Gulzar on Pancham Da!

Today is R. D. Burman's death anniversary, a fact which I came to know after reading my fellow blogger Neel's post. A year back in one of the poetry forum I went into great length about Gulzar's poetry & songs. And during my search on net I found quite interesting incidents related to Gulzar's association with Pancham da. On this very day when pancham da left us I will love to share my old post with u!

Dated 12 Feb 2004
Any discussion about Gulzar is incomplete without mention of legendary musician Pancham yani late R.D.Burman sahab.
If songs ofj Gulzar are immortal in our mind the credit must also go to Pancham da apart from poet itself.

Let's see what Gulzar has to say about the making of those immortal songs. This piece was written by Gulzar in Filmfare after Pancham's da sad demise. Here are few excerpts from that article..

..We first worked together on PARICHAY. It was important for me to sit with him on the music sessions. He inspired certain moments which I picturised later, his music was that visual...I went to Rajkamal studio where he was recording a background score for another film. I gave him the mukhDa- 'Musafir hun yaaro/Na ghar hai na thikaana-and I left. That night he woke me up at 1 a.m. and said, "Come, come down with me to the car." He'd recorded the tune on a cassette already. He started driving through the empty streets of Bandra, he played the beat on the dashboard. It was my first song as a director with him.

By the time he composed 'Saare ke saare', he had shifted from home--he was in the process of acquiring a new flat--to Caesar's Palace Hotel. The most beautiful song in the film--'Beeti na bitaai raina'--was also composed in the hotel room. It was based on a classical 'bandish'; it fetched Lata and Bhupendra National Awards for best playback singers.

In all, we did eight films together, as a composer-director team. Besides PARICHAY, there were: KHUSHBOO, KINARA, AANDHI, KITAAB, NAMKEEN, LIBAAS and IJAAZAT. How did 'Tere bina zindagi se koi shikwa to nahin' (AANDHI) come about? He was recording Bengali songs for Durga puja around that time. The lyrics were by the renowned Gauri Shanker. I liked the tune that Pancham was composing; I filled it up with Hindi words and said, "Look, I'm going to use this for AANDHI."

As for 'Is moD pe jaate haiN, kuCH sust qadam raste', I gave him the words from one of my poems. He composed the tune instantly. He never took time. Spontaneity was his specialty. If he struggled over a song, he would prefer to abandon it. For instance, 'Ek hi khwab kai baar yuhi dekha hai maine' (KINARA) exasperated him. He found that metre a bit difficult, but two months later I put it before him again. He caught the scanning, and the song was finally recorded.

When I gave him 'Mera kuCH saamaaan tumhare paas paDa hai' (IJAA- ZAT), he waved the lyric aside and said, "Huh, tomorrow you'll bring me the front page of *The Times of India* and expect me to compose a tune around it. What is this blank verse you're giving me!" Ashaji was sitting there, she started humming the phrase, "Mujhe lauta do." He grasped it immediately; from that one phrase he developed the song, which was quite a feat! This time Ashaji and I got National Awards. Poor fellow, he did all the work and we enjoyed the 'kheer'..."