Khayyam
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A brief biography
Avijit Ghosh, August 20, 2019: The Times of India
From: Avijit Ghosh, August 20, 2019: The Times of India
1976 was no time for tender melody. The Emergency was on. Rajesh Khanna’s era of romance was gone. Fists had replaced dialogues in Bombay cinema. And songs were no longer what they used to be. Hardly the moment for a music director nearing 50 to make a comeback.
But Khayyam grabbed the opportunity that Yash Chopra’s ‘Kabhi Kabhie’ brought to his sluggish career.
The inter-generational love story required two different styles of compositions. Khayyam excelled in both. For the first, he produced two minimalist masterpieces of melody which enhanced Sahir’s reflective poetry. The title track, ‘Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayal aata hai’ became the topper in Binaca Geet Mala’s annual countdown show. ‘Main pal do pal ka shayar hoon’ became an anthem for any self-effacing versifier.
Khayyam’s music was figurative triumph of violins amidst violence
In times when action movies ruled the roost, Khayyam’s music was a figurative triumph of violins amidst violence. For the younger generation, he produced loopy tunes – Tere chehre se and Tera phoolon jaisa rang – sending a loud message to producers that the 1940’s composer could better the sound of the 1970s.
For the next 10 years, Khayyam was at the peak of his creative powers and in his commercial prime. Umrao Jaan, Noorie, Thodi Se Bewafaai and Bazaar became synonymous with melodies that drew you closer to the radio.
A perfectionist, he scored for only 54 released films in a career spanning over five decades. Some of his compositions were so delicate they did not fit into the mould of film music –Kahin ek masoom nazuk si ladki (Shankar Hussain), Aaje re dilbar aaja (Noorie), Tumhari palkon ke chilmanon mein (Nakhuda), Baharon mera jeevan bhi sawaaron (Aakhri Khat). At the same time, he could throw up surprises with simple, swinging tunes of adolescent enthusiasm (Gapuchi gapuchi gam gam (Trishul), Mausam mausam lovely mausam (Thodi Si Bewafai) and Aaj se college band hai (Khandan).
Under him, an assortment of singers thrived. Bhupinder sang his first solo for him in Aakhri Khat (Rut Jawan). His wife Jagjit Kaur sang in films like Shagoon and Bazaar. This year, Khayyam had donated Rs 5 lakh to the families of soldiers killed in the Pulwama blast.
Born Muhommad Zahoor Khayyam Hashmi in Rahon, a little town near Jalandhar, Khayyam wanted to be a singer-actor in films. To boost his chances, he learnt music from the masters, Pandit Amarnath and Husanlal-Bhagatram, and assisted composer GA Chisti. He also joined the Indian Army during World War II.
He made his debut as a music director with Heer Ranjha (1948). His first hit was Akele mein woh ghabrate to honge (Beewee, 1950). He assumed the name, Sharmaji, for these early films.
Khayyam found his musical métier with Footpath (1953). The film had one of the finest ghazals composed in Hindi cinema: Sham-e-gham ki kasam (singer: Talat Mehmood). The composer used a piano, a guitar and a solo vox, a basic form of synthesizer, and yet it sounded totally traditional. The song, Khayyam told this reporter once, was put together from several recordings.
He earned more critical acclaim with Ramesh Saigal’s Phir Subah Hogi. The film based on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment had some of the finest lyrics written by Sahir Ludhianvi: Woh subah kabhi to aayegi and Chino-Arab hamara. “After listening to the compositions, Asha Bhonsle told me, ‘Khayyam saab aapki to subah ho gayee’. Mukesh immediately told her, ‘You have said the right thing’," the music director once told this reporter.
Khayyam is gone. But his melodies of matchless tenderness will always be heard and remembered.
