Yesteryear Lyricists of Bollywood

I have always found poets to be fascinating and interesting characters. They live in their own world and their mind is always occupied on some poetry.  Even while in conversation with someone, at the back of their mind there is a poem being born.  A preacher or a politician, will speak volumes to make his point clear.  On the contrary if a poet is asked to speak on the same subject, he will beautifully and with interesting note complete it in quatrain.

Poetry dates back to pre-historic times.  The volumes of sacred texts, while their purpose is more, are mostly poetical. Epic poetry appears to have been composed in this form as an aid to memorization.  The very first volume on the face of earth is said to be Yugved,  This was followed by the other three Vedas, all in Sanskrit.  So were the Indian epics of Ramayan and Mahabharat, and The Torah, The Zabur,  The Bible and The very Last revelation, The Qur’an.

Referring to ancient history – there used to be poets in every kingdom irrespective of whether they were in the East or the West.  Poets used to entertain Kings and their councillors in the “darbar” (King’s court).   The Last Moghul Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was himself a renowned poet and his poems are still popular with poetry lovers. So are the poems of Mirza Ghalib, who was his chief poet in his “Darbar”.  Great writers like Shakespeare had an essence of poetry in their writings.

Coming into the cinema world: Bollywood had its golden years of music. This period was from 1945 -1980. In that era, thousands of timeless songs were composed. Lyricists played the very important role in making the songs memorable. They are still popular today and will continue to the next generations.

These song writers can be categorized into two broad categories: Urdu Poets and Hindi Poets.

Urdu poets of that era were:

Sahir Ludhianvi

Majrooh Sultanpuri

Hasrat Jaipuri

Shakeel Badayuni

Qaifi Azmi

S H Bihari

Raja Mehdi Ali Khan

Jan Nisar Akhtar

Hasan Kamaal

Khumar Barabakvi  

Gulzar. (He was born in a Sikh family thus his mother tongue was Punjabi. Being a student of Urdu his lyrics are in Urdu.)

Hindi poets were:

Shailenda

Rajendra Krishna

Qamar Jalalabadi

Neeraj

Anjan

Indeever

Yogesh

Bharat Vyas

Santosh Anand

Prem Dhawan

Kavi Pradeep

Anand Bakshi

All these poets were of remarkable calibre.  This last one made his entry in the early sixties, as did Gulzar and within short span of time both became extremely popular.  Sadly, today with the exception of Gulzar, Hasan Kamal and Santosh Anand all of them have made an exit to their final abode. But their memories remain with us through the poetry they created.

All these Lyricists used to have very healthy competitions among themselves. This resulted the best compositions.  

Though  these Lyricists could write on any subject, each had their own speciality.  Sheilendra was very philosophic while his counterpart, Hasrat, was more romantic.  One’s strong points were on social background matters, while the other’s were on patriotic matters. The producers would sign lyricists according to the subject of their movies.

Here is one of the philosophic poems of Shailendra:

“Dunia banane wale, kya tere man mey samai, Kaheko Dunia Banai?”

While Hasrat in one of his romantic songs wrote:

“Ahesan hoga tera mujpar, dil chahta hey woh kahene do,

Muje tumse mahobat ho gai hey, mujeh palko ki chaun mey rahene do”

On death, Qaifi Azmi wrote the following note:

“Dekhi Zamane teri Yaari

Matlab ki yeh sari

Bichde sabi bari bari”

While Majrooh wrote:

“Bhool ja, jo chala gaya usey bhool ja, woh na sun sakega teri sadah.(Call)

Koi iltaja (humble request) na koi bandgi (prayer) kadha (death) se hath chuda saki.

Aadmi ne kiye jitne jatan, na koi iske kaam aa saki.

Jo chala gaya usey bhool ja woh na sun sakega teri sadah.

Qaifi Azmi in one of his songs wrote:

“Yeh dunia hey jahan pyar nahi ho sakta,

Kaise baazaar ka dastur tume samjau – jo bik gaya woh kharidar nahi ho sakta”

This is from Sahir’s collection:

“Jeevan ke Safar mey –  rahi milte hay bichad jane ko, aur de jate hay yadein tanhai mey tadpaneko.”

Indeever:

“Zindgi ka safer, yeh kaisa safer, koi samja nahi, koi jana nahin”

75 years ago Shakeel wrote this:

“Yeh Zindgi ke mele dunia mey kam na honge, afsos hum na honge”

Emotional and sad lyrics in songs proved to be very likeable to listen.

One of Rajendra Krishan’s lovely lyrics:

Ab koi bhi tammana nahin,

Ab yahan hum ko jeena nahin,

Zindgi ab tere jam se, ek katra bhi pina nahin.

Maut ko bhej de,

Khatm Kerr de meri dasta’an.

Beraham aasman meri manzil bata hey kahan?

Certain lyrics we can’t erase from memories.

Who can forget Anand Bakshi’s lyrics:

“Yeh kya Hua, Kaise Hua, kab Hua, kyu Hua, jab Hua so Hua”

These few lines of lyrics are just the tip of the iceberg.

Someone has aptly said that when one is happy, he enjoys a song for its rhythm and tune, but when he is sad, then he can enjoy it for its lyrics.

In conclusion: 

I may be wrong in my observation that in today’s world the importance of poets is losing its ground. The poems of today aren’t that appealing and impressive as they used to be. Secondly, the number of poets are also decreasing.  In India they often used to held “mushairas” to promote poetry which are also dying a natural death. However an organisation named “Rekhta” has recently been formed to promote the Urdu language. Hopefully it will bring back the old glory of the Urdu language, its literacy, and its “Shairy” (poetry)

Few months ago, while browsing on the Internet, I came across this piece of poetry which I really liked.  Hope you will like it too!

-A K Bagha-

P S

I have focused on Lyricists from the period 1945 to 1980  For this reason, I have excluded the name of Javed Akhtar who made his entry as lyricist  in 1981.