Circa 1980, mainstream newspapers weren’t partial to Bollywood reportage. Neither was the legendary chief reporter, B. Seshagiri Rao, of the Mumbai edition of a newspaper. If he ever spoke about his rookie days’ coverage of the city’s film industry, it was only because in an interview the coy actress Nimmi had confided that she had never been kissed in her life. “Imagine, after that she was known as the No Kiss Girl.”
I recall this somewhat off tangent story, essentially because one drizzly morning in October, Rao had been phoned by Yash Chopra to tell him, “Sahir saab has passed away. Can you do something?” So off I went, to Juhu at a daunting distance those days to report on the end of a lyricist-poet. The house where he lived was dark and empty of mourners. I cannot be absolutely sure, but I did see Amrita Pritam, the grand amour of his life, there, inconsolable, looking around the room which kept darkening with the fading light. She was being placated by Yash Chopra. I returned to the desk to file a story duly edited to about three paragraphs and carried on Page 3. The Ludhiana born poet, at the age of 59, went half unsung.
Belatedly, ever since the new millennium set in, there has been an outbreak of biographies, the scholastic ones being the most valuable in the endeavour of chronicling the life and times of directors, musicians, technicians, dialogue writers and versemiths of popular culture. Lyricists invested a progressive spirit to the boy-meets-girl cinema of the 1950s, resulting in songs accentuating humaneness and social concern.
By comparison, the studies of actors perfect material for unfulfilled fantasies have largely been in the nature of geev whiz hagiographies and, worse, quickies which neither inform nor edify, besides being eye-sores in any film connoisseur’s book shelf. Gratifyingly, Akshay Manwani’s Sahir Ludhianvi: The People’s Poet is a keeper, handy reference book as well as a tribute to a lyricist who can be justly described as a poet as well a status most film songwriters have aspired to, even if their body of work has largely been cut-and-paste romanticism, going gaga over those curly zulfein or re revending moonlight drenched metaphors.
Some discordant notes are struck at the very outset in the Sahir biography though. Indeed, perhaps Manwani could have dispensed with the “introduction” ritual entirely. He describes at length the process of “elimination” which he subjected himself to before selecting his subject. Majrooh Sultanpuri and Kaifi Azmi were struck off since their families would do a better job. Hasrat Jaipuri, compared to some of his peers, didn’t possess the “same timbre”, it seems. Rajender Krishan, nope, just not possible.
Eventually, Shakeel Badayuni and Shailendra were off the author’s radar too, because, as he puts it, Sahir had the most interesting (spicy?) “personal life”. And Sahir’s lyrics were torn from his various vicissitudes, admitted in the lines, “Duniya ne tarjurbaat-o-havaadis kis shakl mein/Jo kuch diya hai, lauta raha hoon main” (Whatever the world by way of experience and accident/ Has given me, I return them to you).
Now which artist poet, author or painter doesn’t mine his own experiences? Surely, Manwani’s selection of Sahir wasn’t governed by that premise? Anyway, the elimination explanations excused, the book while vivifying the poet’s early failures at wooing women are recounted with admirable restraint and taste. In addition, the Sahir Ludhianvi Amrita Pritam relationship, which was in a way as intense as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s, is retold in some detail, but again without trivialising the love story. The chapter “Finding Love in the Shadow of Oedipus” is, in fact, the most poignant section in the 320-pager.
Why Oedipus you might ask? Simply because of Sahir’s troubled childhood under the tutelage of a father who sounds much too ogre like to be true actually, and then of a noble mother who raised him with the care of a protective tigress. The picaresque shift of the young Sahir from one town to another, before casting anchor in Mumbai, is also recapitulated vividly. And an attempt has been made to discuss the shayar’s non-film poetry (like Taj Mahal, which set off an uproar, since it lamented the exploitation of the labour force which built it), and his film songs, the most memorable one being the anthem “Yeh mahelon yeh takhton yeh taajon ki duniya… yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai?” from Pyaasa.
Its depth of despair would be lost even in the best of translations.
That there has been a timeless rivalry among the progressive writers is reported, what with Ali Sardar Jafri being critical of Sahir’s writings. This was in retaliation to a rash salvo Sahir had fired against Kaifi Azmi. Unlike them, Sahir felt no need to become a card-carrying communist, warranting perhaps the accusation of being a passive progressive. Come to think of it, the era of post-Independence India which sparked ideological ferment among the intellectuals, is an epic story by itself. To Manwani’s credit, he at least provides a glimmer of those days when friendships were forged and broken among poets and writers, over endless cups of chai in match-box-sized rooms.
Sahir Ludhianvi, the man who emerges from the book is a quintessential thinker of the 1950s and ’60s, not without a touch of arrogance. He would be fussy about his clothes, and conscious about his looks. Tall and imposing, yes, but not the kind of striking presence who’d win over hearts at first sight. Amrita Pritam, it is endearingly pointed out, fell in love with the tall shadow he cast when they were walking together.
Manwani collates the biography from texts already written on Sahir, mostly in Urdu, and interviews. He admits he’s no expert, especially when it comes to the poet’s “non-film songs”. Written with simplicity and clarity, the running text is naturally punctuated by poems and lyrics in the Roman Hindustani script with English translations. Their fonts are much too unreadable though, but that’s the way it’s done by most publishers. So why invent another reader-friendly style?
Such grouses apart, Manwani’s portrait of a people’s poet is worth your immediate consideration. In today’s dumbed-down era, film songwriters are featured on the front pages. Ironically, during their days of constant hope and glory, even their deaths were reduced to three paragraphs on Page 3.
