♦ Literature and Society ♦


The topic in seemingly backwared, yet remains vital in the sense that it poses a question which cannot altogether be ignored i.e. as to what are the reasons of different types in literature belonging to different societies or social groups. For elaboration of my point, it is necessary to define literature, clearly state the limits of its action and to find out whether the relationship between literature and society is just casual or is deeply founded. Literature is something which cannot be defined comprehensively since it deals with the intellectual experiences of a particular human group subject to certain environmental conditioning. It can however be defined as an abstract, yet vital and living representation of social life of a certain society or group. While dealing with themes of such controversial nature as this, one cannot afford to be too much objective, yet the statement of facts and letting the facts speak for themselves can save it from being a more expression of the writers whims and imposition of his beliefs on his readers. While writing an article on the theme under discussion in this short essay, the writer is faced with the difficulty of removing those misconceptions which are founded on the popular "interpretation" of the term literature. Literature to me is not only representative of a particular society in terms of its perception of the problems of human existence, but is expression of the entire view of life a society takes under certain conditions of human living. The topic as I have mentioned before is an old one and writers in all times and all ages have been writing either emphasising or concealing the social element in literature and thus being unjust to either individuals claim of its being a personal concern or the due of society in the form of social conditioning.

To take a broad view of literature, one cannot ignore the vital significance of non written material besides the written one such as religious sermons, noted political and social doctrines and prevailing dogmas in a certain age, whereas society is a group of individuals having a common outlook and agreed on certain fundamentals of human living, specially so in the realm of collective security and group of solidarity. Society and literature both are human creation with the only difference that one is institutional and having a planned origin, while the other is spontanious in growth, unplanned and springs out of inspiration and intuition, though occasionally by Reason also.

The intellectual quest of man can be classified in three different categories i.e. truth, beauty, justice. The quest for truth is the realm of science, the love of beauty falls in the sphere of Arts and search for justice is the area of Religion : —

The three elements are instinctual, inherent in the very nature of man and deeply imbedded in human personality. Literature evindently falls in the second category i.e., Art the ultimate motive of existence of of whom is aesthetic satisfaction. It is not to be forgotten that if one hand literature has been the form of expression of those delicate and fine human feelings which cannot be expressed otherwise, it has been a tool in the hands of intelligentia for the propagation of certain socially accepted and recognised doctrines and precepts. It should be kept in mind that social psychological conditioning on literature does not necessarily mean its accordance with the existing value structure, as sometimes it is a reaction against it.

For having a few glimpses of the relationship between literature and society, let us start from the age, when man for the first time took up literature seriously i.e. the dawn of culture and civilization in Greece. We know that the Greeks were patriarchial and patrilineal people having a great reverence for authority and their social set up  was the one where males were holding predominent position and women were regarded as inferior and despicable. The social attitude is depicted very clearly in "Empides's" Hippolytus when Phaedre could not help saying "I learnt to know as well as that I was but a woman, a thing the world detests." In the same play Hippolytus says Great Zeus, "Why didst thou to man's sorrows, put woman's evil counterfelt. If thou were minded that the human race should multiply, it was not from woman they should have drawn their stock." It is clear from this how great a curse a woman is; the very father who nutured her, to rid him of the mischief, gives her dowry to pack her off. In an another play Thesous says, "Tiis said no doubt, that frailty finds no place in man, but is innate in the woman." This literary attitude was in accordance with the religious views. Greek Mythology, being an early form of Religion, was based on perception of certain non manipulable powers by man, who tried to solve their mysteries through symbolising and identifying his intellectual experiences in the light of his physical ones.

The myth of Pandora's creation for avenging mankind through her box which was full of miseries for mankind and the responsibility of human suffering on women in this myth is amazingly in accordance with the literary view quoted above. It is interesting to note that this attitude towards women did not vanish even in Mediaevalages. We find a striking resemblance between the story of Adam's extermination from Heaven for Eating the forbidden fruit on eve's temptation, and the responsibility of human suffering on Pandora for her opening the lid of forbidden box. This attitude towards women reflected itself not only in daily living when women was held in contempt, but influenced the literature of of the age.

The witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth are female who along with another woman "Lady Macbeth" drive Macbeth to his tragic end. In Hamlet also, the dramatist could not help Hamlet's soliloquy, when he said "frailty thy name is woman." The severity of this attitude went to such an extent that Mediaeval Christian Saints repudiated marriage and asserted on the importance of calibacy in Religion. The spirit of age is clearly depicted in the writing of Dryden and Swift as would be clear to the reader of "Absalon and Acthophal" and "Gulliver's Travel."

Among the reactionaries, it would not be out of place to point out that Wordsworth whose poetry took refuge in nature against the rising tyranies of industrials. Walt Whitman who rebelled against the sophistication and Thorian who went to the extent of condemning the very concept of social living. Among those writers, who accepted social change as an evil necessity and turned to past, T.S. Eliot stands most prominent. He is voice of antiquity in modern age who has the conciousness of being alone.


As Goethe said, "The decline of literature indicates the decline of the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency."

In the end I feel justified in asserting that literature and society influence each other and complete detachment from one's surroundings not is only difficult, but impossible for a writer.

♦ Teach Your Mind To Think ♦

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◄ You struggle with a problem, but cannot solve it. Then someone else finds the solution, and — behold — it's "obvious." What did you do wrong? How could you do better? Here are some practical suggestions ►

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For more than 100 years, psychologists have been studying the thinking process in solving problems. They have watched rats release themselves from puzzle boxes; observed chimpanzees use a stick to reach bananas outside a cage; seen how children mix color-less fluids to find the combination that produces a yellow liquid.

As experimental psychologists, they surveyed this mountain of data to learn whether such laboratory studies, in far from natural settings, have any relevance for solving the problems that coup up in everyday activities. It seems to them now that there may be a common thread. The stumbling block that appears again and again in both laboratory and "real life" is failure to make use of information at hand.

A homely old illustration of this concerns a truck that become wedged in an underpass. Onlookers suggested various ways of extricating it, but all involved major alteration — either of the truck or the underpass. Then a little boy came up with a simple solution: let some air out of the tires! Many such examples of problem-solving exist in the world of science and invention. All make the same point: a solution, once stated, becomes "obvious."

How can a person have all the necessary information and not be able to use it? The answer seems to lie in the fact that the brain, like the computer, is divided into a shortage unit and a processing unit. Although the storage unit can hold a vast amount of information, the capacity of the processing unit is limited. The average person is able to retain and repeat back only about seven un-related digits. This suggests that the processing unit can handle no more than about seven independent items of information at a time. Because any problem of consequence probably involves more elements than that, elements, or combinations can easily be overlooked.

Furthermore, the individual may start his search for a solution by looking at the wrong elements. As he does so, he places them in a tentative organization — and this may block him from a better approach. Think of the truck. Your attention is directed to its top, for that is where the problem is. And, if your thoughts are thuis channeled, that is where you look for the solution.

We do not know in advance what may be the right direction to look. But the problem-solver is more likely to hit upon itif he tries various approaches.

Here are six working preceots to aid in sloving problems. Three are preventive, to help you keep from getting your attention fixed on an incorrect line of reasoning; three are remedial, to help you if you find yourself stuck.

• Precept 1. Run over the elements of the problem rapidly several times, until a pattern emerges which encompasses them all.

The above helps you get the "total picture" before you become lost in details. Descartes, the 17th century French philosopher, in his Rules for the direction of the mind, put it this way: "Knowing the relationship of A to B, then B to C, and C to D, does not help me see the relationship between A and D — unless i recall all the others. To remedy this, I run over them from time to time, keeping the imagination moving continuously, until I can pass from the first to the last so quickly that I seem to have the whole in intuition before me at one time."

As the German physicist Hermann L. F. von Helmholtz said more than 200 years later: "It is necessary, first of all, to turn my problem over over on all sides, so that I have all its angles and complexitiesin my head, and can run through them freely without writing them down."

• Precept 2. Suspend judgment.

The above rule keeps you from getting trapped into clinging to the first interpretation that comes to mind. Consider an experiment carried out by psychologists Jerome S. Bruner and Marcy C. Potter: If an individual wrongly identifies the object while it is far out of focus, frequently he cannot identify it correctly even when it is brought sufficiently into focus for another person to recognize it easily. This seems to say: more evidence is required to overcome an incorrect hypothesis than to establish a correct one. He who jumps to conclusions is less sensitive to new information.

• Precept 3. Rearrange the elements of your problem.

Frequently the solution to a difficult problem appears after a slight physical rearrangement. In Wolfgang Kohler's famous experiments with chimpanzees, a banana was hung outside one chimp's cage, just beyond his reach. A stick was available to the chimp, but it was behind him, where he could not see it when he looked at the banana. Later, when the chip was idly playing with the stick, it and the banana accidentally became part of the same field of vision. The chimp instantly made the connection and, using the stick as a tool to extend his reach, obtained the tempting fruit.

• Precept 4. If you are getting nowhere, try a new approach.

The "direction" a person takes in seeking a solution, depends on what he sees the problem to be. In one experiment, Dr. Maier gives his subject the task of tying together the ends of two strings of different length suspended from the ceiling. The strings are so located that the subject cannot reach one while holding the other. One reaction is to see the problem as shortness of reach; the subject's "direction," then, is to look for a stick to lengthen his reach. Others see the problem as a shortness of string and strive to make one of the strings longer. Neither solution works.

Some subjects finally see the problem in terms of getting one string to come to them. They tie an object to the end of the long string and make it swing like a pendulum. As it swings toward them, they catch it and tie it to the short string.

Maier learned from this test that good reasoners do not persist in one direction if they find themselves getting nowhere. Rather, they jump from one direction to another so they find a solution.

• Precept 5. Take a break!

Does it do any good? The answer is a qualified "yes." It seems to depend on the timing of its application. If you are really stuck — that is, if you have explored all the possibilities of your present approach thoroughly and can think of no other approach — this would seem to be a good time to take a break. But itf you have not given an approach sufficient thought, the break may not help.

• Precept 6. Discuss your problem with others.

In talking over the problem with someone else, you are forced to consider the aspects that you might otherwise skip over. The presence of a listener provides a powerful feedback mechanism which quickly exposes obscure or inconsistent points in your reasoning.

In general, these prospects can be reduced to two: Look before you leap. Then, if you find yourself bogged down, try another approach. Remember, you can not force a solution to come to mind. So, keep your mind open for new combinations and do not waste time on repeated unsuccessful attempts. As Dr. Maier says, "Reasoning, at least in part, is the overcoming of habit."

Article by Gulzar after the demise of R D Burman


Two persons were involved with almost each and every moments of laughing-weeping,joy-sensitiveness,love-sorrow and shame-pride of my life.I walked miles of my way depending only on their  broad shoulders in various ups and downs in the Bollywood.I couldn’t think of making films without these two.Yet how easily they left me.Haribhai I mean Sanjeev kumar has already deceited .During a few past years,I was managing that shock slowly and at that time only,Pancham passed away leaving me simply alone.

Telling only that Pancham was my very intimate friend will not be sufficient to describe the real relationship between us.From the time of 50’s,when none of us started our carrier meaningfully,Pancham was my companion in happiness and sorrow.At that time he was working in some films as music assistant of SD saheb.He used to break and create so many dreamwaves…tunes and musics of different streams…different films…thinking in a newer way…our hour-after-hour time used to be spent  in discussing these.Within that time I fully recognized the creative mind of Pancham.I also used to get the heat of the blazing fire of the confidence,urge and insistence to create something in a very self-style and self-thinking coming out breaking the tradition.Very often I used to think that if I,Sanjeev and Pancham had scope to work jointly,we would make everyone astounded.Still now when I look back, I recall those days only.By the side of much condensed agony inside heart,some prides also stand raising head…and this pride is all for my dearest friends.On going to make films perhaps I committed so many mistakes…many carelessness, inattentiveness and foolishness did give impression on my works.But Pancham and Sanjeev  were unparallel.Totally flawless…their works were like machines…nobody can find out error out of them.We  used to add life to life more closely through  more works,more thoughts and more new creations .Perhaps Pancham liked a new song suddenly…a new Gujrati  folk tune…or a glimpse of a Jazz…immediately he phoned me,”Come on just now…braught a new thing..not getting peace without making you listen.” Pancham used to do like this like a child.

Almost everyday we shared conversation on telephone. Receiving his phone call was so much like a habit that after not getting his call for one or two days my heart used to become restless. Whenever I used to think about to take informations about Pancham,my telephone used to ring and on receiving, that knowned voice from the other side, ”What happened to you? There’s no trace about you…in my side, my chillie-trees had so much chillies…I have to send those to  you…why are you not communicating”…he used to talk spontaneously like this..I was basically the listener…in the midst I used to remark somehow…dispute used to start and the hobnob used to become captivated..now on staring to that telephone like a dead person, a throatful weeping as if are getting up with a heavy load of many reminiscences..
In these days, the talks I had to share about Pancham, I didn’t have told so much about him in the last 30-35 years  also…So,  inspite of Pancham not being there, there is a scope of sharing his stories, reminiscences and the agony of missing him with all of you…but the waves of these stories also will be settled down in a time. There will not be a scope of interchanging sorrows. Then only me and so many reminiscences of Pancham surrounding me. I’m startling to think about those days only. That surely will be a great void. With which I’ll fill up that void? My last words with him was also in that telephone only. On 31st Dec midnight, there was a party on the occasion of the publishing of my Poetry Collection’s English translation. I told Rahul, ”Come on, we’ll enjoy very much’. Now-a-days his health condition was not going well. Still he uproared, ”Well, I’ll surely come…it can’t happen that your book is being published and I’m not attending”. But, he didn’t come! I’ll write more poems, perhaps I’ll make more films also, but I’ll not have that my great sensible friend again to tell me ‘Very well done’ by hugging me with a tremendous passion….no,never….

(Kaushik Bandyopadhyay)
                  

R.D. Burman : Trendsetter


He was a jet-set trend-setter.

Naushad Ali, in his prime, was referred to as 'The Maestro with the Midas Touch'. I would likewise refer to Rahul Dev Burman as 'The Maestro with the Mod Touch'.

"RD Was by far the stand-out talent among the younger line of composers, at all times innovative like me, at all times experimenting like me,'' says Salil Chowdhury. "In fact, I would go step further and rank him alongside all the top composers of my generation, such was his range and variety.''

Salil is never one given to sentiment, not even when he is speaking of a composing prodigy who is no more. Salil, in fact, has no great opinion of Naushad. But he does rate RD highly. Salil's point is that Naushad was, at all times, predictable, RD was not.

To each his own view. But RD's early passing should teach us vintagers a permanent lesson: Never to be dismissive of young talent. The Naushad-S.D. Burman generation consistently ran down R.D. Burman. Today, when so many of RD's tunes live on in the mind and heart after his death, the generation is constrained to revise its view.

That is why I would not hesitate to pass instant value judgment on either Nadeem-Shravan or Anand-Milind. Copy they may, but was there any composer in his time who was accused of being more imitative than R.D. Burman? The point is, within the ambit of being imitative, you can be creative. You can bring your own stamp even to a tune whose base is borrowed. This RD consistently did. Much of his early work was considered inspired by foreign composers. Yet he stayed on to become an inspirational influence to the younger array of composers. So fresh-sounding was RD that you just could not believe he was on the scene for 33 years. RD, in his lifetime, could not even dream of the possibility of his death meriting an editorial in The Times of India. Even his illustrious father was not accorded this editorial distinction when SD discovered, on October 31, 1975, that somebody up there liked him even more than we mere mortals on earth did.

Dada Burman composed some of his best tunes for Bimal Roy's Devdas: Talat's Mitwa mitwa yeh kaise anbhuj aag re and Kis ko khabar thi kis ko yakeen tha, Lata's Ab aage teri marzi, O jaane wale ruk jaa koti dam, Jise tu kabul kar le, Geeta-Manna's Aan milo aan milo Shyam saanwre, Saajan ki ho gayi gori and, not the least, Mubarak Begam's Who no aayege palat ke and Rafi's Manzil ke chah main. When word spread that R.D. Burman was scoring the music for Gulzar's 'Devdas', the idea of his compositionally measuring up to his father was treated with withering contempt. But, today, can we be sure tht RD would not have done as good a job as SD on 'Devdas'? After all, RD had his roots in Ali Akbar.

Just think, would the Gulzar-RD teaming not rank as being as creative as any musical collaboration we have known in our films? Who but the Gulzar-R.D. Burman du could have got Lata-Kishore to articulate, as tellingly in 'Aandhi' as these two singers did, Tere bina zindagi se koyi shikwa to nahin, Is mod se jaate hain and Tum aa gaye ho noor aa gaya hai? Who but this team could have got Bhupinder to blend so sensitively with Lata in Beeti no beetayi raina ("Parichay"), Meethe bol bole bole paayaliya ("Kinara") and Naam gum jaayega chera yeh badal jayaega ("Kinara").

Lata's articulation of Meri awaaz hi pehchan hai gar yaad rahe has become the Gulzar-RD puchline by which her velvety vocals are treated by us now and forever. Much like Asha Bhonsle, in her profound grief, being left all to herself today in a Bharat Vyas-. Bulsara vein of jag ke liye, aaj rone do mujhe pal ek apne bhi liye.

The Gulzar-RD combine, on Hema Malini in 'Khushboo', offered us a spot comparison of the best that could be drawn out of Asha and Lata alike on the same heroine: Bechare dil kya kare sawwan jale bhadon jale, on the one hand, do naina mein ansoo bhare hain nindiya kaise samaye, on the other.

I have studiedly touched on the softer side of RD, which was best represented in his case by Gulzar, to bring home Pancham's true intrinsic worth as a composer. As the pace-setter, RD was the trend-setter in the 70s. If the 90s found him confused and uncertain about what to give, it was because RD made the cardinal mistake of going public, in the film glossies, about the fact that 23 of his films had flopped in a row.

You do not do this in films, where a 24th film could prove a superhit and wipe out the memory of all earlier failure. As it turned out, that 24th film was 'Sunny', the film in which RD showed his class afresh the way he got Asha and Suresh Wadkar to vocalise the tandem: Aur kya ahd-e-wafa hote hain. But the resurrection came too late. RD had irretrievably damaged his cause with that '23 flops' acknowledgment. Look at Naushad, to this day he carries on as though nothing has happened.

But RD, he was incredibly naive for one who had hit the high spots. For one who had been a wave-maker, RD just did not know how to blow his own trumpet, he needed Bhupinder to do that for him! RD strangely had no comprehension of his own talent, no sense of achievement. Even his father did not settle for the 'Chalti ka Naam Gaadi' attitude that RD did. This, when RD was no less adept at scoring in every idiom, ranging from Kishore-Manna-Mehmood's ek chatur naar kar ke singar ('Padosan') to Asha's Mere kuchh saaman tumhare paas pada hai ('Ijaazat').

Asha aptly pinpointed RD's contrasting class when she named Mera kuch saaman tumhare paas pada hai ('Ijaazat') and O mere sona re sona re sona re ('Teesri Manzil') among her ten best of all time. Likewise, Kishore Kumar had accorded RD a rare honour when be picked not one but wo of his tunes among his all-time ten best: Chingari koti bhade (from 'Amar prem') and Mere naina saawan bhadon (from 'Mehbooba'). No doubt, Kishore Kumar was to RD what Mohammed Rafi was to OP. Yet there was no cause for RD to have sat paralysed for as long as he did when Kishore passed away. It was a body-blow, of course. But never in this industry must you give the impression that it is a death-blow. RD did exactly that on the passing away of Kishore.

With reason, you might say. After all, who but Kishore could have rendered for RD with such meaning and feeling, O mere di ke chain ('Mere Jeevan Sathi'), Kehna hai kehna hai khena hai aaj tume yeh pehli baat ('Padosan'), O maanjhi re ('Khushboo'), Musafir hoon yaaron ('Parichay'), Yeh jo mohabbat hai ('Kati Patang'), Raat kali ek khwab main aayee ('Buddha Mil Gaya'), Diye jalte hain ('Namak Haram'), Zingadi ke safar mein ('Aap Ki Kasam'), Meri bhigi bhigi si ('Anamika') and Kuchh to log kahenge ('Amar Prem') to mention just a fistful of tunes that lend teeth to the argument that RD it was who, even more than SD, switched the aural-oral allegiance of a whole new generation from Rafi to Kishore.


RD had proved with 'Bhalika Badhu', in 1976 itself, that he had only to wok on son Amit Kumar to draw out of him the Kishore Kumar effect: Bade ache lagte hai, yeh dharti yeh nadiya hey raina aur tum. It would have needed very hard work on RD's part, no doubt, to get Amit going in Kishore's footsteps in the quicksands of filmdom. But he should have readied himself for this slog after having already scored with the same Amit Kumar in 'Love Story'. Yet Pancham just sat back, arguing Kishore was Kishore. This was true. But only upto a point in films, where a music director has to be something of a quick-change artist. I am not arguing against Kishore Kumar, only for Amit Kumar. RD's music had got so cast in the Kishore mould that, immediately, Pancham needed a prototype. And what better prototype than the son?

Of course, RD was unlucky that Kishore's passing was followed by the first signs of a sway, in the industry, away from Asha Bhonsle. None of the new singers were a patch on Asha. But a younger set of music directors wanted younger singers. The Bhappi Lahiri challenge had built up to a point where RD should more urgently have explored variety in the voices he employed, without really moving away from Asha Bhonsle. But here, too, RD was slow to react.

Once again I am not arguing against Asha Bhonsle, only for R.D. Burman and the spirit of youth he had represented when he made his big breakthrough with the same Asha through 'Jawani Diwani', 'Yadon Ki Baarat' and 'Khel Khel Main'. Asha, as the Mera naam hai shabnam - Piya tu ab too aa ja - Chura liya haim tume ne jo dil do - Sapna mera toot gaya girl had S**-symbolised the ethos of RD's music in the 70s. But the 80s was a new decade that called for new adjustments.

RD, at one point, had overtaken the formidable team of Laxmikant-Pyarelal. But he let himself be beaten back by vastly inferior talents in the 80s, while Laxmikant-Pyarelal fought back like tigers. In retrospect, it can therefore be said that RD faltered at the crucial moment, LD didn't. And this is an industry in which you are only as successful as your last film. A record of 23 flops took some living down. RD buckled under the pressure.

All this cannot alter the fact that RD set a trend with Asha as he did with Kishore. No other composer would have dared to jettison Rafi the way RD did -- even Dada Burman was hesitant in making a switch here. But RD showed the way and others followed suit, courtesy Rajesh Khanna. Amitabh Bachchan, to beat Rajesh Khanna at his own game, had to take on his voice. Kishore thus became established as the Voice of Youth and it was RD who had set the course for this. RD's hold on electronics, his insights into Western notation, gave him a rare edge. But, minus Kishore, RD found his keen edge blunted. There was a generation change due in our film music. RD failed to see this change coming in 1987 as he had one in 1971. The cross commercialism of the neo-film industry also undid him. When Bhappi Lahiri started quoting less at one point, RD should have stuck to his price. He caved in. And paid the price.

But the price never did matter much to RD. This way, he was like Dada Burman, who was happy working only in his set-ups. RD always was a bit of a loner, comfortable only in his own selection company. He was unsuited to the totally groupy style in which the industry began to function in the 80s. As Gulzar too began to lose commercial clout, there was less and less opportunity for RD to make a different kind of music, which he loved to do. He needed Gulzar badly to balance his hula-hula stuff. The 'Ghar' style of Gulzar option, by which RD could come up with something like Aaj kal paaon zamin par nahin padte mere (Lata) and Aap ke aankhon mein kuch mehke huye se raas hai (Lata-Kishore), was no longer available to RD in the late 80s.

RD's mod image as a youth composer also became a bar to his inevitable growth as a composer. When 'Shanarabharanam' was to be remade in Hindi, the point about who should compose for the film was referred to me. I suggested the name of R.D. Burman and then rang to ask Pancham whether he was game. "I would love to do the theme, be sure I'll surprise them with the purity of my classical score,'' RD said.

Yet his image was all wrong for the theme. There was no chance, I was told, of the distributors accepting the label, 'Music R.D. Burman', in a weighty remake of the scale of 'Shankarabharanam'. The remake finally went to Laxmikant-Pyarelal as 'Sur Sangam'. The K. Vishwanath film flopped in the face of a thematic enough score by LP. What kind of a score would RD have created? The same kind as he would have evoked for Gulzar's 'Devdas' vis-a-v9s S.D. Burman. But the RD image just did not classically jell.

It was this image that RD unsuccessfully fought in the later part of his career. As convener of the Sur-Singar Samsad Film Awards committee, i remember RD's Lata classic from 'Chandan Ka Palna', O Ganga maiya paar laga de, coming up for live consideration. But it was finally rejected, not on its own merit, but on the grounds that Sur-Singar's name would be in the mud if it presented a classical award to R.D. Burman.

In the end, therefore, RD discovered that he was acceptable neither as a light composer nor as a serious one. Result: he got confussed about what to give. And once this confusion enters a composer's mind, it is the end.

Yet the end, when it came, saw those who had come to scoff, remain to praise. RD had become part of our vintage mind-set without our being aware of it. We knew, in our heart of hearts, that he was as much a trend-setter as his father, if in a different style. But we had religiously refused to acknowledge his fibre and calibre. Those who the gods love, die young. And when they die after having influenced a whole generation in its musical thinking, we finally grudgingly accept that the jet-setter was like one other in films.

For a composer of the depth and dimension of Salil Chowdhury to rate R.D. Burman alongside the top composers of his era is, indeed, acclaim indeed. It needed uncommon talent for the son to emerge from 'The Jet' shadow of his father. Pancham came into Dada Burman's music room as early as 'Nujawan' (1951). And even at that early age had a keen enough musical ear to question SD's use of Rabindra-sangeet in the purely Goan setting of Kaise yeh jaagi agan ('Jaal').

Handpicked by Guru Dutt to score the music for his 'Raaz' at the age of 19, RD discovered that this cineaste was never firm on any tune he okayed. ''I don't know about other composers,'' Pancham told me, ''but I personally found Guru Dutt could never make up his mind about the final tune he wanted. You could never say he had finally okayed a piece of music and that, to my way of thinking, is not the sign of a direction who knows his mind. Raj Kapoor, by contrast, was totally different. He okayed the very first tune I played for 'Dharam Karam', the tune that acquired on him the grab of Ek din bik jaayega maati ke mol''.

Hear this 'Dharam Karam' tune carefully again, is it in any way inferior to any of the many straight-line tune Shanker composed for Raj Kapoor? Give credit to RD for the fact that he instinctively recognised what, precisely, Raj Kapoor wanted. And got it right the first time out. RD thus tuned as easily with Raj Kapoor as he had with Dev Anand. He vibed easily enough with Rafi when that singer was at the top. And then helped turn Kishore into a singing legend. If O.P. Nayyar peerlessly exploited the bass in Asha's voice, it was RD who discovered her true range to strum.

RD's spaciously ambient music room at Santa Cruz in Bombay, to who does it go? to Asha Bhonsle as his legally wedded wife? If so, what does Asha do with it? I know Asha Bhonsle has always secretly nursed this ambition of being a composer herself. Will Asha take up where RD left off? The spirit of RD, will it come back to us through the still resonant vocals of Asha Bhonsle? and what of younger singers under the baton of Asha Bhonsle? A baton what would have been handed on to Asha by her very own Pancham?

Come on Asha, there still is the Santa Cruz room at the top.

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Raju Bharatan

“If only, if only…”

Having just read “Why Do We Intoxictae Ourselves”, an essay by Manto, that I had not read before, I am convinced that, as an essayist, he had Hazlittean qualities, that is to say, that he never allows you to forget the dark and antithetical relationship between the power of the imagination and the power of experience. Had he lived longer he might have said goodbye to writing short stories and taken to the essay.

Manto begins by positing the existence of the notion that people drink (or smoke intoxicant stuff) because they want to forget their woes. He then goes on to explore the compulsions which induce people to want to line up their actions with their conscience. As someone who could not do without his tipple, at any hour of the day, the essay is written with clinical perception and remarkable lucidity.

Saadat Hassan Manto (frequently referred to as Minto) was not the only genius who drank himself to death. Dylan Thomas and Meerajee are two formidable poets who come to mind immediately. Interestingly enough, both Manto and Meerjaee died in their forties. (Dylan Thomas died just before he turned forty). Researchers may yet discover that self-destruction reaches its culmination when you cross the age of forty.

The world has been full of painters and sculptors, musicians and actors, poets and playwright who, like Manto, suffered from deprivation —and humiliations — but did not take to drink. Drink to Manto was like a shield he wore to protect himself from his inner broodings. In the last year of his life he was aware that he had lost his self-esteem. He began to borrow money unashamedly; he would accept a pittance for a story without a murmur and the pittance went out to buy cheap liquor. The degradation to which he had sunk made him loathe himself and he began to drink with a vengeance. He had been warned, repeatedly, that cirrhosis was eating him up and that if he didn’t stop drinking he wouldn’t last long. During his sober moments he wrote:

“I am feeling so depressed. I wish I could do something. But what is that something? I keep pondering over it. I feel like writing so many things but there is no time for it. I don’t know what to do about it…”

But he did know. He made frequent promises to give up drinking and, on one occasion, he did. Manto’s sister informed an Indian researcher that he got his small room in Laxmi Mansions tidied up and sat down to write after arranging all the paraphernalia on his table. “Many days passed happily in this manner. We would sit down, unobtrusively, in his room taking turns one by one. One day he said that the routine was leading him nowhere. He thought it would do him good to enter the mental hospital where nobody would come to meet him. After deliberating over it for a few days he entered the hospital. It was his own decision”.

The place Manto went to, the Pagal Khana(House for lunatics), was anything but a hospital. It was more like a prison occupied by derelicts and hardened criminals whose influential relatives had had them certified as insane, a few schizophrenics and some decrepit outcasts. Manto spent nearly a month in this loony bin. Urdu literature will, forever, be indebted to him for it was in the Pagal Khana          that the seeds of his superb work, Toba Tek Singh’, germinated. Toba Tek Singh is a story that is perfect in its balance and its structure. The sequence of events is breathtakingly dramatic. The end is so moving that it makes you reel. It is a most scathing indictment of the senselessness that prevailed on both sides of the border in the wake of partition.

Manto’s other stories on partition that he wrote in Lahore have a frenzied flavour. His literary output in Lahore did not have the ‘soul’ of his earlier ‘memorable’ stories, which were all written in Bombay.

He arrived in Lahore in 1948 and, soon after, began to miss Bombay. He wanted to go back and wrote to Ismat Chughtai about it but nothing came of it. He ran out of money he had brought with him. The lucrative job he had been promised with Gidwani Pictures never materialised. He was down and out. In a letter he wrote to Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi:

“Since long I have felt in the words of Turgenev that I am the redundant fifth wheel of a carriage. I wish I could be of some use to someone.”

In Bombay his film earnings were two to three thousands rupees a month (a substantial amount in the forties) and he picked up a tidy sum by selling his stories. In Lahore he couldn’t even make one tenth of that amount. He should have been able to make some kind of a living out of the newly established broadcasting service (he had worked for All India Radio in Delhi as a scriptwriter and had made a mark as a versatile radio playwright). But the doors of Radio Pakistan were barred to him. Rumour had it that in Bombay he had a row with Zulfikar Ali Bokhari who was now the Head of Radio Pakistan. Manto was advised by several well-wishers to make his peace with ZAB, but he was headstrong about it.

He wrote some film scenarios but the movies turned out to be flops. In any case the movie producers in Lahore were a different breed from their counterparts in Bombay. They felt more comfortable with hacks who danced attendance on them and didn’t mind cringing for their money. Manto was too big a name for them.

It was not just financial movies that drove Manto to despair. The ‘Progressive writers’ denounced him as a renegade and a reactionary. The reactionaries denounced him as a licentious leftist. And the guardians of the newly founded state’s morals condemned him as a purveyor of filth. No wonder his health suffered.

Ill health had dogged Manto throughout his life. He contacted tuberculosis when he was barely 21. Apart from a congenital defect in his abdomen he suffered from pulmonary and respiratory diseases; he had chest pains that made him feel dizzy; he had to have his teeth extracted when he was 30. In a letter to Qasmi, at the time, he wrote:

“I want to write a lot, but my listlessness, my constant tiredness keeps me under its grip and will not let me work. If only I could get a little peace of mind I would collect my thoughts which keep flying like moths in the wind… I will die one day uttering, ‘if only’, ‘if only’….”

 Zia Mohyeddin

One degree above normal (Zia Mohyeddin)

I admire Manto for his genius for winkling out the hypocrisy that lies at the root of human behaviour. I admire him for writing prose which is bold in character and adult in texture; and I admire him for bringing to life characters who roam that unknowable garden from which, by being born, they were exiled. Unlike many of his contemporary fictionists, who strained thoughts through muslin without getting the lumps out, Manto’s narrative in his short stories is thoroughly distilled and shorn of convolutions.

* * * * *

My acquaintance with Saadat Hasan Manto was brief. I only met him once in 1949 at his apartment in Laxmi Mansions in Lahore in the company of two budding painters, Anwar Jalal Shamza and Moeen Najmi. They wanted Manto to inaugurate their forthcoming exhibition.

Manto was in his cups. In those days, he was hardly ever out of them. He thought all ‘inaugurations’ were a fraud. It was a word he used frequently. His talk was acerbic laced with juicy Punjabi expletives. He ranted about Krishan Chander. “That MA, that son of a …thinks he is a story writer. You don’t become a story writer by passing an MA examination. He is a fraud. He doesn’t know… nobody knows…only one man knows how to write a story — and his name is Manto.”

He was leaner than I had imagined. His eyes shone through his thick-rimmed glasses which he kept adjusting with the forefinger of his left hand. He never bestowed a glance at me but when he looked at the two painters his eyes narrowed as if he was trying to remember where he had seen them last. I remember that he was wearing a crisply-starched, spotless white kurta-pyjama which fitted his slim figure perfectly. I was surprised that it did not seem crumpled even when he stood up from the floor.

* * * * *

When I got a job in the News Department of Radio Pakistan in 1950, I moved to Karachi. I was lucky enough to be placed in the charge of Hamid Jalal, their best news editor at the time. Hamid Jalal, or Lala, as I called him, was one of the most affable and enlightened souls I have ever come across. He was very well-versed in modern English literature and he introduced me to contemporary American writers like James Gould Cozzens and John O’Hara. In those days he was in the process of translating Manto’s short-stories into English. His book, ‘Black Milk’, would be published later.

Lala was Manto’s nephew. He talked of Manto with great affection. It was from him I learned that Saadat Hasan Manto was the youngest son of his father’s second wife. They were eleven brothers and sisters. His father was a stern man and Manto spent his earlier years in constant dread of his father. He was a wayward adolescent, but he was tidy in his personal habits. It was ironical that though he was an avid reader, he failed in his matriculation examination twice. It was only with great difficulty that he got a pass on the third attempt, in the third division.

* * * * *

The humiliation rankled Manto throughout his life (His diatribe on Krishan Chander’s MA degree can be understood, if not condoned). The various ailments that Manto encountered since the age of 21 might have contributed towards the acerbity which he wore as a cloak during the last three years of his life in Lahore. His sardonic sense of humour led him to observe that a perfectly healthy man who ran a temperature of 98.6 degrees had nothing to his credit but the cold slate of his life. Manto’s body temperature was always one degree above normal.

* * * * *

Manto had to suffer the humiliation of being dragged into the lower courts on charges of spreading obscenity. There were five trials in all. One case, in particular, concerning his short-story titled ‘Thanda Gosht’ was tried three times. It went from the lower courts all the way to the high court. The lower court held Manto responsible for obscene writing and awarded him three months rigorous imprisonment as well as a fine of Rs 300, declaring that if the fine was not paid he would undergo twenty one days’ additional rigorous imprisonment.

Manto appealed. The case was moved to the sessions court where, ironically, the judge, generally considered to be a narrow-minded prig, dismissed the case with a priceless comment: “If I punish Saadat Hasan Manto he will say that he has been penalised by an orthodox, bearded man.” He acquitted Manto with a smile and remitted the earlier fine imposed on him, in full.

The authorities were not pleased and they filed an appeal in the High Court against the judgment of the sessions court. The case came up before Justice Munir who had the reputation of being a fearless and an unbiased judge.

Manto and his lawyers must have heaved a sigh of relief. The relief was short-lived. The learned judge pronounced that the ‘leanings’ of the writer had to be taken into account and not his ‘intentions’. A story could not escape from being obscene if the details of the story were obscene. A story was not like a book, which could be good in some parts and bad in some parts. He declared ‘Thanda Gosht’ to be obscene, upheld the government’s appeal, and re-imposed the fine.

Justice Munir sounds like a myopic literary critic of a provincial weekly. Ignoring his remark that a book can be good in parts and bad in some parts — a bland statement if ever there was one — I am curious as to what he meant by ‘details’ of a story. Did he mean the incidents that occur in the story or the language that some characters used, or the bits of narrative between dialogue? If a story is to be judged by its ‘details’ then nearly every story written by Salinger and Updike is obscene. And how did the learned jurisprudent perceive the difference between Manto’s ‘leanings’ and his ‘intentions’?

The irony is that Justice Munir’s judgement was hailed as a landmark on the subject of obscenity. A lesser mortal would have wilted and broken down. That Manto ignored the denunciation of the court and the sneers of the “respectable” people and continued to write in his impertinent vein is a tribute to his indomitable courage.

Manto’s status as an excellent short-story writer is beyond dispute, but Manto is a fine essayist as well. The irreverent manner in which he creates the persona of iconic figures (Agha Hashr, Bari Aligue, Meerajee, Charagh Hasan Hasrat, Ismat Chugtai) is a most valuable contribution to our literature. The fact is, he was a maverick. In his earlier work, his intention might have been to shock the reader but as his style gained maturity his stories instilled a sense of wonderment in the mind of the reader.

* * * * *

For a brief period, Manto worked for All Indian Radio as a ‘staff artiste’. (Someone should write a whole book about the many highly talented writers, actors and musicians who worked as ‘staff artistes’ for All India Radio and Radio Pakistan). Manto’s, job was to vet scripts, but he soon turned into a radio playwright of repute.

The poet Noon Meem Rashed, who was a Programme Executive in AIR at the time, told me that Manto had become so adept at the craft that he could write a play about a lecherous mistress bought for a song as easily as he could write a play about a lecherous song bought for a mistress — and in one sitting. He once sat down at his desk and announced to his colleagues that they only had to mention a subject or a theme and he would write a play on it there and then. They were discussing the matter when a man appeared at the door. “May I come in? he enquired. “Well, here is a title,” said a colleague, “Why not write about it?” Manto inserted a paper in his typewriter and began to click the keys. He finished the play by late afternoon. The play ‘May I come in?’ was broadcast more than once. It is a great pity that our own Broadcasting Service never made any use of Manto’s expertise in the genre of radio drama.

* * * * *

Manto is not going to fade away from our memory. The man who laid bare the festering sores of society will, I am sure, continue to be the subject of many studies. Some bright spark might even consider to examine how badly his art suffered as a result of his migration to Lahore.

Other than Amritsar, a town he speaks of with warmth in all his reminiscences, Bombay was the only city he felt comfortable in. He knew the byways of Bombay intimately and had a large circle of friends and admirers there. He had achieved his fame as towering writer of fiction while he was in Bombay and he was more than well-off in Bombay.

Manto didn’t have any roots in Lahore. In his early youth, he had lived there for two years as a young literary aspirant. In the post-partition Lahore, he felt rejected and abandoned and he must have found it a most dispiriting chore to go begging editors and publishers of flyblown magazines to buy his stories.

In his ‘profile’ of Anwar Kamal Pasha, he recounts that the hotshot producer-director once invited him to his studio and asked him for his help in solving a knotty problem with the script he was filming. Manto immediately saw the problem and not only pointed it out but suggested a new development which could tighten the story and make it more gripping. Pasha was awe-struck. He liked what Manto had suggested but was doubtful as to whether he should accept a solution offered on the spur of moment. Manto could read his mind clearly: “You would have been thrilled,” he said, “if I had taken the script home and brought it back after a week to tell you that having mulled over it for days my suggestions are as follows. No, my friend, I think quickly.”

As he was about to leave, he said flippantly, “And do you know how much my advice would have been worth?” Shamefaced, Pasha offered him a cheque for a measly five hundred rupees. “I should have torn the cheque into bits and thrown it in his face,” he writes, “but my needs…oh my needs. I accepted it and wept bitter tears realising how low I have sunk.”

No wonder he died soon afterwards.

The writer is actor, columnist and president NAPA.

The gismo called ‘Remote’

Except for snooker or the odd cricket match featuring Sri Lanka, I do not watch much television these days. The BBC, having been banned from our screens, I no longer have the luxury of listening to news read in an intelligent and unself-conscious manner. Whatever viewing I do is during the search for the channel showing a match between Ronnie O’Sullivan and Stephen Hendry.

The cable operators have begun to play childish tricks with me. Until three months ago, ESPN used to be channel number 72 on my television screen. It then became channel 11 and then channel 81. Last week it was shifted to channel 22 but this channel now only shows snowy balls and flickering asteroids.

Television in the subcontinent is a victim of its own clichés. The various Indian channels which keep dishing out endless fare of the so-called ‘family entertainment’ have come to an amicable agreement with each other: their soaps and serials may have different titles  but the same simpering, bejewelled, over made up, bovine ladies appear in each one of them. Also they make sure that the ten-year old girls in their sit-coms are played by pigtailed, revoltingly precocious children that you ache to push out of a high window.

We, in our part of the world, have aped most of their soaps. A well- established writer of serials for television told me not so long ago that the producers (and financiers) of a high profile channel gave him a copy of an episode  of the long running Indian soap, Kabhi Sas Bhee Bahu thee and told him to fashion his creative effort exactly along the lines of the given script.

For the viewing public the main attraction of a talk show, which has almost disappeared from our screens, is the slow eradication of the aura of a famous personality. The public is ever greedy to become privy to the private lives of the rich and famous. Our celebrities do not like the viewing public to become privy to their private thoughts. This is the main reason why they spout so many clichés “Maan ke paon tale Jannat hai” (paradise lies beneath the feet of one’s mother) etc etc. I realised this when I hosted my show forty years ago. I let them ride their hobby horses. The high moral tone that they adopted soon betrayed their timorous vulnerability.

A famous actress — shan’t  name her — whom I had invited to my show asserted that she strongly disapproved of dressing immodestly, that she never went anywhere  without being chaperoned by her mother and that she only wanted to work in ‘good films’. (Her concept of a ‘bad’ film was the one which flopped at the box office) but “kabhi kabhi dunyadari bhee karni parti hai”. (Sometimes one has to be worldly-wise). I hesitated to ask if she had ever wanted to ask for a script before accepting a role. In those days actors never ever read the script before the start of a movie simply because there never was a script as we understand it. So I just let her ramble on about her piety. “There are heroines” she said primly, “who sign a film on a single phone call from directors. I never do.” How many phone calls did she receive before she agreed to sign a film? I ventured to ask. Innocently, she answered, “Oh jee hamaray to rate fix ho jatay hain”. This produced a big laugh. The poor girl was blissfully unaware of the fact that she had revealed the seamy background from which she had emerged.

When I look back at the inner working and the ritual of my ‘talk show’, I remember that it was the only format in which my favourite as well as my embarrassing moments occurred within the span of the single programme. The ‘talk-show’ is a form in which an unknown personality sparring with a celebrity (or the host) can gain enough notoriety to become a highly sought-after guest or even the host himself. The trend-setter, Quentin Crisp, was right when he said, “No matter how ignominious a person’s public image is, as soon as he gets on television he becomes a virgin in the eyes of the viewer”.

The gismo known as the remote control is a lethal weapon. Once you hold it in your hand you are goaded by unknown forces to press your thumb on the button marked ‘channel’. With so many channels to choose from and nearly all of them interrupted every few minutes with endless insipid advertisements (some of them repeated as many as six or seven times within the same break) it becomes obvious that the real purpose of ‘entertainment’ programmes is to allow advertisers to have the maximum amount of time. I don’t know about others but I — thanks to the surfeit of commercials — only end up by seeing what else is on, rather than the programme I set out to see.

What bewilders me — if and when I want to see something on the box — is that the same programmes are shown over and over again at the same time each night. Whichever ‘family orientated’ drama serial I chance upon, the same hapless girl seems to be torn between filial loyalty and the dictates of her heart.

If you happen to watch TV during the day you will find your screens hogged by some of the has-been politicians who offer a panacea for all our ills. In the name of Current Affairs, most of our television networks hold slinging-matches between high profile politicians of the main political parties. There is one rule they have to follow strictly: they must all speak at the same time in such a manner that the viewer should not be able to understand a single word. All of this happens in between advertisements for various mobile telephone companies.

We assert, at every opportunity, that, we have a free media, which is commendable. I wish we also had the wherewithal to match our assertion.  The host’s chair in the morning chat shows — a mid-morning phone-in programme about unruly adolescents, an afternoon health programme, or a late afternoon discussion about  discrimination against women — is occupied by model girls, ingénues, school teachers, and unsuccessful movie starlets, possessing no other assets but the patronage of channel owners and influential producers. There are exceptions, of course, but, in the hands of these ‘anchors’ as they are called nowadays, serious issues are dwindled because of the ineptitude of the presenters who are so taken in by the notion of their own popularity that they refuse to do their homework and rely, instead, on the theme of survival that binds them to their patrons.

Zia Mohyeddin

Gulzar remembering RD

We knew each other from the moment we were hopefuls. We were assistants--he to his father and me to Bimal Roy. When SD would come with his compositions, his son would come carrying a "dagga". He'd be wearing shorts the way kids wear Bermudas today.

My first lyric for Sachinda was Mora gora ang lai le. Pancham would be there. Shailendra did the other lyrics for BANDINI. And Pancham would encourage me--go meet baba, go and talk to him. He'd invite me to their apartment in the one-storey building, 'Jet', on Linking Road. Today there's a tall building over that one-storey structure. I don't know who stays there now, Sachinda was there till his end.

Pancham was three-four years younger than me. He was always a kid, he remained one. He was fond of pranks, of colorful clothes and especially of the color red. He had a nickname for me--'safed kavva'. He'd phone, if I wasn't at home he'd leave a message, "Tell 'safed kavva' that 'lal kavva' had called."
His sense of humor was his very own. He knew Asha Bhonsle was very particular about keeping the house clean; so he sent her a gift--two big brooms in bright wrapping paper.

One of his passions, besides music, was cooking. He grew chillies in his terrace garden--as many as 40 varieties, cross-breeding them to get new exotic tastes. Ashaji now wonders, "Who'll look after his plants? He's gone."
If a friend was going abroad, he'd ask him to get back some soup packets. Like he asked Rahi Sabarwal of Air India to bring him some soup packets which you can only find in Hong Kong. Pancham even sent him a telegram, "Don't forget my soup." The telegram was signed Soup Lover.
As young men in our 20s, we shared many common interests--interests in home-cooked food and in sports. He was a soccer fanatic, he was a true Mohan Baganian, he'd get into heated arguments with (director) Gogi Anand over soccer. Yet Gogi remained Pancham's friend till the end.

Pancham married Jyoti. It was a love marriage, but I think it didn't work out because they were two very different people. He was immersed into films and music; he'd spend long hours away from home in the recording studio of Film Centre. He was so obsessed with his work that he had little time for any other love in his life.

Pancham was a terrific mouth-organ player; he played the organ in his father's orchestra. And he was an outstanding sarod player too; he had trained under Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.

Pancham would have his differences with his father. But he was Sachinda's only child, he was the pampered one. And he could get pretty possessive about his father. They hailed from a royal family; for them it was a matter of pride that they had carved out their own little kingdoms with their music.
There'd be good-natured bantering between them. "Baba," Pancham would pout, "you don't give me enough pocket money." And Sachinda would laugh back, "Oi Pancham, when are you going to contribute to the kitchen expenses?" Whenever the son would try to shuffle out quietly from the music room, Sachinda would say, "Jao jao, I know you want to smoke a cigarette."
Pancham would frequently compose his tunes in the course of car drives. He'd hum, we'd reach Film Centre and he'd say, "OK, you go home now, I've got the tune in my head. I'll try it out with the musicians." If he was especially excited about a tune, he'd scream with joy. He never kept his happiness within himself, he shared the moments of ecstasy with others.
Pancham would keep the actor's face in mind while working on a composition. He'd tell me that, at times, he thought of my face while conjuring a tune--which I thought was a great compliment.

We first worked together on PARICHAY. It was important for me to sit with him on the music sessions. He inspired certain moments which I picturised later, his music was that visual...I went to Rajkamal studio where he was recording a background score for another film. I gave him the mukhDa--Musafir hun yaaro/Na ghar he na thikaana--and I left. That night he woke me up at 1 a.m. and said, "Come, come down with me to the car." He'd recorded the tune on a cassette already. He started driving through the empty streets of Bandra, he played the beat on the dashboard. It was my first song as a director with him.
By the time he composed Saare ke saare, he had shifted from home--he was in the process of acquiring a new flat--to Caesar's Palace Hotel. The most beautiful song in the film--Beeti na bitaai raina--was also composed in the hotel room. It was based on a classical 'bandish'; it fetched Lata and Bhupendra National Awards for best playback singers.

In all, we did eight films together, as a composer-director team. Besides PARICHAY, there were: KHUSHBOO, KINARA, AANDHI, KITAAB, NAMKEEN, LIBAAS and IJAAZAT. How did Tere bina zindagi se koi shikwa to nahin(AANDHI) come about? He was recording Bengali songs for Durga puja around that time. The lyrics were by the renowned Gauri Prasanna Majumdar. I liked the tune that Pancham was composing; I filled it up with Hindi words and said, "Look, I'm going to use this for AANDHI."
As for Is moD pe jaate haiN, kuCH sust qadam raste, I gave him the words from one of my poems. He composed the tune instantly. He never took time. Spontaneity was his specialty. If he struggled over a song, he would prefer to abandon it. For instance, Ek hi khwab kai baar yuhi dekha hai maine(KINARA) exasperated him. He found that metre a bit difficult, but two months later I put it before him again. He caught the scanning, and the song was finally recorded.
When I gave him Mera kuCH saamaaan tumhare paas paDa hai(IJAAZAT), he waved the lyric aside and said, "Huh, tomorrow you'll bring me the front page of *The Times of India* and expect me to compose a tune around it. What is this blank verse you're giving me!" Ashaji was sitting there, she started humming the phrase, Mujhe lauta do. He grasped it immediately; from that one phrase he developed the song, which was quite a feat! This time Ashaji and I got National Awards. Poor fellow, he did all the work and we enjoyed the 'kheer'.

Ashaji's and his was a superb creative companionship. He used the potential in her voice to maximum effect. No other composer ever placed Ashaji's voice above his music the way he did. We recorded the non-film ),Father, Son album DIL PADOSI HAI, and the variations from semi-classical and ghazal to pop and jazz, were a valuable experience for each one of us. There was a three-way harmony of voice, music and lyrics.

After his heart ailment, Pancham did feel that producers were sidelining him. He did feel hurt. He would laugh, with a touch of bitterness, at the new music composers who copy his tunes and make a mess of them. They would even imitate his singing style which was unmistakably his. Mehbooba mehbooba (SHOLAY) and Dhanno ki aankhon meiN (KITAAB) were his creations,
but others tried to clone his style, only to sound like amateurs.

My last meeting with Pancham was on December 30 [1993]. He went to Sahara recording studio in Goregaon. Ashaji was recording a song for G.V. Iyer's VIVEKANANDA. Salil Chowdhry had composed the music. Pancham and I had gone along with Ashaji. At the end of the evening, he said in his customary manner, "Milte hain."

We never did.