Raga Bhairavi,
How a Romanian song and raga Bhairavi, considered the “queen of melody”, shaped the music of Kapoor’s films, embedding them in the collective consciousness of a nation.
Like a river, sometimes a tune can travel thousands of miles, and become etched in our collective memory. Its melodic lines remind us of our lives — the anxieties and learnings, as well as the raptures.
In Barsaat (1949), when Pran (Raj Kapoor) plays his violin on a houseboat in Kashmir, his beloved Reshma (Nargis) is so moved by the refrain that she flouts all the conventions that a woman would have to be mindful of in the 1950s. Defying her family and any notions of “izzat”, Reshma rows a shikara in the dead of night, dashing up a ladder to reach the houseboat’s deck and falls into her lover’s arms. The violin remains cradled in one hand. This scene, depicting an all-consuming passion that was rare in Indian cinema then, is unforgettable. So great was its significance, that it would even form the logo of RK Films, depicting his two great passions — music and drama of life.
The tune Pran had played was Waves of the Danube, a Romanian waltz capturing the ebb and flow of the eponymous river. It was composed by a military band conductor named Ion Ivanovici and trickled into the Indian consciousness through Kapoor’s fascination with it. In the hands of the filmmaker’s favourite composer duo, Shankar-Jaikishan, it formed the leitmotif of Barsaat (1949) and was also heard in Sangam (1964), Bobby (1973), Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai (1960) and Mera Naam Joker (1970). Since it was an integral element of Kapoor’s swansong, “Jeena yahan, marna yahan/ Iske siwa jaana kahan,” it grew to become synonymous with the life and times of the showman of the century.
Kapoor first heard the tune as Anniversary Song in the film The Jolson Story. This 1946 American musical told the fictionalised story of singer and actor Al Jolson, a Hollywood superstar of the 1920s. Kapoor discussed the song with Goa-based violinist and his friend Joe Menezes, who went looking for it and found the original record in a Mumbai vinyl shop. Kapoor, who had lost his heart to the melody, spent Rs 35,000 to get the rights to it, a huge amount to spend on a song then.
If a waltz from Romania captivated him, it was Raag Bhairavi that completed his musical persona. The “sampoorna raag”, often described as the “queen of melody”, could capture a range of emotions and found full expression across Kapoor’s films — from the pathos-laden (Dost dost na raha) and romantic (Pyar hua iqrar hua hai, Ghar aaya mera pardesi) to philosophical (Awaara hoon, Jeena yahan marna yahan), joyous (Mera joota ha Japani, Ramaiya vastavaiya), haunting (Tera jaana dil ke armaano ka lut jaana), patriotic (Ab tumhare hawale watan saathiyo) and frenetic (Chahe koi mujhe junglee kahe). In Kapoor’s long list of hit songs, perhaps more than half are located in Bhairavi, the morning raga that still concludes every Hindustani classical concert. It was a combination of notes that was likely to get approval if Kapoor heard it in a song sitting. And the Shankar-Jaikishan-Shailendra /Hasrat Jaipuri-Mukesh-Lata Mangeshkar combination was well aware of this. So steeped were Shankar-Jaikishan in Bhairavi, that Shankar’s daughter was named Bhairavi as a tribute to Kapoor and the music they made. Mukesh and Mangeshkar, though, often craved to sing in other ragas as well.
Born in Pakistan’s Peshawar, Kapoor always had a predilection for music and its moods and initially learned from his mother Ramsarni Kapoor who had trained under the aegis of Pandit Jagannath Prasad. When Prithviraj Kapoor moved the family to Bombay, he enrolled a young Raj Kapoor at Narayanrao Vyas’s Academy of Music, where he trained in classical music and learnt to play the harmonium and the tabla. He even assisted composer Anil Biswas before deciding to be an actor and director. And once he had the reins of a film, he controlled the music like an exacting master, fusing the song into the soul of the film. He would sit through the rehearsals and all the recording sessions, even in the later years.
In a rare video that can be found on YouTube, one sees Mangeshkar recording Chitthiye from Henna (1991), which was released after Kapoor died in 1988. Even in his last days, when Kapoor had breathing issues, he was seated behind the console, keeping track of the notes and the rhythm. It’s rare to see a filmmaker so invested in the music of his film. It’s also a lesson for the filmmakers of today, who consider music creation to be the sole domain of composers and lyricists, their own role being limited to narrating the brief. For Kapoor, melody and poetry emerged from life, lending themselves to songs that have echoed in the popular consciousness for decades.
Kapoor was also thrilled by songs in the higher register. The peaks and troughs that the songs in his films charted were a reflection of his understanding of life, that it could never be a straight line. This was underscored by lyricist Shailendra, who had a unique ability to pull at the heartstrings of a newly independent India. Kapoor told the stories of the masses in his films, and his understanding of people, relationships and emotions put these in perspective for those who watched his films and listened to their songs.
“My songs first originate in me,” the filmmaker says in Living Legend: Raj Kapoor, a documentary by actor Simi Garewal’s production company SIGA Arts International. Like his stories, the songs were also audio-visual experiences. How else could that dream sequence in Awara be so deeply imprinted on our memory? And how else could the image of a couple finding romance on a rainy night under an umbrella, become one of the most indelible in Indian cinema? Then there’s that famed evening at RK Studios in 1979, Kapoor’s son Rishi’s pre-wedding festivities, when Pakistani qawwali giant Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan crossed the border for the first time for a performance on the request of a friend. Nusrat’s all-night performance was a story that the whole film industry would talk about for years. Khan would often credit Kapoor for introducing him to a world audience. The conflict over Kashmir continued to foment in the geopolitical space. For Kapoor and Khan their interaction in Punjabi — their native language — and affection for music bound them for life.
In the early 1960s, when he wanted to create a film loosely inspired by Margaret Mitchell’s complex classic Gone With the Wind, Kapoor wanted Vyjayanthimala to play the lead, Radha. The film was Sangam, an epic love triangle. Vyjayanthimala was in Chennai and had not responded to Kapoor. So he wrote a telegram to her, “Bol Radha bol Sangam hoga ke nahi” and told Shailendra, whom he addressed as “Pushkin”, about it. The lyricist, whose eloquence was only matched by his clarity of thought, wrote “Tere man ki ganga, aur mere man ki jamuna ka/ Bol radha bol sangam hoga ke nahi”. This tune, like the others, joined the great sea of music that belongs to us all.
suanshu.khurana@expressindia.com
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