#365DaysOfWriting – Day Forty-Four
I’m listening to some Panchamda classics on the radio.
RD Burman. A class apart, someone who I’ve been listening to from the age of 3. And he formed a potent combination with Kishoreda – their jugalbandi gave us some of Bollywood’s most loved classics.
But I’m not going to talk about him today. It’s about another man he formed a great partnership with. The inimitable Gulzar.
Gulzar. It’s an Urdu word meaning ‘garden’. His real name is Sampooran Singh Kalra, and he was born on the other side of the border in 1934. But these are facts you can even get from Wikipedia.
What you don’t know, is that Panchamda and Gulzarsaab used to have a lot of arguments when they worked together. Apparently, Panchamda remarked during Ijaazat that what Gulzarsaab wrote were mere words, and “How can I set this to music?!” But it was a challenge Panchamda passed with flying colours.
Ijaazat. A beautiful Urdu word for ‘permission’.
It happens to be one of my favourite Bollywood films – very progressive for its time, and still relevant today. It also features Rekha in her best performance of all-time (in my opinion) and the equally restrained, brilliant Naseeruddin Shah.
Quite unlike most Bollywood films at the time, it had only 4 songs. But what songs they were!
Everybody’s favourite is Mera Kuch Samaan. And for good reason. Read these lyrics –
Mera kuchh saman tumhare pas pada hai
O o o… savan ke kuchh bhige bhige din rakhe hain
Aur mere ik khat mai lipatee raat padee hai
Woh raat bhula do, mera woh saman lauta do…
It’s just the first stanza, and you are already drawn to Anuradha Patel’s longing. Here, the ‘saaman’ is her memories, which are with Naseeruddin Shah. All she wants are her memories back from him. And the story of a beautiful night between the two is tucked away safely in a letter. She wants Naseer to forget that night and give her memories back to her. It’s the story of a forbidden love, one that should never have happened. And yet, it did. Gulzar weaves this story beautifully through Anuradha Patel’s expressions and Panchamda’s peerless music. And oh, how can I forget the mellifluous voice of Asha Bhonsle? A heady cocktail of love, longing and life, this one. And the bartender is Gulzar.
I remember this song particularly because I wasn’t too old when I first saw this film. But I got obsessed with this song. And naive as I was back in the day, I imagined someone singing it for me… someone was waiting for me, perhaps, to return a few memories, and a letter…
The other songs – Katra Katra, Khali Haath Shaam Aayi and Choti Si Kahani Se – all are beautiful, but none of them match the haunting, ethereal quality of Mera Kuch Samaan. And the song owes most of these qualities to Gulzar’s carefully selected words – words that he picks from his own flowery gulzar (garden).
