Sahir Ludhianvi’s heartbreaking lyrics about his mother’s hardship
Tu mere saath rahega munne.
Writer Khushwant Singh once wrote pithily about Sahir Ludhianvi’s gynophobia (fear or dislike of women) and gamophobia (fear of marriage), most likely linked to his mother-fixation, saying the poet-lyricist probably drank himself to impotency.
Sahir, though romantically linked with several women, loved no woman as much as he doted on his mother Sardar Begum. She had walked out on her notoriously bigamist husband Fazal Din and raised him alone, inspiring Sahir to write the rousing poetry of Tu Mere Saath Rahega Munne in Trishul (1978).
The poem had been marinating in his heart for a long time. It wasn’t until her death that he found the right words to express her feelings.
In the film, Waheeda Rehman walks out on her lover Sanjeev Kumar who marries another woman. Holding her infant, she sings the song, traipsing down a deserted road with tears in her eyes but courage in every stride forward. Her words are woeful but strong. She raises her son in harsh living conditions, and on her funeral pyre reminds him to avenge her tormentor, her husband.
It is a stirring melody, evocative, and perhaps even holds a candle in the wind to the troubled times Sahir’s mother faced when her husband harassed them for Sahir’s custody after she left him.
Tu mere saath rahega munne
Tu mere saath rahega munne
Taaqi tu jaan sakey
Tujhko parwaan chadhaane ke liye
Kitne sangeen maraahil se
Teri maa guzri
Tu mere saath rahega munne***
You will stay with me son
You will stay with me son
So that you see
To raise you
What treacherous paths
I’ve had to tread
You will stay with me son
Composer Khayyam strings the melody with minimal fuss, using slow-tempo instruments in the background to focus on Lata Mangeshkar’s plaintive voice sung as an elegy at her own funeral. She begins the song haltingly, in sync with the distraught mother’s slow steps, and gradually, as the mother soldiers on through strife, her voice rises with formidable strength, echoing a war cry from her ashes. It has a heart-wrenching, cathartic effect.
The song is a powerful bridge that connects the mother-son bonding in film as in real life and death. Begum died in ’76. The song was released two years after her death in ’78. Two years after the awe-inspiring melody, Sahir too died in ’80, burdened with grief.
In one stanza, Sahir spells out how a mother’s feelings are trampled, daggers are driven into her heart, eyes and ears. It is this kind of mental torture that she has to persevere throughout her life. It must have weighed heavily on Sardar, at a time when it was unheard of a woman to walk away from her husband and raise a child. The indignities she had to face in the community and society.
Tu mere saath rahega munne
Taaqi tu dekh sake
Kitne paaon meri mamta ke
Kaleje pe pade
Kitne khanjar meri aankhon
Mere kaanon mein gade
Tu mere saath rahega munne
As the song surges, the words become a chilling reminder of mortality and justice in an unfair world. Lyricist Gulzar and Javed Akhtar have spoken about Sardar’s commanding presence in Sahir’s life. Gulzar said her voice boomed through the house. ‘Woh hamesha unhe daanti rehti thi.’ Sardar was always chiding Sahir in the house. Javed said, despite it, Sahir sought her approval in every thought, every word he spoke. The duo fed off each other because they had no other. Their mutual hatred for his father glued them together, which reflects in this stanza where she admonishes him to never forget her miseries.
Jab talak hoga tera saath nibhaaungi main
Phir chali jaaungi
Us paar ke sannaaton mein
Aur taaron se tujhe jhaankungi ee
Zakhm seene mein liye
Phool nigaahon mein liye
Mera har dard tujhe dil mein basaana hoga
Main teri maa hoon
Mera karz chukaana hoga
Meri barbaadi ke zaamin agar aabaad rahen
Main tujhe doodh na bakhshoongi
Tujhe yaad rahe
Main tujhe doodh na bakhshoongi
Tujhe yaad rahe
Tujhe yaad rahe
Tujhe yaad rahe
I didn’t know of the existence of this fierce lullaby till a few days ago, when my mother who was watching it on a music channel turned to me half-smiling, half-foggy inside her square specs, she said, “Yeh gaana maine tab suna tha jab tu mere pet mein tha.”
Awkwardly, she laughed and said, “Roxy theatre mein dekhne gayi thi.”
I was sitting across her. I couldn’t look her in the eye. My tears started welling up. She too had walked away from my father, he a notorious bigamist, and they too had fought an ugly battle for my custody.
And to think she was watching this song on the big screen back then when I was a foetus, caressing her belly with the gentle words of the stanza: Tera koi bhi nahin mere siwa/Mera koi bhi nahin tere siwa/Tu mere saath rahega munne, almost pierces an arrow through my unborn state of mind.
In one stanza, Sahir writes: Main tujhe reham ke saaye mein na palne doongi/Zindagaani ki kadi dhoop mein jalne doongi /Taaqi tap tap ke tu faulaad baney/ Maa ki aulaad baney/Maa ki aulaad baney /Tu mere saath rahega munne
Contrary to the iron gloves Sahir’s mother wore, my mother, impoverished greatly by her own unfavourable circumstances has always said: Bade naazo se paala hai tujhe maine/ Kisi baat ki kami nahi honay di hai.
Maybe that’s how I will write my mother’s swansong.
