was a coquette’s love,

The price too steep for a pauper to pay.

So intimately have I seen life,

Each face now tends to look strange.

Another song (with three versions, and in three voices and moods!) that used to be quite popular from Ek Mahal … is Dil mein kisike pyar ka.

Chockfull of 1970s fashion statements, more bouffant but also a couplet like

Woh nakshe kya hua jo mitaye se mit gaya

Who dard kya hua jo davayi se dab gaya

and a brooding, handsome Dharmendra to counter the sartorial effects.

5. Aaj aur Kal (1963): their first collaboration, I think, is this film by Devandra Goel. It is a veritable bouquet of lovely numbers. If I had to pick a favourite, I'd be torn between a lovely but despondent Nanda’s serenade to death – which taught me so much: Sahir, unknown to them, was a big help to my English teachers; the rhetoric devices that we learnt of in school came to brilliant life in his verses

– and this paean to the landscape and to life:

Death’s embrace would pale in attractiveness before that. And before a young Sunil Dutt.

6. Humraaz (1967): When I look at their work, I think, hmmm, they did have a huge crush on nature, didn't they? Especially when I listen to some of the songs of Humraaz where the real object of devotion would appear to be not the stone-faced heroine but the blueness of the skies, the vastness of the mountains.... the composition, just as the lyrics, conjures up the grandeur, the lushness of the world around:

7. Aadmi aur Insaan (1969): And switching over to a much zingier melody and sentiments ... The more popular number from Aadmi aur Insaan is the superbly vivacious Zindagi ittafaq hai but I love the way this particular melody sways and shimmies, just like Mumtaz on whom it is picturised. And the opening is just irresistible: Itni jaldi na karo, raat ka dil tootega. What a charming ruse to hold on to someone: don't leave in such haste, or night's heart will break! Night breaking her heart seemed the ultimate in pathetic fallacy.  What did I say about a user’s manual of literary devices, language no bar!

8. Kaajal (1965): Over to full intoxication in Kaajal. Chhoo lene do nazuk honton ko is the immediately identifiable song but Meena Kumari at her lachrymose best exasperated the life out of me even at the age of twelve (though the pater gazed at her in something close to adoration, and my mother still cites her as the finest tragedienne ever), so I ended up with a faiblesse for this one, the undertones are rather moving and, as ever with Sahir, self-aware, deprecating of the world’s moral code:

Duniya ki nigahon main bhala kya hain bura kya

Ye bojh agar dil se utar jaye to achha

9. Do Kaliyan (1968): Another film full of pleasant songs. Tumhari nazar kyon khafa ho gayi (in two versions: happy and sad), Sajna o sajna, the ever-popular Bachheman ke sache (which, again, I suspected was an idealised vision of childhood: neither I nor the children around me were anywhere close to altruistic!) and Murga murgi, surprisingly mature for a children’s song. But, it is Sahir, so there had to be some socialism and secularism woven in everywhere, even in the Comic Side Plot-song. So, in the midst of all the high-decibel theatrics of Do Kaliyan, there is a latter-day cousin of Sar jot era takraye, though nowhere as blithe.

The dance producer in me cannot help but be diverted by the flash of interesting – and rather contemporary – choreography at 02.50:

10. Aankhen (1968): And still faithful to my completely jumbled chronology, I end with a song from the fun-tastic, gadget-astic Aankhen, which thrilled a 11-year-old me to bits when I saw it in an Indian Army cinema hall (they did a great job of recycling old films!): radio transmitters in shoes! Cameras in glasses! Chinese and Egyptians who speak Hindi! Jeevan and Lalita Pawar as Enemies of the State! Complete face grafts about thirty years before Face/Off! And More General Amazement in every frame!

It is difficult to choose though, between the poignancy and tender reproach of Gairon pe karam, apnon pe situm, where music and lyrics are in terrific alliance

Gairon ke thhirakhte shaane par

Ye haath gawara kaise karen

Har baat gawara hai lekin

Ye baat gawara kaise karen

Ye baat gawara kaise karen

Tujhko teri bedardi ki kasam

Ae jane-wafa, ye zulm na kar

Hum bhi tere manzoor-e-nazar

Ji chaahe tu ab ikraar na kar

Sau tir chala seene main magar

Begaanon se milkar vaar na kar

Begaanon se milkar vaar na kar

Bemauth kahin marjaaye na hum

Ae jane-wafa, ye zulm na kar

and the madcap abandon of Milti hai zindagi main mohabbat kabhi kabhi,  where words and music act in counterpoint to create a mood that is teasing, buoyant and yet a little wistful. And unusually for that era, we see a heroine persistently pursuing the object of her affection (across continents too, it would transpire):

Milti hai zindagi main mohabbat kabhi kabhi

Hoti hai dilbaron ki inayat kabhi kabhi

Sharma ke muh na mod nazar ke sawal par

Laati hai aise mod pe kismat kabhi kabhi

The sequence is so gobsmackingly over-the-top that I cannot resist it. Mala Sinha's attires make me wish there was some special punishment for bad wardrobe design but thankfully she remains perky despite those pedal pushers (which could have easily cut off the blood supply to her toes). Besides, there is a dishy Dharmendra again (over-sized trenchcoat and mandatory fedora notwithstanding) to appreciate, though he rocks eveningwear to much greater satisfaction in the above-mentioned Aadmi aur Insaan.

PS: My apologies for the change in text between this morning and now. A technical glitch caused the entire post to vanish, and it had to be rewritten in large part.