Lord of the music room

Hari Om, our cabbie, pulled up at our destination three minutes before 10 on the morning of September 17, 2008. It can be intimidating when the person you’re about to meet has a six -storey building named after him. That too in Bandra, Mumbai. Inside the elevator, the mind pencilled contours of a stentorian man in a grey safari suit, adorning 11 gold rings and trailed by a flunky who carries his master’s mobile phone. Getting off the lift anxiously, we rang the doorbell. The housekeeper answered and showed us in.

History, the kind we read in text books, is mostly about dead men. And here was “history” in flesh and blood, with a booming voice, a belly-shaking laughter and a persona to match. In comfortable slippers and weekend clothes was Kersi Lord, the master of keyboards, the man who introduced many innovations to Bollywood.

Kersi appeared to be a man determined to live in the present. Though he generously shared anecdotes from his glorious 40-year music career, he did not dwell on them. His impish sense of humour meant discussions were spiced with jokes, some of which are on Facebook, the rest, unprintable.

Our “sittings”, from 10 am to 2 pm, involved listening mostly to Pancham (RD Burman) compositions on the laptop. This went on for about three years. Kersi would listen to each number carefully, his eyes closed. Suddenly he would gently raise his index finger (the cue to pause). Incredible nuggets would then flow unbridled from his memory bank — how the Lord family’s western music gramophone records had fascinated a pre-teen Pancham; how the ‘Woooo woooo’ sound in ‘ Ye ladka hai allah ’ ( Hum Kisise Kum Nahin, 1977) was created; when he used the electric organ for the first time in a Hindi film (for ‘ O mere sona re ’ in Teesri Manzil , 1966); when Rao Kyao, a Portuguese saxophonist, was made to walk across the studio to create a stereophonic effect; the Carnatic origins of Kersi’s five-and-a-half plus five-and-a-half beat for Shalimar’ s (1978) title music; using Chinese blocks in senior Burman’s Pyaasa (1957) classic ‘ Jaane kya tune kahi ’; how the glock immortalised the cigarette-lighter tune of Hum Dono (1961); and many, many more stories.

Kersi was childlike too, as we found out on multiple occasions. While listening to ‘ Matwali aankhon wale ’ ( Chhote Nawab , 1961) he suddenly picked up his mobile and made a call. “Pyare bhai, Kersi here. What an amazing arrangement you had done for this song, ‘ Matwali aankhon wale !’ Lovely fresh sound — as if it has been recorded in 2009!” Kersi then handed the phone to us on speaker. We barely managed to splutter a few incoherent words to Pyarelal Sharma. Kersi had identified the music’s arranger by merely listening to it, and that was overwhelming for us to watch.

He recalled how the three Lords — father Cawas, brother Burjor and Kersi — played the percussion in ‘ Pappa Jamalo ’ ( Dr Vidya , 1962) as SD Burman handed over the baton to his son to conduct. He gaily recalled the tiff he had with a composer who took credit for arrangement — specifically the A minor sixth chord — which had initially sounded off-key to the producer of the film. On another occasion, he showed us how he generated the sound of two piano accordions in ‘ Main chali main chali ’ ( Padosan , 1968), and then proceeded to demonstrate the precise finger placement, something he never did publicly in recent years. It was as if he was coming out of retirement to play for an audience.

Light tea served every hour was the gentle reminder of the passing time, which neither of us would keep track of otherwise.

At times he would get lunch home-delivered. Once he took us to Otters Club, which overlooked the Arabian Sea. Over lunch he recounted the spooky tale of Rajendra Kumar’s bungalow, where his car suddenly veered off course and hurtled towards the sea. Later, Rajesh Khanna had bought the bungalow. It was sold recently.

The Lord family has been central to Hindi film music since 1931. Cawas, who played bagpipes for marching bands and at the Taj Hotel, played for the background score in Alam Ara (1931), India’s first talkie, according to Kersi. And from 1947 to 1987, every member of the Lord family — Cawas and his sons Kersi and Buji have, on an average, played in every third song recorded in Bombay. Jazz and Latino music became integral to Bombay film music largely due to the Lords. Kersi lamented the late arrival of jazz clubs and bands to Bombay. Calcutta and Madras were ahead, at least in the 1940s and ’50s.

Kersi started his musical career playing the percussion in the early 1950s, while still in school. He recalls playing in Jadoo (1951) and Dastan (1950). He continuously shifted from one instrument to another — “I never played an instrument for more than five years,” he said — and over the next 30 years, he played more than 10 instruments, including the bongo, conga, drums, Chinese blocks, xylophone, vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, and, of course, the piano accordion, the instrument he became most-known for playing. The legato-staccato mix set alight the hormones of a young couple on a rainy night in Aradhana (1969). SD Burman’s ‘ Roop tera mastana ’ perhaps has the most well-known piece of accordion in Indian cinema.

Pancham’s thirst for innovation made Kersi his indispensable ally. His cutting-edge as a piano accordionist was evident in those little things like ‘bellows shake’ in ‘ Sa re ke saare gaa ma ko lekar ’ ( Parichay , 1972). Kersi, along with Goody Servai, was one of the few in Hindi cinema who did not transition to the accordion from the harmonium. Kersi used the Roland Echo machine (generically known as Echolite) first in Kati Patang , to generate an echo effect in the background score. A year- and-a-half later, the echo of the flute obligatos chimed flamboyantly in Jawani Diwani (1972). Kersi also introduced the Moog synthesiser to Bombay in 1972-73. The second interlude of ‘ Yeh dosti ’ ( Sholay , 1975) is one of the first works he recalled doing with the Moog.

When synthesisers threatened to replace live musicians, he said, “We used synthesisers to enhance sound, not replace it”. But in deference to some of his colleagues, he held off programming drums and percussions on the synthesisers. Like a true Parsi, he believed in the strength of the community. For him, the sustenance of the ecosystem was above immediate commercial considerations. Not that the Lords were not commercially savvy. “Money has never been an issue,” he said once. “My father purchased a plot in 1960. Later he spent a lakh more [rupees] and built a house. Decades later we sold it to the builder of this six storey apartment. Part of the deal was flats for me and my family.”

The Lord family built its wealth by winning trust, credibility and investing in relationships with the people it worked with. Each of them was anyway exceptionally talented. But they were different in the way they made their talent work for composers.

Apart from mainstream Bollywood, Kersi also arranged the music for offbeat ventures such as Anubhav (1971), Aaviskaar (1975), 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981), and among others, Amitabh Bachchan’s debut film, Saat Hindustani (1969).

Kersi was generous in his praise for others - the trait of a happily-retired champion. “The sound of the guitar that resembles a human voice singing is the one that is unmistakably played by Bhupendra,” he told us once. At a show recently, singer Sonu Nigam called out Kersi’s exceptional arrangement in the melody ‘ Tum jo mil gaye ho ’ ( Hanste Zakhm , 1973). Rarely does an arranger get such a mention in front of a packed audience.

The Dadasaheb Phalke Academy award in 2010 and the Mirchi Music Award 2009 were apt tributes to the unsung musician, who spent decades toiling in the studios.

Five years ago, Kersi, along with others who played with Pancham, launched our book, RD Burman: The Man, The Music, in Mumbai.

He was our agony uncle who agitatedly advised us about the ill-effects of smoking. He was among the first musicians to reach Marylands Apartments in the wee hours of January 4, 1994, when Pancham was in transit — to a world beyond. He found someone smoking in the composer’s bedroom, and chided him — “Your cigarette smoke is gonna kill him, if he’s not dead already.”

He would invariably wish us on our birthdays, which we incidentally shared. When we called him on his birthday — Valentine’s Day — in 2010, he said, “Who said I am 75? I am a 19-year-old with 56 years of experience.” There’s no piling on those years of experience any more. While his last WhatsApp status says, “Last seen October 8, 23:27”, there won’t be a single day in the next 100 years when at least one of his songs will not be played.

Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Balaji Vittal are authors of RD Burman: The Man, The Music

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