Sahir Ludhianvi
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His continuing relevance
Nasreen Munni Kabir, March 8, 2022: The Times of India
March 8, 2021 marked the 100th birth anniversary of Sahir Ludhianvi, the extraordinary Urdu poet-lyricist, born in 1921. The diary, In the Year of Sahir, is my attempt to celebrate this amazingly gifted man.
A wealth of articles, two biographies in English and a formidable publication in Urdu ( Fann aur Shaksiyat) by the poet Sabir Dutt already exist on Sahir, not to forget the extensive blogs and websites dedicated to him, plus there are several editions of his poetry collections, which are continuously reprinted.
In Surinder Deol’s biography, A Literary Portrait, he informs us that Sahir’s Talkhiyan is the only other Urdu poetry book, besides Deewan-e-Ghalib, to have been published in many Hindi and Urdu editions. So, the question for me was to seek out a different way of presenting new insights into his work and personality that could be of historical value and fresh and engaging.
Following on from the cinema diary I produced in 2013, which celebrated 100 years of Indian cinema, the concept of another diary seemed both appropriate and appealing; the idea was to present observations and memories from an array of contributors, interspersed with unseen and wonderful photographs of Sahir from the collection of Meesam Raza, a dedicated admirer of the poet. With this in mind, I went about contacting more than 30 people — poets, singers, directors, producers, distributors, writers, academics, musicians, screenwriters, playwrights, actors, artists and theatre directors — all of whom generously gave of their time to share their experiences of working with Sahir or living with his songs and poems.
Gradually the diary took shape as one by one the contributors sent me their comments, each telling a unique story.
Asha Bhosle remembers the day she recorded the amazing Aage Bhi Jaane Na Tu… from Waqt: “As I sat rehearsing the song in Mumbai’s Famous Tardeo Recording Centre, I heard the familiar soft voice greeting me. I looked up to see a tall lanky figure dressed in his familiar white cotton shirt, dark trousers and open sandals. I complimented him on the lyrics of the song and mentioned that the meaning resembled the essence of the Bhagwad Gita. He acknowledged it with a smile and complimented me on my white sari, which had a bright border… During the recording of Woh Subah Kabhi toh Aayegi, he jokingly remarked to music director Khayyam that his career’s ‘subah’ had dawned with this song.”
Ramesh Sippy recalls a time when he was eight years old, sitting in the corner of a room, when Sahir came to the family house to discuss a song with his father, G P Sippy. “Sahir sahib proceeded to recite the song words: Ab vo karam kare ya sitam main nashe mein hun. Mujhko na koi hosh na ghum main nashe mein hoon. [Whether she’s kind or cruel, I am drunk. Unmindful of joy or sorrow, I am drunk]. My father liked the lyrics very much and wanted it for Marine Drive, but Sahir sahib refused point blank. He was offered double the money, but the answer was still a ‘no’. My father was a known teetotaler, so Sahir sahib explained: ‘How can I give this song to a man who doesn’t even drink alcohol!’ That evening my father poured himself his first drink. And the song was his.”
Then there is the gifted musician Zakir Hussain, who observed Sahir’s approach to the required metre (wording the melody) is similar to that of a sitar or sarod player. As Zakir Hussain explains: “It’s how a tabla player instantaneously organises and reorganises rhythm patterns to aesthetically express the feeling of the piece. The example that comes to mind are the lyrics of Abhi naa jao chod kar. His use of the word ‘ zara’ is amazing. He uses it at the beginning of the line and suddenly switches it to the end of the following line; this I find masterful.” Each comment and observation brings a new understanding of Sahir’s approach to songwriting — and then there is his formidable mastery of Urdu poetry. I think the proudest moment for me, when putting the diary together, was being able to track down and include K A Abbas’ long-forgotten translation of Parchhaiyan, a very fine work, first published in 1958 under the title Shadows Speak, a book that is now out of print.
The idea of tracing the journey of this masterful moving anti-war poem by Sahir and including a photograph of the book’s original cloth cover was most rewarding. This was possible thanks to Gulzar sahib, who has had a signed copy of the first edition in his library.
In essence, this diary is not a history of Sahir but a personal tribute to a poet whose work is so impressive and enduring in its vast range and appeal. The only complaint I have heard so far about In the Year of Sahir is from friends who say that although this is a diary, they do not want to write in it. My answer is that a diary is also about marking time, and as far as the writing is concerned, who can compete with Sahir’s words?
Gulzar’s tribute
By Gulzar, March 8, 2021: The Times of India
From: By Gulzar, March 8, 2021: The Times of India
Sahirsaab made his presence felt as much in films as in literature. Anyone who read or listened to Urdu poetry or mushairas in those days would know who Sahir Ludhianvi was. He was a tall, fair, handsome man with small pock marks on his face and a distinct style of speaking. Always very humble, never boastful — because poets sometimes can be very boastful about what they’ve read and what they write — but he was a modest man.
I remember that he was never allowed to leave the stage without reciting his famous poem on the Taj Mahal — ‘Meri mehboob kahi aur mila kar mujhse’ — it was very, very popular with the people. Progressive writers and poets would often argue that it wasn’t fair to look at the Taj Mahal from the lens of the rich against the poor. But Sahirsaab was a committed communist poet and part of the Progressive Writers’ Association (PWA) like Shailendra and (Ali) Sardar Jafri.
It was a movement that I became involved with later, also. I hadn’t joined films then. I used to work in a motor garage, and attend PWA meetings. But I was lucky to be living in the outhouse of the bungalow where Sahirsaab lived on the first floor. It was called the Coover Lodge at Seven Bungalows, Andheri. On the ground floor lived the famous Urdu writer Krishan Chander, who too, was a legend in his own time. And in the outhouses of that bungalow, three or four strugglers like Ratan Bhattacharya and myself, lived. The compound still exists, although a building has come up now.
When Sahirsaab joined films, he had his own style of using Urdu words that we had never heard of before. For example, the song ‘Yeh raat yeh chandni phir kahaan’ from the movie Jaal. The kind of imagery in phrases like ‘Aur thodi der mein thak ke laut jaayegi’ was very rare at the time. Or take ‘Chalo ek baar phir se ajnabi ban jayein hum dono’ from Gumrah. No other poet until then had expressed separation in a manner that continues to linger in you when you hear it today, just like it did when it was written back then. One could clearly see the individuality in his expressions.
But this modest and humble man also had his own ego and arrogance. He would ask for the same price as the music director of a film. It’s not that he wanted to work with only big names. He’d say, ‘if you can’t afford it then give me a smaller music director, I don’t mind’. That’s how music directors like N Dutta and Ravi went on to compose for him. Sahirsaab was very confident of his poetry.
He is ‘the’ person who called for a strike by writers asking them to not give songs to Vividh Bharti unless they mentioned the name of the writer on their shows. Otherwise, traditionally Vividh Bharti would announce only the names of the singer and composer of a song. Sahirsaab was the man to protest against this and the strike eventually came to an end after Vividh Bharti agreed.
Other than his writing, this was the hallmark of his contributions towards the prestige and identity of writers and poets in the film industry. It has relevance till this date and a cause that Javedsaab (Akhtar) still pursues in his battle for copyright, something that Sahir Ludhianvi did in his time. Javedsaab is someone who he loved very much because his father Jan Nisar Akhtar was a very close friend of Sahir Ludhianvi’s and Javed almost grew up in his house. He was also the first lyricist I ever saw, who had a car. He was like a nawab! In fact, he was the son of a nawab. The only other persons who lived with him in that house were his mother (Sardar Begum) and Ram Prakash Ashq, a very close friend of his who came with him from Pakistan. His mother was a strict lady. Always dressed in white Lucknowi embroidered salwar-kurta she would love him and rebuke him like a child... Bahut daat-ti thi, poore bungaley mein unki awaaz sunai deti thi!
(As told to Mohua Das)
Sudha Malhotra reminisces
Bella Jaisinghani, March 8, 2021: The Times of India
From: Bella Jaisinghani, March 8, 2021: The Times of India
Privileged to have sung his lyrics, says muse
Playback singer Sudha Malhotra was in her twenties when she became an unwitting muse for poet lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi. He recommended her name to film makers and composers, sparking a career that led to songs like ‘Yeh ishq ishq hai’, ‘Na main dhan chahoon’ and ‘Kashti ka khamosh safar hai’. Sudhaji’s personal favourite is ‘Tum mujhe bhool bhi jao’ which she also composed at his instance, reports Bella Jaisinghani.
She said, “All artists, poets, painters need someone to inspire them. If I became an inspiration for somebody, what could I do. I was so young. People can say anything. M F Husain was inspired by Madhuri Dixit. What can anybody do? Our worlds were entirely different.” “I feel I was very fortunate and privileged to have sung Sahir Sahab’s beautiful lyrics. All the songs that he wrote and I sang became such hits. I sang in films for a short time but got so many hits. Sahir Ludhianvi was undoubtedly the greatest poet in my life.”
“Do you know, it was Geeta Dutt and I who originally sang ‘Kabhi Kabhi mere dil mein’ for a Chetan Anand film in 1959-60. It got shelved and I don’t even have a recording. Khayyam Sahab’s tune was nearly the same as the one that was released later.
“The last song I sang by Sahir was ‘Tum mujhe bhool bhi jao toh yeh haq hai tumko’ (Didi). He in fact requested me to craft the tune for it as well, and I did. It helped prove that I was also capable of composition.”
“I often get asked why I gave up such a promising career at the peak. Well, I did. I was getting married at the time. I come from a family of senior government officials. Ab kya kar sakte hain. I say don’t look back.”
“As I said, God has been extremely kind to me that I got a chance to sing Sahir Ludhianvi Sahab’s songs. He was the best, best, best.”
Rajesh K Pallan’s research
March 9, 2024: The Indian Express
As soon as one enters the corridors of Government College, Ludhiana, one encounters the most celebrated alumnus of the college, Sahir Ludhianvi: A group picture featuring him adorns the wall, his not-so-creditable mark-sheets are preserved in old magazines, there’s a copy of his admission form, duly signed by him. One also finds there an auditorium and a botanical garden, Gulistaan-e-Sahir, dedicated to the poet who wrote not for art’s sake but for all of humanity, for life’s sake.
Of his three famous books — Talkhiaan, Parchhaayeean and Aao Ke Koyee Khwaab Bunne —the first is considered to be the one that best represents Sahir’s vicissitudes in life, in which he interweaves the themes of struggles waged in an oppressive society with the sighs and sorrows of unrequited lovers. Romanticism and revolution run cheek-by-jowl in his poetry. That Sahir was an iconoclast is evident from his poem, “Taj Mahal”:
“Ek shehanshah ne daulat kaa sahara le kar
Ham gareebon kee mohabbat kaa urhaayaa hai mazaak”
(An emperor has lampooned poor people’s love by exhibiting his wealth)
Sahir’s Marxist leanings surface multiple times and his poetry almost becomes a manifesto of the people. He displayed a rare sensitivity to the plight of the dispossessed and the downtrodden. Taking on the high and mighty, he attempted to raze their false pretensions to the ground, smashing their ego into smithereens and envisioning an ideal society where the “have-nots” would walk proudly with the “haves”.
His socialistic streak springs forth in the following lines:
“Zameen ne kyaa issee kaaran anaaj uglaa thaa
Ke Nassl-e-Aadamo-Hawaa bilak bilak ke marre?”
(Should the earth sprout grains only so that the human race dies in dire straits?)
As Sahir’s forte was sarcasm, he wrote sympathetically of prostitutes while castigating their rich clients and also pronounced that the East is not, in any way, better than or superior to the West:
“Yeh kuche, yeh neelaam ghar dilkashee ke,
Yeh loot te huye caravan zindagee ke,
Kahaan hein, kahan hein, muhaafiz khudee ke,
Sanaa-khwan-e-taqdeese mashrik kahaan hai?”
(These are the amorous streets and exhibitions where caravans of life are being robbed.
Where are the custodians of self-esteem? How can the east be termed as an embodiment of purity?)
In his poetry, Sahir shredded the pride and prejudices attached to caste, colour, race and religion rampant in our unequal society. These lines exhibit Sahir’s deep-seated scorn for the so-called custodians of religion:
“Quran na ho jisme who mandir nahee tera
Gita naa ho jisime, woh haram nahi tera.
Tu hindu banegaa, naa mussalmaan banegaa
Insaan kee aulaad hai, insaan banegaa”
(That temple is not yours if it does not embellish the Quran; that cannot be your sanctuary if it does not adorn the Gita; You will not become either a Hindu or a Muslim, You will become a human being as you are the offspring of human beings)
Again, in his unparalleled articulation, Sahir pronounces his avowed belief in universal brotherhood:
“Kaabe mein raho ya kaashi mein
Nisbat to ussi ki zaat se hai
Tum Ram kaho ya Rahim kaho, matlab to ussi ki baat se hai” (You might live in the holiest place of Islam or in the holiest place of Hinduism; it is all related to its Being: you might sing of Ram or Rahim, the crux lies only in their teachings”)
In the lyrics Sahir penned for films like Pyaasa, he laid bare the ills plaguing our society by challenging the establishment:
“Yeh daulat ke bhhokhe rivaajon kee dunia
Yeh dunia agar mil jaaye bhi to kiyaa hai?”
(This world is teeming with those who hunger for riches. Even if we acquire this world, it would mean nothing)
A single man throughout his chequered career, Sahir stepped into love with Amrita Pritam – the relationship that did not mature into fruition and made him pensive and morose. Amrita Pritam’s autobiography, Raseedi Ticket, translated by Khushwant Singh as “Revenue Stamp”, is an open confession of love to Sahir. She describes how she and Sahir would sit silently for hours together, without exchanging a single word and after his departure, she would smoke the cigarette butts he left behind in the ashtray. She also mentions her son’s innocent assertion that he looks like “Sahir uncle” and also that she should tell Sahir not to speak on the neighbour’s radio as that neighbour’s child is not on speaking terms with him.
After Sahir’s death, Amrita nurtured a fervent hope that the air mixed with the smoke from the cigarette butts would travel to the other world and meet him! So obsessed was she with Sahir that she once wrote:
“There was a grief I smoked
In silence, like a cigarette
Only a few poems fell
out of the ash I flicked from it.”
In his book, Haseen Chehre (Pretty Faces), Balwant Gargi, a noted Punjabi playwright, has narrated an anecdote about Sahir and Khayaam, the music director. Once Khayaam boasted of getting sixty thousand rupees for directing the music for a Nadiawala film and added that he would have given even one lakh had Khayaam demanded so.” Sahir cryptically remarked, “Khan Sahib, if you were bent upon begging, then you could beg for the throne also!”
Sahir’s much-discussed liaison with Sudha Malhotra not only points to his inadequacy in fructifying his relationships but also denotes his Oedipus complex, his mother-fixation.
In a prefatory note to his book, Sahir: A Literary Portrait, Surinder Deol calls Sahir “a mystery wrapped in an enigma”. Quoting Sahir’s friend from Lahore (Ahmed Rahi), Deol wrote that “Sahir only loved one woman, his mother, and had only one hate, his father”.
Even Khushwant Singh corroborates this view, “She (Sahir’s mother) was the only real love in his life. Because of his doting on her, he developed a distrust for other women (gynephobia) and fear of marrying (gamophobia)”.
Sahir was a very touchy person as Akshay Manwani expressed in his biography of Sahir, Sahir Ludhianvi: The People’s Poet: “He was not a vanilla character … He was a man of contradictions. If he was quick to insult, he would apologise as quickly”.
Khushwant Singh also observed that Sahir was prone to mood swings when the former met him for the first time at the party hosted by Rafiq Zakaria in honour of Firaq Gorakhpuri and attended by Akhrtarul Imam and Krishan Chander, the novelist. Sahir was beside himself with rage when a Gujarati businessman, Mota Chudasama, made an inane remark. “Sahir exploded in bad temper: ‘Who invited you here? If you know nothing, you should keep your mouth shut.’”
Sahir was a painter-poet. Replete as his poetry was with themes like despair, agony, human relationships, and existential crises, Sahir excelled in writing romantic songs, filling them with the fauna and flora of nature, drawing a parallel with the experiences of the love-lorn.
Sahir exuded a spirit of generosity in his lyrics and his innate humaneness was mirrored in them. One is carried away by the sweep of Sahir’s imagination and how he dovetailed the abstract and the concrete, the masculine and the feminine, in the following stanza:
“Maine khaabon mein barson tarashaa tha jisko
Tum wohee sangemarmar kee tasveer ho
Tum naa samjho ke tumharaa muqaddar hoon mein
Mein samjhataa hoon ke tum meri taqdeer ho”
(You are the same statue of marble whom I chiselled in my dreams for years together; You may not consider me as your fate but I reckon you to be my destiny)
The abstraction in the word “khaabon” (dreams) is concretised in the word “sangemarmar” (marble) whereas “muqaddar” (fate) and “taqdeer” (destiny) are emblematic of the masculine and the feminine wrought with a subtle spin of expression.
The following couplet by Sahir is reminiscent of Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream where the Bard refers to the “poet’s eye” giving to “airy nothing a local habitation and a name”:
“Le de ke apne paas faqat ikk nazar to hai
Kyon dekhein zindagi ko kisi kee nazar se hum”
(All said and done, I possess an insight alone; why should I visualise life from anybody else’s perspective?)
A recipient of the Padma Shri in 1971, Sahir was born as Abdul Hayee on March 8, 1921 in Ludhiana of undivided Punjab. His mother, Sardar Begum, was the eleventh of twelve wives and her husband’s wanton ways and illicit relations forced her to leave him. Sahir was separated from his father and lived with his single mother, who faced the trials and tribulations of life alone but with strength.
Sahir’s soul was lacerated by deep scars; his pent-up grief found a cathartic outlet in his writings as he enunciated in the opening verse of Talkhiaan:
“Duniya ne tajarbaat-o-havaadas ki shakal mein jo kuchh mujhe diya hai, woh lauta rahaa hoon mein.” (I am reciprocating only that what I have received from the world in the shape of experiences and disasters).
Pallan is a Canada-based writer
