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Mehndi Hasan: Shola sa lapak jaaye hai, awaaz to dekho

By Rakhshanda Jalil
Updated Wednesday, 10 August 2011 15:08:17 - IST (UTC +5:30)

Ahmad Faraz once told me a very interesting anecdote. I was driving him to the Delhi airport, we were stuck in traffic and I was worried he might miss his flight. Faraz sahib, in his characteristically wry, amused tone told me how, once he was very, very late, the counters at the Delhi airport were closing and he had excess baggage to check in. The airport staff, on the verge of refusing to let him board, looked at his passport closely, and asked: ‘Aaap wohi hain … Ranjish hi sahi wale?’ And not only did Faraz sahib catch his flight but also had his excess baggage waved through. All because of Ranjish hi sahi, he chuckled as he narrated the incident.
Even in an age innocent of recorded music, poets used to become famous not just because their diwans were read or they were heard at mushairas, but because their poetry was sung. I suspect it is always the singing of a particular poem that adds to its ‘shelf life’ – more than its reading. For, it is the singing that brings poetry to those nooks and crannies of popular imagination where the written word does not reach. Now, with tapes and CDs becoming passé and Youtube and World Music having claimed our lives, many of us hear poetry more often than we read it. In India, it is also because fewer and fewer people can actually read Urdu poetry; the singer, therefore, has increasingly become a vital link in ‘accessing’ Urdu poetry.
The point of this somewhat extended introduction is to elaborate the importance of people like Mehndi Hasan who have done an immense service in popularising the Urdu ghazal in India. The sixties and seventies were a period when pirated cassettes from Pakistan were as precious as gold and visiting ghazal singers were treated better than royalty. It was during this time that Mehndi Hasan captured the Indian ghazal ‘market’. While his style of singing (with the characteristic breaking up of the matla into many, many short phrases) spawned many wannabes, no one could come close to his voice and adaygi. I know people (old as well as young) who still sway to Mehndi Hasan’s ghazals in a state of near-ecstasy. While a handful of the so-called ghazal connoisseurs in India know and understand Urdu and comprehend the full wazan of the ghazal in all its intricacies, a great many, I suspect, simply sway to its sonorousness. And when the singer is Mehndi Hasan, people who can barely follow the fill import of the poetry, whose Urdu vocabulary is uncertain and sheen qaf less so, the singer and the audience become one. Why is this so, I have often wondered. Perhaps it has something to do with Mehndi Hasan’s voice that can transpose you to a place where meaning becomes subservient to the magic of the words. Mehndi Hasan’s golden voice comes as close as it is possible in this day and age to a state of sama.
This is not to belittle the importance of the poet. If anything, Mehndi Hasan is single-handedly responsible for introducing many lesser-known poets to us in India. There are many in India who know the kalaam of certain poets thanks to Mehndi Hasan. For instance, Masroor Anwar’s hugely popular Mujhe tum nazar se gira to raje ho or Anwar Mirzapuri’s Main nazar se pi raha hoon instantly conjure up the voice and style of Mehndi Hasan and no one else. While the Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Ahmed Faraz ghazals in Mehndi Hasan’s repertoire never fail to delight Indian audiences, it is the kalaam of the (relatively) lesser-known poets who are perennial favourites (possibly because no one else has sung them at all). Among these, the ones most immediately identified with Mehndi Hasan among Indian audiences would be: Zindagi mein to sabhi pyar kiya karte hain, Yeh dhuan kahan se uththa hai, Shola tha jal bujha hoon, Pyar bhare do sharmile nain. These ghazals have, as it were, become Mehndi Hasan’s.
And in the case of the work of older poets such as Mir, Mehndi Hasan can be credited with infusing a new life in them. Chalte ho to chaman ko chaliye or Patta patta boota boota haal hamara jaane hai has been sung by many artists (including one for a Hindi film) yet none can match Mehndi Hasan’s inimitable style. The same can be said of Bahadurshah Zafar’s Baat karni mujhe mushkil kabhi aisi to na thee. Runa Laila comes to mind with this as well as certain ghazals by Faiz sung by both her and Mehndi Hasan. Runa Laila’s voice is brimful with the delicious exuberance and vivacity, the chanchalta of a mountain brook; Mehndi Hasan in comparison is stately and majestic like the broad river that has descended to the plains.
Unfortunately we in India don’t know Mehndi Hasan’s ouvre in its entirety. We don’t, for instance, know much about the songs he had sung for the Pakistan film industry as a playback singer, or those he recorded for the radio. This, perhaps, has something to do with the largely one-way traffic between India and Pakistan as far as the film industry of the two countries is concerned. But in the popular music category, and especially the ghazal, the Pakistani singers have always scored over their Indian counterparts. However, the immense popularity of certain ghazals in comparison to others is possibly due to the limitations of cross-border traffic. Even to this day, when limited trade has commenced between the two neighbours, when sugar and chemicals go from India and textiles and onyx come from Pakistan, books and music do not seem to fall within the parameters of free trade. One is still dependent on the goodwill of friends who cross the border or the pirated copies of popular cds and tapes available in Indian shops. This is possibly the only explanation why the older Mehndi Hasan numbers such as Rafta Rafta woh meri hasti ka saama ho haye or Gulon mein rang bhare, or are by far more popular than equally enchanting but less ‘anthologised’ numbers such as the Iqbal verses he sang for PTV. The same can be said for the farsi kalam that is even more difficult to access for an Indian listener.
Coming back to Ranjish hi sahi, few would know that Mehndi Hasan inserted these ashaar by Talib Baghpati and sang them in such a seamless way that they seem a part of the whole ghazal:
Maanaa ke muhabbat ka chhupaanaa hai muhabbat
Chupke se kisii roz jataane ke liye aa
Jaise tujhe aate hain na aane ke bahaane
Aise hii kisii roz na jaane ke liye aa
The new breed of singers who have turned the ghazal into a pastiche of verses by doing a cut-and-paste job from different poets would do well to remember the Maestro’s instinctive knowledge of metre and rhyme. With Mehndi Hasan there were never any false notes. (Curtsy: Hindustani Awaaz: Literature, Culture and Society)

Tags: Rakhshanda Ahmad Fraz, Mehdi Hasan, Urdu Gazal, shola sa lapak jaye he

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