Sounds of silence

Success, it is said and believed, is a lonely road. Failure lonelier. Underachievement is probably the loneliest of all.

Hindi film songs have been highly imaginative in plumbing the potential of loneliness. Filmmakers and lyricists have been sold to songs of lonesomeness. For Kidar Sharma, it was the musing Kabhi tanhaiyon mein ( Hamari Yaad Aayegi , 1961) for a lost past. Rajinder Krishan’s Phir wohi shaam, wohi gham, wohi tanhai hai ( Jahan Ara , 1964) forever married the evening with loneliness. Majrooh fused tanha into a suspense romance in Kitni akeli kitni tanha si lagi in Talash (1969). Sahir’s Kiska rasta dekhey... barson hain tanhai ( Joshila , 1973) was nothing short of a suicide note of a depressed man. ‘Tanhai’ was also an opportunity for a naughty getaway, as Hasrat Jaipuri showed beautifully in Ye tanhai hai re hai jaane phir aaye na aaye, thaam lo baahen in Tere Ghar ke Saamne (1963). Gulzar’s philosophy of the loner came forth with the lines Apni tanhai ka auron se na shikwa karna in Kinara (1977) in the antara of Jaane kya sochkar nahi guzra .

At the turn of the ’80s, infidelity discarded its garb of decency as a wife watched her husband walking into a party arm-in-arm with his mistress. Can someone answer Kaifi Azmi’s question Koi ye kaise bataye ke who tanha kyon hain ( Arth , 1982)? Into the mid-’90s, skimpy Urmila Matondkar was anything but tanha as the country swooned to her Tanha tanha yahan pe jeena, set to Mehboob’s (not to be confused with Mehboob Khan, the filmmaker) lyrics in Rangeela (1995).

Javed Akhtar went Tanhayee along the Tasman coast in Dil Chahta Hai (2001) showing that IT or no IT, nobody is above loneliness. Much as ‘tanhai’ is part of the storyline, does it reflect the person writing them? Or the person composing the tune? Anyone who has read or heard of composer Jaidev Varma — better known as just Jaidev — would go with the latter.

Jaidev’s life story reads much like the script of a black-and-white film that tells of a melancholic protagonist, either pining for his love or battling terminal illness or poverty. In a field where success is measured by commerce, and only commerce, Jaidev’s creativity found few takers. His life was not one of penury. But one that lacked appreciation from the very people he worked with yes.

In an interview with Ameen Sayani, the grand old man of radio, Jaidev explained that he didn’t marry in order to have a proper work-life balance. What he carefully avoided was that he was probably unsure of his capability to sustain a family with the transient nature of success he achieved in his career. 'When he died in 1987, at the age og 68, his body was brought straight to the crematorium from the hospital. Like a destitute’s.

Jaidev’s path to the music industry was chequered. He debuted in films as a child actor, an attempt which did not add value to his career. His training in music was continuous though, culminating in a stint under sarod maestro Ali Akbar Khan. Jaidev assisted Khan in Navketan’s third film, Aandhiyaan (1952). He played the sarod and the surmandal (harp), especially for background scores. When director Chetan Anand left Navketan to go solo with Joru Ka Bhai (1955), Jaidev was his choice for composer. However, Chetan’s films, in spite of brilliant music, especially in the inordinately delayed Kinare Kinare (1963), fared miserably. It is not known whether Jaidev’s decision to assist SD Burman went against him, as Hum Dono (1961), the only project he did independently for Navketan, remained his last film with the Anands — both Chetan and Dev. This despite the undying popularity of the songs from the Dev Anand-Nanda-Sadhna starrer — Abhi na jao chhod kar, ke dil abhi bhara nahin is just one example. His partnership with Sunil Dutt and Ajanta Arts, which started off on a positive note with Mujhe Jeene Do (1963), failed to survive the winds of change as Reshma aur Shera (1971) flopped.

Luck, as always, had a decisive and rather cruel part to play in Jaidev’s story. Ved Rahi’s Pyaasi Aurat , renamed Prem Parvat (1973), which had one of the most well-known songs of the ’70s ( Yeh dil aur unki nigahon ke saaye ) sank without a trace. So did Aalingan (1974), which had the radio favourite Pyaas thi phir bhi takaza na kiya , a film where he was forced to take on Pyarelal as an assistant. Even small-time producers and directors stayed away from Jaidev.

Though he came back to prominence with Bhim Sain’s Gharonda (1977) and Muzzaffar Ali’s Gaman (1978), Jaidev’s associations with Hrishikesh Mukherjee ( Alaap , 1977) or Basu Chatterjee ( Tumhare Liye , 1978) did not bring him much success. He never became the preferred composer for any filmmaker, good or bad, even when the misfortune of films hardly had anything to do with the music. He was the only Hindi film composer of his time to receive three national awards. Curious as it may be, the same is the number of his films which were declared a hit, from a list of 40-odd titles.

Today, the songs for which Jaidev is remembered are steeped in loneliness. Be it Ek akela is sheher mein ( Gharonda ), or Seene mein jalan, aankhon mein toofan sa kyon hai or Aap ki yaad aati rahi raat bhar (both from Gaman ). Maybe his life followed the dichotomy expressed by Sahir Ludhianvi in Kabhi khud pe kabhi halaat pe rona aaya ( Hum Dono ). Jaidev lived and died on the fringes of Bollywood, much like his own composition from Kinare Kinare : Chale ja rahe hain, mohabbat ke maare, kinare kinare, chale ja rahe hain .

(Anirudha Bhattacharjee, a Kolkata-based musician, and Balaji Vittal, a Hyderabad-based professional, are authors of R.D. Burman: The Man, The Music. Their second book, Gata Rahe Mera Dil: 50 classic Hindi film songs, is releasing this month)

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