One day I discovered Suraiya

When Suraiya passed away, I wrote this piece for India Abroad, March 12, 2004. On the occasion of her ninth death anniversary today, I post it here.

Suraiya in Dastan (1950)

When I heard that Suraiya, the singing star of yesteryear, is no more, I felt a twinge of sadness for the lost world of old Hindi cinema. Suraiya's songs are so inextricably intertwined with memories of my growing up years in India. As a schoolkid in Bombay in the late eighties, I had just stumbled upon the magical world of old Hindi films, old being pre-1960 for me. The first movie I watched was Raj Kapoor's Shree 420 (1955). Immediately, I knew I had found my own little dreamy retreat. Black and white had permanently cast its spell on me. With their crackling prints, exquisite songs, and breathtaking orchestra (why do they not use such orchestration anymore?), these films captured my imagination in a way nothing else did. One film led to another, one song led to another, and soon I was cruising along the road of Hindi film music's golden years. Each day would bring the thrill of a new find—a rare Anil Biswas composition, a soulful Naushad number, or a Kishore Kumar song as early as 1948. And then one day I discovered Suraiya.

Always on the lookout for vintage songs, I was addicted to a radio program called Raymond Sargam Smriti (it later became Centura Sargam Smriti) that played rare pieces from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. I heard Suraiya for the first time on this program: the song was "Tu mera chand main teri chandni," a duet with Shyam, composed by Naushad in the film Dillagi (1949). I was struck by the beauty of the song and the simplicity of its rendering. Suraiya, I later found out, was a natural singer; she had not learnt classical music. Yet, her singing was effortless and had a certain genuineness about it. Her voice was not cloyingly sweet. It rang vibrant, full of spontaneity and life. Her immortal "Ta rari ta rari" duet with Mohammed Rafi in Dastan (1950), where she acted opposite Raj Kapoor, bespeaks that inherent sense of frolic. This Naushad song with the Western classical touch brings to mind a faraway world, a kind of wonderland almost. It is a world I still periodically escape to.

Suraiya was that rare thing: an accomplished singer as well as a graceful actress. I remember seeing some of her films like Dard (1947) and the aforementioned Dillagi and Dastan at the Kardar film festival in Bombay. (A. R. Kardar was a famous producer-director from the 1930s to the 50s.) While Suraiya started as a child star with a small role in Mohan Pictures’ Taj Mahal (1941), she recorded one of her early songs as a playback singer for a Kardar movie called Sharda (1942). The song was "Panchhi ja," and the composer was Naushad. The Kardar-Naushad-Suraiya collaboration resulted in some very memorable movies and songs. After lending her voice to other heroines in the initial years, Suraiya went on to become the biggest heroine of her times.

She also had the rare privilege of acting opposite the legendary K. L. Saigal in Tadbir (1945), Omar Khayyam (1946), and Parwana (1947). With the Partition in 1947, Noorjehan, the other great singing star of Hindi cinema, left for Pakistan. Suraiya chose to stay on and soon became the acting-singing sensation of independent India. 1948-49 was the turning point of her career. Famous Pictures' Pyar Ki Jeet and Badi Bahen, together with Kardar’s Dillagi, all released during this time, made Suraiya a household name. In Badi Bahen, she sang the haunting "Woh paas rahe ya door rahe" for Husnlal-Bhagatram, possibly the first music-director duo of Hindi cinema. Suraiya had reached the dizzying heights of stardom.

After 1952, however, the scene changed. Lata Mangeshkar's arrival a few years earlier had heralded a new era in playback singing. Suraiya’s fortune was on the wane. Her films could not repeat the earlier magic at the box office, and she was also doing fewer films. The songs were still exquisite though, many of them hits. Sohrab Modi’s Mirza Ghalib (1954), opposite Bharat Bhushan, was one of Suraiya's best performances as an actress. She sang the soothing "Dil-e-nadan tujhey" duet with the velvet-voiced Talat Mehmood. Suraiya and Talat faced the camera together in the 1954 film Waris (one of Talat’s rare screen appearances). Two of Hindi cinema’s finest voices sang the lilting "Rahi Matwale," composed by Anil Biswas.

After Rustom Sohrab (1963), Suraiya quit the silver screen permanently. She left movies but did not leave the hearts of her countless fans. For me, Suraiya's songs and movies will always be a reminder of the carefree days of my childhood—of that happy, spellbinding world of old Hindi films. In some fundamental ways, life has not changed.

The music of Kamal Dasgupta

This post first appeared in the PassionForCinema blog on October 24, 2009.

In the Hindi film Jawab (1942), singer-actress Kanan Devi lulls a restless and rather childlike P. C. Barua into sweet sleep. The song is “Ay chand chup na jaana,” and it is great for frayed nerves. Given my own battles with sleep—the activity that consumes nearly a half of our lives—I feel compelled to attest to the wonder of this lullaby by music composer Kamal Prasanna Dasgupta (1912-1974), with lyrics by Pt. Madhur. Here it is: Song 1:



Considering the extraordinary melody of Kamal Dasgupta’s music (he was also a singer), it is surprising that today very few remember this prolific genius who composed nearly 8000 songs that spanned quite a range—from films (Hindi, Bengali, and—most astonishingly—even Tamil, which I have not yet had the luck of encountering) to non-film categories such as Meera bhajans, Nazrul geet, kirtans, and ghazals, to name just a few.

Here is a composer who gave Jagmohan and Juthika Roy some of their best songs ever, a composer who shaped the early careers of Talat Mahmood and Hemant Kumar, much before they got a break in films as playback singers. And yet, woefully, it is not easy to find detailed, authoritative information on—as Sarwat Ali puts it, “the first million copy seller of golden discs in [the] Indian music industry.”

I am guessing that S. M. Shahid’s book (with accompanying CDs) called Kamal Dasgupta: Unforgettable Songs, whose existence I only recently discovered through the Internet, and which I have not seen, should fill the void to some extent. Certainly it is on my buying list now.

And here comes a pleasant discovery I made from the tracks listed in Shahid’s book/CDs—a piece of information that thrilled me indescribably: for many years now, I have been enthralled by singer Jagmohan (or Jaganmoy Mitra, 1918-2003)—another largely forgotten figure—without knowing that many of his gut-wrenchingly beautiful songs were composed by Dasgupta.

Although I knew that Dasgupta had composed Jagmohan’s eponymous “O varsha ke pehle baadal mera sandesa le jaana” for the film Meghdoot (1945), I had no idea that it was the same genius composer behind other Jagmohan numbers (largely non film) such as “Dil dekar dard liya” or “Deewana tumhaara kahta hai afsaana.” (By the way, the lyricist for these songs is yet another forgotten figure—Fayyaz Hashmi, 1920-?)

I wonder why the old HMV audiocassettes of Jagmohan’s songs never ever mentioned the name of the composer. That has been a huge disservice to the legacy of Kamal Dasgupta—and that damage has stayed on: even now, when I look up Jagmohan’s songs, or the more well-known Talat Mahmood’s early songs, on the Internet, usually there is no mention of the music composer. Why does this information have to be so arcane? Why should one have to burrow one’s way through to know the name of the creator of some of the sweetest melodies? It is utterly deplorable.

I will suspend my outrage for a while and return to Jawab (1942), possibly the first Hindi film for which Dasgupta composed music. One of its best-known songs is Kanan Devi’s “Toofan Mail” (in recent times, Lata Mangeshkar sang it for her Shraddhanjali series that celebrated all-time memorable songs), and it certainly ranks as one of the most unforgettable train songs in Indian film music. Lyricist Pt. Madhur sure nailed it when he wrote “Ek hai aata, ek hai jaata, sabhi musaafir, bichhad jaayenge.” Song 2:



From a soothing lullaby to a sprightly train song—and now to a “dulhaniya” song from Jawab: here is Anima Dasgupta (no relation of Kamal Dasgupta) singing “Dulhaniya chhama chham chhama chham chali” for actress Jamuna, who looks on dotingly at the bashful bride-to-be, a charming Kanan Devi in all her bridal finery. Song 3:



In keeping with the grand tradition in Indian films of double versions of the same song—happy versus sad, or fast versus slow, or solo versus duet—here is the second, shorter version of the “Ay chand chup na jaana” lullaby that appears towards the end of the film, when love triumphs. It is sung by, I believe, Kamal Dasgupta himself, along with Kanan Devi. Song 4:



While researching on Dasgupta on the Internet (a very frustrating endeavor), I found a particularly poignant statement by him. An article by Khalid Hasan mentions a line from Dasgupta’s 1971 letter to a friend in Bengali—and I quote the quote: “‘The pictures you see in front, everybody remembers them and praises them. But nobody wants to know the people who work behind the scenes, nor talk about them. That is the nature of the world.’” Guess that sums it up.

Image credit: stationhollywood.blogspot.com