Remembering the Gazab Ke Din of the 1980s: From Qayamat to Qyamat
by Anirudha Bhattacharjee & Balaji Vittal
One morning sometime in the early-1980s … Chitralok, aired on Vividh Bharati every day at 8.30 a.m., had just begun. The programme consisted of Hindi film songs from new releases. The first number went ‘Tum tum tumba, nacho kahe tumba’, a Bappi Lahiri solo from Karate (1983). The next song could have been a ‘Ui amma ui amma’ (Mawali, 1983). Or a ‘Ladki nahi hai tu lakdi ka khamba hai’ (Himmatwala, 1983). At 8.45 a.m., the radio was switched off. A popular programme at one time, Chitralok lost a lot of loyal fans in the 1980s.
The 1980s have been described as the worst years for Hindi cinema. A number of the old guard who were known for their great music — from Nasir Husain to Dev Anand — were clearly over the hill and on their way out. Yash Chopra was yet to reinvent himself. Big budgets, multi-star casts, proven composers, nothing seemed to be working any more. Gone was the poetry of the 1950s and 1960s; composers who ruled the 1970s — R.D. Burman, Laxmikant–Pyarelal and Kalyanji–Anandji — were finding it difficult to stay afloat in the face of the tsunami unleashed by a few composers and their brand of music. The coming of disco had promised a new sound, but it soon went out of fashion, thanks to overkill and sub-standard music in the name of disco. Gradually, listeners tuned out of the cacophony that was Hindi film music and tuned in to ghazals, which became quite a rage. Jagjit Singh, Ghulam Ali and Pankaj Udhas replaced Kishore Kumar and Mohd Rafi. Even Hindi cinema cashed in on this and films like Arth (1981), Saath Saath (1982), Bazaar (1982), etc., featured some fine ghazals.
By the time the decade was winding up, Hindi film music lovers were in a state of utter despair. But, as the saying goes: ‘It is darkest just before dawn.’ And true to the adage, an unheralded film ushered in a new dawn. Interestingly enough, the film was produced by someone whose name had become a byword for musical entertainment in Hindi cinema, Nasir Husain.
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Bappi Lahiri has often been held responsible for the degeneration of Hindi film music, but musicians differ. To quote Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia, ‘It’s not that Bappi was not talented. But he was getting films where the requirements were not very musical. Hence he had to dish out such stuff.’
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But there was a major difference. Having burnt his fingers with three back-to-back duds — Zamane Ko Dikhana Hai (1981), Manzil Manzil (1984), and Zabardast (1985) — he was no longer confident of directing the film himself. Nasir Husain had frankly admitted that he was unable to put his finger on what exactly was going wrong. ‘In Zamane Ko Dikhana Hai (1981), Nasir overplayed his signature “flamboyance” aspect. He made a lot of movies after that and, in each of them, he tried to play up the flamboyance factor but it didn’t work. The ZKDH failure, I felt, was like a jolt to his confidence and self-esteem,’ says Mansoor Khan, his son. ‘My father realized we needed a change of guard. He was clear about three things: It would have to be a love story since there hadn’t been one for quite some time; he would launch Aamir Khan; and he would not direct QSQT. The film was about youngsters and it was a good idea to let a youngster direct it.’
Milind Shrivastava of the composing duo, Anand–Milind, says, ‘Composer Ravi sahab’s son, Ajay Sharma, introduced us to Mansoor. Mansoor had just come back from the US and said he was making a video called Umberto based on the life of a Catholic musician. He asked us to compose its music. One character plays the violin. One of the heroes in that was played by Amol Gupte (of Stanley Ka Dabba [2011] fame). There were two songs, both written by Sameer, who was also the scriptwriter of the film. We also did the background score. It was not marketed or commercialized. He showed the film to Nasir sahab. Even the son had to go through an audition. Nasir sahib liked Umberto and Mansoor Khan got the job of directing Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak. So Mansoor chose us as music directors for QSQT.’
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There is something incredibly lucky about the young college romance theme for debutants. Bobby (1973), Love Story (1981), Rocky (1981), Ek Duje Ke Liye (1981), Betaab (1983), Jawani (1984) — the formula seemed infallible. Nasir Husain went back to that. The magic would work again and again in films to come: Aashiqui (1990), Maine Pyar Kiya (1989).
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It was their seventh film. But what it meant was that it would be the first time in twenty-two years that Nasir Husain would do a film without R.D. Burman.
‘Nasir sahab wanted to maintain his own team and rightly so. I think a producer should never change his hit team. And his hit team had always been Majrooh–Pancham-da,’ says Milind. Perhaps Nasir Husain wanted to give his young director a free hand. ‘[It was a] very big decision of Husain sahab to drop Pancham-da,’ continues Milind. ‘I have seen the impact of the pressure heroes exert on producers, causing my father [Chitragupta, who had composed for over a hundred films] being taken out of banners. We felt very bad at seeing Pancham-da being left out. But Pancham-da never showed the disappointment. He was so sporting. He met me at a party and said, “I too record at Film Centre. But I don’t get the quality of sound that you get. How did you do the balancing etc? Tell me.” I replied, “Please, Pancham-da. You are the boss. You’ve done so much good work at Film Centre. My sound is nothing different from yours.”’ Indeed, there were similarities — in the use of instruments. And the overall layered feel.
Mansoor Khan says, ‘Dad would say, “Why don’t you work with Pancham uncle? He is so flexible.” Well, I was absolutely enamoured of his talent. I did feel nervous. And probably that is why I didn’t work with Pancham uncle. Pancham uncle would probably have given me the space. But I had my own ideas and I needed someone my age where I could say, “Chal yaar”. I needed some leeway to bully these guys. With Pancham uncle I would have probably held back, I would have got satisfied too easily. How could I tell him [Pancham uncle] to alter his compositions? I was more interested in giving myself to myself. I am not a very technical director. I am more interested in emotions, those small moments.’
Mansoor’s young cousin and Nasir Husain’s nephew, Aamir Khan, would play the boy and the Miss India 1984 would be the girl. ‘Juhi Chawla had done an ad film for my video company. There was something appealing about her. So when we were finalizing the cast for QSQT she came to my mind. She won the screen test hands down,’ says Mansoor. ‘In fact, I was less clear about Aamir. I had seen him as such a shy and quiet boy, I had my doubts about Aamir being able to do the role.’ Two relatively unknown faces, confident and urban, Aamir and Juhi suddenly became the face of Hindi cinema.
Even the composing process had the zing of youth. ‘While composing “Papa kehte hain”, we had this music room in Khar and I was sitting out in the verandah one early morning. I was strumming my guitar and the tune came within a second. I gave it to Majrooh sahab to write. The cross line in my mind was different. While sitting with Anand and Majrooh sahab, Anand said let’s break the lines. This will sound better and also allow the breath. And the polishing went on right till the end,’ says Milind.
Which brings us to ‘Gazab kaa hai din’. Milind Shrivastava says, ‘We had a red Maruti van. We would get into it, play the cassette in that and drive around, sometimes till Worli.’ ‘Gazab kaa hai din’ was composed during one such drive through Band Stand. It was sweet, free-flowing, simply sung, and had an uncluttered arrangement, full of interludes and refrains of the English flute (played on the keyboards) and the soprano sax.
The arrangement of the song was exotic. Ramesh Iyer, who dubbed all the guitar pieces in the song — the lead arpeggio, the rhythm accompanying the song and the deep bass — says, ‘Viju Shah, Kalyanji’s son, played the keyboards. Even the flute obbligatos were on the synthesizer. The hollow sound in the prelude was reproduced in this song by Shyam Raj on the soprano sax.’ The delectable harmonica in the intro was played on the synthesizer by Viju Shah.
The situation carried Husain’s signature. The kiss-and make-up legacy of ‘O mere sona (Teesri Manzil, 1966) and ‘Ye ladka hai allah (Hum Kisise Kum Naheen, 1977) was here again, with the male singer coming in for a solitary last antara. ‘Yes, it was closer to “Ye ladka hai allah”. She is flirting with him and he is resisting her. Now, I am not a great lyricist but I do contain a thought in my song. And I was consciously thinking of the way dad would have constructed the song,’ says Mansoor Khan. ‘“Gazab kaa hai din” was shot at the Ooty Golf Course. At one end of the golf course, there was a bunch of trees. Till the first antara, the song was shot there. A little ahead, there were thicker trees. The rest of the song was shot in that space. The sheer drop [cliff face] was shot somewhere else and not in Ooty.’
Majrooh Sultanpuri too turned young with a vengeance. The use of the phrase ‘kasam se’ is a masterstroke. It belongs to the young, unlike phrases like ‘khuda kasam’, ‘bhagwan ki saugand’ which sound too weighty. ‘Kasam se’ is totally secular. And fun. It holds promise until the next fad comes along. It carries in it the fun of friends teasing each other with a white lie. Majrooh Sultanpuri uses this as the tipping point at the end of the mukhra before going back to the starting line. There was high drama during the post-recording mixing.
Mansoor Khan recounts how it played out: ‘The songs and background score were recorded at Film Centre, but we took it to Anand Cine Studios [owned by Dev Anand] for the post-recording mixing since the studio had synchronized twelve-track recorders. Given my wide exposure to music with my father and the fact that I used to play the drums and the piano, I was familiar with sound, acoustics, the monitors, the reverbs, etc. I knew exactly what I was doing. All through the mixing process I kept objecting to the “distortion” and said it sounded too “high” but recordist Kuldeep Sood kept justifying it, “You don’t understand. In India if you make a mistake you make it on the higher side.”
‘When the song was finally mixed and put on to the optical, it was the most horrendous track anybody had ever heard. The track was making splitting sounds. Anand–Milind ki to band baj gayi. They had this “our-career-is-doomed” look on their faces. I told my dad about this and he conveyed it to Dev sahab. Dev sahab defended his recordists, saying I was too new. He asked for a second opinion by another gentleman and he also justified the poor output. I said this guy had been bought out. He was trying to cover Dev sahab who was probably worried that he would have to give us the money back for the twenty-five-day engagement.
‘I went back to Film Centre. Ashok, the recordist there, pointed out a few technical shortcomings at Film Centre but I told him, “Ashok, don’t worry, we will do it. He took it as a challenge. We arranged the tracks, did a pre-mix for the first time, for some parts and the sound we finally managed was amazing.’
Despite being the age-old love story, a staple of Hindi cinema for decades, Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak was like a breath of fresh air in the cinema of the era. It was a young film with young sensibilities. And the credit for that goes to its director, Mansoor Khan. ‘I was bringing a different sensibility into the film. There was a subtext of tragedy subconsciously building into the story. My mind was preconditioned to a tragic ending as the story was mainly about a Romeo and his Juliet. Now, two sequences had been shot for the film’s climax — one happy and the other sad. My father and his friends favoured a happy ending, the rest of the family, especially the youngsters, rooted for a sad one. But he relented and chose Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak as the title.’
Mansoor admits that he didn’t know what the title meant but it sounded good compared to the original Nafrat Ke Waris. ‘My father called Majrooh uncle, who liked it too.’
‘Till the release, we were not sure whether the album would work or not. We had invested a lot of time into building it,’ Milind says. ‘We had about sixty to seventy trials in which the distributors would come, praise the film and go away without buying it. And there was bad press about the music even before the public heard it. There was a very popular composer of that time who commented that the music was very slow and “thanda”.’
But Mansoor Khan and his young team had the last word.QSQT gave Hindi cinema two new pin-up stars and ushered in a new era of music. ‘The day I saw the first trial, I observed a number of flaws. I was looking at the finer details. But my dad was confident. He was looking at the broader picture,’ Mansoor Khan remembers. ‘When it was released, it got an 87 per cent return. By the time I returned from abroad, a month after the release, QSQT had become a rage.’
This piece has been excerpted with permission from Harper Collins, India
Book Title: Gaata Rahe Mera Dil — 50 Classic Hindi film songs