Re: Sureeli Ghazlen aur Nazmen
When I read – where else but on Twitter – that the man who wrote Aaj Jaane Ki Zidd Naa Karo had died, I paused for a moment, but it did not really affect me too much. But when I also read that it was the same man who had also written my favourite, Ye Mausam, Ye Hasnaa Hasaana, immortalised by Pankaj Mullick, my first reaction was one of disbelief. Implicit in that was the assumption that the lyricist must have been at least in his 30s when he wrote it, which would make him well above 100 years of age.
It took the ever patient Pavan Jha to dig out links to convince me that the gentleman who died today, born in 1920, was indeed only 20 years or so when he wrote the song that’s always been a favourite of mine. Here is Khalid Hasan:
I met Fayyaz Hashmi, the great poet and lyricist of the Indian-Pakistani cinema and entertainment industry only once and now regret that I made no attempt to meet him again. It was in Lahore in 1968 or thereabouts and it was at the offices of a company that supplied hydropower plants and components to Wapda. I used to drop in there off and on to see a couple of friends. That day, there he was, a dark thick-set man wearing dark glasses, sitting in a chair quietly drinking tea. What he was doing there I have no idea. “This is Fayyaz Hashmi,” my friend said. I registered nothing. We shook hands. My friend spoke again, “Yes, the Fayyaz Hashmi.” The penny dropped. There in front of me sat one of the all-time greats of the music industry with few, if any, equals. Pakistan did not treat him well, as it did not treat Saadat Hasan Manto or “Prince of Minerva Movietone” Sadiq Ali or Mumtaz Shanti or Rehana or Meena Shorey, the “ lara lappa” girl, well.
What follows about Hashmi and two others is based on the research work of movie encyclopedist extraordinaire, my friend Muhammad Rafiq of Southend-on-Sea in Essex, England.
Fayyaz Hashmi was born in Calcutta in 1920 and it is a shame that his name is never mentioned among those acknowledged to stand in the first rank, nor has the industry to which his contribution is immense, or the state which he chose to become a citizen of, recognised his work. He started life with the Gramophone Company of India and in 1947 on his insistence he was sent to organise the derelict music scene in Pakistan. Lahore, which was the third important EMI centre after Calcutta and Bombay, lay in ruins, so he began to bring together instrumentalists and vocalists of merit, some of whom had come from the other side of the great divide. To him goes the credit for the first recordings made in Lahore after the maelstrom of 1947 and he it was who brought to the fore Munawwar Sultana (not the actress), Farida Khanum and Zeenat Begum, among many others.
His father, a writer and director, worked for Madan Theatre and they lived in Hayat Khan Lane in Calcutta, next to Agha Hashr Kaashmiri, the “Indian Shakespeare”. Fayyaz imbibed the literary and artistic spirit at the gatherings that took place at their home which Agha Hashr attended regularly. At the age of 13 or 14, he wrote a ghazal that was very well received. Then Master Fida Hussain sang another of the boy wonder’s ghazals that also became a hit from one end of India to the other. ( Qadr kisi ki hum ne na jaani: Haa’i mohabbat haa’i jawani).
He was 20 when the Gramophone Company of India employed him as its resident lyricist. The music director of the company was the great Kamal Dasgupta with whom Fayyaz formed a long and memorable creative association. Fayyaz wrote the first song that Talat Mahmood sang in 1941 (Sab din ek samaan nahin tha) and the runaway hit Tasveer teri dil mera behla na sakay gi. He also wrote the immortal Pankhij Malik song Ye raatain, ye mausam and the first Urdu/Hindi songs for Hemant Kumar, Juthika Roy, Feroza Begum and Jagmohan. In all, he wrote more than 500 non-film songs, each one of which defines a human situation poignantly, romantically. He also wrote lyrics for a large number of movies, both in India and Pakistan.