Sun Mere Bandhu Re: The Musical World Of Sd Burman

Preface

One thing usually leads to another. The thread of destiny unravels in surprising ways, sometimes telescoping the past and present into a concrete moment.

I have never met S.D. Burman. I know his songs of course, have grown up singing them to myself. I had seen the rare picture of him somewhere, and held the impression of a calm, spartan face that could have been etched in solitude by a calligraphist’s pen.

Beyond a chance second-hand encounter with the composer through Abrar Alvi while researching my book on Guru Dutt, I knew nothing about S.D. Burman. And Alvi revealed him only as a gentle soul, possessive about his paan and careful with his money – not much to build an image from.

But one thing led to another. A young man who worked in the same building I used as an office for a while came up to say that his father had read my book on Guru Dutt. He wanted to know if I would take on the writing of a biography of S.D. Burman. His father, the young man continued, was a huge fan of the music director, and had collected clippings published about him for the past few decades, which he was willing to hand over to me.

And so it was that I met Moti Lalwani who came bearing his treasure trove. A meeting that resulted in two bulging files in my custody.

This was followed up by a series of interviews that had been conducted for the four fan-page web sites he administered, and an offer to continue to do interviews of prominent players in S.D. Burman’s musical world. Of course, I gratefully accepted.

For almost four months after this, I refused to look at the material on hand. Material that kept coming in, in the form of fresh interviews, and relentlessly stared at me from my inbox everytime I logged on. When I finally began to read, it was like entering a labyrinth. I could so easily be lost in this uncharted territory, where voices spoke from every direction; some echoing, some contradicting one another. Despite so many voices speaking about him, I could find S.D. Burman nowhere. The man was missing.

Adding to my confusion was a package that landed on my table one morning. From Bangladesh. A book on S.D. Burman by a venerable researcher of the composer’s work, H.Q. Chowdhury.

My heart sank. Was I heading to a dead end? Was there place for a second book? What could I say that was new about a man I had never met or known?

It was S.D. Burman himself who came to my rescue. His slim autobiographical note, Sargamer Nikhad, written with simplicity and a charming lack of self-consciousness was the first real insight into the person I had been looking for. His stories of his youth, his description of his interactions with those who mattered to him in his musical journey through life gave me the clue on how to shape his story.

I put aside everything I had read as notes and interviews. I listened to the songs, I let myself listen to the world around me as someone who heard only the music in every sound.

And the book began to take shape in my mind.

I listened to the music of the birds, to the beat of a butterfly’s wings as it flitted past my window. The rat-a-tat of the local train, the shouted cadences of the fruit seller’s voice, the spoon hitting the side of the pot in the kitchen … I imagined a musician listening to them and capturing the music inherent in every sound.

And destiny took me back to the days when I walked barefoot in the grass, chasing dragonflies, or lay in the shade of a spreading rain tree watching alternately the clouds or the brown tufts at the ends of the leaves of grass waving in the breeze while far away a man selling mud violins played a tune I knew the words of.

It was easy then to blend the real with the almost real. To let imagination colour the calligraphist’s portrait in the shades of music.

By the time this book went into edits, another book on S.D. Burman had come out, this time by an Indian, by someone who shared the surname. But by now I was no longer worried about the content. Another book wasn’t going to make a difference because I had decided on a new approach to the narrative altogether.

This narration of S.D. Burman’s life follows his journey through it and through his music faithfully. There is nothing in the book that has not been documented elsewhere in print or recorded through interviews for this book. It is only in the telling of the story that I have, like the subject of this book, let myself roam free. Just as he would take the seven notes of music and spin out of them an endless fabric of songs, I have tried to take the many facts and milestones of his life and weave a tapestry that reveals in its intricacies the genius of a man whose life was simply dictated by music.

In doing this, I hope to present S.D. Burman’s amazing story not just to those who have thrilled to his songs, but to a generation that can learn the blessings of a way of life dedicated so passionately to excellence. A passion that never waned, and so touched the hearts of at least two generations of moviegoers.

On learning I was writing this book, a friend asked me why I chose to write on dead people. I replied that I seem to be so chosen. And take it on gladly because I could then try, through my writing, to make them come alive again.

Sathya Saran

April 2014

PART ONE

BEGINNINGS

1

He missed being home. The green fields, the chatter of birds, the cries of men hawking their wares.

Here, the very music of life was stilled, and he could not bear the silence. Yet he had no option. This was the way of princes; to learn, to study and grow into fine men who could rule.

And though his father should have been a ruler, but was not; though he himself would possibly never be a king, he was yet a prince.

And so here he was, Sachin Dev Burman, reverentially called Sachin Karta, living among other princes, learning geography and history and math, but also learning somehow to be a prince.

He wondered if knowledge could be thus imparted or princely demeanour thus learned; the masters might know their subjects, but what could they possibly know of how to be a prince? And his mates were an unruly lot: used to getting their own way. Boisterous, pushy and loud, they intimidated the masters. He had little to say to them, or they to him. He was so different, lost in a different world.

At night, when the noise of the school day finally stilled and others slept, he lay awake, his ears straining to hear the music that lay hidden in his mind. The sound of his father expounding on a note, letting a raga unfurl. The flute as it was played in the field nearby, as the farmer sat against a tree, his day’s work done, the music soothing his tired limbs. Some nights he could swear he could hear Madhab chanting the singsong shlokas of the Ramayana under his breath as he worked, or singing them out loud in the evenings…

In fact, the music never really went away. Yet one morning when it curled like smoke and played itself out even as the master pointed out hills and mountains on a map on the classroom wall, he put his head down on the desk to fight back the tears.

He longed for the home he knew and loved, where his father would walk beside him across the warm stone floors under the sweeping arches of the palace, singing all the while. Or let him watch while he crafted and shaped, along with the potters, the wet clay to form the idols for worship on puja days. What was his father doing now? he wondered. Was he resting, shaded from the afternoon heat? More likely he was out in the open, along with the gardeners, sliding the trowel into the soft soil, readying it for the plants that he would push into the earth. His home in Comilla. So full of things to do, to see and feel. Not really so far from where he was, but for all he knew, Kumar Boarding in Agartala could be on another planet!

2

Comilla today is a bustling town. To get here you need to travel approximately 100 kilometres from Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. However, Tripura, in India, is closer, and lies to the east.

Once you leave the town of Comilla and drive into the countryside, the landscape is a kaleidoscope.

Green is a recurrent theme here, the trees arch overhead, fed by the rain that sweeps down for months. The grass glistens like emerald. Every voice has a lilt, like they were born to sing; the fisherman, the shop owner, the man wielding the shrieking machine that sharpens knives … their voices are different yet tuneful in a strange compelling manner.

Along the village roads, boys and men stand alongside the rain-fed marshes and ponds, fishing for their lunch. Bystanders, dressed in shorts and little else, watch idly, with their arms akimbo. Time is leisurely in these parts, life goes by watched in slow measures.

Drive through the roads, avoiding a mushy pothole here and another there, and wend through green patches and small mossy ponds to the verdant village of Charta. Wander into the village roads of Chatra where, if you listen closely, you can hear the echoes of history.

Perhaps your footsteps will lead you to the ruin of the palatial haveli that once stood sentinel over Comilla. A place where the clink of chisel against stone punctuated the day as sculptures took shape in a room shaded from the sun. Or where the notes from a raga made patterns of light and shade against the rough-hewn floor of the corridors that ran from one end to the other, connecting rooms once filled with the sound of voices.

Sixty acres surrounded the haveli, and the air that blew through the building was cooled by the water that sometimes lapped against the sides of the large tanks that were on either side of the building. Fish of many colours and sizes swam in them, and if you could peep into history, you would see the young Sachin Karta, prince without a throne, casting his rod into the waters, perhaps trying to still the humming that rose unbidden to his throat, so that the fish would not be disturbed. His skin would be reddened by the sun, and perhaps you would sight his nurse, Robir-ma, come running up, with a cap, or a wet towel to cool the boy’s delicate skin that the sun was treating so harshly.

Today the palace lies in ruin. Encroachers have set up camp and the chickens that run around are part of the poultry farm clandestinely set up here. The squawking of hens is the only music that fills the air now. The grass around is dead except during and after the abundant rains that sweep the area along with the rest of Bangladesh. The tanks are choked with dead leaves. The move to create a museum of the memorabilia of Sachin Dev Burman that the government has recently started might bring back some life into the place. Or will it?

A recording of Raag Darbari Kanara, played on the sitar in the dead of night, or a recreation of the prayers and bhajans that Sachin’s father Nabadwipchandra recited and sang together with his family every evening, alone can bring us one step closer to resurrecting the dead palace as a living memorial to one of Tripura’s most glorious sons.

Press release, 17 January 2012

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has promised to convert the ancestral house of legendary music maestro Sachin Dev Burman in Bangladesh into a cultural institute-cum-museum, writers and scholars said here today.

‘Hasina assured us that her government would effectively consider our proposal of converting the ancestral house of S.D. Burman at Comilla (Eastern Bangladesh) into a cultural institute cum museum,’ said Gautam Das, one of the eight-member team of writers, painters, singers and cultural elite which met her during her visit here last week.

‘The house was in a dilapidated condition and some local people had encroached upon it and started a poultry farm in it. After Sheikh Hasina became prime minister, the Tripura Cultural Co-ordination Committee along with a few intellectuals from Bangladesh had drawn her attention to it and steps were taken to protect the house,’ Satyabrata Chakraberty, who was also in the delegation said. ‘We are hopeful that the Bangladesh prime minister would fulfìl our desire as she, in her different speeches here, had mentioned about the affinity between the people on both sides of the border and how Rabindra Nath Tagore and poet Kazi Nazrul Islam had influenced and brought us together.’

3

What use having nine children, Nabadwipchandra Karta thought, as he sat watching the sun set. Indeed, the fading light seemed to symbolize the mood of his life. First the tussle over the right to rule, then the court case, and now this, this supreme loneliness that gnawed like a ferret at him, making him believe that there was nothing but darkness ahead.

He had never been a loser. There was in him the strength to rise again and again from the depths life would lead him to. Depths of despair, of anger, deprivation.

He might have lost his kingdom, he thought, but he had his song. His music and his family were his soldiers in life, helping him conquer new vistas of peace, where the old had been lost.

The blades of grass outside the window moved gently in the breeze. Evening always brought with it this soft stirring of Nature’s senses. As if on cue, the sun sent a ray of gold to caress the tops of the blades. A blessing to remind him that though it would soon be dark, the light was never far behind.

Sachin would have … the last time they had sat at the same window and watched this very act of blessing, Sachin had said something. What was it, something about … His mind leapt and caught the ferret. Sachin, that was it!

He knew now whence his melancholy rose. The other boys were his darlings too, but they were grown up, and far away in Darjeeling, studying to be men of the world. They would have to take their place among equals and less soon enough and he was glad they were proving fit for the challenge. But this child, this last delicate boy, with a face that reflected every emotion, was close enough, and yet far away. His heart yearned for the child. A man loves his daughters, he thought, but they are women and need the company of their mother more.

A man needs a son by his side.

I cannot be weak, he thought to himself, as he gathered the folds of his dhuti and rose to move away from the very thought that had presented itself to him. The boy needs discipline, the company of others. He needs to learn many things besides music.

But the thought refused to yield, sitting like a monkey in the corner of his mind, waiting to snatch at his peace.

He woke to the sounds of the night. The chirping cricket, the cry of the night bird hunting … sounds he had heard often enough before.

‘What is it?’ Nirupama asked, seeing him standing at the window, a brooding silhouette of thought. He shook his head. Undecided. Yet he knew his mind had been made up for him by his heart.

The boy would come home.

4

India lives in song. The oldest stories, the myths, even the epics written in sacred letters by the celestials themselves have been converted to song, set to music and in every little hamlet and craggy mountain village or mud-washed desert town, singers have found voices that sing them in their own tunes. With words adapted to their turn of speech.

The wandering minstrel was both circus and saviour. He came through with his bundle of songs, sung in exchange for a smile, a meal or just a glance, and when he had had his say, he would wander off, to sing along his path; the tunes his only company, as he walked the road to his next patch of nowhere.

Perhaps the romance of the road made it happen, perhaps the haunting voices that drifted in the air as the singing minstrel stepped blithely onward wove itself into his psyche, but when he heard them, the young Sachin could not stay.

Others have been thus captivated by song. Radha left her home without fear of reproof when the flute played its call by the Jamuna. Whether it was the flute or the player is a matter of perspective, one being as powerful a magnet as the other.

Singers have followed singers; Mohammed Rafi too would pad along behind a sage who sang in a voice that moved his childish heart to the core. And Sachin took upon himself to wander through the muddy paths or squelch through rain-soaked gullies, following the Baul singers who passed through. In their own way, singer and follower were seeking their gods.

Art begets art. Pictures turn to words, words to pictures sometimes painted on the walls or on fabric, stone patterns from Nature carved on temple walls get woven into cloth, and become symbols in themselves. Music too has its patterns, and Sachin too was exposed to the many layers of music … as if they were petals unfurling to the light of dawn. He took them all and held them in his mind, wrapped in a great secret space.

His voice would rise in song; even as a child, he would sing the strains of classical music that he learnt from his father and yet hum the tunes he heard from others, but the composer in him lay dormant. Waiting for the tapestry to be complete, with a pattern all his own. A deft mix of classical and folk, of song and melody, voice and instruments that would be the unique, unquestioned music of S.D. Burman, the composer.

5

A young girl is playing a game of hopscotch. As she hops from one square to another, she hums. As she stops to pick up the stone to throw it, she stops for a moment. Standing there, softly hitting the stone against her chin, lost in the contemplation of where to place it on the squares on the ground in front of her, she sings out the song she has been intermittently humming. The song has an earthy flavour to it. The words are:

Aajke jaabo shashurbari, saajiye de aamay taratari

(I have to go to my father-in-law’s house today, dress me up quickly.)

Sachin Dev Burman is watching the tableau. He is captivated by the girl’s song.

When the girl’s father appears, Sachin asks him, ‘What is happening? What are you doing?’

He replies, ‘Jo mera ladki hai na, usko shaadi de raha hun.’ (She is my daughter. I am marrying her off.)

The girl is very young … so Sachin Dev Burman asks, ‘Shaadi de raha hun! Abhi kyon?’ (Marrying her off? Why so early?)

Father: ‘Bada hoke toh kharab ho jayega. Uski thaali de raha hoon, nahin toh kharaab ho jayega. Abhi dena hai. Usi ka gaana hai, Aajke jaabo shashurbadi.’ (When she grows up, she might go astray! I am conducting her ceremonies. I have to marry her off now. That’s the song, ‘Today I am going to in-laws’ place.’)

From a Khagesh Dev Burman interview by Moti Lalwani and Richa Lakhanpal:

What’s more surprising is that the rather jazzy hit song ‘Roop tera mastana’ sung by Kishore Kumar is but a beautiful folk melody that SD happened to hear a long time ago. He remembered the tune because of its peculiar effect. It merely uses two notes and has a very special influence on the senses.

6

If he had not lived his childhood in Comilla, maybe the man we know as S.D. Burman might not have become a musician. Or he might have made music of quite a different timbre.

The soil had something to do with it, the sound of water, the rain as it pitter-pattered on the earth hardened by the searing sun. The wind