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SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2011 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM
REVIEWS
The masters’ voices
COURTESY PENGUIN INDIA
HINDUSTAN TIMES
What went into a Burman tune and other details of his music; illuminating facts from the life of KL Saigal
Packing a Pancham When the authors, evidently keen students of Hindi film music, set out to put this book together, they might have known of the enormity of the job at hand. It is a daunting task to chronicle the life of a legend. But it is an even more daunting task to chronicle his work, especially when the man happens to be R.D. Burman, or Pancham, and the work happens to be his music. First things first. R.D. Burman—The Man, The Music by Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Balaji Vittal passes a key test any book on a music legend must. It manages to evoke nostalgia. On page after page, you relive hundreds of Pancham gems—some cult classics, some immensely popular, some only vaguely familiar. On more than one occasion, I found myself on the Internet, looking for a particular song that the book mentioned (it mentions close to 600), either to relive it again, or to get that now-whichone-was-this? discomfort out of my mind. After an upfront declaration that the book is not a biography, Bhattacharjee and Vittal stick to Pancham’s music for the most part, and look at the man behind the composer, primarily through the filter of his music. Some of these moments are poignantly captured, such as his period of insecurity in the late 1980s (which included Subhash Ghai unceremoniously dropping Pancham from Ram Lakhan without informing him), leading up to his death a few months before the release of the music of 1942: A Love Story in 1994. The writers are handicapped by the lack of research available on the Indian film industry, a fact that they lament a few times during the book. Here their work begins to find limiting boundaries. The source material for much of this book revolves around five rel-
RD Burman–The Man, The Music: By Anirudha Bhattacharjee & Balaji Vittal, HarperCollins, 342 pages, `399. evant interviews published in the last 20 years, and some one-onones the authors managed in the process of writing. Important people in Pancham’s life, no less than Asha Bhonsle and Gulzar, are not a part of these interviews. Ironically, Javed Akhtar is quoted liberally, while the relationship between Pancham and Gulzar, one of the most fascinating ones in the history of our cinema, is interpreted primarily through the authors’ viewfinder. The book manages to remain objective through much of its length. In fact, it seems that the writers over-compensate to ensure that they don’t lose objectivity. They dissect every single
allegation of plagiarism against Pancham in great detail, mostly inclined to the composer’s side, but sometimes trying to find reasons for his “errors of judgment”. The book is essentially about the process of creation, and gets fairly technical at times—for the right reasons. The parts about notes, chords and ragas may come across as complex to layman listeners. In fact, the book comments on the inability of music critics to understand what goes into a composition, and calls upon them to “upgrade themselves”. The authors sometimes go overboard in trying to lay the blame for Pancham’s failures at the door of his films, and their lead stars. For example, speaking about the failure of Mehbooba (1976), they say: “Even a reincarnation failed to cure Kaka of his wooden expressions and Hema Malini of her grunts.” In the same breath, Sunny Deol is targeted for the failure of Zabardast (1985): “True, lead actor Sunny Deol had the looks, but then, so do most TV newscasters.” Notwithstanding a few uncharitable comments of this nature, R.D. Burman—The Man, The Music delivers for the most part, an engaging look at a legend’s chequered career. Soaked in trivia that ranges from being interesting to simply fascinating, it serves as a fitting tribute to arguably the most important man in the history of Hindi film music. Sailesh Kapoor
The Saigal effect The first time one hears Kundan Lal Saigal’s voice, one is struck by the sheer alien-ness of it. It is as if one is hearing something that does not just belong to another age, another time, but another culture. It is a voice easy to parody and if one has had the misfortune, as I did, of hearing Saigal when one is young, it is a voice that is easy to dismiss (even Bollywood does it to Saigal. In Professor, when Lalita Pawar falls for the aged professor, who is of course the young Shammi Kapoor in disguise as an old man, she hums a Saigal-Uma Shashi hit to herself, “Prem nagar mein, banaaoongi ghar main”,
KL Saigal—The Definitive Biography: By Pran Nevile, Penguin India, 248 pages, `299.
and we are all invited to laugh at her nasal intonation). But stumbling upon Saigal in one’s 40s, rediscovering him, as I did, is another matter altogether. Pran Nevile does a good workmanlike job of putting together the facts of the case in K.L. Saigal. Where the facts have blurred, he offers every version that is available. This means that there are four versions to the discovery of Kundan Lal Saigal; but in the industry that produces Hindi cinema, none are as industrious as the mythopoeists. Nevile has also added several appendices, including one that tells the stories of all the films as narrated in the booklets that once came out with every film. We read of Saigal’s visit to the kothas (brothels) of Allahabad, of his being the first non-Bengali singer to be blessed by Gurudev (Rabindranath Tagore) and allowed to sing Rabindra Sangeet. But there is no explanation here for that voice. Yes, we know about the sore throat. We have heard of the fondness for alcohol. But nothing I have read about Saigal’s voice explains what it was: something above and beyond the human. The alien-ness of the voice no longer seems apparent now. Instead, its almost mythical ability to conjure up a choral ensemble becomes apparent. Surely, one thinks, this is many voices singing in perfect unison? Then, one grows accustomed to the fact that this is a single voice but one is still not comfortable. Surely this is the sound of some large
Flashback: (above) Saigal and Jamuna in Devdas, 1936; and Burman and Bhonsle at a recording.
expect that, within two years, India will be back on the 9% per annum growth path that it has been during the last four years.” Basu is near enough— growth fell to 6.7% in 2008-09 and is a few percentage points short of 9% in 2010-11. So what’s his prediction for the future? “It is reasonable to forecast that 30-40 years from now, India will be a developed country.” I’d translate that to simply bumping up my SIP (systematic investment plan) contributions in the equity funds I have. For those who freeze at the mention of the word economics, the book is a gentle entry into what is known as a dismal science. His binary thought process finds great application, using game theory to make prescriptions that are as varied as attempting to stop mis-selling of financial products and tracking down a thief in Italy. Miscellany is a great read not just because it allows the reader a glimpse into the person and not just the economist, but also because he does not hesitate to step into the intellectual quagmires of modern-day India—and talks about
(oh my God) God! My favourite story goes like this: Battling a midnight tummy upset in a secluded Japanese resort, Basu had two options. One, wake up his Japanese colleague in the middle of the night. Two, die. He tried a third, which began as a facetious idea, took root and in the absence of any other viable option, got implemented. Basu invokes the longlost connection with “God”. He prayed to God to please take pity and make him well. And if God wondered why he only called Him in a time of distress, Basu reasons: “Unlike other people who call on you day and night with little rhyme or reason, I never do.” Fifteen minutes later he was absolutely fine. That led him to two (of course!) conclusions: Either there is no God and he got better anyway. Or there is a God who loves him for his lack of faith and not troubling Him with daily prayers! When I asked Basu last week if he now believed in God, Basu gave a vintage binary answer: There is a short answer and a longer nuanced answer. The short answer is No.
and awkward instrument, something like a tuba, a bassoon, no, something with the gravitas of wind but the tonalities of string? And then there is the emotional quality, the shading of the voice. It is the voice of heartbreak, it is the voice of masculine heartbreak. And this is what makes it odd because the other men sang as men; Saigal sang as a woman would but he is undoubtedly all man, all male. When the male saints wanted to yearn, they took on the female voice. When they wanted to express birha (separation), they reached for the feminine forms of the verbs of love and longing. Only a woman knows how to weep, to scream pain to the skies. Actually, only Geeta Dutt knows how to sing the blues of the 20th century; Geeta Dutt and Begum Akhtar. And only Saigal sounds like a man who knows where love ends and pain begins. In fact, I don’t think Devdas would have been made over and over again had Saigal not played him the first time and given voice to “Saawan aaya tum na aaye/Tum bin rasiya, kuchh na bhaaye”. And yet it is odd that we know so little about the first genuine bona-fide male superstar. Jerry Pinto Write to lounge@livemint.com
AN ECONOMIST’S MISCELLANY | KAUSHIK BASU
Gods and the GDP The renowned economist’s erudite new collection will appeal even to the lay reader B Y M ONIKA H ALAN monika.h@livemint.com
···························· t’s not often that you get to read the minds of people who have a room in the power-filled corridors of North Block. Though most of the book was completed just before Kaushik Basu’s first few days as chief economic advisor to the Union finance ministry, you do get to read a bit about the first impressions of a person more used to lecture theatres and tutorials than the ceremonial routines of the Indian bureaucracy. No wonder that it took him some time to figure out that the sky-high “In” tray can be dealt with by using the tray labelled “Out”. And that it was pointless trying to open and shut doors for himself or carry his own beat-up laptop case. His toughest
I
An Economist’s Miscellany: Oxford University Press, 200 pages, `395.
moment? Trying to maintain his habit of speaking plainly and not getting into trouble. He finds similarity in the art of political speech, with a character in his play called Lachhu, who speaks in practised gibberish to hoodwink non-Indian travellers looking for the great Indian spirit on their way to Benaras. An Economist’s Miscellany (the title self-admittedly influenced by British mathematician John Edensor Littlewood’s A Mathematician’s Miscellany) will disappoint those expecting a serious discourse on economic theory. True to its name, it is actually just a collection of old columns, articles, translations, self-scripted plays and a game put in some order. But if the dour reader of economic theory can shed the serious mask for a while, there is plenty of deep stuff under the clock of a facetious storytelling style—written in the wonderfully self-deprecating style that Basu has perfected. I found myself turning chortles into coughs as I
read the book everywhere—in office, in elevators, in the Metro. While the non-serious reader has enough to laugh about, the serious reader will do well to read carefully. At two points in the past Basu has predicted correctly the future rates of GDP. The first was in a column in 2005, when India was still to taste the fruit of sustained 8% growth: “Unless India makes a major blunder or gets inadvertently drawn into some costly war or generates so much inequality as to cause political instability, the growth rate should continue. And to aim for a sustained growth rate of 8% and a rapid decline in poverty is entirely within the realm of the feasible.” In the next he stuck his head out at a time when the world was collapsing. It was 2008 and the world was fast grinding to a halt. That the US and Europe were not going to recover for a long time was clear, but it is a tribute to his skill as an economist that he wrote in October 2008: “...India’s growth forecast for this year has been lowered to 7%—my own expectation is that it will be even lower. But there is reason to