The Identical Songs of Ijaazat and Libaas

Is Asha’s ‘Mera Kuch Samaan’ better than Lata’s ‘Sili Hawa Choo Gayi’?

Asha begins singing Mera Kuch Samaan with a rounded ‘a a a a’ alaap. Midway through Sili Hawa Choo Gayi, Lata catches the throaty alaap and responds with a feathery ‘o o a a’ as if the two sisters are communicating a mnemonic melody code that glues their sisterhood.

It is incontestable. They are incomparable. The two slow wave tunes segue to reach for a common shore. The sisters sing inseparably from each other’s grief of estrangement.

The four songs sung by Lata in Libaas (1988) sound like a rejoinder to the four songs sung by Asha in Ijaazat (1987).

Sample this: In Mera Kuch Samaan, the words are

Geela mann shayad bistar ke paas pada ho
Woh bhijwa do, mera woh samaan lauta do
***
My liquid thoughts are lying beside the bed
Send them back, return those possessions of mine

And in Sili Hawa Choo Gayi they are

Jitne bhi tay karte gaye badhte gaye ye faasle
Milo se din chhod aaye saalo se raat leke chale
***
No matter how much I measure the distance grows wider
I have left day by miles and with night I have walked eons

The two songs are having a conversation, a medley, an antakshari. They meet at a crossroad, where intangible possessions are bartered for tangible memories.

The ‘geela mann’ rosebud in Mera Kuch Samaan blooms into a ‘geela sa chand khil gaya’ in Sili Hawa Choo Gayi. The once-in-a-full-bloom ‘chand’ of Sili Hawa Choo Gayi sashays by a hundred and sixteen times, ‘Ek sau solah chand ki raatein,’ in Mera Kuch Samaan.

Studded with mixed metaphors, these songs of separation and longing are united in the abstract expressions of love. Rarely does a lyricist evoke such emotive feelings of interiority using synaesthesia.

Lyricist Gulzar’s poetry sounds as ephemeral as it is everlasting. Combined with composer RD Burman’s simple and yet intricate music harking on familiar background sounds of the five elements of nature; the faint breath of life itself pulses in the atmosphere, giving these tunes a longer shelf life than the commercial sounds he produced on demand for hit tracks. These tunes are not rushed. Just check how the two tracks end in whispers. Asha slows down hushing ‘Main bhi kahin so jaungi…’ Lata trails off into a mist singing ‘la la la la’, doing a mysterious disappearing act. These tunes linger thereafter, like a shadowy figure in one’s dreaming head.

In the mid-Eighties, Burman stopped churning because Bappi Lahiri was overdoing it. Burman entered possibly his philosophical stage in music — just to be precise: spiritually divine, not devotional. It had to have purpose and meaning. It was time to stop ratcheting hit tunes using the ‘same old-same old’ popular words and phrases circling dil, jaan, pyaar and jigar.

Another aspect to consider is Gulzar slowing his pace. Burman found himself grappling with Gulzar’s unmusical poems that sometimes read like a newspaper’s headline, he once quipped. Burman’s music found new expression, unfollowing rules and inventing new ways to accommodate words that were often not set in rhythmic metre because Gulzar wrote in blank verse that sounded like mundane prose.

Gulzar is a first-rate poet and in his own modest opinion not as good a lyricist as his longest-lasting contemporary, the very prolific Anand Bakshi.

Gulzar is right.

How many of Gulzar’s lyrics can you sing beginning to end without encountering and stumbling over an unfamiliar Urdu word or a complex metaphor that takes time to swallow? ‘Main chand nigal gayi daiyya re ang pe aise chaale pade!’ I swallowed the moon, my body writhes with blisters! It is in metre but it is saying the unthinkable, perhaps even traditionally, the unwholesome. ‘Jab hum jawaan honge, jaane kahan honge.’ That fits, syllable for syllable. Simple, sweet, instantly relatable. Bakshi writes this for Burman.

Lyrics dilute poetry, aiding music to reach en masse. Though that is not always the case, as Gulzar’s poetry stands distinctly apart for this very reason, trying to blend the two successfully and for which a melodist like Burman, trained in the classical raags and modern jazz-pop instruments, fuses magic.

Lata’s trailing ‘la la la la’ reappears in Khamosh Sa Afsana, where the themes of love, legacy and mortality seep into Asha’s Khaali Haath Shaam. The Mangeshkar sisters speak to each other through smoke and mirrors.

Khamosh sa afsaana paani se likha hota
Na tum ne kaha hota na hum ne suna hota
***
Had this lore been written in water’s invisible ink
What you had not said what I would have not heard

************

Khaali haath shaam aayi hai khaali haath jayegi
Aaj bhi na aaya koi khaali laut jaayegi
***
Empty-handed evening has come, it will go back empty
No one has come today too, the evening will return empty

The former is about composing a fable in invisible ink and the latter arrives empty handed to document the missing. One could alternately pair Mera Kuch Samaan/Khamosh Sa Afsana by mixing their antaras and likewise for Khaali Haath/Sili Hawa. The tunes are so soluble into one another that separating them is then like trying to split water with a knife.

Asha’s immeasurable ‘Katra Katra Milti Hai Katra Katra Jeene Do’ could only be collected in the ample shade of Lata’s ‘Phir Kisi Shaakh Ne Phenki Chaaon Phir Kisi Shaakh Ne Haath Hilaya.’

Interestingly, a line ‘Pathjhad ki woh shaakh abhi tak kaanp rahi hai, woh shaakh gira do, mera woh samaan lauta do’ in Mera Kuch Samaan, an urgent message is encoded for Lata’s deciduous, hand waving tree branch Phir Kisi Shaakh Ne.

Asha’s Choti Si Kahani Se cuts the upbeat but standard tabla-baaja sounds of Lata’s Kya Bura Hai Kya Bhala short by appearing to be slightly less shrill with its use of the piano-accordion, strings and madal. Bura meets its choti si pair of scissors. Asha softens the end with the ‘la la la’ of La-ta.

The two films were made around the same time but only Ijaazat got a formal release. Libaas was never released. The producer could not agree with the lyricist-director Gulzar on the open-ended climax of the adultery drama Libaas, which was one of the reasons why Gulzar made the other adultery drama Ijaazat. He did not have to obtain permission from an interfering producer to interpret the story the way he wanted.

Asha and Lata were given identical songs, the tunes of which were also similar. Lata had won a National Award as Best Female Playback Singer for Beete Na Bitai Raina (Parichay), lyrics by Gulzar, music by Burman. He had to prove Asha as equally deserving. She got it for Mera Kuch Samaan. That must have been such a triumph for Burman and Gulzar.

The Asha-Lata feud, if at all, is professional. What makes it even wilder to imagine is that it feels almost as if RD Burman and Gulzar are conspiratorially chiselling a wedge between the two singing sisters to extract their best. The ruse works fantastically in these two soundtracks that compliment the two sisters like no other collaboration in film music. Ijaazat vs Libaas is their most beautiful and ultimate musical album face/off.

Lata mandir ki aawaz hai
Asha maikhane ki
Dono mein utni hi parastish hai
Jitni ki dono mein pyaas
Lata woh sunehra savera hai
Jiski chandni raat hai Asha

Or as Gulzar may say Lata gud ki chaasni hai. Namak ki bori hai Asha.